Within or in addition to a Department of Peace should be a Department of Truth and Reconciliation. This is something that works and that is needed in most locations on Earth. We need to admit what has been done, try to make it right, and try to do better going forward. In our personal lives we just call this honesty. In our public life it is a key to reducing conflict, saving money, sparing lives, and establishing habits other than hypocrisy.
The work to create the sort of government with all of these things in it needs to be done as strategically as possible to get the ideal structures firmly established. It also needs to be done as publicly and educationally as possible, because we need a society capable of valuing and protecting such departments and functions.
Something else that works, that some of us take for granted, is freedom of speech and press and assembly. And to some extent we have societies capable of valuing and protecting those things. They make a huge difference. That is of course why war proponents are targeting free speech and especially targeting educational institutions like U.S. colleges, pushing for a crackdown on free speech.
Why do we have more activism against a war on Gaza than other wars? It's not just the nature of the war. It's also years of educational work and organizing, which has gone on because of so many wars against Palestine. We have to be able to educate or we're doomed.
I do not of course mean that we need the freedom to advocate genocide against Jews. I think the legal ban on war propaganda should actually be upheld, that laws against instigating violence should actually be upheld, and that genocide is both war and violence.
I do of course mean that we need the freedom to criticize the Israeli government and the U.S. government and every other government on Earth and to say things not approved of by war profiteers.
Above all, beyond any law or agency, we need a culture of peace, schools that educate, communications systems not operating under the influence of weapons dealers. Above all, we need people who get active, who turn out in the streets and the suites, who shut down business as usual, and the understanding that that is the civic duty of good citizens. We have seen glimmers of this at various moments in history, including the past two months.
Part of our activism should be advocating for and building the infrastructure we want and the society we need to implement it. In the United States in recent weeks we have seen major labor unions come out against mass murder. That should be the norm. Those who care about people should see labor and peace as two parts of one movement. Organizations of workers should become infrastructure for peace and justice and sustainability. They are generally not that, but one can imagine it and work to make it real.
We need media infrastructure for communicating about peace and about peace activism. For the most part, our better media outlets are too small, our larger media outlets are too corrupt, and our public fora and social media are too censored and dominated and algorithmed by unrepresentative overlords. But there are glimmers of what's needed, and we are able to work by stages and observe the gradual progress toward what's needed in this area.
We can find the ways we need to communicate to others the facts and the feelings needed to get them to act. We can establish shadow departments of peace and demonstrate what they would do. We can document the horrors we are supposed to turn away from, and instead hold them up to the light.
Imagine living in Gaza and receiving a phone call from the Israeli military telling you that you are about to be killed. There are actually global human rights groups protesting when such warnings are not provided. Imagine fleeing a make-shift shelter in a school so as not to endanger everyone there, and fleeing to your sister's house. Imagine keeping your phone with you so as to communicate to the outside world what is being done in the name of goodness and democracy. And then imagine being blown up along with your sister and her children.
Imagine a group of small children in the street. Imagine them very similar to the children in a park near your home. Imagine them with names and games and laughter and all the details that are said to "humanize" whatever the hell people supposedly are prior to getting humanized. And then imagine them blown to pieces, most of them killed instantly, but a few of them screaming and moaning in pain, bleeding to death or wishing that they could. And imagine the scene repeated thousands of times over. Tolerating this is indecent. Decency is not speaking in a manner acceptable to the U.S. Congress or the European Union. Decency is refusing the side of the executioners.
Over a hundred years ago in Europe a man named Bruce Bairnsfather wrote down an account of something that suggested how easily people could cease supporting the madness of militarism. He wrote:
"It was now nearing Christmas Day, and we knew it would fall to our lot to be back in the trenches again on the 23rd of December, and that we would, in consequence, spend our Christmas there. I remember at the time being very down on my luck about this, as anything in the nature of Christmas Day festivities was obviously knocked on the head. Now, however, looking back on it all, I wouldn't have missed that unique and weird Christmas Day for anything. Well, as I said before, we went 'in' again on the 23rd. The weather had now become very fine and cold. The dawn of the 24th brought a perfectly still, cold, frosty day. The spirit of Christmas began to permeate us all; we tried to plot ways and means of making the next day, Christmas, different in some way to others. Invitations from one dug-out to another for sundry meals were beginning to circulate. Christmas Eve was, in the way of weather, everything that Christmas Eve should be. I was billed to appear at a dug-out about a quarter of a mile to the left that evening to have rather a special thing in trench dinners not quite so much bully and Maconochie about as usual. A bottle of red wine and a medley of tinned things from home deputized in their absence. The day had been entirely free from shelling, and somehow we all felt that the Boches, too, wanted to be quiet. There was a kind of an invisible, intangible feeling extending across the frozen swamp between the two lines, which said 'This is Christmas Eve for both of us something in common.' About 10 p.m. I made my exit from the convivial dug-out on the left of our line and walked back to my own lair. On arriving at my own bit of trench I found several of the men standing about, and all very cheerful. There was a good bit of singing and talking going on, jokes and jibes on our curious Christmas Eve, as contrasted with any former one, were thick in the air. One of my men turned to me and said: 'You can 'ear 'em quite plain, sir!' 'Hear what?' I inquired. 'The Germans over there, sir; 'ear 'em singin' and playin' on a band or somethin'.' I listened; away out across the field, among the dark shadows beyond, I could hear the murmur of voices, and an occasional burst of some unintelligible song would come floating out on the frosty air. The singing seemed to be loudest and most distinct a bit to our right. I popped into my dug-out and found the platoon commander. 'Do you hear the Boches kicking up that racket over there?' I said. 'Yes,' he replied; 'they've been at it some time!' 'Come on,' said I, 'let's go along the trench to the hedge there on the right that's the nearest point to them, over there.' So we stumbled along our now hard, frosted ditch, and scrambling up on to the bank above, strode across the field to our next bit of trench on the right. Everyone was listening. An improvised Boche band was playing a precarious version of 'Deutschland, Deutschland, uber Alles,' at the conclusion of which, some of our mouth-organ experts retaliated with snatches of ragtime songs and imitations of the German tune. Suddenly we heard a confused shouting from the other side. We all stopped to listen. The shout came again. A voice in the darkness shouted in English, with a strong German accent, 'Come over here!' A ripple of mirth swept along our trench, followed by a rude outburst of mouth organs and laughter. Presently, in a lull, one of our sergeants repeated the request, 'Come over here!' 'You come half-way I come half-way,' floated out of the darkness. 'Come on, then!' shouted the sergeant. 'I'm coming along the hedge!'"
And of course this happened in numerous places. Men charged with killing each other made friends, held what today is called a humanitarian pause, and more than that a particularly clear demonstration that a different world is possible.
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