the propeace community - DoP Bill - Comments

I HOPE IT WAS USEFUL

Susan Livingston — Fri, 13 May 2005 00:14:05 -0400

The guy wants the name to be Department of Peacebuilding, and was very adversarial about it! He's from the Carter Foundation, which seems to be doing some very good work on the international scale (which he detailed painstakingly to illustrate the difference between Peace, Peacemaking, and Peacebuilding). I tried to tell him that this is what they mean when they say we can't get our act together, and that The Peace Alliance and the Carter Foundation should be allies, but he was adamant. Someone else jumped in on my side, so I dropped it. But that's why you see the word "peacebuilding" so frequently in my summary. (It only appears once in the language of the Bill.)

"Blue in a Red State"

very useful

Jason White — Wed, 11 May 2005 22:23:37 -0400

This is an excellent summary. Thank you.

DoP Bill

Susan Livingston — Wed, 11 May 2005 21:25:39 -0400

When I first became involved in the Campaign for the DoP, I printed out the Bill from www.thepeacealliance.org so that I could prepare myself to answer any questions that were addressed to me regarding its provisions. I got a two-page summary that says very little and 14 pages of dry legislatese. Actually, Article 1 (Findings) is quite inspiring; it reads like an essay/history lesson. The rest, though, is pretty dry. Tonight, in the course of a forum discussion on the Kucinich site (www.kucinich.us), I wrote a summary of the Offices that would be created by the DoP, and it took HOURS of poring over my printout. Rather than waste all that effort, I thought I'd reproduce it here. The DoP Bill (H.R. 1673) organizes the Department as follows: (continued, click "read more" below...)