GSC: And what about
those involving post traumatic stress?
GP:
Even a larger number. We don't know the
number. But it is enormous!
GSC: Well, that
takes me to what is probably our last question: What can we--and I'm happy to
include you in that pronoun--what can we as peace activists do to further the
cause of peace at this time? What keeps
you going? When you see all the lies and
propaganda, the vested interests" yet, you are a man who has hope, and you
inspire hope in others, your work inspires hope (I think that was a major
reason you were awarded the Gellhorn Prize). " So, tell us what keeps you
going" and what's ahead for the Peace Movement.
GP:
What keeps me going personally is the quest for truth. On the larger plane of what peace activists
can do, I think that the first order of business is to get organized. Unfortunately, we've seen over the past
decade the collapse of the peace movement in the US. It's an unprecedented collapse. And it demands our attention to try to
understand what happened. I think--what
we've seen is the demobilization of the anti-war movement by successive
administrations which have deliberately propagandized to convince people that
their views won't make any difference--that they cannot change what the US will
do. That's been a very deliberate effort
on the part of the Bush, and then the Obama, administrations. I also think that, because of the
deteriorating social and economic situation, people have been called to a lot
of local issues, social and economic issues, that do demand activism. And, what I think needs to be done is for
people to re-evaluate the reasons that they've moved away from a focus on
militarism and peace" and ask themselves the question whether they are not, in
fact, assisting militarist forces when they fail to be more activist against
this Permanent War State.
GSC: We need to
prioritize!
GP:
We need to prioritize, and we need to analyze the linkages between militarism
and war on one hand and the issues of society and the US economy on the other.
The
one other thing that I would add is the importance of people who care about
these matters to come together around the country in small groups, and then to
gather in a larger congregation, to unify their analysis of how we got to where
we are. Because that is what has been so
terribly missing in the politics of the opposition to the policies of the Bush
and Obama administrations. We have so
many different ways of understanding--it has been shattered into a thousand
pieces. And, to some extent, that can
never quite be repaired without generational changes and so forth, and--
GSC: It's true that
we live in that kind of world today; it's a very fragmented world.
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