WASHINGTON, D.C. – Eight Mainers, including four students from University of Maine Farmington, joined others from across the country for a national conference to lobby for a Department of Peace. Also included was a visit to Maine’s members of Congress on Capitol Hill.
Sponsored by The Peace Alliance, 500 people of all ages from 40 states, joined together for the weekend of March 20-23 to hear from speakers working on the front lines of violence treatment and prevention.
One of the goals of the conference was to educate on the benefits and cost savings of prevention in domestic and global violence and to lobby for HR808, legislation to create a cabinet level Department of Peace. Founder of the bill, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, joined us at the finale of the conference along with Congressman John Conyers and Congresswomen Eddie Bernice Johnson and Lynn Woolsey. Since the re-introduction of HR808 on Feb. 3, 66 co-sponsors have signed on, including Maine’s District 1 Rep. Chellie Pingree.
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The group also met with Maine’s Senators Susan Collins’ and Olympia Snowe’s staff and with District 2 Congressman Michael Michaud.
According to Lynn Ellis of Brunswick, who is the state coordinator for the campaign to have a Dept. of Peace, the group received ” a warm reception from the senator’s offices and there was genuine interest in our campaign. Although no promises for sponsorship in the senate, dialogue is ongoing with Senator Snowe’s office.”
Rep. Michaud, however, was less receptive, reportedly telling the group the bill, “wasn’t going anywhere.” He then asked how it was different from current legislation to deal with violence issues.
“We explained the need for a specific department in our government as the crisis of violence continues to escalate. We stated that whatever is in place now is not working. We shared statistics including the fact that 16 youths between the ages of 10-24 are killed daily due to gang violence and that the cost of violence domestically exceeds $300 billion,” Ellis said.
The Maine group intends to begin a campaign asking Rep. Michaud to reconsider. “Our goal is 500 calls between April 8 – May 8,” Ellis said.
The Department of Peace bill asks for $10 billion, with 85 percent being used to fund programs in the U.S. that work specifically on domestic violence prevention. Co-founder and chair emeritus Marianne Williamson of bill-sponsoring The Peace Alliance, said, “A Department of Peace would honor the entirety of a human – our emotional, psychological and spiritual issues as well as merely our material ones. And in doing so, it would address more deeply the entirety of our problems.”
For more information on the Maine Campaign for a Department of Peace, contact Ellis at 491-5064 or lellis@mainedop.org and visit our Web sites at www.mainedop.org and www.thepeacealliance.org
“Congress on Capital Hill.”
And I always thought it was “Capitol Hill”
why not what’s another 10 billion, when your talking in the trillions!