{"id":471461,"date":"2026-09-22T02:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T02:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/471461\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T02:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T02:08:10","slug":"what-are-peace-poles-sacramento-area-activists-hope-they-can-spark-conversations-about-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/471461\/","title":{"rendered":"What are peace poles? Sacramento-area activists hope they can spark conversations about peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a world that can feel divided, one retired U.S. Army major is planting a different kind of message, one she hopes will take root in communities around the Sacramento region.<\/p>\n

The Peace Pole Project<\/a>\u00a0is a worldwide effort to promote peace and inspire conversations about peace through poles placed in communities. The message, “May peace prevail on Earth,” came from Japanese philosopher Masahisa Goi after the atomic bombings of World War II.<\/p>\n

“Then people started to put his message, ‘May peace prevail on Earth,’ on posts in the ’70s, and they have moved through the world since that time,” Rene\u00e9 Marie said.<\/p>\n

In total, there are more than 250,000 peace poles around the globe in at least 180 countries.<\/p>\n

Marie has installed dozens of her own \u2014 more than 60 of them from California to Afghanistan \u2014 and her next goal is to get them onto “every school campus in our state, but also in our nation. I feel like our kids are craving positive images of peace and hope.”<\/p>\n

“It’s a nonpolitical monument. What if red and blue were mixed together and we could all be purple? I’d like to purple up America. Peace is patriotic, and peace needs a piece of the pie,” she added.<\/p>\n

She’s not the only one carrying that goal forward.<\/p>\n

“I’m fired up about creating positive change in the world the ways that I can,” said Susan Rueppel, a peace pole activist and steward of the Peace Pole Gardens project.<\/p>\n

Rueppel recently teamed up with Marie to install one at a West Sacramento community garden<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“It’s a conversation spot so people can sit and enjoy the garden, but then they look right at it, ‘Peace prevail on Earth,’ and it generates conversation,” Rueppel said.<\/p>\n

The City of West Sacramento recently approved a proclamation to designate it a city of peace. Rueppel is helping to get a peace pole installed at city hall.<\/p>\n

The peace phrase is written in Braille along with the eight most commonly spoken languages in the city \u2014 English, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Tagalog, Chinese (Mandarin), Vietnamese and Hmong.<\/p>\n

Marie says she’s spending International Day of Peace honoring our fallen soldiers.<\/p>\n

“I will be in silence,” she said, “I will honor peace on every continent.”<\/p>\n

There are at least nine peace poles in the Sacramento area.<\/p>\n

\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a world that can feel divided, one retired U.S. Army major is planting a different kind of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-471461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}