A Shield Against War
by Liev, for Become The Change
"Become the change you want to see in the world"
– Mahatma Gandhi
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Mr. Arun Gandhi, whose life's work has been to carry on the message of his grandfather, Mahatma Gandhi, spoke at City College in Santa Barbara in June 2002.
When a man asked him with distress how we could have protected the millions of victims of Hitler's abuse without using violence, Mr. Gandhi replied, "If people had gone out in masses, sitting in the roads, thousands deep, would Hitler's troops have trampled them to invade a nation?"
Mr. Gandhi continued that of course they wouldn't, nor could they. The eyes of the world and just pure shame would have turned them away from their violence.
Today, some seventy years after his grandfather told his followers that "we must become the change we want to see in the world," it has become as possible as it is necessary to expand and extend his idea of nonviolent solutions into a workable and very real end to war.
Please make the pledge: "If 5,000 others will go [or 6,000, 8,000, 10,000 or whatever number feels most comfortable], I will join them in Iraq to form a human shield, preventing the loss of life and the spread of war around the world and encouraging nonviolent resolutions to the complex issues at hand."
Mr. Gandhi endorses our shield. Partner peace organizations such as Veterans for Peace and Not In Our Name support us. Travel will be covered by fundraising, to the extent possible. All you need to do is say yes to join the human shield in Iraq.
Gandhi was right.
The shield culminates what organizations like the U.N. peacekeeping troops have tried to help achieve for years. But instead of guns, there will be cameras and smiling people, U.S. soldiers' mothers and little brothers, ordinary Americans, and citizens of the world. Going en masse to Iraq to form a human shield of completely new proportions. More powerful than conscientious objection, by orders of magnitude, will be the soldier’s newfound motivation to not go to war in order to not murder his own loved ones.
Some would say that transporting thousands of people to Iraq is a daunting task. But so much more than daunting is living in a world where nation after nation has fallen into a global outbreak of war and terrorism. By contrast, inspiring and enabling a few thousand people from many of the world's richest nations to form a human shield in Iraq and begin the mediation process for a peaceful resolution to the current conflict is actually rather easy to accomplish.
It seems clear that, watching a multinational group of 5,000 or more individuals arrive to answer a human need and to encourage a peaceful and multilateral resolution to the crisis at hand, would-be terrorists would reconsider the necessity of committing attacks around the world. The people of the world don't need our governments to push us all into strife. We, the people - we, the nations, the ones this is really all about - can consider and decide our fate for ourselves.
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– Liev
Become the Change is dedicated to nonviolent solutions, dialogue, community and individual involvement. We are beginning by looking at things we can do right now to effect positive change in the world. One idea is the idea of a human shield. There are things each of us can do to slow down the war agenda. Please feel free to share your ideas with us.
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