Dennis Kucinich, Democratic Congressman from Ohio and Candidate for President of the United States: The idea of a Department of Peace is to demonstrate the commitment of the government to a broad-based approach where we would make the work of peace a national calling and to have it brought into every area of human life. And the way that you do that is to create a department that shows the significance and importance of it. I mean right now the United States spends over $400 Billion a year for a department that is involved with armaments, involved with aggression, which is called on to protect our country, but the meaning of it has been transformed of late. We CAN change the awareness of the need for peace...make peace an overarching concern in our society by creating a department which would inform programs at every level of society.

I think War in Iraq makes it more likely that there's a future for a Department of Peace because people see that our nation, through its leadership, has the capacity to unleash aggressive war. And I think it's alarming many people when they find that a nation has a lack of anchor points to insure that the tendencies toward war are tamed at the bureaucratic and administrative levels of a government. A Department of Peace would give a president options. A Secretary of Peace would be in on the cabinet meetings talking about the urgency of resolving matters in a nonviolent way and coming up with programs that do just that. So war's not inevitable. Peace can be inevitable if we work towards it, it's just that right now we're not working toward peace. Our government is working toward war.

Heather Wilson, Republican Representative from New Mexico: No (I don't think a Department of Peace is necessary). We have a Secretary of State, we have a Secretary of Defense, we have the US Agency for International Development. I think we probably have it covered. But Dennis (Kucinich) is running for President. I guess he has to come up with something.

Steve Pearce, Republican Representative from New Mexico: I would suspect that (a Department of Peace) is not going to get a lot of excitement at least on the Republican side. I think that Secretary (of State) Powell has done a very good job of bringing the negotiations (on Iraq) to the point that I was comfortable that we had every initiative that would arrive at a peaceful solution here. So I would be skeptical of a Department of Peace that gives the impression that we're sitting over here as military rogues, trying to export capitalism. Those things just aren't factual. They're not true.

Chris Griscom, founder of The Light Institute and The Nizhoni School For Global Consciousness: I’m not saying that we can't have laws and heads of state and structures like that - we can. But, there cannot be peace unless we learn what it is to be human at a higher octave. But you know what? People are spiritual in their hearts and it's not about religions. It's about life and death and connection and communication. And that's the crux of our problem right now. We need to come back the mystery of life and our willingness to say, we want a better life. What's going to give us a better life? The capacity to be safe. (Suzanne Kryder: But what would you say to folks who say we're safe by using a defense system that costs $400 billion a year? People who say it's natural to fight?) It's natural to fight but it is against cosmic law to kill. Isn't that something that we agree on? And I would get a silly smirk on my face I'm afraid, when they tell me that there's a technology that can keep us safe. And I know you can't do it. You can't do it. You can spend all the money you want but you can't do it. We have got to switch our consciousness to a consciousness of inclusion. We have to take care of the world's problems. We can't have a continuing separation between the rich and the poor. The technology has to be a technology that includes a human consciousness.

Cisco McSorley, NM State Senator from Albuquerque, on his introduction of a Senate Memorial supporting a NM Department of Peace: I felt that there were many important issues that weren't being addressed at the national level that we could do better at the grass roots level as it relate to working towards world peace. For example, the state of New Mexico has already experimented with offices in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Chihuahua dealing with economic issues, trying to promote trade. At the same time, I think we should also deal with the question of are the people that we're doing business with allowing free and open unions, are they allowing for the kinds of hiring practices that are nondiscriminatory, are we paying living wages, are the companies that we are dealing with dealing in good faith with the government of the country in which they are situated, so that the state of New Mexico isn't doing business with sweatshops and unsavory business practices.

Resources: To learn more about the New Mexico Department of Peace initiative, contact 505/995-1959. The New Mexico DOP group meets every Friday at 4:30 PM in Santa Fe.

To learn more about the national initiative, visit the website, www.dopcampaign.org