Abstract
Finishing this essay in the days following the January 6 terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol by right-wing militants underscores the need for deep, sustained scholarship, conversation, and mobilization to confront the threats to peace and justice in this world. Bending the Arc: Striving for Peace and Justice in the Age of Endless War, a collection of autobiographical essays from several leading figures in the peace and justice movement edited by Steve Breyman, John W. Amidon, and Maureen Baillargeon Aumand, aims to contribute to that project. The book came together through the Tekakwitha Interfaith Peace Conference, held annually in upstate New York. Each essay is fairly short and autobiographical, emphasizing each activist's journey into and through the peace movement and the moral, spiritual, and intellectual commitments that have sustained their activism.
The book opens with two introductory essays, one outlining the purpose of the book and the other giving a little background on the Tekakwitha Interfaith Peace Conference. The fact that each of essays is authored by activists who have participated in the Peace Conference feels a bit incidental, though it does help explain why there is a distinct regional character to many of the contributions. As a professor teaching in Albany, New York, I could follow the many references to local places, personalities, and events; but readers without this point of reference may find themselves, at times, disoriented.
Steve Breyman's concluding essay finds common waypoints in each of these activists’ journeys into and through the peace and justice movement. Many trace their activism to their religious faith or that of their parents, and many note the same encounters with U.S. imperialism—the U.S. war against Vietnam and the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq come up in nearly every essay. But, given the autobiographical focus of these essays, many of the commonalities that Breyman finds are presented as rooted in the beliefs and values of the activists themselves, a moral commitment to human rights founded on a deep-seated compassion for human beings no matter where on this planet they happen to reside.
In one respect Breyman's summary highlights what is good and valuable in this collection. Demystifying the lives of those who figure prominently in a social movement can certainly make activism feel more accessible to those who share this same moral code but do not know how to take that first, crucial step of putting it into practice. But if one of the goals of this collection is to inspire a new group of future activists to get involved in peace and justice work, focusing on personal biography and personal morality has real limitations.
Nick Mottern, whose peace and justice work focuses on exposing the real consequences of drone warfare on human lives, writes in the introduction to his essay that, because of the proliferation of drone technology and its increasing use in military engagements, many of us are now blind to the reality of U.S. militarism. Drone strikes keep U.S. boots off the ground and do not attract the same media attention. As a result, the horrors of war that many experienced watching the nightly news coverage from Vietnam go unnoticed today. The fires of moral indignation are starved of fuel, and peace movements that depend on that sense of moral outrage are diminished.
Mottern’s point is a fine example of the argument that Martin Shaw made several decades ago in his Dialectics of War (1988). Earlier, “total wars” mobilized not only the nation's military and industrial resources to the cause of war-fighting, but the citizenry as a whole. Even those who did not have friends and family sent to fight and die nonetheless saw their lives redefined by war. It is a reality that many of the essayists speak to when they recount their experience with the Vietnam War: some were veterans and experienced that conflict firsthand; but even those who were not direct participants or yet involved in peace work remember Vietnam as being formative. We have not experienced a total war for many decades; and the trend, exemplified by the increased reliance on drone strikes to carry out U.S. imperial objectives, is to shield the citizenry from the reality of war rather than to bring them into it. Given this new context, growing the movement for peace and justice will not happen if we are relying on our shared moral outrage as a starting point.
And, to be fair, that is not what brought these movements together in the first place. In many of these activists’ biographies, there are groups and organizations that harness their talents and moral commitments and put them to use for the cause of peace and justice. For some, those organizations are faith-based, while others recount their work on political campaigns or in community justice organizations. David Swanson, who won the U.S. Peace Prize in 2018, captures the power of organizations in his essay, even if unintentionally. The early pages recounting his journey to peace activism cover the usual biographical terrain of family, schooling, and early steps into the world of social justice activism. But it was when David joined ACORN shortly before 9/11 and followed that up with working on the Dennis Kucinich presidential campaign that his commitment to social justice became focused on peace work. As part of their peace and justice work, many of these activists have founded and directed anti-war organizations. There are some that will be familiar to many readers, such as Medea Benjamin's account of CODEPINK's origins and work and Kathy Kelly's work to end economic sanctions in Iraq in the early 1990s, which led to the founding of Voices in the Wilderness.
What we also see in these essays is that peace work sustains, and is sustained by, broader work in the service of social and economic justice. Indeed, for many of these authors their anti-war activism emerged from a general commitment to social justice. The Reverend Felicia Parazaider describes her early work for the Anti-Defamation League fighting hate groups in Los Angeles and her feminist activism in college as part of the trajectory bringing her to peace work. Bill Quigley connects the violence of the aerial bombardment of Baghdad to the violence of our system of mass incarceration. Jim Merkel's essay urges us to connect the movement against militarism to the movement to combat climate change and ecological destruction.
In the closing paragraph of his introductory essay, Breyman writes, “[o]ur authors show us the way forward.” Asking these accomplished, dedicated activists to focus so much on their personal journeys into peace work may have been a miscalculation, one that prevents Bending the Arc from following through on this promise. The autobiographical nature of these essays has a tendency to obscure the way in which the movement for peace has been organized, both internally and in relationship to other social movements. Stories of personal conviction and courage, while inspiring, suggest that the way forward is grounded in the individual, rather than in the groups and organizations that not only channel our personal convictions, but provide a space for critical inquiry to flourish and personal relationships to strengthen. Long-time peace activists will find much in this volume to connect with, but readers who are primarily interested in sustaining and building these movements, who are looking to move the needle toward peace and justice, may find that this volume does not speak to them.