I'm actually here
to make a challenge to people.
I know there have been many challenges made to people.
The one I'm going to make
is that it is time for us to reclaim
what peace really means.
Peace is not "Kumbaya, my Lord."
Peace is not the dove and the rainbow --
as lovely as they are.
When I see the symbols
of the rainbow and the dove,
I think of personal serenity.
I think of meditation.
I do not think
about what I consider to be peace,
which is sustainable peace
with justice and equality.
It is a sustainable peace
in which the majority of people
on this planet
have access to enough resources
to live dignified lives,
where these people have enough access
to education
and health care,
so that they can live in freedom from want
and freedom from fear.
This is called human security.
And I am not a complete pacifist
like some of my really, really heavy-duty,
non-violent friends,
like Mairead McGuire.
I understand that humans
are so "messed up" --
to use a nice word,
because I promised my mom
I'd stop using the F-bomb in public.
And I'm trying harder and harder.
Mom, I'm really trying.
We need a little bit of police;
we need a little bit of military,
but for defense.
We need to redefine
what makes us secure
in this world.
It is not arming our country
to the teeth.
It is not getting other countries
to arm themselves to the teeth
with the weapons that we produce
and we sell them.
It is using that money more rationally
to make the countries of the world secure,
to make the people of the world secure.
I was thinking about
the recent ongoings
in Congress,
where the president is offering
8.4 billion dollars
to try to get the START vote.
I certainly support the START vote.
But he's offering 84 billion dollars
for the modernizing
of nuclear weapons.
Do you know the figure that the U.N. talks about
for fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals
is 80 billion dollars?
Just that little bit of money,
which to me, I wish it was in my bank account --
it's not, but ...
In global terms, it's a little bit of money.
But it's going to modernize weapons
we do not need
and will not be gotten rid of in our lifetime,
unless we get up off our ...
and take action to make it happen,
unless we begin to believe
that all of the things that we've been hearing about
in these last two days
are elements of what come together
to make human security.
It is saving the tigers.
It is stopping the tar sands.
It is having access
to medical equipment
that can actually tell who does have cancer.
It is all of those things.
It is using our money for all of those things.
It is about action.
I was in Hiroshima
a couple of weeks ago,
and His Holiness --
we're sitting there in front of thousands of people in the city,
and there were about eight of us Nobel laureates.
And he's a bad guy. He's like a bad kid in church.
We're staring at everybody, waiting our turn to speak,
and he leans over to me, and he says,
"Jody, I'm a Buddhist monk."
I said, "Yes, Your Holiness.
Your robe gives it away."
(Laughter)
He said, "You know
that I kind of like meditation, and I pray."
I said, "That's good. That's good.
We need that in the world.
I don't follow that, but that's cool."
And he says, "But I have become skeptical.
I do not believe
that meditation and prayer
will change this world.
I think what we need
is action."
His Holiness, in his robes,
is my new action hero.
I spoke with Aung Sun Suu Kyi
a couple of days ago.
As most of you know,
she's a hero for democracy in her country, Burma.
You probably also know
that she has spent 15 of the last 20 years
imprisoned for her efforts
to bring about democracy.
She was just released a couple of weeks ago,
and we're very concerned to see how long she will be free,
because she is already out in the streets in Rangoon,
agitating for change.
She is already out in the streets, working with the party
to try to rebuild it.
But I talked to her for a range of issues.
But one thing that I want to say,
because it's similar to what His Holiness said.
She said, "You know, we have a long road to go
to finally get democracy in my country.
But I don't believe in hope
without endeavor.
I don't believe in the hope of change,
unless we take action
to make it so."
Here's another woman hero of mine.
She's my friend, Dr. Shirin Ebadi,
the first Muslim woman
to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
She has been in exile
for the last year and a half.
You ask her where she lives -- where does she live in exile?
She says the airports of the world.
She is traveling because she was out of the country
at the time of the elections.
And instead of going home,
she conferred with all the other women that she works with,
who said to her, "Stay out. We need you out.
We need to be able to talk to you out there,
so that you can give the message
of what's happening here."
A year and a half --
she's out speaking
on behalf of the other women in her country.
Wangari Maathai --
2004 Peace laureate.
They call her the "Tree Lady,"
but she's more than the Tree Lady.
Working for peace
is very creative.
It's hard work every day.
When she was planting those trees,
I don't think most people understand
that, at the same time,
she was using the action
of getting people together to plant those trees
to talk about how to overcome
the authoritarian government in her country.
People could not gather
without getting busted and taken to jail.
But if they were together planting trees for the environment,
it was okay --
creativity.
But it's not just iconic women
like Shirin,
like Aung Sun Suu Kyi, like Wangari Maathai --
it is other women in the world
who are also struggling together
to change this world.
The Women's League of Burma,
11 individual organizations of Burmese women
came together because there's strength in numbers.
Working together is what changes our world.
The Million Signatures Campaign
of women inside Burma
working together to change human rights,
to bring democracy to that country.
When one is arrested and taken to prison,
another one comes out and joins the movement,
recognizing that if they work together,
they will ultimately bring change
in their own country.
Mairead McGuire in the middle,
Betty Williams on the right-hand side --
bringing peace to Northern Ireland.
I'll tell you the quick story.
An IRA driver was shot,
and his car plowed into people
on the side of the street.
There was a mother and three children.
The children were killed on the spot.
It was Mairead's sister.
Instead of giving in
to grief, depression, defeat
in the face of that violence,
Mairead hooked up with Betty --
a staunch Protestant and a staunch Catholic --
and they took to the streets
to say, "No more violence."
And they were able to get
tens of thousands of, primarily, women, some men,
in the streets to bring about change.
And they have been
part of what brought peace to Northern Ireland,
and they're still working on it,
because there's still a lot more to do.
This is Rigoberta Menchu Tum.
She also received the Peace Prize.
She is now running for president.
She is educating the indigenous people of her country
about what it means to be a democracy,
about how you bring democracy to the country,
about educating, about how to vote --
but that democracy is not just about voting;
it's about being an active citizen.
That's what I got stuck doing --
the landmine campaign.
One of the things that made this campaign work
is because we grew from two NGOs
to thousands
in 90 countries around the world,
working together in common cause to ban landmines.
Some of the people who worked in our campaign
could only work maybe an hour a month.
They could maybe volunteer that much.
There were others, like myself,
who were full-time.
But it was the actions, together, of all of us
that brought about that change.
In my view, what we need today
is people getting up
and taking action
to reclaim the meaning of peace.
It's not a dirty word.
It's hard work every single day.
And if each of us
who cares about the different things we care about
got up off our butts
and volunteered
as much time as we could,
we would change this world,
we would save this world.
And we can't wait for the other guy. We have to do it ourselves.
Thank you.
(Applause)