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The Sebastopol Living Peace Wall

By Michael Gillotti

I created the Sebastopol Living Peace Wall in downtown Sebastopol to promote the cause of peace and justice by honoring the peacemakers among us. Every year we infuse the peace wall with life by adding four peoples’ names to the granite panels and by putting on an Induction Ceremony and Celebration.

This year’s Ceremony / Celebration will be held in the Sebastopol town square, on Saturday, September 7, 11:00 AM to Noon.

Please join us in honoring this year’s peacemakers:

Jim Corbett Among other things, he has founded the Love Choir, helped name Sebastopol “Peacetown USA”, puts on the Peacetown summer concerts, built the Peace Garden behind the community center and more.

Lynn Woolsey served for thirty years in the House of Representatives. While there she gave 435 speeches on ending the Iraq War and other peace and justice issues.

Tula Jaffe was a passionate advocate for social justice and humanitarian causes for more than fifty years. She directed the Sonoma County Chapter of WAND (Women’s Action For Nuclear Disarmament) and later coordinated the Sonoma County Task Force on The Homeless.

Dr. Earl Herr has worked his entire life to create a more peaceful world, first by refusing to fight in Vietnam as a Conscientious Objector, a war he regularly protested against. As a physician he later traveled to central America to provide medical care to those caught up in the Contra War.

What motivated me to build the Living Peace Wall was the recognition that peace activists are almost always marginalized and/or not taken seriously. Their voices are seldom heard during the lead up to war. Instead we hear from ex generals, hawks and professional pundits, often without attribution to their connections to the military industrial complex, which benefits from war making. Non violent alternatives to war are rarely discussed in any serious manner.

Conflicts between individuals or nations may be inevitable, but violent resolutions are not. We must find nonviolent, peaceful resolutions to conflicts, whether they are personal, national or international.

Of course all this starts by finding ways to become more peaceful ourselves in our daily lives. The inscription on the granite bench behind the peace wall reads: “PEACE BEGINS WITH ME.”

We won’t be able to create a more peaceful world if we are not more peaceful individuals. I believe this begins with listening, listening and connecting with the peaceful spirit inside and really listening to others, especially to those with whom we disagree, in order to find the “common ground” between us.

The inscription on the central granite panel of the Living Peace Wall reads as follows: “We honor the peacemakers, whose names are inscribed, who have during their lives worked for peace and against war, for justice and against injustice, for nonviolent resolutions and against violence and for the common good and against selfishness and greed.

By honoring these outstanding individuals we also honor all who share in the collective desire to rise above differences of race, religion, nationalities and ideologies to that place where we are all brothers and sisters, where we share a common humanity and a common desire to live in peace with all the people of the world.”

sebastopollivingpeacewall.com

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