MichiganPeaceNetwork

Announcements:

Pax Christi National Conference July 16-19 Chicago

Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution:
A National Catholic Conference on Peacemaking

July 16-19 | Chicago | Wyndham O'Hare Hotel

With keynote speakers Ernesto Cortés, Jr; Kathy Kelly; Rev. Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann; Bishop Leroy Matthiesen; and Claudette Werleigh



Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing humankind is sleeping through a great revolution." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

To register for this conference online, go to paxchristiusa.org.

Posted on Jun 16, 2009 by Pax Christi Michigan

Vote for a Dept. of Peace

Just last week, a "Department of Peace" idea was submitted to President Obama's website for public engagement in policymaking. Please consider giving 60 seconds of your time and vote for a U.S. Department of Peace by clicking the link below.

Depending on the number of votes and number of comments written, President Obama's staff will decide which ideas move into phase 2, the Discussion phase. This phase will deepen the conversation about compelling topics raised during the brainstorming. Lastly there will be a Drafting Phase, where participants will be asked to use a wiki to draft language for recommendations collaboratively.

With your help back in January, the Department of Peace idea was voted as one of the top 10 Ideas for Change in America and was given to President Obama's transition team four days before the Inauguration. Keeping this idea on his radar brings us closer to seeing it become very real. Would you be willing to help?

Go to http://www.opengov.ideascale.com/ and type "peace" in the search engine at the top right. Department of Peace is the second one down on the pop up. Caution! on't leave the site until you see that your vote is accepted. Enough people can make this happen so send this MPN link to all your friends!

Posted on Jun 04, 2009 by Straits Area Concerned Citizens for Peace & Justice

Pax Christi Young Adult Picnic for Peace

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Posted on May 15, 2009 by Pax Christi Michigan

SweatFree Communities Letters to the Editor's

Please join Michigan Pax Christi's endorsement for writting letters to your local editor's concerning the SweatFree Michigan campaign as we call on Governor Granholm and our local officials to join the SweatFree Purchasing Consortium and pass strong sweatshop-free purchasing policies to end tax dollar support for sweatshops.

Tips for getting your letter to the editor published:
1. 150 words max
2. Include your full contact info, (name, phone, email)
3. Make a follow up call to ensure your letter was received and ask when it will be published.

In your own words include the following suggested goals:
Governor Granholm should join the SweatFree Purchasing Consortium this month, OR
Governor Granholm should sign an Executive Order for an ethical purchasing policy, including membership for Michigan in the SweatFree Purchasing Consortium.

Examples of topics:

Our tax dollars are spent to buy products made in sweatshops.
Every year, our state spends millions of our tax dollars to buy uniforms and other goods for our proud
public employees, like police officers and firefighters.

Unfortunately, most of this gear is made in sweatshops by workers forced to work long hours for poverty
wages in inhumane conditions.

Sweatshops exist in this county, too:
Earlier this year, the state of New York raided a Manhatten sweatshop that was making NYPD uniforms.
Workers were forced to work 80 hour weeks with no day off, and were told to lie to factory auditors.

A sweatshop-free policy is a moral imperitive.
We cannot stand by and see our tax dollars funding the race to the bottom.

Michigan churches, faith leaders, ellected officials, businesses and labor unions support the SweatFree Michigan Initiative.
Learn more at www.sweatfree.org/mi

Posted on Jun 08, 2009 by Pax Christi Michigan

Nuclear-Free Future Month August 2009

Nuclear disarmament in all its aspects is both possible and essential now. The Nuclear Issues Working Group invites all members of MPN to plan nuclear free actions in the month of August this year. Please contact [nuclear issues working group] with your ideas and events. (At the bottom of Member orgs above.) See resources/issues/nuclear issues for ideas and let us know what you're planning.

Posted on Apr 06, 2009 by [Nuclear Issues Working Group]

Campaign for U.S. Ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child

Parenting for Peace, a Grand Rapids-based working group of the Institute for Global Education, has joined over 200 organizations nationwide supporting the Campaign for U.S. Ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The headquarters of this campaign may be contacted at crc@childrightscampaign.org. Their website is http://childrightscampaign.com/.

We invite other organizations in Michigan to contact them and add your support. Every member of the United Nations with a viable government EXCEPT THE USA has ratified this treaty.

We at Parenting for Peace have gotten local people together to communicate our support of this treaty to our Senators and to Barack Obama, who has indicated he will very likely support it. We have spent time educating ourselves on the Convention and the issues involved in getting it ratified. We have enlisted the aid of that part of our City government most focused on youth and their issues in getting the word out and discussing the issue.

We have drafted a resolution seeking our City Commission’s support (a number of cities around the country, including Detroit, as well as five states have already passed such resolutions). We have had a panel discussion on the issues which was aired on our local public access television network. We are seeking support from our local school system and others.

We urge other Michigan organizations to take any or all of these steps and others. More ideas and strategies may be found at the national campaign website listed above. Please share your ideas, events, and actions with us and any others who express interest. We would also like to collaborate with those who are working for USA ratification of other human rights treaties with substantially overlapping provisions/intentions, particularly any of these:


Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women

Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights


Contact Richa at 616.245.8633. Websitehttp://www.iserv.net/~ige/pfp

Posted on Jan 13, 2009 by Institute for Global Education

MPN PART OF A NATIONAL NETWORK-OF-NETWORKS

Did you know? MPN has 119 member organizAtions (and growing) as well as working groups on Palestine-Israel Issues, Nuclear Issues, War Moratorium, Lobbying, and MPN Structure. iF YOUR ORGANIZTION WOULD LIKE TO BECOME A MEMBER, SEE CONTACT US/NEW ORG REQUEST on the black bar above.

We’re part of a national grassroots network, PJEP – the Peace Justice and Environment Project, which connects us to over 30 websites serving 40 states, for a total of1088 grassroots groups. PJEP was granted 501C-3 status by the IRS in January, so please consider making a donation to help it continue to work for you.

Posted on Feb 28, 2009 by Michigan Peace Network

MPN WORKIING GROUPS

At the MPN Planning Conference on Jan. 10, participants from all over Michigan decided to form six WORKING GROUPS to enable us to work together more fully on specific issues.

Working Groups will plan and coordinate actions, share resources, and network for change. Listserves and conference calls will be the primary means of communication. Please join one or more of these Working Groups today! Check out the descriptions and then contact the coordinators. To do so, go to Member Orgs and scroll to the bottom of the list to see the [Working Groups]. Questions? Contact the MPN facilitator at riegle@svsu.edu.

[MPN Structure and Operations]: Tom Rico.
[Michigan Palestine-Israel Network]: Sarah Redmond and Marian Kromkowski.
[War Moratorium Working Group]: Hans Barbe
[Nuclear Issues Working Group]: Anabel Dwyer
[Peace Bus to UFPJ Action]: Sigrid Dale and Al Fishman
[MPN Lobbying]: Al Fishman


You don’t have to be a member of a Michigan peace and justice organization to join a Working Group, although we encourage you to connect with your local groups, too.

Note: [brackets] around the name indicate their status as Working Groups. The [MichiganPalestine-Israel Network] was already in operation; the rest are new.

Posted on Jan 27, 2009 by Michigan Peace Network

MPN Issues and Strcuture Survey Results

Jim DesRocher of the Straits Area Concerned Citizens for Peace suggested that we survey the issues most important to Michigan activists for 2009. Then Tom Rico of the Peace Ed Center in Lansing suggested adding questions on what services MPN could offer to member organizations. The conference planning group helped to design a survey that included both ideas, and twenty-five people responded. Here are the results, which provided input for our conference discussions on January 10.

http://michiganpeacenetwork.org/uploads/docs/michiganpeacenetworksurveyresults.pdf

PS: The Zoomerang program is free for thirty days and I found it very easy to use. Contact me if you'd like help in surveying your own group.

Rosalie

Posted on Jan 13, 2009 by Michigan Peace Network

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