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(04-04-2003) Peace Museum - Inspiration to U2 - Dying - Chicago Sun-Times *
http://www.suntimes.com/
Chicago tribute to peacemakers worth fighting for
BY CATHLEEN FALSANI RELIGION WRITER
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
It's not my line. Jesus said it.
He wasn't just talking about folks who avoid conflict at any cost. Peacemakers are doers. They work for peace. Often they have to struggle for it.
For 22 years, the Chicago Peace Museum, one of the city's perpetually hidden gems, has chronicled the work of peacemakers around the globe.
On the way in to the modest museum on the second floor of the Garfield Park Gold Dome on North Central Park, visitors are greeted by a banner that reads, "We can create life without war."
A few feet farther into the exhibition hall, there's a small red paper sign next to an empty fish bowl: "The Peace Museum desperately needs your help. Suggested donation $10. If you can give more, please do ."
Apparently, some of God's kids could use a little help.
In the midst of this our latest war, the Peace Museum--the only one of its kind in the nation--is dying. By April 15, its last two full-time employees will be let go, future programming put on hold, and the fate of the museum's day-to-day operations left in the hands of volunteers.
"We are needed more right now than we ever have been," museum director Rebecca Williams was saying Thursday, her red-rimmed eyes tearful and tired. "We collect and document activities of peace throughout the world, to show the very best, and sometimes the very worst, of humanity."
The museum proudly displays the remnants of a century of peace work, from Jane Addams holding a "PEACE" banner during a demonstration against World War I in 1915, to a Roman Catholic nun teaching Iraqi schoolchildren in Baghdad how to sing "We Shall Overcome" in Arabic in 1998.
There are drawings by survivors of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. A girl dying alone in a riverbed. Another girl hiding her burned, mercurochrome-stained face. A mother with her dead child tied to her back searching for a place to cremate the corpse.
The displays are simple. A typed piece of paper tells the story of Sadako Sasaki, who was 2 years old when Hiroshima was bombed and died from "Nuclear Bomb Disease" (leukemia) 10 years later.
Sadako believed if she folded 1,000 paper cranes, she would live. She had folded 644 by the time she died. Her classmates folded the remaining 356 after her death. A chain of similar paper cranes hangs on the wall above her story.
There are posters, pictures and art from the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa. A 1965 Life magazine cover with a photograph of police beating civil rights marchers outside the Chick-fil-A in Selma, Ala.
A poster of Albert Einstein's face that reads, "A bundle of belongings isn't the only thing a refugee brings to his new country."
A picture from Kent State University, where four unarmed student protesters were shot to death by members of the Ohio National Guard during an anti-war demonstration on May 4, 1970.
A 1966 letter from Joan Baez to President Lyndon B. Johnson in which she writes, "I will do whatever is in my power to stop the killing."
There's a photograph of Bono and the Edge of the Irish band U2, who visited the Peace Museum in 1983 and named one of their albums after an exhibit on the Hiroshima bombing called "The Unforgettable Fire." Flanking the photograph are gifts from the band: framed sheets of notebook paper with the lyrics to "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" and "New Year's Day" written in blue ballpoint pen.
A few feet away is an acoustic guitar John Lennon used to compose his song "Love." His widow, Yoko Ono, donated it and $10,000 to the museum in 1986.
The Peace Museum has long relied on the kindness of strangers like Ono to keep it alive, the museum's co-founder, Mark Rogovin, a Forest Park artist, told me earlier this week.
"It's always been difficult to raise funds," Rogovin said. "Non-profits in general have difficulty, and one around an issue like peace is not so easy."
This isn't the first time the museum has faced demise. A few years ago, when operating funds dried up and the museum left its home on West Institute to go into "hibernation," the Chicago Park District came to the rescue by offering the museum use of space at the Garfield Park site in exchange for some programming for local schoolchildren, Williams said.
Today, with the economy in the dumps and the nation at war, the museum hasn't been able to raise the $150,000 it would take to keep it running for another year.
"This time, no one was there to save the day," Williams said.
Even grant money wouldn't help at this point, she said, because most grants fund specific programming and cannot be applied to operating costs.
"If everyone in Chicago gave one dollar apiece, that's all we'd need," she said. Actually, it's all the Peace Museum would need to stay open well into the next generation.
Since word of the museum's troubles hit the news last week, many supporters have called or stopped by, offering to help. The small but heartfelt donations haven't been enough, Williams said.
"I've never seen so many people try so hard. That's what's just so sad," she said. "A lot of times when you work for peace, you feel alone."
For the immediate future, the Peace Museum will remain open at its regular hours, 1 to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Friday. "But," Williams said, "people should call first, just to be sure."
Come on. Give peace another chance.
http://www.suntimes.com/
Chicago tribute to peacemakers worth fighting for
BY CATHLEEN FALSANI RELIGION WRITER
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
It's not my line. Jesus said it.
He wasn't just talking about folks who avoid conflict at any cost. Peacemakers are doers. They work for peace. Often they have to struggle for it.
For 22 years, the Chicago Peace Museum, one of the city's perpetually hidden gems, has chronicled the work of peacemakers around the globe.
On the way in to the modest museum on the second floor of the Garfield Park Gold Dome on North Central Park, visitors are greeted by a banner that reads, "We can create life without war."
A few feet farther into the exhibition hall, there's a small red paper sign next to an empty fish bowl: "The Peace Museum desperately needs your help. Suggested donation $10. If you can give more, please do ."
Apparently, some of God's kids could use a little help.
In the midst of this our latest war, the Peace Museum--the only one of its kind in the nation--is dying. By April 15, its last two full-time employees will be let go, future programming put on hold, and the fate of the museum's day-to-day operations left in the hands of volunteers.
"We are needed more right now than we ever have been," museum director Rebecca Williams was saying Thursday, her red-rimmed eyes tearful and tired. "We collect and document activities of peace throughout the world, to show the very best, and sometimes the very worst, of humanity."
The museum proudly displays the remnants of a century of peace work, from Jane Addams holding a "PEACE" banner during a demonstration against World War I in 1915, to a Roman Catholic nun teaching Iraqi schoolchildren in Baghdad how to sing "We Shall Overcome" in Arabic in 1998.
There are drawings by survivors of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. A girl dying alone in a riverbed. Another girl hiding her burned, mercurochrome-stained face. A mother with her dead child tied to her back searching for a place to cremate the corpse.
The displays are simple. A typed piece of paper tells the story of Sadako Sasaki, who was 2 years old when Hiroshima was bombed and died from "Nuclear Bomb Disease" (leukemia) 10 years later.
Sadako believed if she folded 1,000 paper cranes, she would live. She had folded 644 by the time she died. Her classmates folded the remaining 356 after her death. A chain of similar paper cranes hangs on the wall above her story.
There are posters, pictures and art from the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa. A 1965 Life magazine cover with a photograph of police beating civil rights marchers outside the Chick-fil-A in Selma, Ala.
A poster of Albert Einstein's face that reads, "A bundle of belongings isn't the only thing a refugee brings to his new country."
A picture from Kent State University, where four unarmed student protesters were shot to death by members of the Ohio National Guard during an anti-war demonstration on May 4, 1970.
A 1966 letter from Joan Baez to President Lyndon B. Johnson in which she writes, "I will do whatever is in my power to stop the killing."
There's a photograph of Bono and the Edge of the Irish band U2, who visited the Peace Museum in 1983 and named one of their albums after an exhibit on the Hiroshima bombing called "The Unforgettable Fire." Flanking the photograph are gifts from the band: framed sheets of notebook paper with the lyrics to "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" and "New Year's Day" written in blue ballpoint pen.
A few feet away is an acoustic guitar John Lennon used to compose his song "Love." His widow, Yoko Ono, donated it and $10,000 to the museum in 1986.
The Peace Museum has long relied on the kindness of strangers like Ono to keep it alive, the museum's co-founder, Mark Rogovin, a Forest Park artist, told me earlier this week.
"It's always been difficult to raise funds," Rogovin said. "Non-profits in general have difficulty, and one around an issue like peace is not so easy."
This isn't the first time the museum has faced demise. A few years ago, when operating funds dried up and the museum left its home on West Institute to go into "hibernation," the Chicago Park District came to the rescue by offering the museum use of space at the Garfield Park site in exchange for some programming for local schoolchildren, Williams said.
Today, with the economy in the dumps and the nation at war, the museum hasn't been able to raise the $150,000 it would take to keep it running for another year.
"This time, no one was there to save the day," Williams said.
Even grant money wouldn't help at this point, she said, because most grants fund specific programming and cannot be applied to operating costs.
"If everyone in Chicago gave one dollar apiece, that's all we'd need," she said. Actually, it's all the Peace Museum would need to stay open well into the next generation.
Since word of the museum's troubles hit the news last week, many supporters have called or stopped by, offering to help. The small but heartfelt donations haven't been enough, Williams said.
"I've never seen so many people try so hard. That's what's just so sad," she said. "A lot of times when you work for peace, you feel alone."
For the immediate future, the Peace Museum will remain open at its regular hours, 1 to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Friday. "But," Williams said, "people should call first, just to be sure."
Come on. Give peace another chance.
