What AIPER Does and How We Do It
AIPER works to fulfill its mission by means of three interrelated activities: education, research, and advocacy. Our educational programs include the AIPER Film Series, the AIPER Forum Series of lecture-discussions and seminars, and our publications, the Institute Report and this website.
Our research efforts are carried out by AIPER members who prepare the reports for our publications and for public presentation at meetings. AIPER’s advocacy projects usually arise from the recommendations of working groups in which AIPER members join with representatives of like-minded organizations to plan a cooperative response to a particular area of concern. Specific examples of AIPER’s education, research and advocacy activities will be given shortly.
How AIPER does its work is fully as important as what we do. AIPER is a primarily a volunteer organization. All AIPER members are invited to participate in AIPER projects. Decisions concerning policies and programs are made by AIPER’s board through a process of shared leadership. All board officers are elected for one-year terms, with a maximum of two consecutive terms.
Because our mission requires sustained efforts over long periods of time, it is important that we build agreement as we go, so that decisions once made are stable. In order to facilitate broad agreement, board decisions are made by consensus. In those rare instances where consensus does not emerge, proposed actions require a two-thirds vote for approval. In this way, the decisions reached have broad support, and all members are assured that their views are heard respectfully.
Coalition-building is essential to AIPER’s mission. Those political, military, and other organizations which foster violence as a means to resolve conflict are often heavily funded, with large staffs and vast organizational resources. Smaller, community-based organizations working for peace and social justice cannot, individually and in isolation, expect to be effective. Coalition-building, then, is essential to the achievement of our goals. AIPER seeks whenever possible to join with other organizations in both educational programs and advocacy, and to work with them through shared leadership and consensus. AIPER often joins with other organizations in selecting films and speakers, and in mailing notices of events of shared interest.
Film Series. Films are selected to cover a wider range of topics, ranging from from historical backgrounds of current problems to highly specific strategies for social change. The films are typically about 30 minutes in length, occasionally as long as an hour, and are always followed by discussion—often including strategies for advocacy. They are usually shown on Sunday evenings at 5 p.m. (film starts at 5:30 p.m.) AIPER Film Series:
• Confessions of a Weaponeer. Carl Sagan’s interview with George Kistiakowsky, inventor of the trigger for the atom bomb.
• Cyber Secrets. A film about Internet privacy and surveillance from the PBS series Life on the Internet.
•
• To Our Credit: Bootstrap Banking and the World. A documentary about micro-credit programs for people of poverty.
• Nukes in Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens. A film about the planned deployment of "Star Wars."
• Killing Fields: The Legacy of Land Mines. A documentary from the Center for Defense Information.
More recently we've added a First Friday Global Movie Night at Valley Unitarian Church in Chandler.
In many instances, AIPER owns copies of the films it shows, and can make them available for showing by other organizations.
Forum Series. AIPER sponsors speakers on topics which range widely
over issues of peace, social justice, and environmental concerns. These events
usually occur at AIPER House, 325 East Broadway in
• Patterns of
Violence against Children, Women, and the Elderly. Speaker: Ann
Goetting, Professor of Sociology,
at
• The New
Conquistadors: SOA, IMF, World Bank...One Big Happy Family. Speaker: Fr. Roy Bourgeois,
Founder and Co-Director of
the School of the
• Is the Internet
Becoming a
for Social Responsibility
• Are Our Ancestors’
Sins Our Own as Well?:
Catellier, Margaret Grannis,
and Sharon Lindsay, members of the Phoenix EPIcenter Group.
• Global Warming and
the Greenhouse Effect. Speaker:
Paul Weser, Professor of Geography,
College
• How do Quakers
Take Political Action?... Politely, Firmly and Relentlessly!
Speaker: Joe Volk, Executive
Director, Friends Committee
on National Legislation.
Advocacy. AIPER has specified four topics of continuing concern for which working groups have been formed or are in the process of forming:
• National Missile Defense and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
• Land Mines
• Nuclear Waste Transport
• Genocide
The working groups study their topics in a series of meetings as a basis for making recommendations concerning potential advocacy efforts by AIPER.
AIPER is not limited to advocacy efforts for only the topics noted above, but may determine any number of additional topics for which AIPER advocates a public policy position and/or specific courses of action. If you and/or an organization you work with are interested in joining an AIPER working group, please call or write AIPER for more information.
AIPER House. Established in 1988, The Arizona Institute for Peace Education and
Research has consistently advocated for peace from offices in
* * *
If you want to help
make the world a safer and better place, we need you (and perhaps you need us
too). None of us can do it alone. Whether you wish to participate
in and support AIPER’s on-going efforts, or encourage AIPER to take on new
ones, we invite you to join us. If you would like more information us, please
write or call
us at:
AIPER
Tel.: 480-967-3880
e-mail: President of AIPER
Problems with this site, contact: Webmaster
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever does. — Margaret Mead