Each morning, I walk to a peace shrine near me to contemplate what seems to be an unending cycle of wars and to pray for peace in the universal language of the heart shared among those who yearn for peace in our world. The shrine consists of a sturdy rusted iron circle enclosing a thin vertical metal rod and two shorter ones at acute angles to form a distinctive peace sign, placed atop a wooden support. It stands about five feet from the driveway’s edge near a small forest. Plants, such as jewelweed, a species of buckwheat with a distinct stem of pink flowers, and lamb’s quarters, are nearby companions.
A year and a half ago, the peace sign held a set of small multicolored, triangular-shaped banners, which have since faded and fallen from the center of the peace sign, now in shreds of barely visible cloth.
Initially, I had imagined the small colored cloths as mementos of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), a pathway to interracial peace in our own country, which the Trump administration has now gutted as a profligate and wasteful program (dead, eliminated, and ineffectual). The most fateful impact of canceling DEI has been on Black students. Significant monies in scholarships to expand educational opportunities for Black and other underrepresented students have been withdrawn by the federal government, as well as the federal government’s investment in historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
In 2025-26, the freshman class of reporting colleges and universities underwent a significant loss of Black student enrollment compared to the two previous years. Initiatives that foster mentorship and academic guidance — critical to academic success and retention for minority students — no longer exist. And the jobs lost, with the gutting of DEI programs, are largely those of Black women.
The opportunity to build peace within our country, whose pernicious legacy of slavery is persistent racism, is one thing I pray for, beholding the peace sign.
The larger peace crisis that afflicts much, if not most of the world, which I meditate on, is the ongoing presence of conflict between governments and within countries on every continent; and its impact on the victims. My overriding sense that conflicts are increasing was confirmed in reading that brutal conflict and war are on the rise worldwide, with “the highest number of conflicts between states in 2025 since World War II.”
The Russia-Ukraine war, encouraged and abetted by the U.S. and NATO countries, is the deadliest conflict in the world. Israel’s genocide in Gaza aided by the United States and western European countries, has diminished but never ended; and it has targeted children especially, an atrocity crime according to the UN. Israel has ongoing military operations in southern Lebanon, Syria, Iran and the West Bank leading to mass detentions of Palestinians and the theft of Palestinians’ homes and land, as well as the death and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in these other Middle Eastern countries.
Sudan suffers internal conflict between government forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since April 2023, and it leads the world in terms of violence against civilians, including extensive sexual violence against women, with tens of thousands of Sudanese civilians massacred by the RSF. About 13 million civilians have been displaced from their homes with many, especially women with children, fleeing to nearby countries. Millions are surviving on one meal per day or less.
The United States, never free of war since World War II, has “used its global military network to invade or intervene in 96 countries” over the last 80 years. And it is currently involved in seven military conflicts across six different wars.
Leaving the peace shrine to finish my walk, I searched for lessons of peaceful cultures to give hope and counter our conflict-ridden world as inevitable. I remembered the Lithuanian-American archeologist and anthropologist Dr. Marija Gimbutas’ significant work, which inspired me a few years ago to launch a movement of peace signs in store windows in downtown Greenfield. Dr. Gimbutas’ research has provided us an expansive epoch of time, from 6500 BC to 3500 BC when peace prevailed among early European peoples, with a culture of egalitarianism and no male domination over women. People were buried in communal graves, indicating no obvious difference in status or wealth.
Today, there are societies, once warlike and now peaceful, such as the Nordic countries and the five tribal nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. Costa Rica has had no standing military since the mid-1940s, in a hemispheric region where conflict has been rife. We desperately need more countries, if not all, to do likewise.
John F Kennedy’s inspirational peace speech given in June 1963 as a commencement address at American University carried a realistic but peaceful message: “For peace is a process — a way of solving problems. There is no simple key, no grand solution. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor — it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement.”
Pat Hynes is an ardent feminist, social justice and environmental justice activist. She is a member of the US Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and director emerita of the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice.