I stand for peace

Consider adding your name to this powerful document for peace, beloved.

Sign the "I Stand for Peace" Petition July 24, 2008

Dear Susan,

We're calling upon Congress to make reducing and preventing violence a national priority in the upcoming Congress. Won't you join us?

Sign the "I Stand for Peace" petition and encourage everyone you know to do the same.

This is not a partisan issue and it's not about a particular piece of legislation. This is about raising awareness of a largely preventable public health issue that costs billions of dollars and millions of lives each year. There are proven solutions out there, but they're meaningless if we don't use them.

Our young people deserve better. They deserve to live in a country where reducing and preventing violence is a national priority. They deserve to be safe and to grow up without fear. That's why we're asking you to join us in saying, "I Stand for Peace."

On September 11, 2008, we will deliver the petition to the Congressional leadership. We've set an extremely conservative goal of 5,000 signatures. But why not 50,000? 1 million? 300 million - the current population of the United States? After all, violence is an equal-opportunity destroyer. No one goes untouched.

Will one petition change the world? Of course not. But it's a step, one of many that must be taken to bring the field of peacebuilding from the margins of the political and societal dialogue and make it central to our policymaking, investment and understanding.

We must come together to make our voices heard and tell our representatives in Washington that violence reduction and prevention must be a top priority. Sign the petition and let Congress know that you stand for peace.

Learn More You can read the full text of the petition below or online. And visit our I Stand for Peace education page to learn more about youth violence and how you can help.

Watch our PSA www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRNNLwPFTOU

Spread the Word Once you've signed, be sure to ask your friends, family and others in your peace networks to sign. Either forward this email to everyone in your address book or use our Tell a Friend tool.

Thank you for getting informed, taking action, and staying committed. Together, we can reduce and prevent violence, and create a more peaceful world for generations to come.

In peace and partnership,

All of us at The Peace Alliance

Petition Text

I Stand for Peace Make Violence Reduction and Prevention a National Priority

TO: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell:

Violence pervades American culture, and its impact is devastating. Consider just a few sobering statistics:

The World Heath Organization estimates the cost of interpersonal violence in the U.S. at $300 billion per year. The cost to victims was estimated at more than $500 billion per year. [1]

U.S. youth homicide rates are more than 10 times that of other leading industrial nations. [2]

Direct expenditures for corrections by local, state and federal governments between 1982 and 2004 increased 585 percent to $62 billion per year. [3]

All told, domestic interpersonal violence consumes nearly 10% of our national Gross Domestic Product (GDP). And this does NOT include war-related costs. [4]

As staggering as this financial cost is, the human cost is even greater.

The heartbreak of this tremendous waste is that it is largely preventable. We have skilled experts in the science of peacebuilding, effective programs that reduce and prevent violence, and our colleges and universities are already training the next generation of peacebuilders.

What we lack is the political will, visionary leadership, and institutional platform needed to create a strategic, focused effort to empower our citizens, communities and country to resolve conflict before it erupts into violence.

We the undersigned are standing for peace, asking that you make the issue of violence reduction and prevention a national priority in the coming Congress. We can no longer stand idly by as a largely preventable phenomenon destroys lives and drains our national assets.

More than 300 colleges and universities give degrees in Peacebuilding and Peace Studies. The current spectrum of our peacebuilding expertise includes leading edge technologies in the fields of conflict resolution, peer mediation, post-conflict reconstruction and many other forms of alternative dispute resolution (ADR). Countless programs across the nation have been proven to effectively reduce and prevent bullying, school violence, recidivism, domestic violence, dependency on social services, crime, and more--and they have done so while saving taxpayer dollars.

Regrettably, current policy-making tends toward reactive, not proactive, approaches to reducing violence. We typically wait until violence has occurred and then ask our already over-taxed police and military to address these symptoms of violence through activities such as imprisonment of offenders and engagement in armed conflict. While such suppression of symptoms is vital, it is incomplete and must be augmented by stronger preventative measures, with a specific focus on the identification and treatment of root causes.

Please join us in saying, "I Stand for Peace." Help us save lives, save money, and save our country for future generations.

Make violence reduction and prevention a national priority in the next Congress.

------------------------ [1] World Health Organization, The Economic Dimensions of Interpersonal Violence, 2004 [2] World Health Organization, World Report on Violence and Health, 2002 [3] Bureau of Justice Statistics, Direct Expenditures by Criminal Justice Function, 1982-2004 [4] World Health Organization, The Economic Dimensions of Interpersonal Violence, 2004

P.S. Keep those license plates coming. I’m saving them for a future Ode post! And check them out on plateshow.com.

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