Deborah Greene

Known as “The Peace Traveler”, Deborah first traveled to document after 9/11, traveling up and down the West Coast, facilitating student dialogue and filming their views of their new world. In 2016, Deborah traveled the country by car for months prior to US Presidential Election asking people about their “State of Peace”. In total, she traveled over 10000 miles, covering over 40 states, forging conversations and resulting in an intimate display of human emotion, made up hundreds and hundreds of separate interviews weaving a tapestry of human emotions and documenting how American’s feel as individuals, as a nation, and as a growing global whole. Deborah is once again on the road, virtually and literally, interviewing across the States and looking back on our emotional state, then and now, from last election to our current state. With over 25 years in the field, she is a writer, educator, UN Delegate and international speaker. Coining the theory of “3 feet of Peace” during her travels, she is recognized as a leader in peace technology and earned her Masters in Global Diversity Governance at Coventry University's Center for Trust, Peace & Social Relations to research the efficacy of the filmmaking and technology in peacebuilding.

Finding the humanity even at moments of conflict

THEORY OF THREE FEET OF PEACE- After 9/11, I traveled up & down the west coast with a film crew to talk with high school students and see how they were handling our new world. I was particularly sensitive to not overload them with discussions about the actual event but rather to provide a forum to talk, seeing what evolved. We posed: What if you were given a television network to program and say what you want, what would you create? What do you have to say? And so, it began. A deep debate about how they are portrayed, what we as adults were missing from our assessment of them and what they viewed as our obsession with war. These were kids from all walks of life, ethnic backgrounds, political orientation and socio-economic levels. One thing rang out loudly, “How can I as an individual possibly save this mess? World peace is unrealistic.” The Theory of “Three Feet of Peace” emerged. How do we each create a peaceful existence and aren’t we more likely to come to each other in peace if we are experiencing more peace individually? The three feet of peace speaks to our own personal three-foot circumference. We spoke of paradox; the woman who cuts you off in traffic because she is late for yoga, the father who interrupts his own meditation to scream from his room when he hears a glass drop in the kitchen, the parents who restrict their children’s television consumption but are permanently affixed to their IPhone’s. What if you were calm, and I was calm, and she was calm, just for a moment... What if we do it in the next moment and the next? If I can create a peaceful world, and she can create a peaceful world, and he can create his peaceful world, maybe we will be less likely to blow each other apart, in all the small daily ways as well as the earthshaking, truly soul shattering, literal ways. The greatest lesson was about the need to express, be heard and to feel respected as a human being. I remember a specifically pointed conversation about the feeling one student, who was incarcerated for a violent crime, had when holding someone at gunpoint. He expressed a feeling of being respected. He spoke of how, for that moment, he had the complete attention of someone who otherwise might never have looked him in the eye. I took a risk and told him if he had held me at gunpoint, he would have indeed had my attention and momentarily held my life in his hand but my attention would not have meant my respect. Most of us will not experience the truly confining reality of prison. Most of us have experienced a cage of our own making. The psychic cost of compressing ourselves and limiting our expression into those harnessed but safe dwellings has a global cost as well. When in this state, it is near impossible to grow, to be open to the unknown or unfamiliar, or to challenge our beliefs. For me, peace comes when I feel at home within myself, without the feeling of constriction provoked from the outside or pre-instructed from within. When I do, I add my “three feet of peace” to the larger world.

Making a dog feel comfortable :)