Chapter
11: All According to Plan
January and February disappeared quickly, but we were making some progress. I must admit, I’d had a vague time-schedule
in my head when we started this venture, but things just seemed to take a lot
longer than I’d anticipated. Even so, the campaign was growing by tiny leaps and
bounds.
Maya was settled in Peru and she was having amazing success pulling organizations
and local governments in South America on board.
The world’s indigenous communities also seemed to be heeding the call,
and I knew that at last she was ready to face the challenge of her destiny.
We spoke on the phone every day.
Artie had successfully inspired a coalition of UN Ambassadors to lobby
for a UN Draft Resolution. They had 45
signatures so far, and he was confident that in another week or two they’d have
a hundred or more. There’d be no problem
getting a unanimous Resolution passed when the General Assembly met in September.
Back here at ground zero we had a great team assembled.
There’s never any problem finding people who care out there, but usually
they can only care “part-time” -- most of their time has to be spent “making a
living” to survive. The minute we put
the word out that we were hiring at competitive salaries, we were flooded with
applications from the best in almost every field who were eager to put their talents
to use for a positive change in the world.
The ‘Twelve Peace Centers’ idea quickly went out the window. We had sixty-two set up and staffed, with every
continent covered, and the number kept growing. They were busy establishing networks, designing
educational materials and planning advertising campaigns, on limited budgets,
of course.
Jesse was taking an active interest in all the goings-on, and with Artie
and Maya gone, well the two of us spent a lot of time directing the campaign. By the time Groundhog Day came along (and Punxsutawney
Pete had forecast an early spring), we’d already launched a major campaign in
conjunction with the Season For Nonviolence to begin our CountUP to One Day In
Peace.
We’d also worked
up and printed over a million copies of our CULTURE OF PEACE MANUAL. It was a compact but lively guide, describing
how to find peace within, and help peace to grow in one’s community, with several
chapters detailing how to set up Peace On Earth Fairs and Festivals. We had three different versions of the manual
-- one for kids, one for college students and one for adults, and each was printed
in twenty different languages. Jesse took a special interest in heading up the
team that worked on the manuals. “We’ve
got to be able to write it so that someone like me, who’s never given ‘a better
world’ a moment’s thought, will become a convert.” It turned out wonderfully! She’d spend long hours going over various parts
of it though email and on the phone with Artie and Maya. But especially with Artie.
For the 64-day long annual Season For Nonviolence, we helped to coordinate
over a thousand activities around the world, working with the international coordinators
and local church and activist groups. Predictably, however, we received very little
media coverage -- just a few smatterings about the CountUP.
Truth is, I didn’t really understand the “CountUP”
concept. I mean, I understood it, but it
didn’t make much sense. February 1 was
Day 334 and February 2, Day 333. We were counting down to January 1.
But Artie insisted that “it worked the last time,” and although I understood
that it was just to have people see the counting to One Day In Peace in a positive
light, we were counting “down not up!” To
keep the peace, however, I reluctantly agreed to call it a CountUP.
Unfortunately, the media hadn’t yet bought the concept.
I did my best to keep myself from saying “I told you so” each time he called
in from New York.
Artie and Maya had warned me how hard it was to get the media to pay attention
to anything positive that goes on in the world.
I figured it would be difficult, but I didn’t realize it would be this
difficult.
Most of the networks we discovered were focused on a specific issue, like
banning landmines, or curbing greenhouse gases, or human rights, the abolition
of nuclear weapons, and the elimination of child prostitution. There were so many issues! But the passion and desire to change the world
for the better was the same. Although each
network was hesitant to share their resources or even their mailing lists, since
we had money to work with, it was easy to find an angle to partner with them in
their efforts, and with that monetary incentive, they were happy to incorporate
our CountUP to humanity’s first day of peace ever into their campaigns.
Mel's
little brother Henry was really helping out too. He was the webmaster of the PeaceKids
network on the internet, with young members in 50 different countries who shared
their hopes and dreams for a better world on a regular basis.
Actually, it wouldn’t be for a few more weeks until we realized really
just how ‘exciting’ peace can be. But
that comes later in our story. At the time
it seemed exciting enough just watching things come together slowly but surely.
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