poster from the 01989 Celebration. more peace & justice posters

Cause of Peace lures crowd to auditorium

KC event linked to worldwide rallies

An early rising crowd at Municipal Auditorium cheered repeated calls for peace - with each other and with the environment - at the fourth annual World Peace Celebration on Sunday morning.

In light of recent worldwide struggles for peace, and some violent conflict, organizers expressed confidence that those attending would respond to the messages they had heard. “People being here, making this commitment, is what it's all about,” said James Everett, a member of the board of directors of The Future Is Now, a non-profit world peace organizaton in Kansas City. ”This group believes strongly that peace is a pro-active movement.” Several world peace and environmental groups in the United States and 12 other countries gathered for the worldwide celebraton held at noon Greenwich Mean Time, 6 am in Kansas City.

City Council member Joanne Collins welcomed the crowd and introduced the keynote speaker, John McDonald, president of the Iowa Peace Institute. McDonald worked for the foreign service for 40 years, spending almost equal amounts of time abroad and in the nation's capital.

McDonald told the group that he was there to ”speak about peace and what chance peace has in the 21st century.”

He said the Iowa Peace Institute strives to promote peace through conflict management, international trade, international development and interglobal education.

And in the last two years, he said nations have made great strides toward peace, with fighting halted in several regional conflicts, a nuclear missile treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union, and 1989's dramatic changes in Eastern Europe.

”Democracy is sweeping throughout the outer bastions of the Soviet empire,” McDonald said.

In the next decade, he added the United States should supply world leadership toward attaining a peaceful and literate world. “We should make it a real goal to reduce the defense budget by 50 percent by the year 2000, from $300 billion to 150 billion.” McDonal told the crowd, which broke into a hearty round of applause.

McDonald called for further treaties reducing the nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union. But he said the United States also should pursue peace by taking the lead on world environmental issues, population control and illiteracy.

“Everything I have listed can be done if the people of this nation speak out,” McDonald told an enthusiastic crowd. “Over the course of the next 10 years, we, the American people, can make the difference. The future is now. Let us begin.”

based on info from the KCStar

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