By Gayle Morrow-Harris
(This is from the Sun-Gazette on June 13th, 1999)
MANSFIELD-Is world peace possible?
"You have to think it's possible -- if you're not optimistic, you're part of the problem," said 20-year-old Daniel Schmitt. "In your everyday interactions with people, you have to figure out how to listen, even if you don't agree with what they're saying. Everyone has something to contribute even if you don't agree with them completely."
Daniel and his 18-year-old sister, Johanna, got a brief, but intense, world-class education in peace last month when they travelled with a Philadelphia-based Quaker contingency to The Hague Appeal for Peace Conference in the Netherlands.
The conference, held on the 100th anniversary of the first Hague International Peace Conference, which had been convened by Russia's Czar Nicholas II, featured a diverse, multinational group of speakers.
Among them were South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu; Vandana Shiva, director of India's Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology; Vice President of the International Court of Justice, Christopher G. Weeramantry; Queen Noor of Jordan; Ireland's Minister for Foreign Affairs David Andrews; and Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan.
The siblings explained that the opportunity to attend the conference "presented itself at the last minute" when another family member canceled plans to go. While not members of a Quaker "meeting" or congregation, the Schmitts attend services and subscribe to Quaker beliefs, Johanna said.
One of those beliefs is that violence is never acceptable.
Inner peace has to come first, Daniel said. It's followed by peace with the people in your community, with all beings and with the environment. There is a subsequent "ripple outward" of peace and nonviolence.
Could that kind of "ripple" be spread worldwide? If the 10,000 or so who attended this conference are any indication, the answer is "yes."
The conference was "well beyond their (organizers') expectations," Daniel said, agreeing that it was very exciting to see that many people interested in peace, especially young people.
"The youth had a great role," he noted, adding that their input will be included in the final conference report, expected to be published this fall.
Johanna described her participation in a youth-organized march against the use of nuclear weapons in Yugoslavia as "inspiring."
"I felt like I was actually doing something," she said.
What were some of the other highlights of the event? Johanna said that hearing Tutu speak, talking with people from all over the world, listening to the testimony from survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and seeing the horrific pictures from that nuclear holocaust, and "feeling very safe" are memorable aspects of the conference for her.
Daniel recalled the workshops on economic rights, domestic violence, and the possibility of "high-level corporate decision makers" working with peace advocates as some of the conference standouts.
They came away feeling hopeful, they said, despite the fact that media coverage of the event was minimal. Daneil said he found that "very upsetting," but acknowledged that war is "far more marketable" than peace.
We live in a "culture of violence," he continued. People are born into it, become numb to it and are entertained by it. Yet, the two are eagar to do something positive and constructive with their experience. Johanna said she is "really interested in education and working with children."
Daniel said he eventually may take the technology/computer route but, in the interim, he is interested in following up with some of the organizations represented at the conference to see "what kind of alliances they may have formed."
And they're both advocates of adding a fourth "R" to the traditional "reading, writing, and 'rithmetic" curriculum in the schools, that being "reconciliation," or teaching peace. As Cora Weiss, a conference presenter and veteran of four decades of anti-war campaigning said, "You cannot expect people to be peaceful if you don't teach them peace. It doesn't come from your DNA. There's no gene for peace."
