If You Want It

When I was a teenager in the early 2000s my family went to a music festival in a rural northern Wisconsin farm field. The festival was called “War Is Over (If You Want It)”, referencing the 1971 John Lennon song “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”. The festival was wild, featuring talented regional hippy bands. There was no corporate sponsorship, just people coming together, sharing food, enjoying music, and spreading positivity. 

Later that year my family participated in an event that has been called “the largest protest event in human history.” On Sat, Feb 15, 2003, six to ten million people took to the streets in more than 600 cities around the globe in opposition to the coming Iraq War. My family went out to San Francisco, California, to join the protest. I loaded up on a coach bus with my then-girlfriend, and we went to join the protest in Washington, DC.

I had never seen so many people in one place. Washington, DC was absolutely swallowed by the protest, and it was overwhelming to know that there were cities all over the world with just as many, if not more people out protesting. It was global solidarity, and the words “war is over if you want it” echoed in my ears. That year we also had regular anti-war protests in Duluth, MN that were consistently well attended, and full of thoughtful signs and theatrics. 

Remembering all of this, it strikes me that there was a very active anti-war movement 20 years ago. Where did it go? Now, it seems that we have a new threat of world war every few months, but where are the global protests? Where are the anti-war politicians? Why is that 20-year-old protest still the biggest anti-war protest ever?

The truth is that a lot of that anti-war energy was shifted to the climate change movement. And that is a very deserving cause. But as this shift was made, the movement carried a lot of war language with it. The movement would “Fight Against Global Warming”, as if it was an evil foe to destroy. But, just as John Lennon was trying to remind us, we had fallen into a political trap of “fighting against” something rather than working to build a positive alternative. And sitting here now, I think I finally understand what was in front of me the whole time. 

“War is over” is easy to say. But that was not the end of the statement. The last part, “if you want it,” is a very hard thing to understand. What does it look like to actually want war to be over?

What promotes war? Empire. And the American empire is driven by an industrial complex that seeks to extract as many resources as possible, no matter how much that extraction harms the environment. The climate catastrophe that we are currently facing is also a result of that mindset of industrial extraction. So we can see that wanting war to be over is also wanting global warming to be over. But still, what does it look like to live out that want?

If extractive industrial systems are the engine that drives the war machine, how do we live in a way that is not dependent on those things? This is where the strategy of “fighting against” something falls apart – how do you live in a modern industrialized world and also avoid products of the industrial system? It’s simply not possible to do, at least not on a scale that would make a difference. 

If you want war to be over, you have to engage life in a way that promotes peace instead of war. Instead of working against the problem, we need to build the solution. And thankfully there is a solution ready for us: Local Regenerative Agriculture! If centralized and extractive industrial systems are the problem, then distributed community-based regenerative systems are the solution. 

And the good news is: there is already a local regenerative movement that we can engage in! To get started, all we have to do is shift our buying habits to purchasing local regenerative and organic food. When we do that, we make a big step towards transforming the world. Why? Because you are supporting someone in your community who is building a food production system that supports itself rather than relying on industrial inputs. Not only that, but the regenerative system they are building will improve over the years, increasing your local area’s capacity to support its own food needs. By supporting a local regenerative farm, you are helping to build food sovereignty, and food sovereignty means that your community is not dependent on the industrialized system that supports the empire’s war machine. Supporting a local regenerative farm also helps to localize your economy and move it a step towards economic sovereignty.

The more we localize our food (and everything else we buy) the more we are able to stop substantivly supporting the war machine. And that realization brings me right back to that music festival in a Wisconsin farm field, where they were growing their own food, living a regenerative life, and spreading the positive message of true hope through art and music. I am lucky that I got to experience that moment, but I feel more lucky to be able to understand the depth of truth I was experiencing.

Let’s enter this new year with a little music in our ears, love in our hearts, and local regenerative food on our plates. And in that way we can truly wish our fellow humans peace in 2024.

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