An important new documentary is being shown on Monday night - Tim Wise's "Soldiers of Peace" will be shown at the Heights Theatre at 7:30 PM as a fundraiser for FNVW.org and the Peace Alliance. Tickets are $25 and are available at any Bibelot shop location or at the Northern Sun.
The film has gotten a brief review in the Star Tribune:
Is an outbreak of peace upon us? It may seem unlikely, but One Tree Film's and Tim Wise's "Soldiers of Peace" seeks to explore the good work worldwide that's not being covered by the news media. Featuring interviews with Desmond Tutu, Sir Richard Branson, Prince Hassan of Jordan and more, the documentary suffers from being too broad -- veering from the war to Hurricane Katrina to global warming and back. But when it shows peace in progress (Jewish and Palestinian Arab students going to school together or a football game between two conflicting Kenyan communities), it is truly inspiring.
The film, and the groups benefiting from this fundraiser deserve more coverage. Perhaps the trailer can give you a sense of the significance of the film:
The work of the Peace Alliance is incredibly important. Its principle activity is the Campaign for a Department of Peace (new community site on ning) and it has recently added advocacy for the Youth PROMISE Act - HR 1064 to its mission, along with HR 808.
We must have persistent champions for a positive peace, affirming the potential for peace, defining it as something greater than the absence of war or conflict, seeking investment in peacebuilding, defining standards of professionalism in peace-making, showing the measurements of peace and its relationship to economic prosperity (as is done by the Global Peace Index, another project of the group behind One Tree Films).
We must decide to act for peace, lobby for it, invest in the organizations that embody it - because otherwise we are simply reacting to the harms of war, the unwanted expense, the scorn our invasion of Iraq has brought upon the US from the rest of the community of nations. On Monday it is obviously important to oppose the War Supplemental by calling Representatives McCollum and Ellison and asking them to vote no on HR 2346, but it is time to to take a greater step towards peace, to be inspired by this film, to invest in the capacity of the Peace Alliance and FNVW, to commit to working for peace beyond the cessation of our current shooting wars and occupations abroad.