World Beyond War: A New Podcast

From Milan to Caracas to Tehran to Brooklyn and everywhere else, peace activists around the world are experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic in vastly different ways. We speak with Jeannie Toschi Marazzani Visconti, who was organizing a global peace gathering in northern Italy at the time coronavirus shut her city down, and with Gabriel Aguirre, who describes how Venezuelans are staying unified while struggling with immoral sanctions. Thanks to Doug Tyler for translation. (Music removed.)

Piril Torgut is a young Cypriot artist who paints and sculpts visceral images of a marine world. Visual Voices is a global organization that supports artists who can help heal the troubled real world. In this episode of the World BEYOND War podcast, Piril Torgut and Alden Jacobs and Marina Neophytou of Visual Voices join Marc Eliot Stein and Greta Zarro for an unrestrained conversation about art, violence, the Greek/Turkish conflict in Cyprus, and our methods of finding hope through art. Music: "What The Water Gave Me" by Florence + the Machine.

The upcoming #NoWar2020 antiwar conference in Ottawa, Canada will be a convergence of indigenous rights movements, urgency for climate change awareness, protest against military profiteering at the CANSEC weapons bazaar, and, as always, the core principle behind everything we do at World Beyond War: the goal to end all war, everywhere. In this podcast, we hear from four people who will be at #NoWar2020 in Ottawa: organizer Katie Perfitt, longtime resister Colin Stuart, and podcast hosts Marc Eliot Stein and Alex McAdams. (Music removed.)

Shahrzad Khayatian and Foad Izadi are part of the World BEYOND War community in Tehran. Shahrzad has written articles on the effects of sanctions on human lives in Iran, and Foad was a featured speaker at our #NoWar2019 conference in Limerick, Ireland. Following the sudden escalation between USA and Iran in January 2020, Shahrzad and Foad spoke with podcast hosts Marc Eliot Stein and Greta Zarro in the USA about the situation we are all in together. Musical excerpt: "Price of Freedom" by Salome MC.

Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK and economist Ivan Velaszquz of Universidad Mayor San Andres and Konrad Adenauer Foundation in La Paz join Marc Eliot Stein and David Swanson to talk about the current crisis in Bolivia, with special attention to the indigenous rights movement, the question of electoral validity and the problem of external influence on Bolivian politics. (Music removed.)

Ireland has been a global beacon for peace since the Good Friday agreements of 1998, yet antiwar activists in Ireland are struggling to be heard about PESCO and the illegal use of Shannon Airport by USA military forces. We talk to Barry Sweeney, who brought World BEYOND War's #NoWar2019 conference to Limerick, Ireland, and hear inspiring clips from this conference including Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire and Afri/Action's John Maguire. (Music removed.)

What is peace education? Tony Jenkins, Patrick Hiller, and Kozue Akibayashi use teaching and academic research to illuminate their activities against war. These three educators also contributed to "A Global Security System", the book that describes World BEYOND War's platform. These three educators join Marc Eliot Stein and Greta Zarro to talk about conflict resolution, peace science, feminism and the ways in which personal relationships can reflect and project violence. (Music removed.)

Antiwar activists and environmental activists need to work together. Why doesn't this happen more often? In this episode of the World BEYOND War podcast, Ashik Siddique of the National Priorities Project and Alex Beauchamp of Food & Water Watch join Greta Zarro and Marc Eliot Stein to talk about the research and advocacy work they do every day, and how we can build bridges between two movements dedicated to the same urgent cause: saving our planet and all the lives that depend on it.

Two notable literary novelists, Roxana Robinson ("Sparta", "Dawson's Fall") and Dawn Tripp ("Georgia", "Game of Secrets") join regular hosts Marc Eliot Stein and Greta Zarro for a unique discussion of the ways both fiction writers and antiwar activists try to use words to connect with strangers on urgent and heartfelt topics. We discuss USA in 2019, modern tribalism, the Quaker community, the legacy of slavery, gender and intersectionality and much more.

How is the antiwar movement staying focused and unified as shocking provocations and unconscionable moral threats demand our attention, from USA to Iran to Venezuela to Gaza? In this special episode of the World BEYOND War podcast, WBW's board president Leah Bolger and executive director David Swanson join Greta Zarro and Marc Eliot Stein for an honest and realistic look at the challenges, concerns and hopes that are on the minds of all antiwar activists in these urgent times.

We're talking about how art can amplify activism, elevate messages, grow movements and influence change. For episode 4 of the World BEYOND War podcast, Kim Fraczek of Sane Energy Project and Hanoi/DC-based activist Vy Vu join Greta Zarro and Marc Eliot Stein and talk about their experiences with creative activism, intersectionality, identity and where the antiwar movement is today.

In April 2019, an informal coalition of antiwar organizations including CodePink, Popular Resistance and ANSWER began protecting the Venezuelan embassy in Washington DC from an attempted takeover by the US federal government. We spoke to Margaret Flowers of Popular Resistance and Pat Elder of World BEYOND War, who are both inside the Venezuelan embassy and facing imminent arrest for resisting an ongoing regime change operation that endangers human lives with severe sanctions and threats of war.

World BEYOND War's #NoToNATO rally and peace festival will "unwelcome" NATO, the world's most powerful military alliance, to Washington DC in April 2019. What is #NoToNATO all about? We've gathered four determined peace activists to share their own thoughts and perspectives on this often controversial and difficult topic: Shabbir Lakha from London, Liz Remmerswaal Hughes from New Zealand, Marc Eliot Stein and Greta Zarro from USA. More info about the Washington DC event at https://notonato.org.

On the fifth anniversary of the founding of World Beyond War, Marc Eliot Stein interviewed three of the founders, David Hartsough, David Swanson and Leah Bolger, to discuss five years of World Beyond War.