The BeZine

Volume 10 Summer 2023 Issue 2

Collage of images—a dove with olive branch in upper left, empty bullet shells in lower right, gear wheels in lower center with peace arrow pointing toward the left and war arrow to the right, a red rose is just off center and larger than the other images, other flower images fade in the background under a spattering of colors

Waging Peace

signing up, standing with, sitting in

Introduction

Ain’t Going to Study War No More

“As many as 354,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or injured in the Ukraine war which is grinding towards a protracted conflict that may last well beyond 2023, according to a trove of purported U.S. intelligence documents posted online.”

— Reuters

Numbers are deaths per year. Wikipedia

“As data collection by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) shows, a substantial portion of the globe is still engulfed in some form of conflict.”

—Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

“FAIRFIELD, Conn. (Nov. 19, 2020) — A total of 93,236 children[i] have been killed or maimed in conflicts in the last ten years, Save the Children revealed today. That means 25 children, the equivalent of a U.S. classroom full of elementary school students, have been killed or injured[ii] on average every day.”

—Save the Children

[i] Data covers the ten-year period between 2010 and 2019 inclusive. The total number of children killed or maimed in that period (93,236) divided by 3,650 days is 25.54. When looking back over the past 15 years, the number of children killed or injured in conflict jumps to more than 100,000.

[ii] The average class size in public primary school in the United States is 26.2. More here.

From UNICEF

“At least 453 children have been killed and at least 877 have been injured since the start of the war in Ukraine, the country’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Saturday.”

—CNN, January 17, 2023

“For years, I’ve tried to get more people—and especially Americans, citizens of the most militaristic nation on Earth–to agree with me that war that must be abolished. One simple–some would say simplistic–argument I’ve tried is this: war is wrong because killing children is wrong, and children are inevitably killed in wars. If I believed in moral absolutes, not killing kids would be a leading candidate.”

—John Horgan on September 10, 2015, Scientific American Blog

I don’t think you need convincing. If you read The BeZine regularly, you probably understand why we return to this issue every year. Read in these pages about the need to Stop Gun Deaths! Read about our abhorrence of war and deep desires for peace. If you find something moving, please share it. Spread the word—for those who agree that peace must prevail on earth, and for those who need convincing.

Down By the Riverside feat. Grandpa Elliott | Playing For Change | Song Around The World

Thank you for reading The BeZine, and enjoy the art, too…

—Michael Dickel, Editor

We Continue with our ReCollection

As always, The BeZine presents in our issues work related to our social themes, this summer, Waging Peace: signing up, standing with, sitting in. We also have a special section, Stop Gun Deaths. Guns are now the leading cause of deaths in children from ages 1–19 in the USA. We hope that the diverse and deeply felt work in this issue will energize you and encourage your own creativity and activism in these areas and all areas of your lives.

In addition to our usual sections—BeATTITUDES, Poetry, Prose, Music—The BeZine continues with the second in a new series that began last issue, ReCollection. Volume 1 Number 1 of The BeZine came out on October 31, 2014. This issue, Volume 10 Number 2, continues our tenth year. In preparation for celebrating our tenth anniversary in 2024, we have been looking back through the archives to find work from the past and “re-collect” them into our current issues for this year. Enjoy browsing back in time in our ReCollection.

We invite you to nominate any favorite past work from The BeZine that you recollect fondly, for us to include in future ReCollection sections. Search for it on our site or browse our archives. Please include the title and, if possible, the link. Email your nomination to: Editor@TheBeZine.com.