Peace Forums

How to Start a Peace Forum

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!

We suggest that you look at the following questions:

• 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 be doing more?
• What is each one willing to do to achieve that goal?
• Can we measure the results? Can we know when we’ve succeeded?
• How can we share information and learn from other communities who are doing the same thing?

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, 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 this process if you wish. Please call the Communities of Peace Foundation office or use our online contact form for information.

Background

It was just after September 11, 2001. My daughter Marilee, who lives and works in New York, had been involved in the event.

I was doing some marketing consulting for friends, 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 11 th 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 hosted the monthly meetings: other like-minded organizations co-sponsored. They were generally held at a Washington Ethical Society; sometimes at the Center for Global Peace at American University. We brought peacemakers from all walks of life – politicians, academics, diplomats, spiritual teachers, authors, indigenous leaders, musicians, children, people trying to find and invent new methods of energy to remove the dependency on oil.

The Children's Cloth of Many Colors always surrounded the meetings. A soft love always filled the room. We had just a few rules – that no one criticized the other; any approach had to be inclusive, that we all focus on what we wanted rather than what we didn't want.

Our peace forums culminated in a major event on Capitol Hill on September 22, 2002. We recommend that the next wave of these be a type of town hall meeting. Our suggestions are in the “directions” part under Peace Forums.