I am a contributor to Peace Action, a nonprofit group based in Silver Spring, Maryland. Click the link if you'd like to become a contributor, too.
Peace Action describes its work as follows:
Peace Action is the nation’s largest grassroots peace network with chapters and affiliates in states across the country. We organize our network to place pressure on Congress and the administration through write-in campaigns, internet actions, grassroots lobbying and direct action. Through a close relationship with progressive members of Congress, we play a key role in devising strategies to move forward peace legislation. As a leading member of various coalitions, we lend our expertise and large network to achieving common goals.
For over 60 years, Peace Action has worked for an environment where all are free from violence and war. We understand that long-standing global conflicts require long-term solutions and that US foreign policy has a lasting effect on the world. We are working to promote a new U.S. foreign policy that is based on peaceful support for human rights and democracy, eliminating the threat of weapons of mass destruction, and cooperation with the world community. We organize against pre-emptive wars, and advocate for the withdrawal of American troops and contractors from the endless wars across the Middle East.
There are still nearly 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world today. The U.S. and Russia have thousands of nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert ready to launch in minutes. While the Cold War may have ended, the nuclear threat has not. The only way to ensure that nuclear weapons will never again be used – whether purposefully, or accidentally – is global abolition.
Recently, as a past contributor, I received a questionnaire from Peace Action, a "2026 Campaign Priorities Survey." I was asked for my personal views about what Peace Action should be focusing on during this year just now beginning this January. Peace Action asked some specific questions, and then also for any general "feedback I might have about the orgnization's programs and strategies." Peace Action provided me with a half-page space to write down my thoughts. Here's what I wrote:
We need, as a nation, to inspire young people, particularly, to see their personal lives not from the perspective of how can I get ahead/survive individually, but from the perspective of what we can each do, individually, to help bring about, together, the huge economic, social, and political changes that will allow us - and the whole world - to survive. In other words, we need to find an effective means to encourage and allow concerned people (and especially young people) to reallocate their time, moving away from individual career and entertainment activities as the most important priority to activities that will promote environmental protection, economic and social justice, and genuine peace, on a worldwide basis.
Time reallocation. That's what I am advocating as a major need. And I think that is true for all of us. For we "old folks," too - as well as for young people. During the 1960's, people redirected their energies from inidividual efforts to "get ahead" to engage in joint and collective efforts to stop the war then proceding in Vietnam, and to end the centuries-old regime of racial injustice that has afflicted our nation from its beginnings. We changed the world - and for the better - though backsliding has definitely occurred.
Today, global warming and the increasing threat of nuclear war loom over every one of our lives. And while some progress has been made on racial, economic, and social justice, I do believe much more work is needed.
My "old folks" view is that "time is short."
Time reallocation - for all of us. That can help us meet this moment! For those who follow my blog postings on a more or less regular basis, you will see that I am reiterating, as this first month of the year comes to an end, what I said as this month began!
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