Four months ago, two days before the civilized world celebrated one year since the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons came into force on January 22, officials here at the Kansas City National Security Campus hosted a virtual celebration of a different...
Digging for Peace – Resisting Nuclear Weapons
On Wednesday, October 20, I joined "Vrede Scheppen," "Create Peace," about 25 peace activists from the Netherlands, Germany and Austria at the airbase at Volkel, Netherlands, making a plea for an end to nuclear weapons. This base is home to two...
A Tale of Two Stockpiles: Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr. on the Anniversary of his Murder in a Pandemic Year
The United States Strategic National Stockpile of essential medical supplies maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, seems unable to respond to the present COVID-19 crisis. There is much discussion in today’s news about who is responsible for...
A Doubtful Proposition: A Reflection on the Trial of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7
“Whether nuclear weapons are actually illegal under international or domestic law (a doubtful proposition) is not relevant or an appropriate issue to litigate in this case,” so ruled Judge Lisa Godbey Wood of the US District Court for the Southern District of Georgia,...
Solidarity from Central Cellblock to Guantanamo
On Thursday, January 11, the sixteenth anniversary of the opening of the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba was marked by a coalition of 15 human rights organizations gathered in Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House in Washington,...
A Story of Two Blockades: New York City and Yemen
On December 11, in response to the growing humanitarian crisis in Yemen, more than 50 concerned people including representatives of various peace, justice and human rights organizations and communities, gathered in New York City’s Ralph Bunche Park, across First...
Life Goes On Under the Helicopters and the Terrible Cost of Avoiding the Dangers of Kabul
When I arrived at the Kabul International Airport on November 4, I was unaware that the same day the New York Times published an article, “Life Pulls Back in Afghan Capital, as Danger Rises and Troops Recede.” My friends Abdulhai and Ali, 17 years old, young men I...
Redefining ‘Imminent’
How the U.S. Department of Justice Makes Murder Respectable, Kills the Innocent and Jails their DefendersPolitical language can be used, George Orwell said in 1946, “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure...
October 7, 2001, Air War Begins Over Afghanistan
October 7, 2014, Drone Protesters in Court in Missouri
On October 7, thirteen years to the day from the beginning of "Operation Enduring Freedom," Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and Georgia Walker, an activist in Kansas City, will be arraigned in US District Court in Jefferson City, Missouri....
