Update from New Orleans, June 2007 - Proposal for Books Not Bombs

[Tim Roust]

R.I.P. U. Utah Phillips, 1935-2008

It has been a long time since I've written in here, or written anywhere. I am struggling to get back in the habit of writing, even when I'm not in the mood. But I am sick of broadcasting my thoughts. The age of broadcast media is ending, and the age of participatory media is emerging. There are many movements underway that will fundementally change how we view media. The Open Source Software movement is one important example, and the Creative Commons movement is another important example.

I once read a quotation in a book about organizational theory that said "It is amazing how much can be accomplished when no one claims who gets the credit." I think that this is the heart of the Creative Commons movement, and the Open Source Software movement. What if this simple and elegant idea could be applied to the peace movement? What if within the peace movement, we approached movement building and institution building in accordance with this principle.

Imagine if there was not just one, but MANY peace portals....and imagine if they all referred to one another? A portal is simply a doorway. Doorways need to lead somewhere. Imagine if there were many peace portals, and they were all seen simply as different doorways which led to the same shared reality.

For this site to be effective, there needs to be a LOCALIZED peace portal for every city which refers back to this site. I would like to help create a Peace Portal for New Orleans, and one for Boston. (There already is a site called "New Orleans Voices For Peace", but it really has very little to do with New Orleans.)

I do not believe that there is currently a peace movement in the United States. I feel that the key to building that movement is infrastructure building. We need to develop counter-cultural institutions that allow us to pursue a common goals while at the same time managing to preserve diversity and autonomy. We need to build an alternative "marketplace of ideas" for the peace movement. We need to focus our attention on peace education. We need to build collaborative curriculum guides for peace studies, and we need to build these tools using the "creative commons license".

I am proposing the creation of a new imaginary people's librarian network, which I am calling "Books Not Bombs". I hope for this to become an idea-virus which will seep into people's subconsious the same way in which "Food Not Bombs" has. I am envisioning Books not Bombs as being the educational wing of Food Not Bombs. Wherever Food Not Bombs is assembled to distribute food, I want Books Not Bombs to be there distributing books and information. I want Books Not Bombs to be an information clearinghouse for the peace movement. I want it to be a peer to peer book sharing network, based on the same decentralized principles as internet file sharing.

I have created a group called "Books Not Bombs" as a forum for developing this idea.
I am weary of using NING.COM for this purpose. By this point, I am weary of all commercially-driven social networking sites. There are many open source tools out there that would allow us to develop sites that were just as good as anything that ning.com can create. We just lack organization.

I have lots I want to say, but I'm not sure who I am talking to right now, and I am sick of broadcasting my fragmented half-complete thoughts. I need dia-log, which I learned means "Flow of Meaning" (dia = river and logos = knowledge). The key to building a strong foundation for a real peace movement is to try to maximize understanding between peace activists. The goal of Books Not Bombs is to create a set of common reference points for peace activists... so that we are all building a shared vision of peace on a shared body of literature.

One of my main inspirations as a peace activist is Colman McCarthy, who runs "The Center for Teaching Peace" in Maryland, and writes and speaks extensivley on the history and philosophy of non-violence. In 1996 I watched a video tape of a Colman McCarthy lecture called "How to radicalize your life." I am trying to find a way to digitize that video tape so that I can put it online for everyone to see. I think that people like Colman McCarthy should be invited to have regular columns on peace activistm on sites such as this. We need to create a vibrant network of peace educators, all sharing ideas and strategies and materials.

In this day and age, one of the most important things that the world needs are more peace educators. Last week marked the death of U.Utah Phillips, who was another one of my main inspirations as a peace activist and peace educator. I have included a link to a youtube clip of an Amy Goodman interview with U.Utah Phillips, where he describes his experiences in the Korean War, and his friendship with Aamon Henacy, the radical peace activist from the Catholic Worker Union who helped convince Utah Phillips to embrace non-violence as a set of values to structure his life around.

"History has always been a race between education and catastrophe" - H.G. Wells

I am more and more convinced that the best use of my future is to focus all of my creative energy on peace education. I am still unclear on what that path will look like. But I've already made my choice, and there's no turning back.