Full Peace Ahead: ‘Department of Peace’ Campaign Looks Optimistic — Interview With Matt Harris, The Peace Alliance’s Co-Director of Communication

WASHINGTON, D.C. Matt Harris is enthusiastically optimistic about the creation of an agency inside the federal government that would focus on peaceful, nonviolent, and practical solutions to domestic and international conflict.

This idea for a United States Department of Peace is as old as our democratic republic, but the importance of such an institution has grown significantly, Harris told The Lone Star Iconoclast in a recent interview.

Judging by the casualty totals from all the conflicts in the 20th Century more than 100 million lives lost to war Harris may have a point. And since the rate of non-combatant civilians deaths have risen, too, in the years after World War II his point has nonetheless gotten sharper.

The latest campaign to create a federal peace department was officially launched during the first Department of Peace Conference on April 8, 2003, while the 108th Congress was in session.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who threw his hat in the 2006 presidential race last week, has led the effort to establish the cabinet-level position by introducing three bills in the House. In September 2005, Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minnesota) introduced the department-creating legislation in the Senate.

The U.S. Department of Peace campaign was first organized under the Global Renaissance Alliance (now called “The Peace Alliance Foundation”), a 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded by the current chairperson of the board of directors, Marianne Williamson.

The Peace Alliance, a 501(c)4 non-profit organization and sister to the Foundation, was founded in May of 2004 and further organized the U.S. Department of Peace Campaign.

Harris, the Peace Alliance’s optimistic co-director of communication, said that he entered the peace department’s campaign during Kucinich’s first run for president in 2004.

Harris also spoke to The Iconoclast’s Nathan Diebenow about the concept of the Department of Peace campaign, the growth its movement has seen, and likelihood of the agency’s establishment in the near future.

Here is the interview:

ICONOCLAST: What’s your background in, and how did you become involved in the Department of Peace campaign?

MATT HARRIS: I’ve been a writer and something of a social activist for most of my life, but I really went through a change in 2002 or 2003 when we were on the brink of invading Afghanistan, and all of a sudden, I felt like I was adrift in a sea that I didn’t recognize anymore.

I was looking around for ways to get involved and do something, and I came across this amazing man, Dennis Kucinich. I loved what I heard him say when I went to see him speak in Seattle one time. I shook his hand and said I wanted to work on his campaign. I started with the Washington state presidential campaign and was recruited to the national campaign.