The Partisan Divide in Our Country Worsens The first signs of the current partisan divide occurred during the 2008 election.  I hoped that division would go away once candidate Obama became President.  That didn’t happen, and within months the divisive ranting grew from a rumble to a roar.  How did the joy of the victory on election night turn so quickly into dark and vicious rhetoric? From the birther movement to the Tea Parties to the popularity of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, I tried helplessly to understand what was going.  Mostly I was just scared.  The notes of hysteria in the rhetoric, the barely suppressed racism, and the ever-present possibility of violence terrified me.  Having lived through three assassinations in the 1960’s and seen a nation divided by the Vietnam War, those bitter days were and are still vivid for me.  I did not want to see blood in the streets again. A Win-Win Solution Appears in the Transpartisan Alliance I was familiar with the Transpartisan Alliance, a group that has been working for several years to unite Americans across political divides. TA seeks to include all positions and points of view with the underlying premise that all perspectives are needed in order to find win-win solutions. Our current politics is completely saturated with a win-lose, attack/fight approach that is exhausting to participants and to the public. Having focused their work on the national level for some time, TA is now shifting its attention to grassroots political organizing.   When the first Seattle TA meeting was held in October 2009, I was present.

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Returning after Nine Months Absence Peace By Design is back.  I am back. It is good to write those words.  I stopped writing this blog in March 2009.  I did not know If I would ever write again.  I only knew I was bone-tired and could not go on.    I no longer knew what peace was or how to achieve it.  How dare I write about it from that weary place? Where have I been last nine months? Good question!  I worked at my job as a psychiatric nurse but the rest of my life was up for re-invention.  Not working actively at peace, and specifically, not writing, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  The critical voices in my head shrieked  that I should be writing now! As if I, single-handedly, could save the planet with my writing.  Could it be that resting was more important than writing?

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As we watch the intense partisan wrangling going on in Washington DC over the stimulus bill, while hundreds of thousands of Americans are losing their jobs, their homes and their retirement funds, it is gratifying to learn that the Transpartisan Alliance is growing. Dedicated to bringing Americans from many different political perspectives together and helping them learn to talk and connect with each other, this is a groundbreaking movement that everyone who cares about peace should know about. We, at Peace By Design, are heartened that Transpartisan Alliance exists and we support its growth.  The movement will sponsor an American Citizens’ Summit next week in Denver Colorado from February 11th to February 15th at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel.  For more information please visit the website of the Alliance at www.transpartisan.net. To read more about the background and history of the movement check out the following: —A recent blog by the founder of the movement, Joseph McCormick  on the www.beyondconventional wisdomblog.com (titled A Democratic Republic: Beyond Partisanship). —An article by Dan Shaw titled Hot on the Trail of Democracy in American on his web site. We will feature more from this group in future blogs on Peace By Design.      

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