September 11th Families For Peaceful Tomorrows

The Nobel Peace Prize-nominated families of 9-11 victims organizing for peace, against the war on Iraq.

The field of peace and conflict studies is rich in secular and faith traditions. At the same time, as a relatively new and interdisciplinary field, it is ripe with innovation. This volume, the first in the series Peace Studies: Edges and Innovations, edited by Michael Minch and Laura Finley of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA), is edited by top Canadian and US scholars in the field and captures both those traditions and innovations, focusing on enduring questions, organizing and activism, peace pedagogy, and practical applications. From the historical focus on disarmament, ending warfare and reducing militarism to the civil rights, women’s rights, and environmental movements, peace activists and pedagogues have long been important agents of social change. Authored by US and Canadian academics, educators, and activists, the chapters in this book demonstrate, how scholars and practitioners in the field are using the important knowledge, skills and values of their foremothers and forefathers to address new issues, integrate new technologies, and make new partners in their efforts to create a more just and humane world.

Americans responded to the deadly terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, with an outpouring of patriotism, though all were not united in their expression. A war-based patriotism inspired millions of Americans to wave the flag and support a brutal War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, while many other Americans demanded an empathic patriotism that would bear witness to the death and suffering surrounding the attack. Twenty years later, the war still simmers, and both forms of patriotism continue to shape historical understandings of 9/11's legacy and the political life of the nation. John Bodnar's compelling history shifts the focus on America's War on Terror from the battlefield to the arena of political and cultural conflict, revealing how fierce debates over the war are inseparable from debates about the meaning of patriotism itself. Bodnar probes how honor, brutality, trauma, and suffering have become highly contested in commemorations, congressional correspondence, films, soldier memoirs, and works of art. He concludes that Americans continue to be deeply divided over the War on Terror and how to define the terms of their allegiance--a fissure that has deepened as American politics has become dangerously polarized over the first two decades of this new century.

This forward-thinking volume examines the rule of law from a global perspective, in the context of a growing array of transnational challenges and threats As the United Nations (UN) notes, the rule of law constitutes the basis “on which fair and just societies are built.” The contributions to this volume provide insights to several emerging debates about what the rule of law means in the modern era of warfare and of massive and systematic human rights violations that call for robust and transparent accountability mechanisms and processes. The authors of this work examine several controversial topics, including: -The growing use of drones, and the morality of long distance use -The UN Security Council’s evolving counterterrorism policies and practices -Victims’ Rights and the effort to provide meaning and justice to victims and survivors of terrorism - The relationship between the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) -The effectiveness of the international criminal justice process overall, with an eye to procedural fairness and justice. This timely work will be of interest to researchers in criminal justice, particularly with a focus on counter-terrorism and international justice, as well as international law, human rights, and international studies.

This book critically examines the institutional curation of traumatic memory at the 9/11 Memorial Museum and its evocative power as a cultural storyteller. Memorial Museums are evocative spaces. Drawing on aesthetic practices deeply rooted in representing the ‘unrepresentability’ of cultural trauma, most notably the Holocaust, Memorial Museums are powerful, popular mediums for establishing cultural values, asking the visitor to contemplate "Who am I?" in relation to the difficult histories on display. Using primary data, this book poses important questions about the emotionally-charged site: what ‘moral lessons’ are visitors imparted with at the 9/11 Memorial Museum? Who is the cultural institution’s primary audience—the imagined community it reconstructs this traumatic history and safeguards its memories for? What does the National September 11 Memorial & Museum ultimately teach visitors about history, ourselves, and others? This work will be of interest to students and scholars in the areas of Human Geography, American Studies, Museum Studies and Public History, Cultural and Heritage Studies, and Trauma and Memory Studies.

American Voices of Conscience, Post-9/11 is an anthology of letters, op-eds, speeches and short essays drawn from a broad spectrum of Americans, which eloquently expresses their outrage, betrayal and frustration over the corrupt and misguided actions and policies of the Bush/Cheney administration since the tragedies of 9/11. Within its pages, you?ll find stirring monologues, passionate rants, laser-guided satire, and proposals for sane, nonviolent solutions to our problems. From soldiers to seniors, from Zen monks to Christian ministers, from librarians to libertarians, these are the true patriots - those who really care what is happening to our society and have had the courage to speak out against dishonesty and deception in our cherished institutions. With the publication of Outcry: American Voices of Conscience, Post-9/11, we hope to weave these myriad voices into a chorus of reason and compassion. For they are the voices of conscience, unintimidated by the dissonance of militarism, corporate greed, and the blind, uncritical acceptance of flag-waving propaganda.

Organized groups of victims' families and friends have emerged since September 11, 2001, to become a powerful voice in U.S. counterterrorist policy and legislation. These groups were remarkably successful in getting the 9/11 Commission established and in getting the commission's most important recommendations enacted. This report documents these groups and compares them to groups formed in response to other terrorist attacks.

Restorative justice refers to a social movement that seeks to repair interpersonal, communal, and social injustices without recourse to violence or retribution. Volume two analyzes the contemporary terrain of restorative justice and peacemaking in North America and profiles the exemplary work of nine practitioners who incarnate the scriptural vision in real life contexts of profound violence and injustice.