In downtown Columbia, Missouri, a gust of wind catches a rainbow-striped flag, sending it into a swirling dance with a peace flag hanging a few feet away. A shopper looks up to watch the flags, then down to notice the small doorway below them, nearly hidden among the busy shops and trendy restaurants lining Broadway. Curious, she peers inside, then descends a set of creaky stairs, like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, to the Peace Nook.

The Peace Nook is a non-profit store and community resource center operated by Mid-Missouri Peaceworks. Peaceworks, which formed in 1982 to oppose nuclear weapons, works to promote public awareness about peace, diversity, energy and sustainability issues. The Peace Nook carries products that support the organization’s goals, such as fair trade imports and books, T-shirts and bumper stickers promoting Peaceworks’ ideology.

Mark Haim, Director of Mid-Missouri Peaceworks, has been with the organization since shortly after it was founded, when he started as a volunteer. Haim, who studied social science as an undergraduate and did graduate work in economics, said he has spent most of his adult life working on the problems Peaceworks tries to solve.

“People often think of us as the store, but the store is an outgrowth of the organization and basically serves to support the organization’s work,” Haim said.

Most of the work Peaceworks does involves public education about social and ecological issues. The organization raises public awareness by showing films, hosting speakers, organizing weekly peace demonstrations and coordinating events, such as their annual sustainable living fair.

One of Peaceworks’ larger annual projects is helping to coordinate Columbia’s Earth Day festival, which Haim said Peaceworks has been involved with for the past 20 years.

Haim said the Earth Day festival is a big event in Columbia, complete with a street fair, booths, live entertainment and children’s activities. He said Columbia’s Earth Day differs from festivals held in larger cities because it is put together as a grassroots effort.

“Not to dis St. Louis Earth Day, but it just seems a little bit of an oxymoron when you have an Earth Day and it’s sponsored by Monsanto and Ameren UE,” Haim said. “We don’t take money from polluters. We put it on with a coalition of grassroots groups, environmental folks and city agencies and university programs.”

Peaceworks members also engage in advocacy to influence public policies relating to energy issues, often participating as legal parties before regulatory commissions. Haim said Peaceworks members recently helped prevent the construction of a large and costly nuclear reactor in Callaway County.

“This year we were part of a coalition that was successful in convincing our state legislature not to repeal a very important consumer protection law that Ameren UE was pushing that, had [it been repealed], would have facilitated them charging rate payers in advance for building a very large, very, very expensive nuclear plant,” Haim said.

Peaceworks uses the Peace Nook to reach the community and foster change through education.

“Much of what’s [in the store] directly or indirectly promotes people essentially developing greater understandings of peace, nonviolence, sustainable lifestyle choices, helping people cultivate an attitude of embracing diversity,” Haim said.

The Peace Nook is housed in a small, crowded basement. The aisles are narrow, and the shelves are cluttered almost to the point of overflowing. Colorful handmade signs label merchandise and provide fun facts, such as how many trees could be saved if every U.S. household used recycled toilet paper.

One corner of the store holds an extensive book selection, with titles including “Canning and Preserving Your Own Harvest,” “Soulfully Gay,” “Animal Spirit Guides” and “The Complete Book of Incense, Oils and Brews.”

Farther down the wall, a rack of children’s books stands behind a short bench painted with the words “Future Activists’ Seating.”

Another section is devoted to food items, most of which are nonperishable and organic. The selection is not extensive, but there are a number of hard-to-find specialty items, such as gluten-free pasta.

The rest of the store is a hodgepodge of T-shirts and bumper stickers with messages such as “Renewable energy is American security,” candles, CDs, gay pride items and fair trade clothing and purses.

“Fair trade imports are ones that are produced by workers’ cooperatives in developing countries where the workers actually own the companies cooperatively,” Haim said. “They’re not working in sweatshops to be exploited, and they’re getting a living income — an income they can live on — out of their labor.”

Haim said it is important for stores like the Peace Nook to set an example by selling fair trade imports.

“There’s too many stores in this country that will buy cheap, sell relatively expensive, make a big profit, and the people who are producing goods are really living in the margins,” Haim said. “People working in factories in Southeast Asia and China make 25 cents an hour and work 70 hours a week, and it’s just pretty outrageous.”

Haim said he feels the Peace Nook not only treats producers with more respect, but it treats customers more fairly as well by not marking up its prices.

“Most of the import items folks just tend to at least double the price from wholesale to retail, and we just don’t do that,” Haim said.

He said the Peace Nook’s prices also are lower because the shop has a lower cost of operation than most stores.

“Everybody questions why we haven’t moved up to street level,” Haim said. “It costs three times as much per square foot on street level as it does in a basement. By keeping our overhead low, we’re able to keep our prices low, and that means that we’re a real resource for people who have limited means and want to get things at an affordable price.”

Haim said another way the Peace Nook manages to keep its prices low is by having more volunteers than paid employees. He said the store typically has 25 to 30 regular volunteers.

“What’s always been the lifeblood of the Peace Nook is the community support,” Haim said. “We have people who value what we’re doing here and are willing to commit their time and energy to this and the fact that people in the community appreciate what we’re doing and want to support it.”

Meghan Keeler worked at the Peace Nook and for Peaceworks as a volunteer for about three months before she was hired to work at the store as an employee. Keeler said she had recently moved to Columbia when she began volunteering for the organization.

“I’ve done a lot of advocacy work, traveling around a bit, like in the last few years I spent time down at the Black Mesa reservation supporting Navajos who were facing forced relocation from their land and herding sheep, things like that,” Keeler said.

Keeler said she was looking for a place in Columbia where she could continue her activism, and she chose Peaceworks because she agreed with the organization’s goals of encouraging peace, promoting sustainability and respecting diversity.