Reflections after a “War Forum” in Rock Tavern, NY

Words drop from our lips like honey
Sweet coating with abstractions
The cruel realities that veterans
Face as daylight nightmares
Flashbacks on bloody broken bodies
Twists and turns of suspicions
Lost as they are mustered out
Into a world that never asked them
To go fight in those foolish wars, a world
That resents the costs that still weigh
And will for decades to come on what
Is now impossible, Achilles redux,
Forgiven to be forgotten, not honored.
While at home the waters never did
Roll down like justice, they dried up
And the parched throats cannot swallow
The euphemisms for waste wrapped
In false promises and forked paths of politics.


By Mark C. Johnson

Voices FOR Peace celebrates Women’s History Month:

“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.”
~ Jeannette Pickering Rankin
[photo: The first woman elected to the United States Congress listens to lobbying for a unanimous vote for the declaration of war in 1941. A longtime pacifist, Rankin ultimately voted no and was the only House member to do so. (Library of Congress)]

Voices FOR Peace celebrates Women’s History Month:

“The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war.”
~ Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

Voices FOR Peace:
“War is not the answer, because only love can conquer hate.”
~ Marvin Gaye

Global call to action to stop the violence in Israel-Palestine

F.O.R. Statement on Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense: Ceasefire Now!

(click on photo to read statement)

Voices FOR Peace:
“No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Voices FOR Peace:
“Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world’s problems?”
~ Bill Watterson (creator of Calvin and Hobbes)

Voices FOR Peace:
“Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!”
~ Helen Keller

Voices FOR Peace:
“Someone once gave me a poem with a line in it that offers a good definition of peace: ‘Softening what is rigid in our hearts.’ We can talk about ending war and we can march for ending war, we can do everything in our power, but war is never going to end as long as our hearts are hardened against each other.”
~Pema Chodron