Peace, to me isn’t just absence of gunfire, It’s quieter than that louder too. Peace in juba at 6am before the generators wake up ,When the Nile moves slowly and doesn’t ask anyone for anything ,It’s the sound of kinds kicking a ball in the street without flinching at every motorcycle backfire, Peace is not having to count exits in two rooms, Not measuring your before you speak them, It’s your shoulders dropping two inches because your body finally believe no one I coming tonight, Peace is a Grandmother laughing loud, Both hands on her knees, telling the same story twice and no one rushing her top finish, Its planting mango seeds you’ll never sit under, and trusting same one else will, Peace is forgiveness without a parade, its enemies sharing shade from the some acacia tree because the sun is honest and doesn’t pick sides, it’s looking at tomorrow and not bracing for it. Peace is sweeping broken glass of your door step and choosing not to sweep anger into your neighbor’s yard, its letting the bread bake all the way though even when you are stomach says hurry, Peace is a cease fire with self, The war you been fighting in your chest at 2am about things you can’t change and people who won’t say sorry, Its laying that down, not forgetting just laying it down. In Juba peace sounds like music from a phone speaker with no one turning to glare, It’s a taxi driver letting someone merge and nobody leaning on the horn like it’s a weapon, Its kids drawing maps of the future that don’t have check points on them, Peace won’t fix everything, but it gives everything a chance to be fixed, It’s the space between bullets where gardens grow, where love gets brave ,where we remember we’re not just survivors, we’re builders too. Peace is stars above Juba, not flashlight searching the ground, peace is night skies for dreams, not for running, To me, peace feels exhaling after holding your breath for years, it feels ordinary, and that what makes it holy.

The fluorescent lights of the ADNOC station buzzed, moths racing around the glow. It was 3 AM in Dubai. The tyrannical summer humidity clung to the glass doors, fogging them up. Inside, a small TV was mounted above the commercial refrigerator, the news channel, Al Jazeera, playing at full volume. A red banner swooshed across the screen, reading: “47 Iranian missiles intercepted. 2 dead.” I hoisted myself up on the stool, leaning over the counter. I was Iraqi. My entire legacy was political maps. I had grown up picking roses from the garden while military planes flew above. Even in this new country, war seemed to reach me. It reached everyone. “One karak, boss,” I said, sliding a five-dirham bill across the counter. The man behind the counter didn’t look up. He poured the scorching, amber liquid from his bruised metal kettle into the plastic cup. The scent of crushed cardamom and condensed milk filled the air like an endless lullaby. “From Baghdad?” The tea-maker asked softly, recognizing my accent. His eyes were weathered with the Arabian spills of coffee, the deep lines of a Ghaf tree’s bark, and the steam of this karak. “Baghdad,” I nodded. “What about you?” “Shiraz,” he said, pointing a weathered finger at the TV screen. “Iran.” I stared at him, frozen by the weight of history we had both inherited. As a child, I was taught never to share the same ball as the Iranian neighbors. To never share dates with them, no matter how many I carried in the deep pockets of my ruffled lace skirt. “Do not be scared, friend.” He smiled gently, wiping the stainless-steel counter. “For we are like this karak. We may come from different farms, but we swirl in the same boiling pot. And in the end, we are poured into the very same cup.” I held the cup between my hands, feeling the warmth surge within my palms. Sipping it, I could not tell if the cardamom was Pakistani or Indian. I could not tell if the soil the saffron grew on belonged to his ancestor or mine. Iraqi or Iranian. I pushed through the glass doors, stepping back out into the molasses air. I paused on the asphalt and looked back through the window. The tea-maker ran his fingers through the mishbaha, counting each word. It was as if his words were limited, and having spoken his piece, he had to make the silence count. High above him, the moths still kept up their frantic caper against the light. We are moths drawn to the same light.

All of my 17 years, I believed that peace is sitting in a quiet place, then everything must be fine, as long as I am not affected towards the issue. As I grew older, I realized that being comfortable should disturb the people that think they are at peace even in war. There are situations where people remain quiet, not because justice has been achieved, but because speaking up feels inconvenient, especially if that issue doesn't disturb them. Our mind is our own battlefield, that everyone is facing their own private war. Every person’s priority is to avoid a bullet aim at their head in able to survive the war, they pretend to be at peace, but peace without justice is purely a condition that set people to believe that they survive the war, infact they still tangled with it. Personal choices are never entirely personal. Society and individual are mutually dependent to each other that the way we respond to injustice is shaped by the society we live in. We are influenced by family, culture, media, education, and the expectations placed upon us. When a society repeatedly tells people to avoid controversy or to simply "move on," silence begins to feel normal, but there is no normal. It is just created to feed the social standards. What appears to be an individual decision to stay quiet is often connected to broader social patterns that discourage critical engagement. In this way, private comfort and public injustice become deeply intertwined. Peace is between our private war and choices. It cannot be practiced when restricted by society's standard. Social decay, especially corruption, is one of the things that became so common, that sometimes people treat it as an ordinary thing when in truth, this quiet acceptance became the part of what allows injustice to continue. In sociology, in order for us to be more in depth in understanding our society, we should first seek light in others in order to find and understand the people around us, then slightly open your eyes for more other possibilities to open to the people about your peace and their own peace. In social science, war is not just for brutality, but to open more eyes and steer away from censorship. It is where empathy starts to arise and will embrace its own peace to enjoy the human difference even if everyone's experiencing their own war. Comfort should not outweigh conscience. I know it is too large to exist but in the choices we make every day about what we notice, what we ignore, and what we are willing to stand for. Looking at this through the lens of sociological imagination, Peace is not pretending that everything is fine when it is not. The true battlefield is not just in wars but also within our own minds and morality. Every day, we choose peace with responsibility to our consciousness. That a right will not be wrong, and wrong will never be right.

The often neglected local politics plays an instrumental role in our success or failure in our battle against climate change. Flashing headlines and breaking news often center on national politics while local government is disregarded as mundane or unimportant. In reality, the opposite is true. Two examples of how failed local policies deeply affected my own life prove this point. For decades, Salem Harbor Power Station, situated just miles from where my mother grew up, was allowed to continue polluting by policies set in the State House in Boston. Higher rates of illness, including those of the grandparents I never met, were the tragic cost. Decades later and a coast apart, I myself witnessed another environmental disaster and policy failure – this time in my own hometown of Los Angeles. It has now been a year and half since large swaths of the city where I was born and raised were consumed by wildfires totaling over 37,000 acres. Tearing through Pacific Palisades and Altadena, they reduced wealthy enclaves and communities of working class Angelenos alike into piles of ash. I remember sitting at the TV helplessly, watching as baseball fields I grew up playing turned to soot and staring at photos of friends’ homes engulfed in flames. While dry conditions may have meant fires were inevitable, their devastating extent was not. Reservoirs were not full, firefighters were unequipped and poorly positioned, and in the Palisades underground embers of a small original fire were not fully extinguished. They would go on to reignite to these devastating consequences, in turn leading to endless insurance wars, community conflict, and increasing wealth inequality. Such shortcomings were a function of poor local governance. Tragically, with correct measures in place, the Palisades and Eaton fires could have been prevented or reduced - just as Salem Harbor could have been regulated and cleaned decades earlier. Becoming involved in local politics and civic organizing - from volunteering to register voters attending city council meetings - can save lives and communities. If we actively participate in local government, we can help lead the battle against climate change.

The ocean does not carry flags; it has no state. It does not ask who owns the dock or holds the gate. But as the saltwater crept up the coastal street, The ancient neighbors found a brand new enemy to meet. ​The high-ground houses built their walls of concrete high, To push the flooding toward the slums where elders sigh. "Go back," the dry land yelled to those with muddy floors, And locks were turned, and planks were nailed across the doors. The city fractured as the tides began to swell, A war of sandbags where the poorest always fell. ​They spent a bitter year defending lines of silt, Fighting for dry squares on a floor already tilted. Until the day the grand, expensive seawall broke, And choked both rich and poor alike in heavy smoke Of brine and wreckage, washing status clear away. ​There is no high ground when the ocean claims the bay. ​They met at last within the schoolhouse on the hill, With soggy boots and tempers quieted and still. They drew a brand new map, not based on wealth or pride, But where to plant the mangroves that could blunt the tide. ​They traded concrete walls for roots that grip the clay, And built a floating boardwalk where the children play. They learned the lesson that the water brought to shore: You either share the raft, or you will have a war.