by Judy Kimmel,  Guest Blogger

As I fly home from Washington I want to provide those who were unable to attend a brief snap shot of our Peace Alliance Conference in Washington, DC over the past five days.  

by Pam Steager, Guest Blogger

Below are Pam's notes from the sessions on Sunday. They include notes on presentations by Danielle Gramm, Denise Brown, Lisa Schirch, Tricia Jones, and Frances Henry.  

by Pam Steager, Guest Blogger

Below are Pam's notes from the Saturday sessions of the National Conference for a US Department of Peace.  They include notes from Marianne Williamson's and Deepak Chopra's presentations.  

by Pam Steager, Guest Blogger

[Editor's Note: Below is the next installment of Pam's notes from Friday's Student Peace Alliance and State Coordinators' sessions at the Peace Alliance's National Conference.]

by Pam Steager, Guest Blogger

[Editorial note: Below are Pam's notes from the conference which she has kindly made available to all DOPers.] 

by Sarah Goresch, Guest Blogger

My journey on Capitol Hill started with an unnecessarily circuitous route around downtown Washington D.C. via metro.  Being from a smaller town where I strictly depend on my personal car, I got confused and transferred to three different trains just to find out that the Capitol building was right across the street from the train I initially boarded.        

by Sarah Goresch, Guest Blogger 

When my mom first told me about the peace conference that was being held in Washington DC, I thought it was just going to be a bunch of older hippies marching outside the white house with picket signs promoting peace and doing a “Bush Bash.”

by Marianne Perez

A testament to the Department of Peace Campaign's success is the increased media attention it is receiving.  Thanks to the tireless efforts of our national media coordinators, Patty Kuderer and Matt Harris, over a dozen members of the press have turned up at the conference.  They are radio, print and television journalists, from across the United States as well as representatives from Japan and Germany.  Each of them were invited to our press conference which featured the following speakers: 

by Michael White, Guest Blogger

Saturday was an amazing day at the Department of Peace Conference. We listened to a presentation by Deepak Chopra about how we represent the next phase of human evolution, and that the next phase was not one of just physical evolution, but the evolution of consciousness. He drew upon discoveries in quantum physics to describe the new awareness we are moving into, and how we are discovering that are reality is made of waves of possibility. He talked about the underlying oneness and the omnipresence of being that we are all a part of, and how our senses have not been fast enough to perceive the underlying nature of the physical world as vibration, onenness and simultaneity.

by Will Riley, Guest Blogger

I am Will Riley, Chicago 8^th grader, political junky, and dreamer. Dreamer of a world in which peace is inevitable, in which it doesn’t matter if the President pronounces nuclear wrong, because it’s not in our vocabulary anyway, and, most of all, dreamer of a Department of Peace.

By Jason White, Guest Blogger
Saturday, February 3, 2007

Marianne Williamson , Dot Maver, Aaron Voldman, Lynn McMullen and a host of community and campus activists took the stage today, inspiring us with their synthesis of spirituality, political activism, youth and adult energy, outreach, and community building.  Frequent eruptions of applause and cheers washed over an exuberant crowd of 700 people from 45 states.  Standing ovations honored the courage, heroism, and enormous success and progress of Department of Peace campaign.  This is a celebration and a triumph.  But this is also a refocusing on and recommitment to the work ahead.

by Sarah Goresch, Guest Blogger

My best friend's name is Tyler. His dad worked all over the world as an architect, and his mother for a small pottery shop part time; therefore, he was the family's main source of income. In 2001, he was involved in a fatal car accident on his way home from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and was pronounced dead-on-the-scene.