Peace Recruiters Converge In The ATL pt. 2

So our task over the course of three days was not only to share what we're doing separately in our individual cities, but to attempt to develop a plan for nationally collaborative work. Can we be more then the sum of our parts and what would that look like? Could there be a nationally "branded" effort that would work in both New Orleans and Portland? That was our challenge.

Organizers are managers in a sense, which means we have ideas and experience about what works and what doesn't, we've all developed instincts over the years of our work. This can work for us when we get together in that often times one person can see potential obstacles that perhaps another hasn't experienced. It can also be a challenge to find consensus amongst a group of passionate organizers who have strong ideas about what works in their community and what doesn't.

The second and third day of our meeting was inspiring, and really tough at times. Folks got emotionally and physically burned out, others had lots of questions about the direction of our work. It was honestly the toughest AFSC national gathering I've ever attended. It's also potentially one of the most productive. Perhaps meaningful organizing isn't supposed to be a piece of cake, perhaps that's why we call it a struggle. Maybe the struggle isn't just against the systems of oppression and violence, but also a struggle to organize ourselves and our communities. Sometimes it's a struggle against our old idea and behavior patterns.

The good news is that we developed some pretty amazing plans for the next 12 months. One is really broad and super youth driven, the other deals with something a little specific and policy driven. I'm not going to go into details just yet as we're ironing out kinks but I'm excited that we're gonna see real national collaboration around youth work at AFSC, I believe this will position us to turn up the volume a few notches. This will make us more than the sum of our parts.

Oh, and I did get a few minutes to give a super lazy tour of some of Atlanta's street art, which of course took us to the Krog tunnel. Would have loved to have given a more legit tour of Atlanta. Maybe next time.


Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee

From Atlanta to Berlin, Resist Don't Enlist!!

I knew that the topic of street art and graffiti would come up in Berlin for two reasons. One, it really does have some of the best street art in the world. Two, Shauna and Bjoern Vogel where hosting me. Shauna's a childhood friend, Bjoern is the extremely talented artist that Shauna married. Bjoern and I had gotten to know each other while he was living in Atlanta and had many online conversations with him about current events.

Bjoern and I pretty much started talking collaborative possibilities immediately, as I am a budding street artist myself. We talked about the possibility of doing some sort of global "Cost of War" campaign that would provide an education on the human and economic(one in the same) cost of war in different countries through art. The possibilities really caught my mind on fire as we both know people in dozens of major cites.

We did decide to look at some short term collaborative possibilities and came up with several concepts for murals to paint in Berlin. We talked about exploring several themes, we wanted to explore the similarities of German soldiers and the Afghan fighters that they are trained to kill, the economic injustices in the German Enlistment process, and how much money is taken from German communities and spent on war(billions).

We jointly designed a pretty awesome mural that will go up in the next few months and today Bjoern painted, in a legal space, a pretty great mural that's based on the classic German anti-war book, "Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt". Bjoern decided to include what has become one of the slogans we often use in the Atlanta Truth in Military Recruitment movement, "Resist Don't Enlist" as a homage to our work in Atlanta and a message to the Berlin community.

In Germany young men have three choices after they turn 18, military service, social service, or college. Many lower income young men choose military service because they are told that it will help them develop a career in the military or learn job skills training, these promises often don't become realized.



Germany is in an economic crisis. Over 15% or Berlin is unemployed yet billions continue to fall out of the sky for war funding. Recently the German President, Horst Kohler, was forced to resign after making several bold statements against Germany's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. This makes it clear that while there are many who pay for German's involvement in America's war(including the over 300 dead soldiers and countless injured), there are a select few that do profit from it.

With President Obama's recent request for Germany to commit an additional 1000 troops to the Afghanistan, it seems like a good time to be creating art in Berlin that spark conversation about the issue. I look forward to further collaborations with Bjoern and many of the other amazing artist from my new favorite city, Berlin!


Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee