This is a transcript of a speech given by Paul Chappell at the 26th Annual Evening for Peace

I cannot express in words how deeply moved and inspired I am to be here with all of you celebrating peace.  All of you being here and me being able to be here has deep personal significance for me because much of my life has been affected by war.

My mother lived in Japan during World War II and she lived in Korea during the Korean War.  My father served in the army for 30 years and he fought in the Korean and Vietnam wars.  I graduated from West Point, I served in the army for seven years, and I was deployed to Baghdad.

But this celebration is not about waging war.  It’s about waging peace.   Waging peace means that peace is not sitting alone in a quiet room.   Peace is action.  Peace is an activity.  Peace is community.  And look at what happens when people come together as a community and wage peace.

Two hundred years ago in America, anyone who was not a white male landowner was oppressed.   If you were African American, Asian, Hispanic, female, even if you were white but you did not own land, you were oppressed.  But look at how far our country has come because of the women’s rights, civil rights, and workers rights movements.  I’m half Korean, a quarter white, and a quarter black, and I grew up in Alabama.  And the fact that I’m even here shows you how far our country has come.

Five hundred years ago things such as democracy, the right to vote, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and women’s and civil rights virtually did not exist anywhere on the planet.  Today they’re widespread.

State sanctioned slavery existed on a global scale for thousands of years and it built the backbone of many countries and empires around the world, but now state sanctioned slavery has been abolished.  I’ve never met anyone who’s owned a slave.  I’ve never met anyone who’s has been a slave.  If I told all of you that I owned a slave you would call the police.  But who would have imagined a few hundred years ago that our world would ever be like that?

So we have come so far, and think about how much further we can go.  But how can we get there?

The army taught me that in order to accomplish a mission, the first thing we need is what Einstein called our strongest survival advantage, cooperation, brotherhood, solidarity, or in other words, community. 

Our mission is to create a peaceful world that is free of nuclear weapons, and we are certainly a community. 

We are a community of people who believe firmly that because of nuclear weapons war is no longer just a moral issue.  War is an issue that threatens human survival.

We are a community of people who believe with conviction that change must happen, but that change will never happen as long as conscientious people do nothing.

We are a community of people who know that all things are possible when people wage peace.

Leadership means: motivating people to work together toward a shared goal.  And people trained in peace leadership can build many more communities around the world waging peace.  That is what the Peace Leadership Program will do.  Right now the training that people get in waging war is much better than the training that people get in waging peace.  The Peace Leadership Program will bridge the gap.

During the past month I have traveled around the country speaking with young people.  I have spoken with many of the young people joining us this evening.   Can all of the students please stand up? 

And what I can tell you, based on my conversations with them, is that with young people like these there is no reason to despair for our future, and there is every reason to be hopeful. 

So, I want to thank all of you for being here, I want to thank all of you for welcoming me into your community, and I want to thank all of you for waging peace, not war.

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