Progressive Women 6: Activists (cont.)
These are some women who put themselves out front, on the line . . .
/>Kathy Kelly - http://vitw.us/speakers/speakerBios.html#KK of
Voices in the Wilderness - http://vitw.org/ . A Nobel Peace Prize
nominee several times, she has also gone to jail for her beliefs, stepped un-armed into
harm's way, defended the most vulnerable and exploited peoples with words, actions, and
love, and inspired thousands of us to keep on. A clip from her bio:
/>
Kathy Kelly (M.A. Theology), 51, of Chicago, IL, helped initiate Voices inSimona Pari, Simona Torretta, Ra'ad Ali Abdul Azziz and Mahnoaz
the Wilderness, a campaign to end the UN/US sanctions against Iraq. For bringing
“medicine and toys” to Iraq in open violation of the UN/US sanctions, she and other
campaign members were notified of a proposed $163,000 penalty for the organization,
threatened with 12 years in prison, and eventually fined $50,000, a sum which they’ve
refused to pay. Voices in the Wilderness organized 70 delegations to visit Iraq in the
period between 1996 and the beginning of the “Operation Shock and Awe” warfare (March
2003). Kelly has been to Iraq twenty times since January 1996, when the campaign began.
In October 2002, she joined Iraq Peace Team members in Baghdad where she and the team
maintained a presence throughout the bombardment and invasion. Kelly left Iraq on April
19, 2003 and has returned there twice, for 17 day visits with team members who’ve
remained in Baghdad. She most recently traveled to Iraq from December 21-2003 – January
8, 2004 . . .
She was recently sentenced to three months in Pekin Federal
Prison Camp for her participation in a nonviolent protest calling for closure of a
military combat training school based in Fort Benning, GA. As a pacifist and war tax
refuser, she has refused payment of all Federal income tax for 23 years . .
.
Bassam are aid workers, opposed to the occupation, who were kidnapped on 7th
September from the Un Ponte Per - http://www.unponteper.it/liberatelapace/ office in Iraq. There is more about this at Free Our Friends - http://freeourfriends.blogspot.com/ .
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) - http://www.wilpf.org/ .
/>
On April 28, 1915, a unique group of women met in an InternationalHelen
Congress in The Hague, Netherlands to protest against World War I, then raging in
Europe, to suggest ways to end it and to prevent war in the future. The organizers of
the Congress were prominent women in the International Suffrage Alliance, who saw the
connection between their struggle for equal rights and the struggle for peace. WILPF's
foremothers rejected the theory that war was inevitable and defied all obstacles to
their plan to meet together in wartime. They assembled more than 1,000 women from
warring and neutral nations to work out a plan to end WWI and lay the basis for a
permanent peace. Out of this meeting the Women's International League for Peace and
Freedom was born.
WILPF's first International President was Jane Addams,
founder of Hull House in Chicago and the first U.S. woman to win the Nobel Peace
Prize.
Caldicott - http://www.helencaldicott.com/
Physician, humanist, empassioned advocate forDolores Huerta - http://www.greatwomen.org/women.php?action=viewone&id=81
nuclear disarmament and a true woman of peace is Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Dr. Helen
Caldicott.
Helen Caldicott is recognized in every corner of the globe as the
most visible advocate for peace in the world. Her awards, acknowledgments and citations
fill pages - just to name a few: Peace Medal Award (United Nations Association of
Australia), which she shared with her husband, William Caldicott, who is equally
dedicated to the mission for world peace; Integrity Award (John-Roger Foundation), which
she shared with Bishop Desmond TuTu; Peace Award (American Association of University
Women); SANE Peace Award; Ghandi Peace Prize... and the list goes on.
Dr.
Caldicott has written books (Nuclear Madness.- What You Can Do and Missile Envy),
developed dozens of video tapes and films, written scores of articles which have
appeared in nearly every major newspaper and magazine; spoken at major universities
throughout the world and has met with heads of state everywhere.
She founded
and headed Physicians For Social
Responsibility - http://www.psr.org//home.cfm?id=home and Women's Action For Nuclear Disarmament
(WAND
- http://www.wand.org/).
As a teacher, Huerta saw first-handGranny D
the effects of the working conditions on migrant farm workers’ families when their
children would come to school barefoot and hungry. She left teaching to work on their
behalf and in 1962 co-founded the United Farm Workers (UFW) union in California with
Cesar Chavez. Her work led to the passage of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act
(1975), the first “bill of rights” for farm workers in the United States. One of the
most respected leaders of the labor movement, she embraces nonviolent actions to fight
for change.
- http://www.grannyd.com/bio.php is 93 and running for the US Senate in New Hampshire. This is a clip from her speech
on 9/21/2001, Terrorism and the Four
Freedoms - http://www.alternet.org/story/11603/
Our neighbors and children are being killed in greatThanks again.
numbers because Americans are not in control of the American government, and haven't
been for some time. And now we are being killed by our own airplanes, just as we were
killed in our African embassies in 1998 by our own explosives, which we gave to the
Islamic fundamentalists so that they would please kill our then enemies, the
Russians.
And four months ago the current Bush administration gave $43
million to the current Taliban Regime so that it would please kill our enemies, the
heroin dealers of Afghanistan. Or was it to protect an oil pipeline? That's what we are
now learning.
Our subcontracting of death has never done us much good, with
Vietnam still the shining example, and with many other examples still bleeding in
Central and South America, Africa, and in Southeast Asia . . .
More tomorrow. And thanks, Cyndy, my back actually feels a little better today. And
thank you, too, Gram Jhin, for carrying some of the weight for me today.
. .
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Be at peace
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