[Peace-discuss] mission statement

[raia fink]

this looks great! with one exception. When we initially founded AWARE many
moons ago there was to be a focus on intentional language. With
that, might I suggest removing the word 'aggressive' from before the word
'wars' This word acts as a redundant qualifier and suggests that there's a
non aggressive strain of war in some laboratory somewhere that we peace
activists can't wait to release. Even the Cold War was highly
aggressive, being a war and all. I'm guessing the intent with the word
aggressive might be to succinctly comment that as a group AWARE doesn't
blindly oppose every war (I realize I'm no longer around at the meetings to
hear and participate in these discussions, so I apologize if my comments have
already been made been). However, don't we oppose war? When we founded
AWARE, there was no one specific war, only a bunch of blips looming on the
horizon. When I hear about war from the media, the redundant modifiers
they consistently use (violent, unjust, bloody, devastating, etc.)
detract from the report, while creating and enforcing the public's
emotions. Should a war ever come along that AWARE does support, I suggest
disbanding.

-Raia

The tone of this parallels my feelings on the matter. strong. If I come
across as abusive or snippy, please let me know so I can work on it, as
that's not what I intend.

>
> > AWARE, the Anti-War-Anti-Racism-Effort,  is an alliance working to
> > oppose aggressive wars and to end racism. Our concerns also include
> > the militarization of society, inequalities of wealth and opportunity,
> > the concentration and uniformity of news sources, the global extension
> > of American power, the demise of internationally agreed norms of
> > behavior, the threat of corporate globalization to the common welfare,
> > and the erosion of civil liberties. We come together to coordinate our
> > efforts individually and with other organizations to share resources
> > and ideas and to make large scale actions possible as we work towards
> > peace and justice.