What is happening to mankind, now facing increasing threats of warfare, dire poverty, disease, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction? Governments have failed completely to ensure peace. The grass roots must now find recruits to energize public opinion and become peacemaking partners with governments and the United Nations.

An impossible dream? Read how fourteen unemployed young activists started Greenpeace in a church basement in Vancouver, Canada. Read the stories of 110 Nobel Peace Laureates, including Woodrow Wilson, Mikhail Gorbachev, Willy Brandt, Mother Teresa, Yitzhak Rabin, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela. Learn about the seventeen Nobel peace organizations, such as Amnesty International, Red Cross, and Doctors Without Borders, who are dedicated to work to find a different road to peace—the only alternative to preventing a repetition of the carnage of the twentieth century.

The author states the case for an understanding of the increasing threats to peace. He calls for a different approach, an Action Now Campaign with a new commitment of the grass roots to become a significant power working for peace. This book is of vital interest to anyone concerned about world peace—educators, university students, civic-minded professionals, humanitarians engaged in helping the poor, political leaders, environmental activists, countless volunteers in non-governmental peace organizations, and workers in all management ranks of state governments and the United Nations.

It is a treasure-house of quotations for any speaker on world peace, democracy, politics, the social free enterprise system, technology, business, the environment, current history, world social conditions, and human rights.

The complex issues of the obstacles to peace and the necessary foundations to build an enduring world peace are presented, both with the wide-ranging fundamentals and the detail that brings a sharp focus on the specific issues.

An assessment of recent progress and failures of the leading organizations responsible to build world peace is presented, along with the track records of state governments, the United Nations, and non-governmental organizations. The book also deals with the all-important linkages of peace with democracy and the social free enterprise or market economy system, and with the importance for these institutions to become more reforming and committed to their public relationships and responsibilities.

A new approach to peacemaking raises many difficult questions and a search for answers, building toward the primary purpose of this book—to help volunteers find the key steps to taking action to become peacemakers. There are specific examples of the start-up of small peacemaking teams and a wide range of potential projects for new peacemakers groups.

The conclusions of this book touch all lives, and spell out a wake-up call for all citizens, young and old, who want to help in the work for peace. The author hopes that Grass Roots Peacemakers will plant the seeds to grow many small teams of peacemakers working to create a peaceful world for all humanity and for future generations.