Conscience Canada (CC) board member Jan Slakov wrote the following statement for the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace (VOW) last fall, when VOW was celebrating its 50th anniversary. We decided to post it on the CC website because others may find it useful or inspiring to read. Interestingly, a good number of VOW members have also been or are members of CC, including Dale Dewar, who is quoted in this article and Muriel Duckworth, who also inspired it.

Statement for the VOW 50th anniversary Conference and
Gala – Building Peace: Resisting War

The Canadian Voice of Women for Peace has hope for our beautiful and precious
earth, and confidence in the people who live on it. Even though “human beings
and the natural world are on a collision course” as the Union of Concerned
Scientists pointed out in1993, we are part of a global grassroots movement that
refuses to give up in the face of this terrible situation. What does peace have to
do with this collision course between human beings and the natural world? Quite
a bit. In fact, as a native Mi’kmaq elder pointed out during a Peace Day in
Halifax, Nova Scotia, peace, justice, and environmental health are not related
issues, they are the same issue. They cannot be achieved separately.

Environmental concerns—the global climate crisis, the spectre of serious water
shortages, the fragility of ocean ecosystems, soil depletion and decreasing food
production, the irreversible, heartbreaking loss of species – are happening as
predicted or even more quickly than predicted. Injustices caused by political
power, corporate greed, racism, sexism, and the lack of gender equality abound.
The destructive power of violence and war, both to people and to the ecosystem
our lives depend on, is evident in so many ways: indiscriminate injury and death
to civilians and wildlife by bombs and land mines; rape as a weapon of war;
poisoning of air, soil and water with chemical weapons such as agent orange;
loss of life and injury, both physical and mental, of military personnel, who
sometimes turn the violence on family members or themselves; the utter
dependence of the military on oil, and the willingness of governments to go to war
to secure its supply; and the threat of complete annihilation by nuclear weapons.
In particular, the suffering of children is so great: horrendous birth defects from
depleted uranium weapons exposure; lost lives or limbs from land mines in the
ground where they play or from the brightly colored cluster bombs that look like
toys; loss of their homes and sometimes their families when they become
refugees fleeing war zones. All of these issues are connected, so the most effective way to solve problems in any one area is to find approaches that work in other areas as well.

In fact, the Union of Concerned Scientists, in their 1993 “Warning to Humanity”,
listed five areas for action, each one “inextricably linked” to the others:

1) We must bring environmentally damaging activities under control to
restore and protect the integrity of the earth’s systems we depend on,
making special mention of the need to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and develop
smaller scale, renewable energy sources matched to Third World needs.

2) We must manage resources crucial to human welfare more effectively.

3) We must stabilize population. This will be possible only if all nations
recognize that it requires improved social and economic conditions, and
the adoption of effective, voluntary family planning.

4) We must reduce and eventually eliminate poverty.

5) We must ensure sexual equality, and guarantee women control over their
own reproductive decisions.

The declaration went on to point out that “Success in this global endeavor will
require a great reduction in violence and war. Resources now devoted to the
preparation and conduct of war – amounting to over $1 trillion annually – will be
badly needed in the new tasks and should be diverted to the new challenges.”
Obviously, in the nearly 2 decades since this warning was issued, humanity has
not made much progress on reaching these goals, despite the dedicated efforts of
millions, even billions of individuals and groups around the world. For instance, by
now, the US alone is already spending close to or more than $1 trillion on
“defence” each year; Canada’s military expenditures amount to $58 million every
day. The huge disparity between unimaginable riches and dire poverty still exists,
with only 20% of the world’s people consuming over 80% of its resources.
We know our earth is gravely ill, the “diagnosis” is frightening, and the prognosis
is not hopeful. We realize that denial is tempting, not just for patients who face a
dire illness, but for humanity as a whole, faced with our current situation. We also
know that sometimes, especially when there is great love and strength of will,
some patients can heal, despite all the odds. There is so much we love in life, in
this earth we share with all kinds of other creatures; we must carry on “perversely,
with no extraordinary power” seeking to “reconstitute the world”. *

We ask our fellow citizens: if you were gravely ill, how would you want to act?
Would you not hope to have the courage to move beyond denial, so that what
time you had to spend with those you loved most would be real, rather than a
charade of “nice” appearances? Would you not want to change your way of life, to
do what you could to bring about healing?

Thus, we ask you, our fellow citizens: Please, let’s use the resources we have to
make the changes that will give us and our planet a chance for a healthy future.
For instance, let’s not squander our wealth on fighter jets that we supposedly
need for defence from “threats” such as the recent Russian flight exercises, a
claim columnist Jeffrey Simpson described as “side-splittingly funny”. With the
money we would need to spend on those F-35s, we could pay for a whole host of
useful programs, including programs to fight poverty, invest in food security,
improve health care & education and fight climate change.

It is when we are in denial that we can end up making ridiculous decisions, such
as deciding to use gas-guzzling fighter jets** to “defend our air space” when what
we really need is to defend our air from ever increasing concentrations of
greenhouse gases. Of course, it is not just one decision about fighter jets that must be changed, but this current
example is highly symbolic of the overall change in direction we need. As Dr. Dale
Dewar, currently executive director of Physicians for Global Survival (PGS) and also a member of the board of
VOW has stated, “War’s utter waste of human resource – lives, intelligence, time
and money – devoted to childish “games” will eventually end – or the human race
ends.”

Once we move beyond denial, we can take the kinds of risks that may bring
healing. How about opening our eyes to the reality of what war and militarism are
doing to us and all life on earth? We must face the fact that there is no failproof
path to “security”; neither military force nor the power of nonviolence can protect
us from all harm. But investing in military force causes crushing harm to other
people and our earth whereas learning to use the tools of nonviolence can help
us grow as human beings, and offers real hope for a livable future.
Systems thinker and author Joanna Macy once pointed out that we have “no
guarantee that this tremendous shift [in values and lifestyle, the “Great Turning”]
will kick in before our life support systems unravel irretrievably.” But this
uncertainty could “draw forth our greatest courage and creativity. […] From our
own life experience, we know there’s never a guarantee -whether we’re falling in
love, or going into labor to birth a baby, or devoting ourselves to a piece of land,
turning the soil and watching for rain. We don’t ask for proof that we’ll succeed
and that everything will turn out as we want. We just go ahead, because life wants
to live through us! […] Our time to come alive is right now, on this edge of
possibility.”

The Canadian Voice of Women for Peace is proud of its 50 year history
advocating for peace. We look forward to continuing to support the role of
women as peace builders and peace makers.

*********************************************************
* These words come from a poem by Adrianne Rich, which was particularly
inspiring to one of VOW’s much-loved founders, Muriel Duckworth.

**An article published in the Earth Island Journal in 1991 points out that militaries consume unbelievable
amounts of fuel, for example “An F-16 jet on a training mission ignites more fuel
in a single hour than the average car owner consumes in two years.”

This statement is something of a work in progress, originally written by by Jan Slakov (250) 537-5251 and revised by:

Sandy Greenberg
RAZZMATAZZ FOR KIDS
902-455-8544
razz@razzmatazz.ns.ca
www.razzmatazz.ns.ca

with contributions from others too.