Utahns seeking a Cabinet-level peace agency

Ashley Anderson not only wants to give peace a chance, he wants to give it a place in the president's Cabinet.

The Department of Peace, it would be called. But not peace as in anti-war, say Anderson and other Utah members of the national Peace Alliance, who stress that war is sometimes a valid solution for international conflict.

"We're not naive," he says, but adds that war and violence are not the only solutions, at home or abroad.

The Cabinet-level department would focus much of its energy on ending violence in America's communities, schools and families, said Julianne Fitzgerald, Utah coordinator of the Peace Alliance. "One of its main functions will be to provide funding for programs that are already working," including those that focus on alternative dispute resolution and prisoner rehabilitation. The department would also oversee a peace academy, similar to the Defense Department's military academies but with the goal of "peacebuilding."

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, has introduced a bill to establish a Department of Peace, after a similar bill failed in 2005. But the new bill isn't exactly big news — it failed to get any press coverage when Kucinich introduced it earlier this month, and a Peace Department conference that same week drew Deepak Chopra and a thousand other supporters to Washington, D.C., but, again, no press interest.

Still, Peace Department advocates are hopeful the bill will get a congressional hearing this time around and will eventually pass. Utah members of the Peace Alliance lobbied their representatives and senators when they were in Washington in early February.

"My parting words to each of our (congressional) representatives was ... we're here to stay. It's not a matter of if, it's truly a matter of when. We'll run for Congress if we have to to get it to pass," Fitzgerald says. "We've got to change the way we run our lives on this planet."

Fitzgerald was hopeful that the group had convinced an aide to Orrin Hatch that the proposal was a good idea and that the aide would in turn convince Hatch. But Utah's senior senator has since issued this statement: "The representatives from the Peace Alliance put forth some good-faith proposals for dispute resolution that could figure in future policy debate, both foreign and domestic. I appreciate their time and their sincerity, yet I don't predict creation of a Department of Peace at this time."