A global movement is growing to stop war—that is, all war on Earth. And now a crowdfunding project at Indiegogo.com offers individuals and organizations the opportunity to contribute to an advertising campaign aimed at making “millions of people … aware of exactly how popular and mainstream the idea of war abolition has become.”
World Beyond War, the organization behind the global billboard and ad campaign, is dedicated to ending the institution of war everywhere. Its organizers provide resources and coordinate peace-promoting activities and events. For example, you can sign a pledge on its website to “engage in and support nonviolent efforts to end all war and preparations for war and to create a sustainable and just peace.” Already, people from 58 countries have signed the pledge.
Militarism has been profitable for armaments manufacturers and the politicians who support them, but it has ever been unpopular among those who are drafted to fight. It was the Vietnamese people who defeated first the French and later the U.S. occupations of their country, but the peace movement of that era in the States helped bring the war to a close. More recently, popular resistance within the U.S. may have prevented American missile attacks against Syria.
The costs of war are well known. The World Beyond War petition states that, “wars and militarism make us less safe rather than protect us, that they kill, injure and traumatize adults, children and infants, severely damage the natural environment, erode civil liberties and drain our economies, siphoning resources from life-affirming activities.”
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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 not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.
– U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, from a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953.
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Now awareness is growing that war is not only harmful but also unnecessary. Evidence shows that nonviolent resistance is often more successful than violence in overthrowing tyranny and creating space for democracy and peace.
Sociologist Jane Addams, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, observed that “peace is not merely an absence of war, but the nurture of human life.” Every year, the world spends about two trillion dollars on war and war preparation—half from the U.S. alone.
The good news is that we can redirect those resources to sustainable energy, agricultural, economic, health and educational systems. This would not only end war, but nurture life and make possible the social justice necessary to sustain lasting peace on earth.
More Information:
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worldbeyondwar.org
