Helena Service for Peace and Justice

Founded October 4, 1990, in Helena, Montana

Statement of Purpose (October 1990)

• We, the people of the Helena Service for Peace and Justice, are a community of persons committed to working nonviolently for peace, justice and ecological responsibility.
• Because we are people with hope, we have organized ourselves as a grassroots community of peace and justice workers. Our hope is grounded in the truth that peace, justice and nonviolent living are possible.
• Our actions flow from our belief that real peace is the fruit of social and economic justice, democratic empowerment of people and ecological responsibility.
• We come together out of love for each other, for our children, for our sisters and brothers all across the earth, and for our planet and its precious variety of living beings. Therefore, out of love for our country, for justice and for democratic values, we commit ourselves to community service for changes that will build democratic structures which will help to put an end to the use of war and repression as methods of resolving human conflict.
• Reclaiming our right and ability to live nonviolently as individuals, we reclaim our right to work democratically and nonviolently to create a society that lives nonviolently as well. We commit ourselves to actions to bring about peace, justice and creative change in our individual hearts and lives, in our communities, in the system and in the world.
• Our work as members of Helena SERPAJ is urgent. The current system in our country and abroad is still fundamentally characterized by involvement in wars and preparation for wars, by foreign policies of our nation and others that override democratic values and processes, and by massive social and economic and ecological injustice. This situation is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a way of life that must be understood and then changed by the service of persons who love justice, democratic processes and ecological stewardship if peace is ever to be achieved.

Helena SERPAJ members are people committed to realizing a vision of a new and just world order which includes:

• A new U.S. foreign policy that is compassionate, democratically-controlled, noninterventionist and based on a respect for human rights, economic justice and international law.
• A new foreign policy in which relations between nations are based on reconciliation, generosity and respect for international law rather than on geopolitical greed and threats of military intervention.
• A new U.S. domestic policy that is economically and socially just and converts unnecessary military, nuclear and other weapons facilities and industries into ones which meet peaceful, civilian, human needs and promote ecological stewardship.
• As a democratically-controlled membership organization and grassroots community, all our projects and policies are determined and shaped by the members of the Helena Service for Peace and Justice. Valuing the contributions of each and every individual SERPAJ member, we work to empower each member of our community for the sustained, nonviolent, democratic action needed to achieve our goals of peace with justice and democracy and love of the earth.