Making Sedona a City of Peace
by Margaret Joy Weaver
T
he Sedona, Arizona
International City of
Peace team, 35th in the
now over 100 cities on
five continents around
the world, first came together in
June, 2012. We share our story here
to encourage you and a team of
positive peace partners and influential citizens in your community
to consider creating this opportunity for your city, our state, and
our world! We hold to a vision of
Arizona becoming the first State of
Peace in the United States by having 25 International Cities of Peace
statewide by the end of 2016.
A City of Peace, as officially
defined by International Cities of
Peace and the United Nations, is
“a community that endeavors to
make progress against violence and
foster a culture of peace. A Culture
of Peace is a set of values, attitudes,
modes of behavior and ways of life
that reject violence and prevents
conflicts by tackling their root
causes to solve problems through
dialogue and negotiation.”
l Creating our Vision. In Sedona,
six founding partners began our
process by envisioning how we
might best foster a culture of peace
consistent with our own values and
the heart and unique contribution
of this special place we are blessed
to live. We explored our roots and
the role Sedona has played in terms
Sedona: Int’l
City of Peace
of peace and healing among the
First People. We looked on the internationalcitiesofpeace.org website
to discover what other Cities of
Peace were creating. We examined
effective organizations focused
on compassion, non-violence and
social justice to see what we could
learn from them in formulating
our vision. And we connected with
civic, interfaith, environmental,
education, arts, business, media,
wellness/healing, historical/indigenous, multicultural, criminal justice,
youth, and human rights groups to
discover what peace meant to them
and what they felt it would take to
foster a culture of peace. Within
a few months we had over 600
signatures from Sedona residents
expressing their interest in participating with us.
l Organizing Ourselves Around
What Matters. We discovered
through our process that there are
many avenues for creating peace
with opportunities and strategies to
nurture each of them. We began to
explore a variety of these pathways
including peace within oneself;
peace in the increasing complexity of family; peace in aging and
life’s transitions; peace within and
among different generations; creating peace with our environment;
peace with those who seem different from us or in challenging—even
unapproachable situations; creating
peace in the face of violence, etc.
l Engaging Our Community. Our
process for engaging our community is to catalyze, co-host, partner
with organizations, and participate
in events that we believe are fostering a culture of peace.
Within three months of our
formulation we celebrated our first
annual International Day of Peace
on September 21st, co-hosting an
Interfaith Forum and engaging the
Sedona Red Rock High School to
assemble the student body into a
peace symbol on the football field.
Year Two we hosted a Peace Walk
and Global Feast for Peace at the
Amitabha Stupa and Peace Park and
catalyzed groups at five other stupas
worldwide to partici