Here Are the People–Where Is the Vision?
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 3 Jun 2024
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service
1 Jun 2024 – Here are the people who can take advantage of the looming crash of the US empire and create a new world.
We can see their faces in the streets, on the university campuses and in the city halls.
On the streets:
For the international day of peace, September 2023, CPNN reproduced photos of mass demonstrations in 17 countries of Western Europe, 7 in Eastern Europe, 56 states and provinces of the US and Canada, 16 countries of Asia/Pacific, 17 in Latin America and the Caribbean, 26 from Africa and 8 from Arab and Middle Eastern countries.
For International Women’s Day, March 2024, CPNN reproduced photos of mass demonstrations in 18 countries of Western Europe, 17 countries of Asia/Pacific, 17 countries of Africa and the Middle East and 17 countries of the Americas.
For May 1, worker’s day, CPNN reproduced photos of mass demonstrations in 11 countries of Europe, 10 countries of Asia/Pacific, 6 countries of Africa and the Middle East and 12 countries of the Americas.
In the university campuses:
The latest counts of university encampments against the Israeli genocide in Gaza list 17 countries including India, Mexico, Japan, as well as the UK, Australia, France and, of course, the United States where encampments are listed in at least 24 colleges and universities.
And in the city halls:
Mayors for peace are now established in over 8,000 cities in 166 countries and regions, with one of their three main objectives to promote a culture of peace.
It is here in the organizations for peace and justice, women’s rights, trade unions and cities around the world that people can be mobilized to respond to the crash of the US empire.
But will they create a new world? Will they create a new system that is no longer based on the culture of war? It is not enough to revolt against the old; it is necessary to construct the new. And for that, there must be a shared vision of a new world.
In this blog three months ago, we said the following:
“As described in this month’s bulletin of CPNN, there are some initiatives of culture of peace as a vision for the future that can make a contribution, although they are not yet shared by many people.
“Another consciousness-raising initiative proposed in this blog has yet to be realized: an alternative security council composed of mayors who would issue regular press releases about what they would do if they ran the council. With its objective of culture of peace, Mayors for Peace could bring this about, but so far they have resisted the proposal to do so.
“When the window of opportunity arrives, can we hope that the remarkable spread of new forms of communication, including the internet and the widespread use of cell phones, can make it possible to disseminate rapidly and universally a collective vision for a new social order based on a culture of peace? And that such a vision could give shape to the future?”
The time is short. History is moving faster than our consciousness!
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Dr. David Adams is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment and coordinator of the Culture of Peace News Network. He retired in 2001 from UNESCO where he was the Director of the Unit for the UN International Year for the Culture of Peace. Previously, at Yale and Wesleyan Universities, he was a specialist on the brain mechanisms of aggressive behavior, the history of the culture of war, and the psychology of peace activists, and he helped to develop and publicize the Seville Statement on Violence. Send him an email.
Go to Original – decade-culture-of-peace.org
Tags: Peacebuilding, US empire, USA
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One Response to “Here Are the People–Where Is the Vision?”
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Very important question. Many offer answers but with no ability or motivation to engage with the answers of others — often after framing others as simply wrong or misguided. How do we handle an ecosystem of visions when the wood cannot be seen from the trees?