CEASE at NAEYC 2009 - Peace Award Speech

Audrey Schirmer’s Acceptance Speech

for the CEASE 2009 Peace Award

November 19, 2009

     It is a great honour and a joy for us to be here to celebrate with you, and to pay tribute to all of you and the extraordinary work of CEASE.

     Thirty years ago it was a small handful of dedicated teachers, now it criss-crosses the nation. And your goals have not changed, only expanded. And that is wonderful to see.

     One of CEASE’s first priorities was to rid the world of nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war. Let us hope that our new president, Obama, will be able to carry through with his goal of doing just that. Obama's April speech in Prague, committed the United States "to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."  He said the United States "has a moral responsibility to act" because it is "the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon."  It will take a lot of determination on his part and support from every one of us to make this happen but, on this issue, he seems to be very clear.

       An early editorial of the CEASE Newsletter, written by Peggy in 1995,   however, said: "reliance on military dominance permeates our whole society endangering international relations, glorifying violence in the media and wasting the resources needed here and abroad to build a safe and healthy world for children."  This has not changed, unfortunately. The US reliance on military dominance is killing our own as well as our ‘adversaries’. In last weekend’s CBC radio interview with Canada’s General Romeo Dallaire, he stated a chilling statistic from a US military official: 58,000 US service personnel were killed during the Vietnam War and, in 1997, it was recorded that 102,000 Vietnam veterans had committed suicide during those 20 years after the war – making it twice as many veterans who killed themselves as were killed in combat.

     In our present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan what will those numbers be? Our children are losing their fathers killed by the ‘so-called’ enemy. But how many of these service men have already been killed, or will be killed over the next 20 years by their own hands! What are these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan doing to the health and well-being of our children and their families?  Peggy, these young women’s grandmother and my mom, would be alarmed and deeply disturbed, as we are now. So much healing and caring is needed to rise out of these ashes.

     Your CEASE work gives hope to children and youth and to those who live and work with them… and it helps them to see a better world is possible. 

     You are the living example!  Bravo!!!