Hi guys!  I hope you’re having great Fridays.  Here at Peace X Peace we’re having a staff retreat today, but I took a few moments to track down these links for you to dig into before the weekend starts.  The theme?  Discussion! Discussion! Discussion!

From the Friends Committee on National Legislation, find out how recent talks might help stall war with Iran.
Thanks to Roxanne Krystalli for this deepening and expanding of our April PeaceTimes discussion of poetry and peace!
What do you think of this interview with Johan Galtung?
I had no idea: …

Hi all – sorry for the late posting last week – a technical glitch kept the links from you until Monday.  This week, we have a bevy of tips and recommendations of books and articles to dig into this weekend.  Enjoy!

Optimism about the peace movement and women’s role in it, delivered via a list of books.
Are Afghans building peace (and coping with war) by writing poetry?
Another reading recommendation from Texas in Africa – on the dangers and pitfalls of oversimplification of the Congo crisis.
Are you a woman web entrepreneur?  Check …

Mary Liston Liepold
One statement calls racism and xenophobia “the most serious threat to world peace and therefore to the human right to peace.” Do you agree?
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Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., probably the best-known peacebuilders in the US, if not the world, were both people of color. Yet if you go to a peace rally or a meeting of a peace organization in most US neighborhoods, you’ll see a rather notable preponderance of pale. What’s up with this?
First let me acknowledge that this is my personal observation, unsupported by statistics, and that …

- by Kimberly Weichel
CEO, Peace X Peace

It was thrilling to participate yesterday in the official launch of the US National Action Plan for Women, Peace and Security. Having been part of the civil society team, meeting for over a year to provide recommendations to the US government agencies tasked with preparing this plan, it was a momentous occasion to have it come to fruition. And I felt proud of the role that Peace X Peace played!
The goal of the National Action Plan is profound – to empower half the world’s …