Real, concrete peace can be achieved between warring parties through dialogue and understanding, former nurse and current Northern Ireland peace activist Anne Gallagher told a captive audience Monday night at the Wisconsin Union Theater.
Gallagher, raised in a family of seven brothers and four sisters, including four brothers who belonged to the ranks of the Irish Republican Army, said her life changed when she got into a car accident over 10 years ago. After two decades of nursing healing the wounds caused by the bombs and grenades used in the fighting in Northern Ireland, she chose another path for herself.
\I realized that 20 years on, I was still surrounded by the Northern Ireland troubles,"" Gallagher said.
Her new vocation led her to found Seeds of Hope, an organization that puts former enemies'generally Irish Republicans and English Loyalists'in situations of conversation and mutual understanding. Her life in medicine, she said, gave her a faceless outlook on the violence between English and Irish. Many of the bombing patients that came under her care were naked and injured beyond recognition. With the injured she did not see sides in a battle, she just saw ""humanity,"" she said.
Gallagher said she uses artwork as a starting block for stimulating discussion between former enemies and prisoners.
""The only tool I knew how to use was the artwork,"" she said. ""The artwork is a way that they can respect each other's cultures.""
Gallagher had some of the artwork on display Monday night, and she added that her work translates well to the street gangs of Los Angeles, where she has cooperated with EARN RESPECT, a gang mediation coalition.
The peace activist was critical of some of the vengeful rhetoric that has come from the Bush administration in recent months during the U.S. war on terrorism.
""The American people are so respected back in Ireland,"" Gallagher said. ""The children are back in school listening to their president talking about revenge.""
Michael Cullen, an attendee of the lecture, said everyone can learn a lesson or two from Gallagher.
""Our future is not the guy with the stronger arm beating on the guy with the weaker arm,"" he said, referring to the United States' actions in South Central Asia. ""[Bush's] is the language of an 18th-century cowboy, not the 20th-century statesman.""
UW-Madison sophomore Helena Safron said she had no experience with Gallagher previous to Monday night, but was taken aback with the lecture.
""It was just interesting that she turned art into healing old wounds,"" Safron said.
Gallagher is a resident of Dublin, some 150 miles outside of Belfast.
