Peace Forum
How to Start a Peace Forum
Washington Ethical Society
To form Peace Forums in your community, we suggest that you convene groups of people who are interested. Small groups are fine: don’t worry about having to save the world all at once!
There are just a few rules of order:
- No one criticizes another, or another policy.
- Any approach has to be inclusive.
- Focus on what you want, not what you don’t want.
We suggest that you look at the following areas:
- What does being a “Community of Peace” mean to us?
- What kind of a community do I/we want to live in?
- Where are we doing well?
- Where could we improve?
- Can we measure the results? Can we know when we’ve succeeded?
- How can we share information and learn from other Communities of Peace?
Areas that some of our Communities of Peace have focused on include diversity and energy sufficiency, sustainability, and food preparedness. An additional focus on local food and organic gardening is in the planning stages.
We recommend that this be a “make-it-up” scenario, as if you’re creating a movie that you’d like to live in. It should be fun, engaging, and creative for you. It’s meant to use your most wonderful qualities.
You might want to document the process, creating a video or film presentation. Our consulting group is available to assist you in facilitating this process if you wish. Please call the Communities of Peace Foundation office for details.
Some Background for Your Information
It was just after September ll, 2001. My daughter Marilee, who lives and works in
I was doing some marketing consulting for a friend, Art Miller, who owns a printing and copying company. We looked at each other and said, “We’ve got to DO something. And it has to be something that enables others to DO something as well.” And so the Peace Forums were born. We wanted to create a way so that the September 11th kind of thing would never happen again – to hurt anyone’s child, of any age, in any way, either emotionally or physically.
The Masters Group (our predecessor organization) hosted the monthly meetings; other like-minded organizations co-sponsored. The meetings were held either at the Washington Ethical Society or at the Center for Global Peace at
The Children’s Cloth of Many Colors always surrounded the meetings, filling the room with a soft love. Representatives from many of the
We had just a few rules – that no one criticize another; any approach had to be inclusive; that we all focus on what we wanted rather than what we didn’t want.
Our initial peace forums culminated in a major event on Capitol Hill on
Sept. 11th 2002
At that time, we recommended that the next phase of the peace forums be a type of town hall meeting, with everyone participating toward community goals rather than listening to speakers or panelists.
