BRUNSWICK — PeaceWorks has announce that the 2014 PeaceMaker Award will be presented to Maine Veterans for Peace.

PeaceWorks honors the efforts of people who have seen the face of war to protect others from that reality and to shift the culture of violence to one rooted, instead, in cooperation.

Veterans for Peace was founded in Maine in 1985 by a group of veterans troubled by the militancy of the United States and its intervention in the affairs of other nations. They are an educational and humanitarian organization dedicated to the abolishment of war.

Their mission statement says, in part: “We, having dutifully served our nation, do hereby affirm our greater responsibility to serve the cause of world peace. To this end we will work with others toward increasing public awareness of the true costs of war; to restrain our government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations; to end the arms race and to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons; to abolish war as an instrument of national policy.”

There are now more than 120 chapters across the country. Always their goal is to change public opinion in the United States from an unsustainable culture of militarism and commercialism to one of peace, democracy and sustainability. Their work is done primarily through grassroots organizing and education at the local level.

The award will be presented as part of the opening of the 10th annual Peace Fair at 10 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 2, on the Brunswick Mall.

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