[liberationtech] Call For Entries: Peace In The Present

[Erik Sundelof]

All,

Yosem suggested I should post this to the list as well.

I have co-founded a Swedish non-profit organization Peace In The Present with my brother Johan with the aim to inspire people globally to choose non-violent approaches in conflicts between people, populations or nations. You will find the website at http://www.peaceinthepresent.com
  
Peace in the Present is about finding and presenting a concrete, sustainable and realistic non-violence alternative together globally. We as founders do not know what this alternative is. but strongly believe by providing a global web-forum we can together identify key factors for a non-violent approach which people can be realistically choose. Indeed, dialogue, truth, humanity and confirmation of suffering are important issues in any conflict. Nevertheless, we do not aim to tell what is right or wrong in specific conflicts. Instead, we are all about finding and presenting a concrete non-violent alternative with help from all around the world.

We know one thing for sure, the path of retaliation and revenge and violence leads to more casualties and suffering than non-violent action and 90% are civilians. We also know that nonviolent struggle can be very powerful and that the violence as a resolution of conflicts has failed, all through centuries. This failure of finding resolution by violence, retaliation and revenge is possibly the strongest argument why we need to find the alternative. Violence, retaliation or revenge does not give you or your children peace. Ever.

Three important terms define Peace in the Present and what we believe in: peaceful co-existence, sustainability, and peace in mind.

To formulate this realistic non-violent alternative, we need you to help tell your story about how you believe a realistic and concrete non-violent alternative can be defined and chosen where you live. We have formulated the following initial instruction for entries for guidance:

Considering where you live or come from, what is needed for you to choose a sustainable, realistic non-violent path for progress or change? The main focus should be on a path forward and how such a path can be possible. The focus should be less about who is right or wrong in the moment, but rather how a non-violent future can be accomplished.

You can either write a blog post with a featured image of your choice or provide an embed code to a short video. The video does not be edited or sophisticated. It can simple be a webcam capture of you talking about the topic. Right now we do not support direct uploads on the site so you will need to go to YouTube and upload it there and grab the embed code.

You can submit your post by registering at http://www.peaceinthepresent.com and then click create new blog post to submit your entry.

Please do note that the main content area on the main landing page is not live until later this week and that we are still making some changes and edits to the site. Later this week I will make all entries available on the landing page and in the blog posts section.

Next week the site will be featured in the predominant national news media as the Palestinian doctor Izzeldin Abuelaish is coming to Sweden for the first time organized by Peace In The Present. We hope to be able to post a short interview with Izzeldin later next week or post an entry together. Link to an Democracy Now interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAwhsu-Gg3M

Let me or Johan (his email in the to field as well.) know if you have any questions or comments. Also please feel free to let anyone you know would be interested in the site.  

Best,

Erik 

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