Peacebus.com undertakes campaigns of witness for peace, justice and a sustaining Earth. It is both a colourful and crusading 1996 Mitsubishi L300 van called Happy Wheels and this website which promotes and records its adventures.
Graeme Dunstan is its gray nomad captain.
Happy Wheels at Parliament, 19 October 2010, Happy Wheels in camp, Lone Tree Hill, Ararat 11 December 2010 and Graeme at Happy Wheels kitchen, Rockhampton 27 may 2011 Graeme imagines that in 100 years time an introduction will be written to history compiled from web fragments and called The Chronicles of Peacebus.com and that its introduction will read something like this:
"How did humankind and indeed the Earth survive the assault of corporate capitalism which began in the late 20th century? How did the culture, heedless and racing like a freight train to certain disaster, stop and turn around?
Hard for us now to imagine how dire it was then.
"At the beginning of the 21 century, all the so-called worker's states had been vanquished by so called market forces. The ambitions of the rapacious rich and their corporate management elites seemed without obstruction and without frontier. No limits to corporate greed. Beyond conception and excluded from the balance sheets of profit and loss were the finite limits of the Earth and its life support systems.
"A new tyranny of the super rich took hold and the gains in social conditions won by the social reformers of the 18th and 19th centuries were systematically undone. Representative democracy, once the great hope of liberty, had become the best government money could buy. And buy it the corporate rich did.
"And so it was that the USA once the light of liberty to the world, came to be a state captured by super rich, a state that oppressed the poor both at home and abroad in pursuit of empire.
Like all previous tyrannies of the rich, the magnitude of the greed of the super rich was matched only by their armed might, their relentless wars and their ability to lie.
What was new about this tyranny was that the new technology of communications and the rise of global media monopolies had made the reach of their lies both global and at the same time intimately domestic.
"Every home had at least one TV set and the medium was the massage. The reach and thrall of the US corporate propoganda and the US war machine seemed overwhelmingly everywhere and absolute.
"But liberty lives in the heart; freedom is a yearning ever reborn and oppression is liberty's midwife. The US corporate propoganda illusion seemed absolute but it was still only an illusion, a shifting thing and ever ill fitting on a world ever changing and chaotic.
"As with previous liberation movements, change did not come from the centre. It had to come, as it could only come, from the margins, in the chaos, the cracks and the contradictions in the old regime, where first are heard the prophets of the new paradigm.
"Far from the centres of power and influence these voices, but close to the poor, the dispossessed and the oppressed.
"It was an old road and yet a new one in another age; there were no maps. The times demanded new pathways, new skills and new tactics and another generation of pioneers.
At the time no one knew how best to proceed. There was only the demands of the times, the courage of the early waking grievers, the wisdom of the ancestors, the call of future generations, the will to act, the inner light and humble prayers for guidance.
"In that time, Peacebus.com was one such voice ..." Graeme began his nomad journey in 1998. He had come from a career in festivals and events and now an aged pensioner he continues to apply his skills at occupying public place and getting noticed in the service of social movements for peace, justice and a sustaining Earth. In Victoria during summer and Queensland in winter, he follows the sun and has no base; rather he has multiple docks, a rich and extended network of friends with whom he has shared event making. "Turn off the Tv sets," says the Peacebus preacher. "Turn towards kindness. Turn to friends who are kind to you and help extend that kindness to others. Speak up and speak out about your fears and concerns. Be visible and be heard. Make art together. Occupy public pace and public imagination. Build community. Build resistance. Community resistance. Sustainable resistance. For the Earth!"
Not only will the revolution NOT be televised, neither will it come with a corporate sponsorship or a government grant. Generosity is the foundation of social movement amongst the poor and the oppressed. Peacebus travels from kindness to kindness. You can be a supporter Peacebus.com and its campaigns by donating:
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