When African American World War I veterans with guns approached a white mob in 1921, the whites responded with massive violence. Over 30 years later, Martin Luther King, Jr., led a nonviolent movement that succeeded in expanding voting rights and open accommodations. Similarly, in the violent Algerian struggle for independence from France, 1954-1962, roughly a million out of 11 million were killed. By contrast, only a few thousand out of 350 million were killed during the nonviolent struggle for independence in India. India since has proudly been the world's largest democracy, while Algeria has struggled with autocracy and anocracy.
2022 ‘Peace Is the Way’ walk, Wichita-KC
The “Peace Is the Way” walk through Kansas next year … is a walk away from the addiction of violence and fossil fuels to honoring and listening to Mother Earth. It is a walk to expand our consciousness into the reality that nuclear weapons are illegal! It is a walk to seek humility and to hear the stories of First Nation Peoples and people who were forced onto this land into the violence of slavery.
A Call to Live Nuclear Free
Ron Faust sees the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as coming just in time "to create life and forestall death / To breathe in hope and breathe out a future / For our grandchildren and for all human races."
Stand Up KC caravan corrals McDonald’s
“What do we want? 15 and a union! When do we want it? Now!” This call echoed across the country, including in Kansas City, Mo. The local group Stand Up KC organized a caravan that corralled a McDonalds where their demands for $15 an hour and a union were presented.
Members of US Congress to speak at MLK Celebration 1/18
US Rep. Emanuel Cleaver will moderate an online panel of other US representatives 1/18: Rashida Talib of Michigan, Hank Johnson of Georgia, and Dwight Evans of Pennsylvania. Members of the PeaceWorks-KC community are encouraged to participate.
PeaceWorks and Poor People’s Campaign join in KKFI show
A Dec. 31 program on KKFI, 90.1 FM, celebrated the political activism of PeaceWorks-KC and the Poor People's Campaign (PPC), giving reasons for hope. Among the six persons interviewed, Tammy Brown, of the Missouri PPC, says in the podcast, "I was hungry. I was homeless. Somebody told me, 'Cherith Brook feeds.'" She went there for help, began volunteering, and now belongs to the PPC.
US in crisis: war, pandemic, racism, poverty, climate emergency
It’s time to end the Afghanistan War, bringing all the troops, not some, home now. But not just Afghanistan. ALL US troops across the Middle East, and throughout Africa, where the US has more military bases than in the Middle East, must come home now.
KC KS activists form Mennonite Catholic Worker House of Resilience
The house’s mission: We grow a healthy home by sharing labor and power, knowing our histories, partnering with Creation, and practicing hospitality, response-ability, and place-based peacemaking. Priority will go to local women activists working for systemic social justice in Wyandotte County and providing reparations to women of color in the form of rest and rent relief.
Chasing Hope
Ron Faust waits for a new administration, condemns the federal executions, and observes: Warming the transition are colored lights / Hung on trees inside homes shining through / The doubts and fears of a shivering nation / While outside squirrels chase hope around.
Add new threads to our national narratives
What we are taught about the founding of our country does not reflect experiences of indigenous people, and our lofty values of freedom and democracy fail to recognize the disenfranchisement of African Americans, women, and poor people in general.