Nobel Peace Prize Winner Visits KSU

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams spoke at Thursday on her life as an activist and the future of global peace movements.

Williams received the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts in organizing an international ban on antipersonnel landmines, which concluded with the signing of an international treaty in Oslo in September of that year. For almost 15 years, Williams has served as the Campaign Ambassador for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, and in 2006, she co-founded the Nobel Women’s Initiative, a global women’s rights organization.

Williams said she "started as an activist" in April of 1970 "during the days of the civil rights movement, the reemergence of the women’s movement, of course, the Vietnam War business. It was the days of Woodstock, and sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but I of course, was not involved in any of that,” she said with a smirk.

Williams said that after graduating from the University of Vermont in the mid 1970s, she lingered in several dead-end jobs, including stints as an oral surgeon assistant and a secretary hired through a temp agency. She said her life was forever changed when she was handed a flyer in the subway system of Washington, D.C. that read “El Salvador: Another Vietnam?”

“Had it not had ‘Vietnam’ in the title, I would have thrown it away," Williams said. “But the juxtaposition of El Salvador and Vietnam made me curious, because of being a kid in the days of Kent State.”

Williams soon found herself volunteering for a small organization that sought to raise awareness about the plight of El Salvadorans. For the next 10 years, she spent a considerable amount of time in Central America, frequently taking United States delegates on tours of Nicaragua and Honduras.

Williams recalled taking delegates to Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras, which she referred to as a “cesspool.”

“The CIA was there, the U.S. military was there, directing the war against the Sandinista government in El Salvador,” said Williams. “It was quite an amazing place.”

For the last decade, Williams’ work has predominantly focused on South America and Africa, where she said “femicides” are regular occurrences. In 2007, she issued a report to the United Nations' Human Rights Council, calling attention to atrocities being committed in the Darfur region.

Williams said that “human rights” within the United States have slowly eroded since September 11, 2001. She talked about recently being invited to an upcoming summit of Nobel laureates in Chicago, a city where Williams believes laws “disallowing the freedom of expression” have been passed to preemptively halt massive civil demonstrations.

“I’ve kind of thought about going, and comparing the lack of freedom of expression in Central America with kind of what’s happened in the U.S. around the ‘Occupy’ movements,” she said. “People can’t peacefully protest the G8 [Summit], and if I’m speaking truth to power, I’m going to have to say I think it’s unfortunate that I’m having to worry about my civil rights in this country.”

Williams said that when she first began protesting the Vietnam War, and subsequently, a number of military conflicts in Central America throughout the 1980s, all she thought about was simply ending the wars. She said that in her nearly 40-year-long career as an activist, she ultimately discovered that peace requires a transformed way of thinking about human interactions.

“We’re talking about human security, not national security,” she said. Williams mentioned the nonviolent campaigns waged by Gandhi, Marin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela as examples of courageous behavior that dispels what she called a mythical “wimpiness” pertaining to modern peace activism.

“The next time somebody talks about peace being some kind of utopian dream, please offer them some of these people and ask them why that is weak-kneed?” she continued.

Williams said that understanding the root of violence required recognizing it as both a continuum and a choice.

“When a man chooses to beat his wife, it is a choice to use violence,“ she said. “When an economic system is structured so that certain parts of society have no hope for economic parity, that is the violence of the economic system. When countries invade other countries, because they think they have the right to, that is a choice.”

Williams wrapped up her lecture by telling the audience that there was nothing “glorious” about warfare.

“Individual human beings can do magnificent, absolutely magnificent acts of courage and heroism in war, but war isn’t heroic,“ she concluded. “Having been in some of them, I can tell you myself there’s nothing heroic about what I saw in El Salvador or Nicaragua, and we have to stop thinking it is. We have to stop accepting the mythology one has to go to war because that’s the only way we can defend ourselves.”

Williams said that “sustainable” peace can only be achieved once a society stops glorifying acts of warfare.

“I grew up thinking U.S. intervention in World War II saved the world,” she said. “World War II is still used as some sort of measure about American benevolence in terms of intervention. That was how many jillions of years ago, though?“

“Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen,” she continued. “We need to be conscious of what is done with our money and in our name.”

Do you agree with Williams' opinions on the future of global peace movements? Tell us in the comments.

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