Promoting Enduring Peace is a pacifist organization and United Nations non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Connecticut USA. "PEP" was founded in 1952 by Dr. Jerome Davis to resist the ideology of endless aggression that characterized the Cold War, and was incorporated as a tax-exempt educational organization in 1958 and reincorporated under current tax exemption regulations in 2008. Its principal programs have been peace education, citizen diplomacy, and the awarding of the Gandhi Peace Award to recipients such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Cesar Chavez, and Daniel Ellsberg. http://pepeace.org [1]
Though "PEP" is a secular organization, its roots are in the Christian Left and it continues to cooperate with members of the progressive religious community. In its early years PEP was led by Davis and Dr. Roland Bainton, both Yale Divinity School professors, and its executive directors were retired Christian ministers. Howard Frazier, the first president of the Consumer Federation of America, served as PEP's longest-serving Executive Director. He developed and conducted the programs and activities from 1978 until his death in 1997, with the assistance of his wife and co-director Alice Zeigler Frazier. [2]
PEP is a membership organization, with "activist" and "supporting" members. Because an endowment has accumulated from member donations over the decades sufficient to cover modest administrative costs, all contributions to PEP are allocated entirely to programming. [3]
Contents |
PEP's mission, reformulated in 2007, is to contribute to transforming the reigning social paradigm from one of competition to one of cooperation, from a culture of violence and war to a global commonwealth devoted to the well-being of all who share it. The updated mission statement anticipates a convergence of dangers previously considered as separate and discrete, in which each danger compounds the others, paralleling the convergence of systems that characterizes globalization. It states that a rapid and peaceful transition is required from an unsustainable civilization steeped in institutionalized violence, exploitation, and profligate consumption to a commonwealth based on universal harmony, mutual respect, and a love of the Earth and all beings who call it home. The mission statement also states that PEP intends to devote significant effort and resources to achieving a fusion of peace, environmental, and social movements, in the belief that these causes are interdependent and none can succeed unless all succeed. [4]
During the Vietnam War period, PEP mailed over 10 million articles encouraging peace to educators and organizers in numerous countries; now such resources are distributed via the Internet. In 1975 PEP presented "Uncloaking the CIA" at Yale University, the first national conference exposing the dangers posed by unregulated CIA activities in 1976, from which a book of the same name was developed and published in 1978 (Ed. Howard Frazier). A principal conference organizer was Dr. Martin Cherniack, then a student at the Yale School of Medicine, who later served as president of the organization for 18 years. Currently PEP provides articles and other peace resources online at http://pepeace.org. A conference is in planning for Fall 2009 at Quinnipiac University on the expanding influence of the military-industrial complex in governing the U.S. and maintaining nearly a thousand permanent military bases located on every continent.
By organizing groups of Americans to visit the USSR, Cuba, Costa Rica, China, and Mongolia during and after the Cold War, PEP has given ordinary citizens a chance to get to know "the Other," leaving them with positive, life-long memories, new friendships and hope for a peaceful world. As an example, in 2002 a PEP citizen diplomacy delegation journeyed to Vietnam to contribute to healing the deep scars left by the 1960-74 U.S. invasion. Its largest and most well-publicized event was the reciprocal tours of the Volga River in Russia and the Mississippi River in 1978 by citizen delegations from the Soviet Union, the United States, and other nations.
The Gandhi Peace Award is always accepted in person by the recipient during a ceremony held for that purpose in Connecticut or New York City. Nominations are accepted from PEP members throughout the U.S. Brief bios of every Award recipient: [5]
PEP co-sponsors and helps fund numerous events conducted by other peace, environmental, and social justice organizations, such as the conference on human rights held at Quinnipiac University in 2008. The stated strategy is to take the "long view" rather than only respond to each new crisis as it occurs, as when Dr. Jerome Davis anticipated the dangers Cold War in the late 1940s and founded PEP in response. In 2003 PEP coordinated with other Connecticut peace groups to provide trains conveying thousands of people to the demonstrations in New York City opposing the Bush Administration plan to invade Iraq. PEP is developing a long-term "think tank" activity intended to create cogent source documents encouraging the productive interaction and mutual support of the peace, environmental, and social action movements.
PEP's activities, carried on continuously since the 1950s, were interrupted by events occurring in 2005 through 2007; more at http://pepeace.org/tmpl/history.html. In 2007 the Peace and Social Justice Fund was established using a significant portion of PEP's endowment, and administered by the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven, to award grants to organizations proposing projects substantially similar to PEP's traditional activities of peace education, citizen diplomacy, and work toward a sustainable world peace. [6]