President Obama continues to support war. He continues to remove many basic civil liberties and human rights. He continues to condone drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan that kill women and children. He meets with his advisers every Tuesday morning and signs extrajudicial killings. To me, those are not the actions of a peace person.

People keep me going. I believe people are wonderful.

I am very hopeful that there is a solution to the Israeli/Palestinian injustice.

I was born into a Catholic family. I grew up in West Belfast. Faith was very important to us eight children and my mother and father. It was grounded in the Christian tradition of social involvement.

If we want to reap the harvest of peace and justice in the future, we will have to sow seeds of nonviolence, here and now, in the present.

We have to start from the fact that there are always alternatives to violence.

In Northern Ireland, people said there would never be a solution. But once people begin to have the political will and force their governments to sit down, it can happen.