Summary
The Santa Fe chapter of Veterans for Peace (known as the Joan Duffy chapter) wanted to provide graduating high school students considering the military with another option. So it sponsored an essay writing contest in which students were asked to explain how they might contribute to a peaceful and just society. The contest was geared to Navajo students, many of whom come from families with a long history in the military. Santa Fean Lucy Moore coordinated the project for VFP after meeting Fernando Suarez del Solar, a man who became an anti-war activist after his 20-year-old Marine son, Jesus, was killed in Iraq. After hearing his story, Moore says she asked him: "'What can someone like me do?' and Fernando said, 'We have to make an alternative for kids who want to do something with their lives so they don't have to go into the military to get their dreams fulfilled.'"
The Make Love Not War T-shirt worn by [LUCINDA MONTROSS] on this week's cover features a photograph shot in 1968 by J Barry O'Rourke. The shirt is for sale as part of SFR's and Victoria Price Contemporary Art & Design's Peace Art Brigade project. A portion of the proceeds from all the T-shirts sold will benefit VFP. You can join the Peace Art Brigade by taking a photograph of yourself wearing the shirt or engaged in any "make love, not war" artistic statement, and your photo will be displayed in the gallery or on the Web site. SFR also will be publishing some of these photos in the coming year. Learn more about the Peace Art Brigade at the kickoff event on election night, Nov. 7 from 5 to 7 pm at Victoria Price Gallery, 550 S. Guadalupe St.I started to listen to people's views of war, from past wars to current wars, and they all have the same outcome. You can't make the other side change their minds or force them to change their minds; you have to negotiate. Early in our people's history, we learned that negotiation was the only path to follow. Our people were dying and our leader loved his land, but he loved his people more and presented the United States with a peace treaty. The same thing is happening with our country today, but does our leader feel the same? If he did, he would have figured out a peaceful negotiation for our current circumstance. Nonviolence is an easy way to settle differences, but most people do not avoid confrontation. They seize the opportunity to show their strength, to show they are not afraid and are not to be reckoned with in the future. The same theory applies to the United States and other countries. In the future, I hope our country will be ready to accept what we are doing to it now. We are putting ourselves in a place where we are not trusted to the world. In our future, we need to have peaceful understandings and negotiations for a better tomorrow.See the full content of this document
Extract
Choosing Peace
THE MILITARY WANTED LUCINDA MONTROSS. SHE WANTS SOMETHING ELSE.
After the US military failed to reach its enlistment quotas last year, recruiters stepped up their efforts with new financial incentives and modified criteria to widen the base of potential enlistees.The Santa Fe chapter of Veterans for Peace (known as the Joan Duffy chapter) wanted to provide graduating high school students considering the military with another option. So it sponsored an essay writing contest in which students were asked to explain how they might contribute to a peaceful and just society. The contest was geared to Navajo students, many of whom come from families with a long history in the military. Santa Fean Lucy Moore coordinated the project for VFP after meeting Fernando Suarez del Solar, a man who became an anti-war activist after his 20-year-old Marine son, Jesus, was killed in Iraq. After hearing his story, Moore says she asked him: "'What can someone like me do?' and Fernando said, 'We have to make an alternative for kids who want to do something with their lives so they don't have to go into the military to get their dreams fulfilled.'"Moore decided to focus on the Navajo reservation for the first essay contest because she had lived there during the Vietnam era. "The Navajo are unbelievably patriotic, and when I was living there it was the Vietnam war and I saw a lot of young men coming back really destroyed in a lot of ways by the experience of being over ...See the full content of this document
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