“All we are saying is give peace a chance” ~ John Lennon

Peacemaking and advocacy are different practices. In the advocate’s world, there are good guys and bad guys. The way to stop the horrors that are happening all around us is to convert the bad guys to our way of looking at the world or, failing that, by killing or incarcerating all the bad guys.

Peacemakers see things differently. All of us have done bad things, things we wouldn’t do if we didn’t feel threatened. In our minds, we create bad guys and good guys, enemies and allies. For peacemakers, the way to end the horrors is to bring people together around their differences: what we have in common is our differences.

Some of us are advocates at this moment in our lives. Some of us are peacemakers. Things are changing all the time. I have been an advocate most of my life. Most of my heroes have been advocates, Martin Luther King, Gandhi. At this moment, I’m feeling myself a peacemaker. I can hardly recognize myself. Some of my friends don’t recognize me either. They used to count on me to share their rage. Am I a traitor? Have I gone over to the dark side? I hope not, but some of the people who I used to think were “beyond the pale,” the Others, are the very people I want to bring to the table.

I’m changing. Maybe the table is changing too. I grew up fighting to end segregation. There was huge energy in boarding busses together before dawn to get to Washington, in marching side by side. We did it so many times I lost count. The energy of breaking barriers was huge. Few of us had ever been to a party with people with different colored skin. That was more than half a century ago, and it’s gotten easier to be at the table together. We can be together and agree: the bad guys are the racists. That’s a new challenge. If we want to make peace now, we have to find a way to sit at the table with those we call “racists.”