Dear Neighbors,

I am writing to tell you why my family and I have been placing a candle in our window these past nights.  My work often takes me to the Middle East where I work with villages in war-torn communities to rebuild homes, schools, and playgrounds.  I go to tell the story at mosques throughout the U.S. and also churches and synagogues.   When I learned that the late Ambassador Chris Stevens was from the SF Bay Area, I placed a candle in our window in his memory to reach out across the world in support of the ideals he valued so deeply.  Will you find it in your heart to join us?

Why a candle in the window?  This gentle, yet tangible, symbol filled neighborhoods in Poland in the 1980's during that dangerous time when the Polish Solidarity Movement was placed under martial law... even President Ronald Reagan put a candle in the White House window back then.  It was used even more effectively in Czech Velvet Revolution. 

In the stand off just before the first Gulf War in 1990, while in New Hampshire, I started a candle-voice message to the people of Iraq, and the message spread: all the candles sold out in the “Live Free or Die" State.  Maybe 10,000 people joined and I received telegrams from South Korea, Japan, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Denmark and Poland, pre-Twitter.  My op-ed in the NYTimes was translated into Arabic and presented to the Iraqi Women's Association just a week before the war began.  They were deeply moved, but we were too late.

Now, I hope the candle brings calm as it brings attention to people of good will in neighborhoods near and far.  I ask you to join me by placing a candle in your window at sundown on Thursday September 27th, and Thursday Oct. 4th to show you believe in respect, understanding, freedom and hope — just as U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens did.

Please use this Ushahidi Crowdmap to map your candle, add your message, and if you wish, include a photo. Please invite your friends to join too.

The translating team at Meedan.net is standing by to make this work in both English and Arabic.  If enough people sign on, the press will take notice and the message will grow.  As Dawood Ghaznavi, Senior Associate Dean at the Karachi School for Business & Leadership wrote to me this evening, “Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”

Sincerely,

Donna Baranski-Walker
Redwood City, California

P.S.  You may be interested in the essay I wrote long ago:

Small Lights in the Darkness

By Donna Baranski-Walker

LONDONDERRY, N.H.

It gets dark early in New Hampshire now that winter has set in. The leaves have fallen since September, when I first began my quiet effort in direct diplomacy.

My candle still shines out on Friday evenings with its silent message to the families of Iraq. The neighbors across the street keep their candle shining too — two small lights in the cold, deep darkness of the night.

A candle in the window. It is a quiet message of reason and hope: “Understand that we do not want to be your enemy. Instead of fighting a deadly war, can we, as neighbors, build a just and honorable peace?”

If the light extends beyond my home to houses throughout my town and then throughout the country, perhaps the people in the many lands affected by the crisis — Europe, Asia, India and especially the countries of the Middle East will also join in this quiet gesture.

By itself this will not solve the problem, but what if families in Iraq, having already suffered eight years of great war, also place a candle in their window one night, for peace? Despite all the barriers of language, history and culture we are not so different on the most basic, fundamental level.

We all have families — children, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters — whom we care about deeply. Surely we can work this out without rewarding aggression or being forced to war.

A few hundred people in my town have joined this gesture, and I know of Friday night pockets of candlelight throughout the U.S. I have received letters from some 70 people in small towns like Centuria, Wis., Micanopy, Fla., and larger cities like Los Angeles, Kansas City and Winnipeg.

I have received telegrams from South Korea, the only other place where the United Nations ever authorized the use of force. Thousands of Koreans are placing a Friday candle in their windows; some write to say that this idea moved them to tears. People in Japan, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Denmark and Poland have learned of it through computer networks.

There is no “organization” spreading the message. It started with my family in New Hampshire and it is carried by the energy of the people who hear of it and take it to heart. People have spread the word in their church papers, faxed and mailed it to out-of-town friends and relatives. In this age of the “global village,” a news message can reach every corner of the world in a day. Surely we can use this network to reach out, while there is still time.

Americans are not prone to national gestures. It must be difficult to imagine why such an effort holds any validity.  Yet the Czechs and the Poles have shown the worth of national gestures as a mechanism for achieving one’s goals when other nonviolent means have failed. In the bleak years preceding their revolutions, they placed candles in their windows to voice their solidarity with those against the totalitarianism regimes in control. At the very least the window light showed individuals that they were not alone.

One of my neighbors stopped placing a candle in his window. He sees negotiation as equivalent to concession. He believes we should just go in there, bomb Baghdad and get this over with quickly.

It cannot be so simple. Once the killing starts, once innocent people die, there is little room left for talking and negotiation. Even when a war is “won,” the hatred and animosity left over festers for a long, long time.

It is not a question of peace at any cost. The world community, through the deadline set by the Security Council, has demonstrated a readiness to use force if the international embargo proves unsuccessful. Have we demonstrated just as clearly how deeply we desire, how strongly we prefer, a just honorable resolution through peaceful means over resolution through force?

The silent candle holds many voices in its message to the people of Iraq. It is a way to show that we, people of every type, belief, background and race offer our thoughts, prayers and support for a fair and peaceful resolution of the crisis.

It is a symbol of support for our soldiers far away from their families: Please be safe and unharmed. It is a willingness to go the extra mile to find avenues of understanding. It is a quiet, determined belief that people of goodwill can triumph over violence.

In my family, we will place our candle in the window this Friday evening, and every Friday evening as long as the crisis lasts. Across the street, my neighbors’ candle will quietly shine out once again to meet ours somewhere in the darkness of the night. And maybe, just maybe, the light will be bright enough. 
                            

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