10 GOOD IDEAS FOR ENCOURAGING PEACE & JUSTICE

These are in no particular order. I have had direct engagement with most of these and believe deeply in all of them. They are not necessarily "in your face" acts for peace and justice, but they are effective at achieving significant outcomes in the face of isolating urban environments, depressed economies, neighborhood demise, lack of community connectivity, unfair wages, etc.

1. NEW URBANISM. This community architectural design approach creatively and comprehensively retrofits urban and suburban areas that don’t work in terms of neighbor isolation, non-connectivity, fear, and over-commercialization followed by big-box vacancies. Particularly the principles of mixed-income level dwellings and neighborhoods, walkability, green space, and town centers are good hope for communities and neighbors who want to see the promise of urban living fulfilled. Where implemented, this design does a lot to indirectly impact social change in a community.

2. RESTORATIVE JUSTICE. Instead of merely locking up the perpetrator of a crime, restorative justice brings perpetrator and victim together in conferences that confront hard facts and feelings but often bring mutual healing to both--and to the community. Victim and perpetrator agree to consequences and restitution. I’ve seen this work for non-violent crimes and particularly with juvenile offenders. This is what “justice” is supposed to be about.

3. PAID TIME FOR SCHOOL INVOLVEMENT. Employers who take a broader view of their workplace health and long-term viability of their business in a community will see the value of encouraging their employee-parents to get directly involved in helping make their children’s formal educational experience a success. Businesses and manufacturers have nothing to lose and everything (including positive community image and regard) to gain.

4. LOCAL ECONOMY. Shop local. Buy locally-made and exchanged products when possible. Frequent the farmers’ market. Check out the consignment shops. Ask for more locally-grown and locally-produced products at the stores you like. Let retailers know you’re interested in local products.

5. NEIGHBORHOOD BLOCK PARTIES. When’s the last time you attended a block party? Why not host one? If that’s not your cup of tea, what is? Neighborhood clean-up? Neighborhood garage sale? Neighborhood collection for the food bank? What can you do to get to know your newer and older neighbors? What are you waiting for? What holds you back?

6. CROSS-CULTURAL EXCHANGES. Take the opportunity whenever you can to expose yourself to any other culture than the American suburban consumerist one. No, going to Taco Bell is not crossing cultures. What ethnic festivals are held in your community? What restaurants are authentic? What communities of faith are available? Take in a student for a semester. Seek to develop relationships across cultures. Know that it will take your time. How sad to come to the end of a lifetime and only to have experienced one’s own culture.

7. LIVING WAGE. Try to live for a month on what the income from a $7.00 per hour (or less) full-time job. Until you do, don’t you dare say another careless word about the minimum wage or how hard it is to get good service at restaurants, retail outlets, or just about any service-industry location. Every worker deserves to be able to actually live on the fruit of their work. Don’t tell me about it being impossible to pay living wages when CEO’s, managers, and stockholders are laughing all the way to the bank. Pay the living wage and see what happens to worker loyalty, productivity, and readiness to support your interests.

8. INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT ACCOUNTS. Michael Sherradin’s work, The Assets of the Poor, begat a good thing. He found that the major difference between intergenerational poverty and ending it are assets. Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) are special savings accounts for neighbors living at poverty levels. For every dollar saved, three will be matched by a special fund. The catch: the multiplied savings can be used only for asset-building: to pay for higher education, vocational training, purchase of home, equipment for starting one’s own business, or cash to buy into an existing viable business.

9. RESPONSIBLE CONSUMER SPENDING & STOCKHOLDER INVESTING. Wonder why these prices are so low? You KNOW it’s not a wonder. It’s usually based on unfair trade practices. It’s usually based on cheap or near-slave labor being pressured by US-based big-box retailers. You are not contributing to a developing economy unless your product bares a “fair trade” indication. Consumers reinforce bad international capitalist behavior daily. We are complicit. Each of us can buy more responsibly. Stock traders have a much higher level of responsibility and opportunity than consumers. Do the right thing by working neighbors and consumers in other parts of the world!

10. ASSET-BASED COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT. John McNight and Jodi Kretzman started a good thing, helping folks who want to help their neighborhoods and communities overcome dependency on experts and big outside dollars to renew their communities. Instead of counting what you don’t have, start cataloguing the capacities and resources in your neighborhood and community. Then, organize together. See what a difference you can make.

GANDHI & KING: COMMON GROUND?

COMMON GROUND. Last week, I viewed the movie “Gandhi” for the first time in about ten years. The movie made a significant impact on me when I first saw it, but I’d forgotten several critical points in his story. For instance, Gandhi’s upbringing assumed the compatibility of diverse religious and ethnic groups with the belief that they all ultimately served the same God. This childhood vision and local reality served Gandhi well in his later years when tensions between Hindu and Muslim factions erupted into violence, nearly turning the dream of independence into a nightmare of chaos.

COMMON PURPOSE. While much could be said of their differences, in this regard Martin Luther King, Jr. had a similar upbringing as Mohandas K. Gandhi. In contrast to the chaotic background of Malcolm X, King was able to articulate his dream against the backdrop of a childhood in which he was taught that there was one God who willed diverse people to overcome their oppression, prejudices, and sins. King, like Gandhi, believed in such a transcendent and self-evident common ground. As an emerging leader, King appealed to all--oppressed and oppressor alike--to move resolutely and non-violently toward the common ground revealed in one God. Like Gandhi, King held to this vision, formed in childhood, when violence and factions in the civil rights movement threatened to undermine it.

COMMON GOD? Apparently, neither grass-roots leader succumbed to the “principalities and powers” represented in the authorities and institutions that they so boldly challenged. Instead, they were both killed by out-of-focus people who not only did not share a belief in one God but who were, on the contrary, convinced that the very idea of a common dream in which all shared a part was at the heart of the social problem. It is instructive by association, I think, to consider the backdrop against which our current national and international conflicts are being waged. To the point: do we believe that there is common ground to be found in a Source whom we all, ultimately, believe is One and who wills us to move toward peace?

MISSING LEADERS. One of the critically missing pieces in human rights struggles, so-called “culture wars,” and international conflicts today is the conviction that, behind all the specific and multiple names and attributions of religious deities, is the one God who wills peace for all and among all. It's hard to find a religious or political leader these days who believes--and acts in the conviction--that, ultimately, we are all calling upon the same God and that this same God wills us to find and live on the common ground that lies beneath our specifically-defined domains, claims, assertions, suspicions, notions, and/or “rights.”
BELIEVING IS SEEING. Whether or not this common God can be proven or this proposition embraced by any particular religion or political influence group acting the name of a particular religion is not the point. The point is that great progress toward justice and peace in specific culturally-divided, politically-explosive settings was made under Gandhi’s and King’s influence. And at least these two spiritual and social leaders believed that common ground was possible because a common God existed and willed it. By and large, today’s leaders cannot lead toward common ground because they do not believe it exists and they do not believe it exists because they cannot believe or see beyond their own conceptions of God.

DRYING UP TERRORISM. I find it interesting that conceptions of God are closely intertwined with civil, cultural, political, and international conflicts. Today’s most significant conflicts are religiously-based. Denying or recognizing this is, I am convinced, critical to America's war on terrorism. Since 9/11, American leadership--across the board--has mis-framed the sources and motivations of Islamic terrorism and they have taken an approach to fighting terrorism that continues to fan its flames. I contend that intentional and unintentional religious offenses by the West are fueling resentment and hatred. The West has failed to take Islamic fundamentalism seriously, or refused to accept its claims on its terms (we’re too modern for that!). As we continue to make a secular assessment and take a non-religious approach to address terrorism, we foment it. When American leadership comes to deeply understand, truly respect, and act with high regard for the religion of Islam, Islamic fundamentalist-sourced terrorism will begin to be dried up. Gandhi and King, I believe, would have articulated this.

A CALL TO COMMON GROUND. Please note: I am not a unitarian. I am not a universalist. I am, in fact, a Christian standing squarely within the Arminian, Wesleyan, and American Holiness traditions. And from this very specific belief, theological orientation, and perspective, I reach out in hope to challenge people of all beliefs and backgrounds to search your hearts deeply to find the common ground upon which we all stand and where we can all meet and dwell as diverse and respectful neighbors upon this fragile earth.