HANK
KAMINSKY’S “PEACE ROCK”
Hank Kaminsky's
"Peace Rock'' (1998) accentuates the hillside back yard of the residence
of James Richard (Dick) Bennett, who commissioned the sculpture in 1997. The
sculpture honors all peacemakers by naming thirty United States peacemakers,
men and women equally.
The oval sculpture --17
inches wide, 40 inches long, and 19 inches tall-is eloquent in its function. In
bold raised letters at the top the sculpture spells out PEACE, while the names
of the peacemakers, also in raised letters, surround the sides.
Three features of the
sculpture deserve special comment (with thanks to Hank). First, it is shaped and colored dark brown to
appear from a distance as a large stone, to suggest a connection between peace
and the evolving earth and humankind. Second, the letters of PEACE are designed
to contain soil for growing moss and ferns to suggest the connection between
the ideal of peace and the tranquility of plants, in contrast to the machines
of death machine guns, planes, nuclear bombs. The quest is for peace not only
among humans but between the human-made techno-sphere and the natural
ecosphere. Among the planet's greatest problems--perpetual wars, nationalism,
imperialism, hunger and malnutrition, the global war of rich against the poor,
nuclear holocaust--ecological destruction ranks highest in urgency. Third, the
name\ of the peacemakers are not always immediately discernible because, in
contrast to the Vietnam Memorial Wall's incised clarity for quick
identification, the sculptor wished to involve viewers in the peacemakers
search for peace. The incompleteness of the names Thoreau and Rukeyser, for
example, share the subsidence of the letter E, to suggest the perpetual danger
of the collapse of peace into war.
All of the names are
inscribed horizontally to suggest time and the equality of these peacemakers in
time, who are placed in random order up and down, left and right. The sculpture
rests in a setting of flowers, shrubs, and trees. It can be viewed on eye-level
from the residence's deck at a distance of 30 feet.
The United States is a
war-making nation. It has fought a dozen wars since 1941, most of them not
defensive (despite its name-change, the Department of Defense remains the old
Department of War). It invaded a dozen countries during the second
half of the 20th century, in violation of international laws and treaties, illegal
acts of aggression against sovereign nations which opposed us, were defined as
"enemies,” expressed a different ideology, or simply stood in our way to
some national goal (Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Libya, Nicaragua, El
Salvador, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, Iraq). The United
States glorifies war; ceremonies and symbols and monuments of warriors pervade
national life: and terrorism comes always from some other nation or group. From childhood, we are conditioned to accept
aggression and war and the violence essential to war-making.
Many methods exist for
diminishing nationalistic, conditioned aggression. One is to increase the ethos
of peace and of peacemaker models for our youth by building memorials to
peacemakers and nonviolence in peaceful and beautiful landscapes. Our children
know the names of our warriors, who are celebrated in countless ways. They do
not know the names of our peacemakers. So we must begin at our homes to instill
the values of beauty, peace, and just law by celebrating the peacemakers by
naming them. Just as citizens have always expressed their patriotism by
erecting a flag in their yard, or by setting aside a place in their home to
remember loved ones who served or were killed in war--the home as a war
memorial, privately reinforcing the legitimacy of the war-making nation---, we
can also transform our homes into peace memorials.to honor those who sacrificed
for peace and imagined a peacemaking nation.
John Ruskin in The
Seven Lamps of Architecture argued that architecture, as the art of
edifices that contributes to our "mental health, power, and
pleasure," is an index of a nation’s values. Throughout our history,
warriors have appropriated this domain of public good. But a counter-movement is rising of beautiful
monuments dedicated to peace, especially in landscaped places. We must know and
remember peacemakers, not warmakers and killers, if we are to have peace. The
plastic arts and literature provide us with memory. Ruskin: "it is well to have, not only
what men have thought and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their
strength wrought, and their eyes beheld, all the days of their life.”
This sculpture is a
measure of our culture's struggle with violence. In conception, design, and execution, it
offers "health, power, and pleasure.'
And it benefits from the spiritual and sensory power of the landscape,
both of` which are to be discovered by the inquiring visitor. In contrast to the immensely successful
conditioning of soldiers to kill by the U. S. Army, and the apparently
successful conditioning of the population to be violent by our culture---in
films, television, computer games--sculpture and place invite non-violent
reflection and behavior.
It is hoped that this
private place for peace will inspire the creation of more private peace
memorials. and Iead outward to more public peace memorials. We should strive to
create not only private places of peace but also to create peace parks and
gardens and sculptures in our towns, cities and countryside, if we are ever to
evolve into a nation and world dedicated to peaceful rather than Pentagon
values.
Biographies of all of
the peacemakers named on Kaminsky's sculpture (except for one) may be found in
books by Michael True: Justice-Seekers, Peacemakers: 32 Portraits in Courage
(1985) and To Construct Peace. 30 More Justice Seekers and Peacemakers
(1990). True has also written An Energy Field More Intense Than War: the
Nonviolent Tradition and American Literature (l995).
A note on heroes. Our
genuine heroes are less well known than the false heroes used to sell products.
Our society is saturated with meretricious celebrities pushing commodities.
Celebrity names sell; celebrity makes money. What kind of person the celebrity
is or what relation the celebrity has to the product sold matters little. But the
heroes listed on Hank Kaminsky's engrossing “Peace Rock” possess authentic
identity as seekers for a peaceful world.
Hank Kaminsky was born April 3, 1939. He is
married to Jo Ann Burton Kaminsky and has two sons. Jesse and Daniel. He was
educated at
The Peacemakers celebrated on the sculpture, all from the
Jane Addams (1860-1935) co-founded the Women's International League for Peace
and Freedom, opposed U.S. entering WWI,
"one of the great leaders in the American tradition of nonviolence."
Joan Baez (194I-), human rights activist, jailed twice for demonstrating
against the Vietnam War and U.S. interventions in Southeast Asia, supported war
tax resistance and political prisoners.
Adin Ballou (l803- 1890) founded the Hopedale Community utopian experiment,
significant adherent of Christian non-resistance and nonviolence, influenced
Tolstoy and Gandhi.
Daniel (1921) and Philip (1923-) Berrigan, leaders of the Catholic non-violent anti-war and anti-nuclear movement, both often imprisoned. Philip and
his wife, Elizabeth McAlister, founded the resistance center, Jonah House, and
the publication, Year One, and have
been active in Plowshares actions.
Daniel has won many literary prizes for his poetry and play, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.
Elise (1920-) and Kenneth (1910- 1993) Boulding, founders of the International PEACE Research Association
(PRA) and its North American Affiliate, the Consortium on Peace Research,
Education, and
Development (COPRED). He
authored Stable Peace, she Building a Global Civil Culture.
Randolph Bourne (I886-1918), socialist, fervent opponent of U.S. intervention in
WWI and the war-making state.
Elihu Burritt (I8I0-I879), founded the first International Peace Society
(1854), edited the Advocate of Peace and Universal Brotherhood for the American
Peace Society which anticipated the League of
Nations and the World Court.
Cesar Chavez (1917-I923), with Dolores Huerta co-founded the United Farm
Workers, both committed to nonviolence.
Noam Chomsky (1928-), anarchist and socialist opponent of U.S. imperialism and
the
military/ndustria/media/university complex of war-making
Sr. Maura Clarke (1931 -1980), member of the Maryknoll order, friend to victims of
repressive governments, murdered by the El Salvadoran military.
Frances Crowe (1919-), Quaker, anti-war (Vietnam) and anti-nuclear activist,
anti-draft counselor, prisoner, recipient of awards from Catholic, Protestant,
and other groups.
Dorothy Day (1897-1980), Catholic, war-resister, defender of the poor.
civil-disobedient. writer, founder (1933) of The Catholic Worker, "the
most remarkable person in the history of American Catholicism
Eugene Debs (1855-1926), five times the Socialist Party's nominee for
president of the U.S.. imprisoned for opposing W.W.I.. defender of the poor,
co-founder of the I WW.
David Dellinger (1915 –2004), imprisoned for
conscientious objection during WWII, edited Liberation
after the war, a journal of radical pacifism, co-chair of the New Mobilization
committee to end the war in Vietnam, one of the Chicago 8.
Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn (1890- 1964), communist,
chair of International Labor Defense, co-founder of the ACLU, victim of Red Scares of 1919 and
McCarthyism, imprisoned 1955-57: she was the "rebel girl” of Joe Hill's
song.
Allen Ginsberg (l925-l 997), poet, opposed the Vietnam War (the only person on
the sculpture not in either of True's books; a favorite peacemaker of the
sculptor).
Martin Luther King,
Jr. (I 929-1968), Baptist
minister, advocate of non-violence, writer, orator; leader of Civil Rights
Movement I950s- 1960s, opponent of Vietnam War, prisoner.
Kathy Knight (1938-), a leader of Catholic non-violent peace movement against
the Vietnam War.
Meridel LeSueur ( 1900- 1997), writer, socialist, blacklisted during McCarthy
era, opponent of nuclear weapons,
feminist.
Denise Levertov (1923- 1997) opposed the Vietnam War and wrote numerous poems on
war and violence.
Mennonites, one of the three historic peace churches (with Quakers and Brethren),
oppose war and killing as contrary to the gospel.
Thomas Merton (1915-1968), Trappist monk, urged nonviolent social change among
Catholics, edited Breakthrough to Peace and Thomas Merton on Peace.
Quakers, the Society of Friends, one of the three historic peace churches,
helped develop principle of conscientious objection, committed to nonviolence.
Muriel Rukeyser (l9l3-1980), prize-winning poet, imprisoned for opposing Vietnam
War draft and nuclear arms, as president of PEN (international organization of
poets, essays, and novelists) traveled the world to protect imprisoned writers.
Mulford Sibley (1912-1989), teacher, writer (The Ouiet Battle, 1968, The
Obligation to Disobey. 1970), war resister, pacifist.
William Stafford (1914- 1993), imprisoned in
Lucy Stone (l818-1893), abolitionist and women's rights activist.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), jailed for "civil disobedient" tax
resistance against the U.S. invasion of Mexico ( I846), author of “Civil I
Disobedience,” one of the most influential critics of unjust state violence.
Annabel WoIfson (1915-I983) opposed war, conscription, imperialism.
Howard Zinn (1902-), historian: SNCC:
The New Abolitionists (1964), A People`s History of the United States
(198O), war protester.
True discusses many other peacemakers in his two books. For
example, he says of Ammon Hennacy (I893-1970): “the one man revolution,"
draft resister who served many years in prison during WWI, arrested 32 times
for civil disobedience against nuclear weapons, war, and capital
punishment. That is, choosing my thirty
peacemakers was very difficult, so great are they all, and became sometimes a
toss of a coin.
Recommended reading:
Ackerman, Peter, and Jack Duvall.
A Force More Powerful: A Century
of Nonviolent Conflict.
Adolf,
Commoner, Barry. Making Peace with the Planet.
Gay, Peter. The Cultivation of Hatred. Vol. III of The
Bourgeois Experience:
Grossman, Dave, Lt. Col. On Killing The Psychological Cost of
Learning to Kill in War and Society.
Hanh, Thich Nhat. Peace Is Every Step, the Path of Mindfulness
in Everyday Life.
McKean, John. Places for Peace,
McSorley, Richard. New Testament Basis of Peacemaking. Herald,
1985.
Mosse, George, Fallen Soldiers. Reshaping the Memory of the
World Wars,
Polner, Murray and Thomas Woods, Jr., eds. We Who
Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now. Basic Books, 2008.
Sharp, Gene. The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Porter Sargent, 1973.
Smith-Christopher, Daniel, ed.
Subverting Hatred: The Challenge
of Nonviolence in Religious Traditions.
Winter, Jay. Sites of memory, sites of mourning: The Great War
in European Cultural History.
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