Journal for Peace and Justice Studies

Volume 22, Issue 2, 2012

Will you really protect us without a gun? Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping in the U.S.

The habits of direct violence in U.S. society continue to pose dangerous and dehumanizing trends. As scholars and activists cultivate alternatives to the use of violence, a key need involves providing direct experience for U.S. residents to explore and see the power of unarmed civilian peacekeeping. In this paper I ask the following questions: How can the international unarmed civilian peacekeeping models influence the U.S. in the form of domestic peace teams? What are the accomplishments and the challenges for local peace teams with an eye toward further development? First, I describe some broad trends in the international work of unarmed civilian peacekeeping. Second, I analyze the accomplishments and challenges for the Michigan Peace Team and Ceasefire in Chicago. Third, I integrate these insights to recommend key contributions from each program toward developing more domestic peace teams. I briefly provide a recent example and analysis of implementing these recommendations in the DC Peace Team.