MANUAL FOR THE CULTURE OF PEACE BY THE NEW GENERATION

This manual is based on my experience during the 1960's with the movement against the War in Vietnam, my work with the People's Peace Appeal and the Seville Statement on Violence in the 1980's, my work at UNESCO from 1992 to 2001, and since then as the editor of the Culture of Peace News Network. Others who have contributed are too many to list.

Basic principles:

The same species that invented war is capable of inventing peace.
Think globally, act locally
Another world is possible

THINK GLOBALLY
Know your history:

Early History of the Culture of Peace
History of the Culture of War

Know your psychology:

Psychology for Peace Activists: A New Psychology for the Generation Who Can Abolish War.
The Seville Statement on Violence

ACT GLOBALLY
Be part of an activating team for the Peace Manifesto, joining with other teams working for the Peace Manifesto in 14 languages around the world.
Link your work to the organizations that are already working for a culture of peace. Many of them are partners of the Peace Manifesto.

ACT LOCALLY
The American Empire with its culture of war is going to crash, with even more terrible effects than those with the crash of the Soviet Empire almost 40 years ago (the Soviet people lost all their savings due to an inflation of 10,000 percent).

We should be "apocaloptimists," seeing this apocalpse as an opportunity to reconstruct global governance for a culture of peace instead of a culture of war. See my blog A Culture of Peace is Possible: Here's How.

Local actions will be needed in two stages:

1. SURVIVAL `
With the global economic crash and the lack of fuel for transport, there will be no food in the supermarkets, and food will have to be found locally. There will be mass migrations from cities to the countryside. National governments are not prepared for this. It will be necessary to re-organize local governments to make agreements with the farmers of the surrounding countryside.

There will a danger of violence during this transition period. Beware of people who promise to provide guns and dynamite for violent revolution. We saw this during the Anti-Vietnam movement of the 1960's in the United States; most them were agent provocateurs as part of the national government's COINTELPRO campaign that was designed to crush opposition to the war.

One good thing the national governments can contribute is the military. The military has the transport and communication facilities, stocks of food, and tents, just what will be needed for the millions who migrate from the cities to the countryside, literally turning swords into ploughshare.

Lacking fuel for tractors, farming will go back to handwork by the migrants arriving from the cities. (Cuba did this when the US embargo stopped its access to fuel).

2) LINK THE LOCAL TO A NEW SYSTEM OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
The new importance of local governance and the new role of militaries, need to be expanded to a global level.

Local governments, both directly and indirectly through their international organizations, should be linked to enlarged United Nations agencies for agriculture, education, healthcare, transport, communication, migration and labor. This can link global to local without needing to pass through the nation-state.

Either a reformed United Nations, or a new global organization in its place should be governed by representatives of the local governments of the world. Mayors for Peace is already in a position to assist with this. Unlike National governments, mayors have no use for nuclear weapons, no military-industrial complex to feed, no national borders to defend.

The dream of a global military organization as part of the United Nations should be realized, not as militaries for war but militaries for humanitarian assistance.

A Global Movement for a Culture of Peace, initiated through the Peace Manifesto, should provide this strategy that people will be looking for.