NOTE: This is the 2024 Calendar. Click here for the 2025 calendar.

Twelve months of creative, powerful artwork to inspire our collective work of seeking justice, pursuing peace and creating a sustainable future. Featuring stunning murals, illustrations, digital art and photography, this 53rd Peace Calendar will accompany you through the coming year of change. Josh Yoder's photo of a Sunshine Movement Climate Justice march calls us to act for a just and sustainable future.

Provocative... Inspirational... Visionary... Essential.

• Over 300 people’s history dates
• Holidays for many faiths
• Lunar cycles, 13 native moons
12 x 12 • Wall - New Size!

Central New York singer-songwriter Colleen Kattau, wrote a song, This Calendar for Peace, to share the 2024 Peace Calendar. Check it out on Youtube.

Each Peace Calendar is beautiful, educational and inspiring. I am challenged each month by the courage of so many who make the world safer and more just for each of us. Thank you Syracuse Cultural Workers for continuing to speak truth to power with beauty and conviction.
-Barb Kass Luck WI

JANUARY

We're All In This Together

Artwork: Elan Shapiro, paint pens ©2020

Building Unity

As we begin the New Year, we seek to counter individualism and polarization with the reminder that we're all in this together! Elan Shapiro's colorful artwork highlights key human needs and weaves together the overarching concept of justice and dignity with concrete ways those values can be brought to life. This vision challenges the divide and conquer strategy used so effectively by ruling elites here and across the world. Building community and organizing at the local level is key to developing the resiliency we need. As we continue to confront a changing climate, this reality becomes increasingly clear.

FEBRUARY

Midwives For Black Lives

Artwork: Bekezela Mguni, screenprint ©2023

Creating Birth Justice

Black women in the US are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women. Among the many factors behind this appalling statistic is the continued failure of our medical system to adequately address long-standing issues stemming from systemic racism.

Building on the legacy of traditional midwifery in the southern US, Black midwives and other BIPOC birthworkers today are key to helping mothers and parents improve their maternal health outcomes.

Top art from the Black Midwives Alliance juxtaposes two stories. The invocation of Anarcha, Betsey and Lucy calls us to remember the forced contributions of three enslaved women who were subjected to repeated gynecological surgeries by Dr. J. Marion Sims as he pioneered surgical repair techniques in the late 1840s. For enslaved women, there could be no consent; their pain and suffering would never be acknowledged, much less mitigated.

The “Granny” midwives in the center remind us of the long decades during which Black, indigenous and immigrant women attended births, only to be stripped of their important community role as childbirth was medicalized in the early 20th century. Even as a new public health role emerged for “professional midwives” it was often dominated by White women and a government/medical establishment disdainful of culturally appropriate care.

MARCH

Iranian Women On The Rise

Artwork: Clarion Alley Mural Project, Mural by Farnaz Zabetian ©2023

Rising Up Against Oppression

This mural of an Iranian woman cutting her hair with the colors of the Iranian flag in the background celebrates the courageous role played by women in the Mahsa Amini protests that began in September 2022. Defying religious police and a government violently enforcing traditional gender roles, women in Iran continue to struggle for their rights to self expression.

The mural serves as a powerful testament to the strength of nonviolent resistance and the unwavering resilience of the human spirit. While the mural may eventually fade, its message and the spirit of these protests will forever inspire Iranians and people worldwide to stand up against oppression and strive for a brighter future.

APRIL

Youth Act for Climate Justice

Artwork: Josh Yoder, photograph, ©2021

Scaling Up The Movement

The Sunrise Movement has been agitating for bold climate action since 2017. Like other youth across the globe, they recognize the dire threat posed by the climate crisis and the opening it creates to transform systems of inequality and oppression. Their tagline – We Are The Climate Revolution – recognizes the need to build alliance across race and class to create a powerful movement.

The Biden Administration has taken important actions to address climate change, but they fall far short of addressing the scale of the problem. This June 28, 2021 protest in Washington, DC was part of the broader campaign to push the Democrats to be more ambitious and enact a Green New Deal as a comprehensive and far-reaching plan.

Strategic organizing combined with powerful protest and direct action offer our best opportunity to move quickly enough to avert the worst outcomes of a changing climate. Those of us who are older owe it to young people and future generations to heed this call to action.

MAY

Union Labor Lattes

Artwork: Michael Sanabria, photographs ©2023

Solidarity And Ally Support Will Carry The Day!

With the top 5% of Americans getting richer and richer and corporate profits again soaring (frequently with little or no taxes paid), union organizing and success is critical. Enter Starbucks Workers United (SWU) which is taking on a Fortune 500, anti-union (of course) company with vast financial resources. The company's profits in 2022 were $21.9 billion.

SWU, as of 5/25/23, has successfully organized 308 stores. Another 430 stores have filed for union elections. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued more than 90 complaints against Starbucks, encompassing 1600 alleged violations of labor law.

With stores in virtually every US metropolitan area, it's easy to adopt a store if you are an ally (coffee drinker or not!) and make a difference. If you work at a Starbucks, join the movement – it will transform your life! Go to sbworkersunited.org for help. Let's all push this important movement forward!

JUNE

Letting Go Of The Gender Binary

Artwork: Olly Costello, digital illustration, ©2023

Embrace The Dynamic Spectrum
Condensed from a larger 12-panel poster published by SCW, top art is a call to reflection, learning and action. Many progressives struggle to use the preferred pronouns of our non-binary siblings (and some actively resist that respectful practice). At the same time, the Republican Party has launched an all out attack on trans and non-binary folx. Across the country we see laws to demonize, criminalize and isolate those who challenge conventional gender patterns. As of May 2023, 537 bills have been introduced in 49 states to limit rights and 63 have already passed.

As with other liberation movements throughout history, we are called to both act in support of the individuals we encounter and to organize collectively to defend the right of all people to live authentic lives free from bias, discrimination and oppression. Like all thoughtful social action, it starts with learning about people who are different from ourselves (see the back pages for suggested resources). As the poster concludes: “When we practice using someone's pronouns, when we affirm gender expansive existences... we create networks of care. We create a safer world for all.”

JULY

40 Years Of Direct Action

Artwork: Dan Wilkins, photo collage ©2023, Photos by Tom Olin

Activists With Extraordinary Differences

ADAPT is a national grassroots community that organizes disability rights activists to engage in nonviolent direct action, including civil disobedience, to assure the civil and human rights of people with extraordinary differences to live in freedom. Beginning in 1983 in Denver with campaigns for independent living and accessible public transit, ADAPT shared their experiences and state chapters were formed across the country. Legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), which prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities and Money Follows the Person (2005), which allows individuals of all abilities to choose where they want to live in the community, are some of the many successes that ADAPT had an integral part in passing. Today, ADAPT is still fighting to raise wages for homecare workers, keep individuals with extraordinary differences out of nursing homes and make accessible, affordable and integrated housing available to everyone.

AUGUST

Elections Belong To The People

Artwork: Angelica Frausto, digital illustration ©2020

Organize, Organize, ORGANIZE!

As of May 2023, there is some good news and some bad. In a major upset, Democrat Donna Deegan just won the mayoral race in Jacksonville, FL. Two Tennessee state legislators, ousted for speaking out against gun-violence, were reinstated by their outraged constituents. However, MAGA Republicans (MR) continue to out-work us in state legislature races and school board elections. They are roughly 20% of the electorate but highly committed.

It is critical that Biden and a Democratic Congress are elected in 2024! Here are some suggestions for success. Ignore the MR folks. They are a small minority and not likely to change soon. Focus on registering new voters – particularly young voters and people of color and reach out to Independents and moderate Republicans.

Use the words “freedom” and “respect.” It's time to take them back.

Talk about Biden's remarkable accomplishments in PLAIN LANGUAGE and how they directly benefit people's lives.

Talk about the obscene cuts to our fragile social safety net demanded by MRs to support debt relief. Not even a hint, of course, of taxing the rich or cutting war spending.

Use all means--direct action, legislative work, court challenges–to turn back the MR's attacks. Our democracy, our communities, demand nothing less.

SEPTEMBER

Protest Shrine

Artwork: Mallessa James, photograph ©2020

The Wake Of Violence

The Black Lives Matter Movement insisted that the US begin to face up to the devastating effects of police violence against Black Americans.

But even as that point was driven home, and activists pursue the long road of systemic change, we have failed to reckon with the ways in which systemic violence affects the mental health of communities of color.

Every death or other experience of police violence unleashes a barrage of trauma — not only for direct victims, but also on family members, activists and the community. As the hashtags spread across the globe, the responsibility to fight for change is urgent. But while hashtags increase awareness, they also fuel trauma as people are forced to re-watch, re-read, re-listen, and re-feel the trauma they experienced from the original event.

A growing body of research shows a causal link between racial trauma and psychological and physical symptoms like those of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And they are present not only in adults, but in children as young as 12.

Even as community members organize to care for themselves and one another, it is imperative that all of us demand adequate funding for community-based support and ongoing services to communities of color affected by police and other violence.

OCTOBER

Preserving The Fragile Balance (Not Final)

Artwork: John Simpkins, acrylic with gold, silver and aluminum on wood panel ©2011

The Flood

The Earth is indeed remarkably resilient. However, the ecological balance that humans require to thrive is deeply threatened by climate change and unchecked pollution.

Across the globe, people are pushing for changes to maintain balance, but there are also strong, well-funded forces of resistance.

This Noah's Ark-inspired artwork highlights endangered and extinct animals to remind us of what is at stake. Created over 20 years, the piece has plenty of intricate detail to draw one in to think more deeply about the plight we face and how to move forward sustainably for all life on the planet.

NOVEMBER

You're On Indigenous Land

Artwork: Judith F. Baca, digital reproduction on glass panel ©2022

Memory Of The Land

Muralist Judy Baca has devoted her career to creating public art that revives our understanding of California’s past, and celebrates the continuous and ongoing struggle for justice.

This piece connects modern-day activists with the original people of this continent: the indigenous peoples who first resisted the invading Spaniards. The middle panel of La Memoria de la Tierra: UCLA (The Memory of Earth) centers Toypurina, a medicine woman of the Tongva nation who in 1775 helped lead a rebellion against Spanish mission-builders who had invaded her homeland, outlawed her culture, compelled people to convert to Catholicism and forced them into servitude. After the uprising at Mission San Gabriel Arcangel failed, Toypurina was tried – where she continued her denunciation of Spanish colonization. She was exiled to a mission settlement hundreds of miles from her home. The civilian pueblo adjacent to the mission became the city of Los Angeles.

In the mural, she is flanked by labor and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta and professor and Black Panther Angela Davis, who have continued the fight against race-based violence and oppression into the present day. Like their Indigenous siblings across the world, the Tongva continue working to maintain their culture and restore their land base.

DECEMBER

Sankofa: Reflecting On Our Roots

Artwork: Edmund R. Royster, acrylic marker and decorative paper on wood panel ©2017

Embracing The Past To Move Forward
Sankofa is from the Akan language of Ghana, meaning, "go back and get it." Sankofa reminds all of us, and particularly those descended from enslaved Americans, to know the stories and understand the struggles of our cultural past. The mythical bird symbol with its head turned back represents the importance of learning from the past to inform and guide our present and future. Embracing our roots is a critical aspect of personal and societal growth and development. By looking back and understanding our history in this way, we can gain a deeper understanding of our cultural identities, connect with our ancestors, and learn valuable lessons that can help us make better decisions moving forward.

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