Persons concerned about peace and justice sometimes ask how they can join the Global Peace Collective of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center. The Global Peace Collective welcomes new members who endorse its basic principles, and who can work with us in a cooperative and respectful manner. We are especially eager to attract younger people, but we also welcome an older crowd too.
The Global Peace Collective has seven basic principles:
- Human Rights: Human rights are the foundation of sustainable global peace. All human beings are entitled to life, liberty, personal security and all the freedoms detailed in the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. All forms of racism and misogyny must be abolished.
- National Self-Determination: The people of every nation are entitled to establish and maintain their own form of government and their own economic and social systems. Every nation must protect human rights and honor international law.
- Anti-Imperialism: Efforts by one nation (or one group of nations) to dominate, control, or sabotage another nation (or group of nations) are impermissible and must stop.
- War Resistance: Warfare must end. Standing armies and preparations for military action must be eliminated. Military industries must be abolished or transformed for other uses.
- Environmental Sanity: Nations must work rapidly, energetically and in concert to sustain the environmental health of Planet Earth, which is now severely threatened.
- International Organization: Global peace requires strong, rational and democratic international organization. The U.N. should be strengthened and made more democratic. As the acknowledged international organization for mitigating conflict, the U.N. must give effective worldwide support to human rights and international law. In the conduct of its peace keeping operations, the U.N. will use force only as a last resort.
- International Law: International law consists of the general rules endorsed by a democratized U.N. A coherent and respected body of international law is essential for enduring global peace.
The first step for anyone considering membership in the Global Peace Collective is to carefully examine these seven principles. A prospective member must be able to endorse all of them without reservation.
The Global Peace Collective does not require ideological uniformity. Global politics are complex matters, and Collective members sometimes disagree about specific things: e.g., does a certain politician deserve support, does a particular action violate international law, can social revolution be reconciled with war resistance, should concern for human rights override anti-imperialism. Yet our Collective operates by consensus. The consensus procedure is only viable if all participants certify and work for the same general goals. We control membership to ensure that this really happens.
If you can endorse our seven basic principles and would like to join the Global Peace Collective, please send an email to Ron Forthofer (rforthofer@comcast.net) or Tom Mayer (thomas.mayer@colorado.edu).
Your email should contain a brief description of yourself and a brief explanation of why you want to join the Collective. The Collective will discuss your membership request at our next meeting. If there is no objection, you will be invited to participate in our subsequent meetings. After about two months, the Collective will reconsider your participation. If everyone (including you) finds your participation satisfactory, you will become a full member of the Global Peace Collective.
The membership gauntlet described above may sound intimidating, but this is really not so. We almost never reject a simpatico applicant. Indeed, the shoe is usually on the other foot: We beg for new members. Yet to accomplish our important tasks, we must also protect the Collective’s capacity to function effectively within a sometimes unfriendly political environment.
