November 08, 2009
UTNE READER

Peace Needs To Be Cool

September 6, 2002 Issue
By Rebecca Wienbar 
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Peace Needs To Be Cool,

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Shani Abergel, InnerSelf
What if peace was cool? What if people who used violence were seen as really big nerds? And what if we all worked together as a community to make violence intolerable, something absolutely unthinkable? Sixth grader Shani Abergel's ideas, originally published in the book "Young Voices: Breaking the Cycle of Violence" and excerpted in InnerSelf, may seem simple - but then again, the best solutions are rarely complicated. If a huge public campaign to stamp out littering in the U.S. was successful, imagine what would happen if everywhere you went you saw or heard (and thus internalized) the message that violence is wrong. In the meantime, David Hartsough is gathering a civilian corps - a Global Non-violent Peace Force, modeled after Mahatma Gandhi's shanti sena ("peace troop") - that will be dispatched to areas of conflict around the world "armed with only a commitment to peace," reports Kate Rope in Geo Newsletters. Until everyone realizes what enormous nerds all these violent people and governments are, this peace force will do their best to protect human rights and create a safe environment to resolve differences peacefully.
--Rebecca Wienbar
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A Global Non-Violent Peace Force the Bangkok Post, Kate Rope
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