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Books
Hope lies at the end of this trains line
PEACE TRAIN TO BEIJING AND
BEYOND By Beth Glick-Rieman Northstone Publishing Inc., 288 pages,
$19.59, paperback
By JUDITH
BROMBERG
Besides the fact that she is a good storyteller, what I
appreciated most about Beth Glick-Riemans book was its honesty. If
Glick-Rieman were ever tempted to sugarcoat the peace movement, the
womens movement, this particular experience or even her own responses,
she certainly rose above it -- enhancing both the writers credibility and
the readers regard.
In 1995 Glick-Rieman was one of 242 women and a few men who
converged on Helsinki to begin travel on The Peace Train, for seven weeks, to
the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. This is her
story, told picture-postcard style, beginning in November 1994 when she first
learned that there would be such a peace train, itself a re-enactment of a 1915
pilgrimage of women across Europe pleading for an end to all
wars.
It should be noted that, despite the title, the book is
principally about this journey by train with relatively little about either the
U.N. Conference or its counterpart, the NGO (Non-Governmental Organization)
Forum to which the author was a delegate.
Beth Glick-Rieman is an ordained minister and founder/director of
a consulting firm to enhance skill-building and communications. At age 72, this
is at least her second U.N. Conference, as she alluded to her presence in
Nairobi in 1985.
Travel can be daunting at any age, even before one leaves, and so
it was for Beth, from funding issues and visa and passport problems, to the
typical pre- trip anxieties -- some about leaving children and grandchildren,
including a seriously ill son. But Crossing Borders, the theme of
The Peace Train mission, is what this book is about -- geographical borders,
cultural borders, intra-movement borders and personal borders.
It is in this that her honesty is most appreciated. From Helsinki
she wrote about the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom,
the sponsor and organizer of the Train, and as admirable an organization as it
is, how it still was rife with its own justice and communication issues. For
example, the league made no attempt to introduce the travelers to one another,
much less begin building any sort of community. What was understood to be a
paid-in-full junket proved not to be, as participants were dunned in Finland
for their meals at the official stopover points in the eight countries they
would visit. Those who couldnt pay were excluded from the dinner
gatherings and banquets.
She is honest about the racism that tarnished the assembly, about
the ageism -- which she acutely felt -- and even sexism, as a man was given a
workshop slot while several women would-be-presenters were turned down. And she
was embarrassed by the way women from the United States, by far the largest
delegation, often steamrolled their agenda over the preferences of women from
the other 41 countries.
She was also honest about the Chinese organizers, who with their
governments backing in ways subtle and not-so-subtle tried to undermine
the gathering, most blatantly by moving the NGO Forum 17 miles out of town and
then making it difficult to get there. They also fabricated a quote in the
daily newspaper attributed to Glick-Rieman.
But as honest as she was about all this, she was no less than
honest about her exhilaration at just being on The Peace Train -- interacting,
learning, introspecting, reflecting and growing by the hour. At each stop they
de- boarded to meet and interact with local women, to hear their stories, learn
their issues, difficulties and triumphs. The travelers also learned from each
other, both formally and informally, via the workshops held in a special car on
the train and in impromptu late night chat sessions.
The air around me, she wrote, still resounds
with the stories of women, some told in Helsinki, many told on The Peace Train
and many more told in Beijing, stories full of suffering, action and hope. Some
were about privileges and commitment to personal growth and responsibility.
Some were about giving voice to the voiceless, the poor, the oppressed. Some
were about putting an end to the craziness of war and preparations for it. Some
were about saving our Mother Earth. ... Some were about open confrontation of
the evils being perpetuated against women and girls.
Glick-Rieman is explicit that this book represents her experience
alone; nevertheless, readers get to meet many of those other women and hear
their voices. One entire chapter, in fact, and parts of others consist of
interviews and storytelling.
One thing the book does not deal with at all is the politics of
the U.N. Conference proper so that we get none of the controversy surrounding
the Vatican delegation and how, for example, the delegation was perceived as
stonewalling on reproductive and other issues. She does, however, quote
Charlotte Bunch of the Center for Womens Global Leadership who opened a
panel on womens human rights by throwing down the gauntlet to the United
Nations and world governments in general by citing all the rhetoric at this and
previous conferences and demanding accountability.
What are you doing, she demanded, to fulfill the
promises made to protect and promote the human rights of women, promises made
in Mexico City in 1975, made again in Copenhagen in 1980 and again in Nairobi
in the Forward-Looking Strategies document in 1985, promises made in Vienna at
the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993? Most of these promises remain
unfulfilled.
As for herself, Glick-Rieman left the conference with a very
personal and self-appointed task, to write this book to empower
women with the courage and strength it takes to challenge oppression against
ourselves and all women wherever we find it.
Earlier in the book, she had quoted Vaclav Havels
understanding of the terms optimism versus hope.
Optimism is the belief that things are going to turn as you would
like, as opposed to hope, which is when you are thoroughly convinced
that something is moral, right and just, and therefore you fight, regardless of
the consequences.
Glick-Rieman writes, When I see the passion, determination
and sacrifices that are being made by courageous women all over the world, I
have hope. Im even guardedly optimistic.
Judith Bromberg is a regular book reviewer for NCR.
National Catholic Reporter, September 4,
1998
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