Though people have valid concerns about our electoral process, still the biggest secret in our midst is not how much of our power is seeping away. Rather, it's how much power we still have but we're not using.

America needs a pro-democracy movement of our own. Many of us don't remember the civics we learned in the seventh grade; we don't even know who our Congressional representatives are, how to contact them or that it makes so much difference when we do.

An overwhelmed generation wants easy steps, and here they are:

1) To use our new Congressional contact system, visit:
http://www.demaction.org/peacealliance/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=902, mail or call your member of the House of Representatives (we'll try for Senate support a bit later), and urge them to support the Dept. of Peace legislation that is being re-introduced this September. If even ten people in your Congressional district call your Congressman asking for his or her support, that will put the legislation on their radar. Congresspeople react to their constituents when their constituents make themselves heard.

2) If at all possible, come to Washington DC for the Department of Peace Conference http://www.thepeacealliance.org/events/sept_conf_05.htm which takes place from September 10-14 and urge others to come as well. People from all over the United States will be there lobbying Congress to pass the bill. What walking through the streets was to the Sixties, walking through the halls of Congress is today. Just as important, just as exciting, and just as powerful.

The Department of Peace will be part of the executive branch of the U.S. government, articulating and facilitating nonviolent solutions to domestic and international conflict. It will house a Peace Academy to augment the work of the Military Academy, turning conflict-resolution, nonviolent communication and humanitarian concern into serious political tools. It will provide our leaders with broader problem-solving options than the mere application of brute force. It will create an institutionalized voice for the interests of peace within the workings of the United States government, making the effort to wage peace as serious a political conversation as the
effort to wage war.

This legislation will not pass easily or quickly. It is a very serious cause and it necessitates a very serious effort. Yet it's an idea whose time has come, and we are the ones it has come to.

Let's do this for our children, and for theirs...

God bless everyone.

Marianne Williamson