PEACETOPIAN MILESTONES

A holistic movement for a better world
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April 27, 1825
New Harmony


On April 27, 1825, British industrialist Robert Owen, established a utopian community in the town of New Harmony, Indiana he had just purchased. This community was one of the first communes established to be organized around the principle of rational ethics instead of religion. Owen believed that misery and vice in the world stemmed from a "trinity of evils" : traditional religion, inequalities in wealth and private property, and conventional marriage based on religion and property. He also thought that through education and nurturing a person's intellect and spirit, human character and potential could be developed to its highest potential and benefit for the individual and the community. 800 people were invited to live for free in his utopian experiment. Although the community proved to be an economic failure after just two years, Owen's experiment provided inspiration for many philosophers and political pragmatists and in the development of what would eventually become the principles and practices of socialism.

Before coming to America, Robert Owen was a successful Welsh businessman during the Industrial Revolution in Britain who had left his mark on history as one of the leading social reformers of his time. He is considered the "father of the cooperative movement." At the time, most workers lived and worked in poor conditions for little wages. After amassing a fortune as an industrialist, Robert Owen set out to make his new cotton factory, New Lanark Mills in Scotland, a cooperative factory community that focused more on the well-being of the community than on profits. During the early 1800s poor children were expected to work in factories at an early age; For his mill, Robert Owen set up an infant school, a day care center for working mothers, providing education and health care to children starting when they were three. Children did not have to work in the mill until they were 10, which was revolutionary at the time. He also set up a cooperative shop that provided high quality goods at reasonable costs for the mill's workers and their families. Owen believed that education and safe cooperative work conditions would promote a happy, healthy and productive community of workers. This would not only be good for the business, but for the entire society as well. The Mill became a successful model that prominent social reformers and industrialists visited. Owen published many works promoting his cooperative ideas and attempted to establish several utopian communities, besides New Harmony. This visionary philanthropist's ideals have continued to inspire many trade and cooperative movements for the past 150 years.


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MILESTONES

c.380 BC
"Republic"

1215
Magna Carta

1516
"Utopia"

1528
"On Civil Power"

1625
"On The Law
of War and Peace"

1648
Peace of Westphalia

1650-1799
Enlightenment

1689
"Two Treatises of Government"

1762
"Social Contract"

July 4, 1776
US Declaration of Independence

September 17, 1787
US Constitution

August 26, 1789
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

September 25, 1789
US Bill of Rights

1793
Department of Peace

1795
"Perpetual Peace"

May 18, 1899
Hague Peace Conference

1901
Nobel Peace Prize

January 8, 1918
14 Points

June 28, 1919
League of Nations

1933
The New Deal

January 6, 1941
The Four Freedoms

October 24, 1945
The United Nations

August, 1947
World Federalist Movement

December 10, 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights

1955
"Let There Be
Peace On Earth"

1956
The Beloved Community

1960-1963
The New Frontier

1963-1969
The Great Society

1970
Earth Day

October 11, 1971
"Imagine"

1981
International Day of Peace

1985
77 Theses on the Care of the Earth

1988
Global Cooperation for a Better World

1991
Earth Constitution

1992
UNESCO
Culture of Peace Programme

1992
"4000 Ideas & Dreams for a Better World"

1995
Earth Magna Charta

1995
"When Corporations Rule The World"

1996
"Peace On Earth Millennium"

1997
Appeal of the Nobel Laureates

1998
"Conscious Evolution"

May 11-15, 1999
Hague Appeal for Peace

January 1, 2000
One Day In Peace

June 29, 2000
The Earth Charter

September, 2000
Millennium Development Goals

January 25-30, 2001
World Social Forum

October, 2001
"Better World Handbook"

2005
Clinton Global Initiative

July 18, 2007
The Elders

September 17, 2011
Occupy Wall Street