I want my taxes to help fund universal health care for everyone in our country.  All but 43 countries offer free healthcare or access to health care for at least 90% of their citizens.  Why cannot we, the world’s wealthiest nation for over 60 years, divorce ourselves from corporate capitalist healthcare?

What of other social and economic issues as we near Tax Day?  Take poverty:  140 million people – 40% of US people – are poor or near poor, defined as one emergency away from economic ruin, according to the Poor People’s Campaign. The “140 million” are people of every race, ethnicity, age, faith, sex and sexual orientation, while poverty is highest among Black, Latino and Indigenous peoples due to systemic racism. More women than men are poor due to systemic sexism.  The pay gap between women and men – 21.8% on average – has persisted for 30 years, an injustice that deteriorates our democracy. 

I want my federal and state taxes to lift people out of poverty and end inequality in income. It can be done. Cities are leading the way in raising minimum wage; and they outpace the best states, while the federal minimum wage languishes at a despicable $7.25 per hour

 These 10 Cities have the Highest Minimum Wage in the U.S.

• Tukwila, Washington: $20.29.
• Seattle, Washington: $19.97.
• SeaTac, Washington: $19.71.
• West Hollywood, California: $19.08.
• Mountain View, California: $18.75.
• Emeryville, California: $18.67.
• Sunnyvale, California: $18.55.
• Denver, Colorado: $18.29.

Today, the highest minimum wages, by state and Washington, D.C., are in D.C., ($17), Washington ($16.28), California ($16), Connecticut ($15.69) and New Jersey ($15.13).  New York has raised its minimum hourly wage in New York City and its suburbs to $16. 

But we need to do better: A livable wage in Connecticut, that is, an hourly wage that enables a single adult to pay for necessities, including housing, food, utilities, transportation and health care, would be $24.13.  Overall, most single Americans need to earn at least $20/hour to pay their bills, given cost of living where they live.   More than 1/3 fall short. 

I want my federal and state tax money used to raise minimum wage to a livable wage in the name of economic justice for everyone.

PBS NewsHour Video: “Families slip back into poverty after pandemic-era child tax credit expires”

In 2023, the Department of Defense (aka the Department of War) was allocated $816.7 billion dollars in our national budget, while failing to pass its sixth straight audit.  US war spending in 2023 dwarfs that of other countries, totaling more than the next ten highest military budgets combined.  Since October 7, the gunboat-diplomacy Biden administration has approved over 100 weapons sales to the government of Israel, an average of 1 every 36 hours.

I want my tax money to “beat swords into plowshares” by supplanting masculinist militarism with intelligent, committed, unrelenting diplomacy that lifts our country above our abject ranking of 131 least peaceful country out of 163 countries on the Global Peace Index.

Our arduous path back from flawed to healthy democracy will only be through engaged citizens, activist organizations and unions in cities and some states not shackled in the stranglehold of anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, Trumpian, and extreme religious right politics, nor held hostage by their weapons manufacturers.

• “Voters inCalifornia, Vermont and Michigan in November 2023 adopted amendments to enshrine abortion protections into their respective state constitutions.” More states are expected to advance similar measures, because constitutional protections are considered the most ironclad and are very difficult to amend.
• In February 2024 the city of Flint Michigan recently approved a universal cash program for babies, called Rx Kids, that provides new mothers $1,500 and $500 monthly for their child’s first year.
• The same month, Detroit became the largest U.S. city so far to pass a “Move the Money” resolution, following the lead of neighboring city Hamtramck, Michigan. The measure, approved unanimously by the City Council, calls on the U.S. Congress and the president to shift public money away from the military to fund social services.
• In June 2023 the US Conference of Mayors unanimously passed a resolution “Calling for Urgent Action to Avoid Nuclear War, Resolve the Ukraine Conflict, Lower Tensions with China, and Redirect Military Spending to Meet Human Needs.”
• In March 2024 the New York State Appellate Court ruled unanimously to affirm Kingston, New York’s Rent Guidelines Board mandating 15% rent reduction, given the scarcity of rental units and tenant organizing for housing justice.
• More than 100 US cities, including Chicago and Seattle, have passed resolutions on the genocidal Israel-Gaza war with most calling for a permanent ceasefire, exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian political prisoners and free flow of aid to the Gazan people.

I want my taxes to be used for our true national security: lifting people out of poverty, hunger and homelessness; providing universal health care; ensuring affordable housing for everyone needing it, assuring a livable wage, ending violence against women, affirming that Black Lives Matter, and fostering peace.

In the spirit of International Women’s Day, let’s look at a brief profile of women’s status today and the consequences for our country and the world.

If I asked my brothers, my many nephews, male friends and colleagues, did they think women are as capable as men, I wager that most, if not all, would say yes. Beyond doubt we women have all the talent, intelligence, and potential for leadership and political responsibility as men. But I have also learned from recent history that, in some cases – such as negotiating an end to conflict; working toward long-standing peace; and prioritizing health, education and social welfare in government – women outperform men.

I would go so far as to say that the fate of nations is tied to the status of women. Studies back this up. A team of researchers has created the largest global database on the status of women called WomanStats. Their findings are profoundly illuminating for global security and world peace. In a sentence: the degree of women’s equality predicts best how peaceful or conflict-ridden their countries are. Consider that feminist revolutions to gain human rights and equality for women and girls have freed and saved the lives of millions of women and girls—without weapons, without fists, without a drop of blood spilled.

Let’s bring the injustice of female inequality down to the personal level, where millions of women and girls here and throughout the world experience sexual violence, sex trafficking and prostitution; neglect of girls because of son preference; and preventable maternal mortality. Ponder this shocking finding: More lives were lost in the 20th century through male violence against women in all its forms than during 20th century wars and civil strife. Yet, while thousands of monuments in parks and plazas throughout the United States honor those who gave their lives for their country, only one – the first of its kind – is being planned for women who lost their lives giving birth to their country’s children.

World Association for Sustainable Development Video: “International Women’s Day 2024 and Most Influential Women 2024 Sustainability Awards ”

The scourge of men raping women and girls is now compounded in those US states that have denied or greatly diminished the reproductive right to abortion. It is estimated that there were 65,000 rape-related pregnancies between July 2022 and January 2024 in US states banning abortion since the US Supreme Court overturned the 50-year women’s right to make their own reproductive decisions.

Looking into women’s economic status, we find that women have higher rates of poverty than men across most races and ethnicities, with women of color having the highest. Women are hired at a lower level than male counterparts and paid less for the same work, and this wage discrepancy follows them throughout their work life. Domestic violence causes women to lose an average of 8 million days of paid work per year and is a strong factor in women’s homelessness.

Not only do more women than men struggle to cover everyday expenses due to the gender wage gap, which has remained stagnant for 20 years – at about 82% – but the gap compounds over a lifetime, a significant factor contributing to the disparity in poverty rates among women and men age 75 and older.

Women’s birth of and care for children are not compensated with paid parental leave in the United States, unlike all other comparable countries; thus, women who give birth are cheated of savings, pensions and Social Security. No surprise then that the greatest risk factor for being poor in old age is having been a mother.

On a personal note: My fairest employer was my brother Michael: when I delivered papers for him in 7th and 8th grades, he paid me the same rate as himself. Bless you, Mike

• Fairer than the US Environmental Protection Agency New England, which hired me a grade below a comparable male environmental engineer employed at the same time. (When I confronted the director about the inequity, he responded “Doesn’t your husband work?”)

• Fairer than my next employer, which hired me at a significantly lower salary than a comparable male colleague, forcing me to enter into (successful) litigation to win equal pay for equal work and retroactive compensation.

Finally, studies of women and men negotiating post-conflict agreements found that all-male groups take riskier, less empathic and more aggressive positions. They also break down more quickly than negotiations that include women. Interestingly, men are more satisfied with decisions made with women involved than by all-male groups.

So where are the women in negotiations for permanent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, return of Israeli hostages and Palestinians in Israeli jails, and life-saving aid to Gaza? Where are the women in efforts to bring the war in Ukraine to an end? When will men dare to use the wisdom and skill of women to end their wars and create peace agreements that endure?

International Women’s Day is not only about the arithmetic of equality but also about its consequences – justice for women and girls and a better future for all in our country and the world.

As I began this piece on trees in forests, woods and parks, a friend asked, why in January in New England?  Why didn’t I wait until the deciduous trees were a palette of new spring green crowning the stark brown trunks and branches of winter?  The next day, January 7, nature provided the answer: a 10” snowstorm.  Trees after a winter snowstorm – their upstretched dark deciduous branches shouldered with snow and their downreaching evergreen branches pillowed with snow – are a feast for the eyes.

  “A forest is a sacred place…The medicines available in the forest are the second most valuable gift that nature offers us; the oxygen available there is the first.”  These are the words of Irish born and educated in the ancient Celtic culture of spiritual and physical respect for trees, Diana Beresford Kroeger.  This brilliant botanist went on to receive advanced degrees, culminating in a doctorate in medical biochemistry.  She affirmed that simply walking in a pine forest is a balm for the body and soul, elevating our mood, thanks to their chemical gift of pinenes aerosols released by pine trees and absorbed by our bodies. 

The healing potential of nature even stretches to those hospitalized. Patients recovering from surgery heal more quickly and need fewer pain killers if they have a hospital room with a window that looks out onto nature.  Similarly, studies of students in classrooms with a view of nature have found that they both enjoyed learning and learned more than students without a view of nature.

Suzanne Simard worked for Canada’s minister of forests doing research on the most efficient ways to re-grow forests that had been clearcut by the logging industry.  Loving forests since a child growing up in rural British Columbia, she grasped immediately that clear-cutting whole areas of a forest and applying herbicide to kill any competitor plant or tree before replanting monoculture tree seedlings was a “war on the forest.” In testing her insight, she found that clearcutting and planting single species seedling trees made no difference to speeding up the growth of the desired tree plantation and in some cases, reduced tree survival in the monoculture wood lots. 

“Healing Forest,” Digital, Dream / Mystical, 2024.

In pursuing a doctorate and subsequent years of research, Simard documented that biodiverse forests are the healthiest of forests, with trees communicating with other trees of their own species and other species by an underground fungal network linking their roots with each other. Through this network, known as the wood wide web, trees provide chemical food and medicine to keep each other as healthy as possible.  Her work has shown that “the fungal networks between roots of diverse trees carry the same chemicals as neurotransmitters in our brain,” strongly suggesting, she says, that trees have intelligence.  She has learned from Aboriginal people that “they view trees as their people, just as they view the wolves and the bears and the salmon as their relations.”  We need that back, she asserts. 

Trees teach us lessons of community and cooperation through all the seasons, writes German forester Peter Wohlleben in The Hidden Life of Trees.  He deems forests as “superorganisms,” sharing food with their own species and even nourishing their competitors.  Together they create an ecosystem that enables them to live much longer as a community than a single living tree alone, a life lesson for us humans.  Moreover, “sick trees are supported by healthy ones nearby…until they recover; and even a dead trunk is indispensable for the cycle of lifesaving as a cradle for its young.”

Trees are essential for life on earth; the older they are, the more essential they are.  They remove carbon dioxide from the air, store carbon in their tissue and soil, give back oxygen into the atmosphere and slow global temperature increases. They offer cooling shade in hardscape urban neighborhoods, buffer cold winter winds, attract birds and wildlife, purify our air, prevent soil erosion during rainstorms and filter rainwater falling through their soil.  

Without trees, we could not survive, whereas they have and could live without us.  Older than we so-called homo sapiens (“wise men”) by a thousand times, they are wiser than many humans: they do not wage war with each other nor destroy their own habitat.  They know not genocide nor ecocide.  They are our ancestral model for cooperative, non-violent and sustainable communities.

I write this to honor and thank the multitude of forest protectors across our country and for those working to restore nature to their towns and cities.

President Joe Biden

Dear Joe,

I would wish you a Happy New Year; but it seems trite and banal, given all the challenges and troubles you and our country face in 2024 – some inherited from previous administrations, others of your own making.

Americans are 10 times more likely to be shot to death than people in other wealthy countries, with homicides, suicides and mass shootings on the increase.  For the past four years, mass murders have skyrocketed into the 600s per year, breaking all past records.  Since 2020 more children and teens are killed by firearms than any other cause. 

Don’t these sound like war statistics?

Yes, you have established the first White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.  But it is rare to find anyone in your administration making the connection between our country’s record-breaking gun violence at home and our country’s record-breaking military weapons sales across the world, to democracies and autocracies alike, having grown dramatically over the past 5 years.  To re-state, isn’t it possible that the US global culture of weapons and militarism with nearly 100 military bases ringing the world, and our long and persistent history of war (nearly 40 in your and my lifetime), rebounds back to infect our violent culture here at home? 

The US pledged $17.5 million to a loss and damage fund for poor countries vulnerable to extreme climate damage (for which the US is more responsible than any other country) at the 2023 UN climate conference while doling out over $100 billion in weapons and military aid in the same year to feed and fuel wars in Gaza and Ukraine, wars that destroy and contaminate, likely irreparably, the homeland and ecosystems of those peoples who survive these wars and genocide in the case of Gaza.  Crumbs for climate crisis and ruined ecosystems fall from the Master’s table, while feasts of weapons abound. 

Our habit of war “has yielded a host of perverse results here at home,” writes war veteran and noted historian of American military history, Andrew Bacevich.  Neither have our wars brought about “peace [or democracy] by even the loosest definition of the word… the opposite in most case.”  His wise counsel: discard militarism in favor of “prudence and pragmatism.”

You often state proudly that we are the strongest military in the world, as if it is a crown of excellence, when in fact it is a crown of thorns on our country, which hangs on a cross of iron.

As Eisenhower memorably said in 1953: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” What felonious theft our military budget is from the 140 million or 40% of US citizens poor and low-income American people, for whom the crucial Poor People’s Campaign advocates.   Forty-four million Americans “struggled with hunger” in 2022, according to USDA. Diseases of despair are rampant. 

“Missile Theft,” by Juan Cole, Digital, Dream/ Dreamland v. 3/ IbisPaint, 2023

Our life expectancy – a critical marker of people’s overall health – is lower than all comparable wealthy countries, and many other countries including China and Cuba.  Recall Dr. Martin Luther King’s warning: “If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.” 

I do wish that that you had read the other Catholic president John F Kennedy’s 1963 peace speech at American University before you met recently in San Francisco with Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China.  At the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and the Cuban Missile crisis, Kennedy and Khrushchev opened a line of communication and held many secret talks, despite monumental political differences, for the sake of moving away from imminent nuclear war. 

In his 1963 address at American University, Kennedy, after stating his abhorrence of Communism, praised Russia’s key role in saving Europe from Nazism while losing 20 million citizens, and he foregrounded the two countries shared humanity.  “If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”  In many diplomatic private talks and communications, also involving Pope John the XXIII, Kennedy and Khrushchev laid the groundwork for ending above ground nuclear weapons testing with the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons and forging a more peaceful country-to-country relationship.  Within 6 1/2 months President Kennedy was assassinated.

Xi’s remarks to a gathering of business leaders, following your more private meeting with him last November, has some resemblances with JFK’s speech.  He displayed respect for our country’s accomplishments (even if for self-serving reasons) and advocated the two countries accept political diversity in a multi-polar world.  Joe, you did not employ the same tact when you replied at a press conference to a reporter’s provocation, Yes, I think Xi is a dictator –a gratuitous remark that does little to advance your stated goals of working together to avoid war and address the climate crisis and to live in a multipolar, diverse world.  You are generous with weapons; but dismissive of dialogue where it is most needed.

My wish for you in 2024 is to imbibe this wisdom and act on it:  What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That is the core of the Torah, the New Testament, the Koran and other religious traditions.  Make it your own, end the US addiction to war, and save your country’s soul and your own.

Karen Boyden, with the assistance of some family and friends, folded and laid out free shoes and summer clothes and, later, fall sweaters, pants and heavier shoes on a table and blanket on the Commons.  A sign welcomed all passing by to help themselves to “Dippy’s Closet.”  Some who chose clothing and shoes, with the advice of friends, left with smiles; others were discreet, not wanting to draw attention to themselves. 

Dippy’s Closet, I learned from Karen, is a grassroots volunteer driven outreach that provides free clothing for men, women, and children with the specific goal “to attract homeless folks and individual and families who are struggling financially to purchase quality clothing.”  She was first inspired to share her father’s wardrobe when he unexpectedly passed in Sept of 2022; and she began donating his wardrobe to men living in a recovery home in Greenfield.   “It was a great way to rechannel the pain of losing my dad into helping others,” especially seeing “so many people living on the streets of Greenfield.”

 Karen estimates that, in their 9 outreaches on the Commons from June to early November, about 50 people have visited weekly and left with clothing.  She has widened the circle of donors, including co-workers at the Valley Medical Group Easthampton and the Giving Circle Thrift Shop of South Deerfield.

Asked what this act of kindness for other fellow humans means for her, she replied “I want to show the folks who are struggling that we do notice, that we do care and they are valued.  It is my hope that our little clothing mission might inspire others to serve the homeless.  It is not that hard and so incredibly rewarding….”

Karen mentioned being inspired by the Stone Soup Café, seeing their efforts to serve folks in need.  And I noticed that some who stopped by Pippy’s Closet then headed to Stone Soup Café, one long block away, for a gourmet, healthy lunch, offered each Saturday noon to 1:30.  

Image by Linda Lioe from Pixabay

This pay-what-you can community cafe, whose intent is “to build a culture of belonging,” has grown since its opening in 2010 from serving 25 meals to 600 meals each week.  Their Community Free Store, an emergency curbside food pantry, was created at the prompting of their guests during the onset of the pandemic.  It provides between 80-110 households with groceries, produce and personal care items at no charge to them.  In 2022 Stone Soup created a tuition-free 12-week Culinary Institute program career training to people seeking a new career path, especially those who are seeking employment after a period of incarceration or recovery from addiction. Those accepted into the program leave with a Food Handlers License, a ServSafe Certificate in Kitchen Management, job skills, practicum experience, and references for securing work in the food sector of Franklin County.

Explaining her intense commitment, co-director and chef, Kirsten Levitt said; “My life’s passion is to service…humans are hardwired for service.”   Head of Volunteers, Sarah Hilliard, is motivated by “a lot of love. No human being should be without food.”

Nearby in the Second Congregational Church, Gloria Matlock and volunteer tutors work with up to 20 children, to augment their chances to thrive as they grow in the innovative Twice As Smart program founded by Matlock in 2018.    Her lofty four-fold mission is to:

• Provide after school academic instruction to augment children’s confidence in reading, writing and mathematics leading to a love of learning.
• Cultivate social and listening skills.
• Encourage each child to develop their unique “voice” and to find self-expression through art and music.
• Expose children to resources, role models and experiences that expand their educational and career possibilities.

Twice As Smart students are Latinx, Black and African American, Native American and White; some are immigrants and many live in public housing.

This model of holistic education is clearing the students’ obstacle-laden path to higher education, jobs and a deep sense of self, a cause to which artist, musician, and former teacher Gloria Matlock has committed her life.

Are these programs using charity to remedy social injustice, as some might claim?  Jane Addams would disagree.  In 1892, this eminent social reformer explained that Hull House, her settlement house in a poor precinct of Chicago, was not a charity.  Its purpose — and, for Addams, a central obligation of being a citizen — was to help America’s less fortunate make the most of themselves.  “To call this effort [charity]…is to underestimate the duties of good citizenship.”

I would add that, with one half of Americans either poor or a medical emergency away from economic ruin, these programs in our midst and the thousands like them across our country are beacons of civilization in a nation that pumps the world full of military weapons, while its soul empties from within.

Pat Hynes, a board member of the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice, is a retired Professor of Environmental Health from Boston University.  She has published and spoken widely on feminism, environmental justice, and militarism and peace.  Her most recent book, Hope, But Demand Justice book, is available in bookstores and online.

First published in Greenfield Recorder Dec. 1, 2023       

All public ideals of peace with all other peoples were discarded on June 1, 1954, when the US government renamed Armistice Day as Veterans Day.  This erasure of Armistice Day tragically matched our country’s history of militarism after World War II: first bombing North Korea nearly out of existence and metastasizing into a pathological military-industrial-government complex that claims the lion’s share of our discretionary federal taxes and steals from our government’s social investments in health, education, housing and welfare.

Former Marine Corps officer Camillo Mac Bica interprets the rebranding of  Armistice day to Veterans Day as enabling militarists and war profiteers  “…to celebrate and promote militarism…misrepresent war members of the military as heroes, and encourage the enlistment of cannon fodder for future war for profit.”  Many thousands of soldiers and veterans of major US wars of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, including Mac Bica, have turned against war and revived the intent of Armistice Day: “friendly relations with all other peoples.”

Veterans For Peace was founded in 1985 by 10 US veterans in response to the global nuclear arms race and U.S. military interventions in Central America.

In their words, it “is an organization of former soldiers and allies who know too well the costs of war – the obvious, visible wounds; the unseen wounds that curse us and our families for generations and the cost to society of maintaining a military larger than the next ten nations combined. Bitter experience taught us that war is insanity and suffering.”

Image by NoName_13 from Pixabay

Imagine (in the spirit of John Lennon) if every school celebrated at least one day of peace-making for all 5^th graders on International Peace Day September 21, as does the Maine Endwell School District with partners Veterans for Peace and the local historical society.  The day is replete with music, with children playing instruments and making posters, a magician and beekeepers – all with themes of peace, and interviews with children regarding what peace means to them.

Veterans for Peace position on the current war in Ukraine, which has killed and wounded some 500,000 people, embodies their lived ideals: “It is time to drop the weapons and embrace diplomacy and peace.  For the people of Ukraine, the people of Russia, the people of Europe, the United States and China. For the children, for the civilians, for the soldiers, for all living things: We demand Diplomacy, Not War. We demand Peace in Ukraine.” 

I am reminded, as I read their words, of Erich Maria Remarque who enlisted at age 19 in the World War I German army.  Some 10 years after the war’s end, he published his first (and what some consider the greatest) anti-war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. Remarque’s 19-year-old soldier protagonist acutely observes the corrupt dynamics of war: “I see how peoples are set against each other . . . foolishly, innocently, obediently slaying each other … While they [the promoters and boosters] continued to talk and write, we saw the wounded and dying…The wrong people do the fighting.” 

In perhaps the most incisive moment of Remarque’s novel, a young German soldier gazes upon a young French soldier he has killed and ponders their common humanity, with words that undercut the war’s hard-bitten hatred and national chauvinism. “Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony.” 

Undoubtedly, the voices of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers and vets turned war resisters will emerge in time in bitter protest against that war.

We remember soldiers who have died in US wars on Memorial Day and soldiers who have served in the US military, especially those maimed, injured and broken by the moral injury of war, on Veterans Day.

Why not, then, RESTORE Armistice Day with its resolve for friendly relations with all other peoples” for the sake of world peace, if we are to survive.

When will our conscience grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it. –   Eleanor Roosevelt

Greenfield, MA (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – I am heartened each time I come across a study affirming that waging war is not an innate part of human nature, that we humans are just as likely to be peaceful as we are to be violent.   To quote the revered anthropologist Margaret Mead, “warfare is only an invention—not a biological necessity.”

And why do I cherish findings by historians, anthropologists, psychologists and others that we are not doomed inevitably to human conflict; that, in the words of President John F. Kennedy “our problems are manmade–therefore, they can be solved by man.” 

In my lifetime, there has been barely a year that my government has not been at war overtly or covertly. By some calculations the United States has been involved in more than 100 wars since 1776 – early on with Native Americans to steal their land, claim their natural resources, and imprison them on reservations. Between 1945 and 1989 the U.S. attempted to change other (many democratic) countries’ governments overtly and covertly 72 times.  More than 4.5 million people have died in the more than two decades of post-9/11 US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Libya.

But war is relatively new in the more than 200,000-year history of us homo sapiens: evidence of war dates back to 10-12,000 years ago, especially with the emergence of more settled communities.  Further, societies that were once extremely warlike are now peaceful: the countries of Scandinavia, for example, and the tribes of the Iroquois.  Ireland, Austria and Switzerland are neutral Western European countries, not members of NATO; and Costa Rica has eliminated its military in a hemispheric region where conflict has been rife.  All undercut the notion of war being a deeply ingrained, inevitable biological behavior

Moreover, experts who have studied the history of violent and non-violent responses to conflict have found that violence is not the most effective nor successful way to resolve country-level disputes.  Recent landmark research by Dr. Erica Chenoweth and Dr. Maria Stephan  of movements from 1900 through 2006 to overthrow dictatorships, expel foreign occupations or achieve self-determination reveal that nonviolent resistance campaigns were more than twice as successful as violent insurrections with the same goals.  Elsewhere Chenoweth found that when women have leadership roles, they are “more likely to maintain nonviolent discipline…in resistance campaigns against repressive regimes.”

Especially uplifting, too, are the multitudinous, creative individuals and movements in recent decades at work for peace in their countries.  In 2005, 1000 outstanding women peacemakers from 150 countries were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.  Why 1000 women?  Because “creating peace requires a culture of peace practiced by millions in our daily life,” explained their Nobel prize sponsors.  Their slogan, “I am not a wall that divides – I am a crack in that wall” conjures up the lyrics of singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen: “there are cracks in everything/that’s how the light gets in.” 

A final piece of wisdom about the necessity of sustaining peace following violent conflict comes from Liberian Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee, who brought Christian and Muslim women together in her West African country to end Liberia’s brutal 14-year-long civil war in 2003.  According to Gbowee, “Stopping a war does not bring lasting peace.” Peace persists through peacebuilding, using community organizing and expressing dissent; teaching peace and nonviolence; and prioritizing the basic issues of women’s, racial and social equality, and environmental protection.  

Few of us have imagined forgiveness as a crucial element of peace that can enable peace to endure.  In 1995, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, who had spent 27 years as a political prisoner before emerging as South Africa’s first Black president, called for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that offered amnesty to “those responsible for atrocities during the long-nightmare of white-minority rule,” provided they publicly confess all the brutalities they had committed and request amnesty.  The Commission intended to refrain from revenge and to reconcile the peoples of a deeply unjust, deeply racist society in order to inaugurate social healing that would last.  Knowing that forgiveness would not assure perfect justice for all, Desmond Tutu realistically stated that simply punishing their oppressors with prison sentences may have resulted in a civil war ending with “a South Africa lying in ashes.”  

There were shortcomings, though.  Some of the worst unrepentant war criminals escaped prosecution; some citizens grievously harmed by apartheid citizens felt that amnesty was too easily given; and the country is still ridden with vast inequities. Elsewhere, others believe that peace without accountability for violence is a peace without justice, including Leymah Gbowee and other advocating for a war crimes court to ensure accountability for Liberian war criminals. 

On International Peace Day this September 21, imagine an unstoppable wave of peace actions sweeping across our country, like that of the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970.  That day Congress closed so its members could attend environmental teach-ins; 20 million citizens and politicians (1/5 of the population) came out for marches, rallies, and concerts; and 10 million children participated in peace teach-ins in their schools.  A surge of environmental legislation and the creation of the US EPA by President Nixon followed in the next year.

May we be part of finding our country’s lost path to peace:  by peace education and active bystander programs in every school; by interracial and interfaith collaborations; by reparations for the historical injustices of slavery and theft of land from Native Americans; by ensuring women’s full equality, including restoring women’s reproductive rights; by beating warheads into windmills through shifting our government’s priorities from militarism to renewable technologies; and by demanding that our lawmakers have a real democratic debate on war, peace, and the military budget.

While we were planning this article, a cascade of crises shattered climate records.  July 3-6 set a record for the hottest world average temperatures yet measured.   In our state, western Massachusetts was saturated almost daily with heavy humidity and record-setting rain, whose floods devastated $10 million worth of farm crops.  Record-breaking fires burning across half of Canada blanketed some US cities with the worst air quality on Earth.  Always urban environmental justice communities of color suffered most from unbearable heat and asthma-related emergency room visits.

The first full update of the UN climate report since 2014 (the year that 196 countries agreed to cut emissions in an effort to avert global climate breakdown) was recently released.  In response to the report’s findings, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said despondently that the world is running out of options to defuse the “ticking climate time bomb…In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts—everything, everywhere, all at once… Conditions not expected until 2040 are here.”

Ninety-nine percent of the world knows that severing our reliance on fossil fuels is the emergency remedy for an overheating world.  But if governments fail to cut their Gordian knot with fossil fuels, we are on track for almost 5 degrees Fahrenheit warming over pre-industrial levels by the end of the century – unlivable heat.  What stands in the way?   Not science, but the lack of political will, economic courage, and some would add love.  The Biden administration has launched admirable green energy programs, yet, it also permits leasing on public lands for oil and gas extraction and sustains the war in Ukraine with fuel guzzling weapons, while avaricious US fossil fuel corporations are pocketing billions of dollars exporting energy to Europe. 

The climate emergency crisis is one of two equally dire, imminent threats to human existence and the natural world.

Image by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay

Imagine your neighbor stockpiling assault rifles positioned toward your home, ready to use if feeling threatened by you.  And you do likewise.  Your words escalate, you cock your weapons, you are each aggressive and short-fused.  Somebody throws a stone through your window.  How likely is it a bloody massacre will happen?  That’s where we are with nuclear weapons in nine countries and US nuclear weapons strategically placed in 5 NATO countries (Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands).  Likewise, Russia has recently placed nuclear weapons in Belarus.  All nine nuclear countries are currently engaged in upgrading their nuclear arsenal, collectively spending $100 billion per year on these bedeviling weapons.  And a war is going on in Ukraine in which most countries involved have nuclear weapons.  One nuclear weapon used will spark an unstoppable response.

Nuclear weapons’ governments and their bomb-making industries are criminally sleepwalking into what could mean the end of our planet’s life, with the ever-present specter of their use, an accident, or their theft by terrorists. 

On Feb. 2, 1998 General George Butler, former Commander of U.S. Strategic Air Command, addressed the National Press Club: “The likely consequences of nuclear weapons have no politically, militarily, or morally acceptable justification…They expunge all hope for meaningful survival. They hold in their sway not just the fate of nations but the very meaning of civilization.” He joined 60 other retired generals and admirals calling for nuclear weapons abolition. (But, why did these men wait until retirement to speak truth to power?)

The only way to guarantee that nuclear weapons are never used is to eliminate them; and, likewise, the only way to avert climate catastrophe is to phase out and replace fossil fuels.  Both are incompatible with human survival.  A recent project, Warheads to Windmills, begun in Northampton, Massachusetts by NuclearBan.us and now state- and country-wide, brings these two life and death issues together in a grounded, pragmatic proposal.

Warheads to Windmills: Preventing Climate Catastrophe and Nuclear War

proposes that all the money, brainpower and international goodwill currently

being squandered by nine countries pointing nuclear weapons at each other

be devoted instead to a concerted global effort to speed up the transition to a

fossil-free economy.  Significantly, as the report documents, the very same science and engineering training and skills being used to manufacture these weapons could easily be transferred to renewable technologies, given political will and economic investment at the state and federal level.

The campaign to kickstart this essential transition involves promoting H.R.2775, a federal bill calling for the U.S. to sign the UN nuclear weapons ban treaty, to work with the other nuclear-armed nations to eliminate all nuclear weapons and to put those resources into a global effort to address the climate crisis.

How can you, concerned readers, become part of this? You can first of all read,

download or order a paper copy of Warheads to Windmills: Preventing Climate Catastrophe and Nuclear War by going to nuclearban.us/w2w.  You can urge your national representatives to support H.R.2775 with a ready-made template at nuclearban.us/action.  And you can encourage your town, faith community, school, bank, hospital, and local businesses to divest from both fossil fuels and nuclear weapons. 

Our action is needed for the fate of our world.

“We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny…” Dr. Martin Luther King

Pat Hynes is on the board of the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice and NuclearBan.us.   Timmon Wallis is Executive Director of NuclearBan.us.

While deeply disappointed, I was not surprised.  When I first held the same sign in our Saturday morning peace vigil on the Greenfield Common, a number of people passing by objected to ending the war until Russia could be defeated, specifically Putin.  But, what does an “eye for an eye” strategy achieve other than making “the whole world blind,” as Gandhi observed.  The ultimate weakness of violence, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wisely noted, is that “…you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate.  In fact, violence merely increases hate…Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.“

Nearly half of US citizens want their government to keep supplying weapons and military training to Ukraine to sustain the war, while the majority of the world’s people want negotiations to end the war.  The global call for ending the conflict includes the rising powers of the Global South, among them China; a high-level mission of African countries; a “peace club” of countries being created by Brazil; Pope Francis and the Vatican; Denmark, offering to host a peace summit; the 1,400-city US Conference of Mayors and hundreds of US organizations and faith-based leaders.  Why are so many countries, organizations and people across the world urging an end to this seemingly regional war, sustained by US and NATO weapons?  In a nutshell, this war kills and gravely harms not only the combatants fighting but also millions of others.  The global cost is catastrophic.