Wednesday, May 19, 1999
Six-day peace walk ends
Event began as quest of two women
BY WALT SCHAEFER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
SHARONVILLE — A little shoe leather can bring attention to a big issue. Two Anderson Township women, Louise Lawarre and Susan Skach-Bejarano, organized a six-day walk of three to five miles a day through Greater Cincinnati neighborhoods this week to promote peaceful solutions to world violence.
The “Walk For Peace: Imagine a World Without Violence,” which began Thursday, ended with a ceremony Tuesday evening at Sharon Woods.
The idea for the walk “began when I felt drawn to respond to the war in Kosovo, the incident in Littleton, (Colo.), the sanctions in Iraq — places in the world where we use violence to solve crises,” Mrs. Lawarre said.
While the world is being “taken down a dark and bloody path,” Mrs. Lawarre said, “we can instead become people who create peace, and the way to do that is the accept the challenge of nonviolence.
“In the world of evil, the most exercised choices are fight — violence; or flight — apathy or cowardice. These walkers would advocate a nonviolent, creative third option ... (and invite people) to share their own experiences of how alternatives to violent responses have been used to transform situations,” Mrs. Lawarre said.
The walkers, who numbered between 20 and 50 a day, took to sidewalks each day from Anderson Township, through downtown and out the Mill Creek Valley. They distributed postcards to those they passed asking: “Do YOU have a creative third option to address the Kosovo crisis?”
Mrs. Lawarre and Mrs. Skach-Bejarano are members of Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Anderson Town ship, but the walkers represented a wide range of beliefs, from agnostics to Christians to Buddhists.
The walk received the support of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center and Pax Christi USA, a national Catholic peace movement.
Ariel Miller of East Walnut Hills also walked.
“I just think it is marvelous that housewives would be concerned about people thousands of miles away. I am inspired by them. ... I went out because I have been at a loss about what to do about Yugoslavia.
“I'm an Episcopalian. And every time I associate with these two Catholic women, I find they have open minds and raise hopes,” she said.
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