There isn't one celebrity I've worked with who doesn't have major doubts about what impact they are having. I am glad when they question the impact, because it shows they are based firmly in the reality that peacemaking isn't the same as changing a streetlight or distributing mosquito nets.

There is a long and successful tradition of popular movements in the U.S. and elsewhere having an impact on crises in forgotten places.

Slavery, racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry, subordination, and human rights abuse transform and adapt with the times.

In human rights and peacemaking, it's really about having a solid concrete goal - the reduction of human suffering somewhere in the world - and then doing what is required to get that goal achieved.

My mother was the first woman in the county in Indiana where we were born, in Jay County, to have a college degree. She was educated as a pianist and she wanted to concertize, but when the war came she was married, had a family, so she started teaching.

My belief is that when the military is used as the sole instrument of power, that never has a good outcome. If there's no one to take ownership and develop that failed state, human suffering can be even worse than that created by the conflict itself.

I've always been interested in war, but especially its effects on society, which means bringing in the voices of women, which aren't heard as much in the grand narratives.

The government of the United States doesn't want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war. It wants peace, but what's happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? Palestine? What's happening? What's happened over the last hundred years in Latin America and in the world?