3000 Miles for Peace: The Revolutionary Act of Walking
On Earth Peace is currently in the middle of our 3000 Miles for Peace Fundraiser. It’s walk-a-thon style: participants raise money by getting sponsors for each mile that they walk or ride. We have had a lot of wonderful fundraisers so far: hundreds of people have come together in 40 different events, traveling 5000 miles and raising over $130,000.
This is a victory, no mistake. Still, I’ve found myself getting discouraged at times these last few months. The obstacles to peace are so complex: war, slavery, drought, domestic abuse, corporate greed: the list feels endless. I’ve wondered: Is 3000 Miles for Peace really making a difference in the larger struggle for a peaceful world?
The answer, I’ve concluded, is yes. Aside from the money raised, and the programs that have been funded, the act of walking for peace is a very significant one. Historically, strategic walking has been of paramount importance for furthering peace. Today, I believe that can still be true: walking is a revolutionary act.
Imagine Martin Luther King Jr. striding toward the capital at the head of a procession of thousands. The March on Washington was organized by several civil rights groups to assert their continued determination to fight for racial equality. The 1963 March was a decisive moment in the civil rights campaign, and helped to procure the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Walking demonstrated strength of numbers and an unwillingness to be ignored.
Seven years before the March on Washington, residents of Montgomery, Alabama ended segregation on buses nationwide by walking and carpooling. Fed up with sub-human treatment on Montgomery public transit, they boycotted the system for over a year, forcing city officials to recognize them as a political and economic force. And, as King later wrote, forcing them to see themselves as of greater worth.
The marches in America in the 60’s borrowed from another famous civil rights activist: Gandhi rallied his countrymen to the cause of Indian independence during his 240 mile Salt March. He saw the salt tax as a direct assault on the poor of India, where the high heat climate makes this resource almost as necessary as water.
When Gandhi informed the Viceroy and the press of his intention to walk to the sea to illegally obtain salt, the Statesman newspaper wrote, “It is difficult not to laugh, and we imagine that will be the mood of most thinking Indians.”* 60,000 arrests later, the only people who felt like laughing were the protestors. Gandhi’s march gave people the strength and the means to rise from under the heavy oppression they were experiencing. Moreover, its very smallness allowed it to pass unhindered where more grandiose acts of civil disobedience would have met with violence.
Clearly walking has been very significant to furthering peace in the past. How is 3000 Miles for Peace making a difference today through walking?
Walking invites participation. One of our fundraisers, Bob Gross, walked for nearly two months during his fundraiser for 3000 Miles for Peace. During that time, several people asked him why he was walking. This gave him a chance to share his passion for peace, and his listeners the opportunity to connect with causes that are underrepresented in the mainstream media. Connecting with others is essential to confronting the large issues inhibiting peace in the world today. Even voices like Gandhi’s and King’s are only important to the degree that they can inspire others to stand up and begin advocating for their own rights.
Walking is socially just. Driving cars is a luxury not afforded to the poor, taken at the expense of the earth and, ultimately, ourselves. By walking, fundraisers stand in solidarity with mothers in Rwanda who walk miles each day for safe drinking water, with refugees in Syria who are fleeing their homes on foot as a result of the civil war, and with residents of New Orleans, Cambodia, and Thailand where climate change has contributed to massive flooding in recent years.
Finally, walking evangelizes a different set of values. Our world is in a hurry, presumably because there are so many important things to accomplish. Walking is, aside from crawling, about the slowest means of travel imaginable. It is an experience not of logging miles but of taking a good look at the world inside and outside one’s own person. Capitalism values quantity produced, distance traveled, money raised. Walking values physical and emotional health, taking time to think, spending time in nature and around other people. These are the values of a peacemaker, and we testify to them when we walk.
3000 Miles for Peace is indeed helping to create a more peaceful world, by utilizing the time-tested tool of walking for peace. It makes room for others to join the causes of peace. It stands in solidarity with the poor and oppressed. And it testifies to a different set of values than the capitalistic world.
To learn more about the 3000 Miles for Peace campaign and to walk with us this summer, visit 3000MilesForPeace.org, or email Bob at bgross@OnEarthPeace.org.
*Gandhi famously said: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”