Hundreds come out to Riverfront Park for Charleston Peace One Day Festival

In a sort of beating their swords into plowshares scenario, a peace festival drew hundreds to the former Navy base Sunday afternoon.

It was the third year for Charleston Peace One Day Festival.

Last year organizers said about 1,500 people attended at Brittlebank Park in Charleston. This year the festival moved to North Charleston's Riverfront Park, formerly part of the Navy base. Hundreds had showed up by early afternoon -- paying $5 for adults and $3 for students -- and people still were steadily trickling in.

People can promote peace in a variety of ways, festival organizer Beth Wendt said.

For example, a friend told her last year, "Because of this, I've stopped yelling at people in my car."

It was a small step against road rage.

"Peace is not the absence of conflict but knowing how to deal with that conflict without violence," Wendt said.

The peace movement is not necessarily about dismantling the military, said David Parker, a sophomore at Clemson University who also works for the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command.

"This is not an anti-war festival," he said. "It's about building intercultural cooperation, building community. ... There's always going to be conflict in the world. Hopefully we can build better ways to address that conflict."

Understanding other cultures was a major theme of the festival.

Several Girl Scout troops, including Troop 211 from the Goose Creek area, were selling Christmas ornaments with peace signs to raise money for a trip to Europe next year. The publicity materials said the trip is to learn "new cultures, foreign languages, global perspective, tolerance, and about others and ourselves."

Another group, of East Cooper Girl Scouts, paraded through the park carrying a big white dove made of cloth held aloft on plastic poles, followed by girls holding smaller paper doves on sticks and white ribbons.

An installation of panels in the middle of the park urged an end to bullying and stricter laws against hate crimes. It was inspired by the 2007 murder of Sean William Kennedy, a gay man, outside a Greenville bar. South Carolina is one of five states with no hate-crime laws, according to the installation.

Instructors with Yoga Benefits Kids were promoting classes for students, including those at Memminger and Sanders-Clyde elementary schools in Charleston.

"We teach children when somebody comes up and pushes you, is it better to hit back or just take a peace breath?" instructor Jennifer Marvel said.

The College of Charleston's Student Peace Alliance was making tie-dyed T-shirts for children and promoting a talk by Jewish peace activist Anna Baltzer at 5 p.m. Tuesday in Physicians Auditorium.

"War was an invention, and as soon as something else gets invented to replace it, it will be gone," student Brittany McMeeking said.

Charleston Waterkeeper was there to promote protecting Charleston's waterways. That relates to peace because water is a diminishing resource in many parts of the world, leading to conflicts over who controls it, Wendt said.

Dozens of small groups met under two tents during the afternoon, while musical groups and poets performed on the stage near the river.

Reach Dave Munday at 937-5553.