We in our land mines campaign helped to change the world. Yes, it was difficult in many ways but if there had not been tens of thousands of people in the world who shared the same view I did that we'd be a better world if we got rid of landmines nothing would have happened. No one person ever changes the world alone unless they're an idiot who launches a nuclear bomb.

I'm going to focus my attention on what I think peace is. Anyone who thinks serenity is peace, that's not my personal view of peace. The rainbow and dove...contribute to peace. But peace to me is socioeconomic equality; it is not the absence of war. It's a world in which we think about human security to create global security rather than each state arming itself to the teeth trying to protect its own national security. Human security rather than national security through the lens of cluster ammunition, landmines, and nukes, pernicious weapns of ill repute, all of them.

I'm not fueled by serenity, frankly. I'm fueled by human beings who sit back and let stupid things be done in their name; who are willfully ignorant; who think ignorance is bliss. ..

But it will never be possible to change [the thinking behind using nuclear weapons] unless we stop believing that nukes are something out there that only nuclear physicists can possibly understand. And we don't really have to worry about it, because the government - hello - and the experts are protecting us from the possibility of nuclear war. I'm sorry but the people I know in government - mmm - they're protecting me from a weapon I don't even believe should exist and I'm sitting back like an idiot and accepting that? Creating a culture of peace means changing how governments act towards citizens; it also means citizens changing how they act toward governments.

You know we all like to flap about human rights; not that I don't flap along with everybody else; I defend human rights; but what about our individual responsibilities as citizens of our own countries and the world? I don't think being a citizen of this country means I vote every four years and then I let the brilliant people who inhabit the halls of government speak in my name.

I grew up in the 1950s in Vermont; we learned that citizens were involved on a daily basis in democracy and their government...We have to accept the responsibility as citizens, those of us who are in the US - this country is leading the world into a new nuclear arms race, and its doing it in our name; it's doing it because it says it needs those weapons to protest us from terrorists. What straight-thinking human being would think that nuclear weapons would stop 9/11?

...If we really want to change this, create a culture of peace, we really need to say, 'No more weapons of war in my name. I don't need nukes to defend me, thank you very much. We do not need nukes to defend us.'

I'm going to be secure the day all of those billions, trillions of dollars [spent on the invasion of Iraq] are used to meet the needs of the people that these governments are supposed to be in power to meet the needs of...I want a security system that gives everybody the rights that I have; that gives them opportunities for a future that makes them want to live that future.

If I've got nothing, and I know that your country might attack me for trumped up reasons, and that my country is depressed for generations because of some of the policies of your country, why wouldn't I strap a bomb on my back and go blow you up? It's not an illogical response. It may be an unpleasant response. It is a crime, but it is not an irrational response from a total population we wrecked of hope.

I want the people in Darfur to live the life they've been living for generations if that's the life they want to live. Have their homes, have their cattle, have their families, have schooling, basic education; basic health care; a sharing of the resources... I believe if the people of the Middle East have that, if Sub-Saharan Africans have that; the people of Asia have that, we begin to live a culture of peace that is different, that is based on human security, not nuclear or national security.

...Peace will really come when we get socioeconomic justice in this world; when the international criminal court functions so that murderers are brought to justice. When we as citizens speak up when governments do things in our name that we do not agree with.

I think we also have to demystify the belief that peace is some wimpy utopian dream. For me peace is hard work every single day since I've been a full time activist. It's about strategizing what I'm going to do the next day; how are we going to tackle cluster munitions issues; how are we going to get this cluster campaign involved in nukes, because we have a huge network - let's use it.

Somebody ...said, do you really think you're contributing to peace when you're angry? I don't know but I've done a lot for the world. I'm not going to give up my anger. It makes me really mad when there's injustice.

I actually believe that if we're going to change things in this country, we need a national draft. The day that every family has to fear for the lives of their children there will be a little more debate about who gets sent to war. Why do we think this military here in the U.S. is struggling so hard to keep this a volunteer army? Because they don't want the middle class out in the streets like in Vietnam. And for those who don't want to be in the military; national service. In this country where people seem to think that shopping is a basic human right, they need to learn that community service matters; that we're all part of the one.

...If we could just stop war, we'd stop war.

...The day Mr. Bush sends his daughters to the front lines of Iraq, I will go myself.

Billions and billions and billions fuel the nuclear Industry. As many of you know better than I, GE, which brings good things to life, also brings us nukes... If we can't vote good people into office we can vote with our money. Pay attention to who you are supporting with your money. Look at where your money is going. If you can't make [companies you've invested in] carry out policies that really do what you want them to do to contribute to a different world, take your money somewhere else. Money talks. It's the only thing that has made China start to pressure Khartoum.

There are many ways to contribute to a better world. Action; dialogue - action in my view is the most important. Certainly we have to dialogue and cross-fertilize - 'What did you do that worked in your efforts, what did you do that didn't work?' We do that in the landmine campaign all the time. Our national campaigns get together: 'I tried this and it worked; worked really well.' But we've been remiss in our little campaign because we don't do that with the small arms and weapons campaign trying to get rid of the guns that are killing people. We don't sit down with them and share....We need to share, and then we need to take action.

What's even worse is whining without action. Betty Williams, who won the Nobel from Northern Ireland...in one other conference, said, 'If you're going to whine about an issue because you think it makes you better than the people who are totally unaware but then you don't do anything - save your energy.' Get a beer; watch football. Whining without action - get out of my way. I'm going to do action to change the world.

I know there are people who are really angry about the conference here. How they felt disenfranchised, I understand that. How they paid money to bring these people here. They called this a fake peace conference. That confuses me a little bit because everyone in the room is a peace activist from my understanding. It made me think of the landmine campaign. I created a political movement to ban a weapon. And we did it. We banned a weapon, the first conventional weapon that had been used by every fighting force for over 100 years and we did that. We didn't do it magically. It was a political movement.

And sometimes when we would hold campaign meetings where we would strategize how to move the group forward, the de-miners would get with it, and would actually say, that money, that conference would be better used to take mines out of the ground. Maybe. But if this political campaign didn't exist, maybe no one would give you money at all. The reason governments have given about $3 million for mine action is because there's a political campaign that pressures them. Dialogue is important for change, but if it doesn't end up with action, it doesn't work for me. But it may work for somebody else.

There is a movement to understand human security instead of national security in the world. If you google, you'll find lots of documentation. One thing I find striking though is that governments and the UN get it better than NGO's....When an NGO is working on the environment, for example, they are working for human security. If the environment falls apart, we're all gone. When I work on cluster bombs now I'm working to enhance security; when I work on nukes, I'm enhancing security. I went to a conference last summer, a couple thousand NGO's [were there]...about 10 hands went up in the audience when I said human security. It's a concept for over a decade. We have to understand and talk about the linkages for all the work we do. So people understand, that we know, that altogether we're going to change the world. When I talk I encourage, sometimes harangue my colleagues to at least insert human security somewhere in their discussion. They are part of a huge movement to transform how we think from national security and weapons to human security for global security.

I was asked... if I thought it possible to create an international political campaign to get rid of landmines. So we started, we started. Landmines are produced by, exported by, contaminating by these countries. What organizations in the producer countries might want to get involved? What organizations dealing with these victims might want to get involved? It's not rocket science. It's just sitting down, making a strategy and actually following through. So I got on an airplane and started talking to people...Human Rights Watch, Unicef, in each country the NGO's organized themselves however they wanted to. We would sketch out an action plan for the next 6 months or a year or whatever, but no individual or organization supported it all... all the international campaign had to do was ....just let us know what you're doing. It was information sharing. The most important thing in the campaign was communication, communication, communication. Then follow up, follow up, follow up; follow through, follow through, follow through.

We didn't have much money...over five years, we spent a global total of $6 million. It doesn't necessarily take a lot of money.

If you want to get people energized, make it simple. ...it's not that complicated.