[Peace-discuss] Flyer for April 11 panel

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Text below; formatted flyer attached]


A PANEL DISCUSSION WITH POLITICAL ACTIVISTS KATHY KELLY AND PAUL STREET
presented by AWARE, the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort of Champaign-Urbana, a local 
peace group
Sunday afternoon, April 11, 3-5pm at GSLIS room 126, 501 E. Daniel, Champaign - 
  free and open to the public

Kathy Kelly co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence <www.vcnv.org>, a 
campaign to end US military and economic warfare. As a co-founder of Voices in 
the Wilderness, she helped form 70 delegations, from 1996 - 2003, that openly 
defied economic sanctions by bringing medicines to children and families in 
Iraq. Kathy and her companions lived in Baghdad throughout the 2003 “Shock and 
Awe” bombing.  More recently, she has visited Gaza and Pakistan, writing 
eyewitness accounts of war’s impact on civilians.  Kathy was sentenced to one 
year in federal prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites (1988-89) 
and served three months, in 2004, for crossing the line at Fort Benning’s 
military training school. She and her companions at the Voices home/office in 
Chicago believe that non-violence necessarily involves simplicity, service, 
sharing of resources and non-violent direct action in resistance to war and 
oppression. Kathy hasn’t paid federal income taxes since 1980. She has recently 
written,
	"If the U.S. public looked long and hard into a mirror reflecting the civilian 
atrocities that have occurred in Afghanistan, over the past ten months, we would 
see ourselves as people who have collaborated with and paid for war crimes 
committed against innocent civilians who meant us no harm...
	"Some of us still let ourselves believe that the war can do some good in 
Afghanistan, that our leaders’ motives for escalating the war, however dominated 
by strategic economic concerns and geopolitical rivalries, still in some small 
part include the interests of the Afghan people.
	"There are others who know where this war will lead and know that our leaders 
know, and have simply become too fatigued, too drained of frightened tears by 
this long decade of nightmare, to hold those leaders accountable anymore for 
moral choices.
	"It’s worthwhile to wonder, how did we become this pacified? But far more 
important is our collective effort to approach the mirror, to stay in front of 
it, unflinching, and see the consequences of our mistaken acquiescence to the 
tragic mistakes of war, and then work, work hard, to correct our mistakes and 
nonviolently resist collaboration with war crimes."

Paul Street is an independent policy researcher, historian, and journalist based 
in Iowa City. He was the Director of Research and Vice President for Research 
and Planning at the Chicago Urban League from 2000 to 2005; he has a doctorate 
in U.S. History from Binghamton University. He is the author of several books - 
including "Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11" (2004) and 
"Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics" (2008) - and numerous 
articles, essays, and reviews.  In a recent review he writes,
	"Under reigning U.S. media rules, Uncle Sam is always at bottom a noble, 
benevolent, democratic, and well-intentioned force in the world.  He (the U.S.) 
is never a violent, mean-spirited, murderous, and criminal oppressor and 
imperialist. The U.S. occasionally and unfortunately makes tragic 'mistakes' and 
tactical errors in the design and execution of its inherently virtuous foreign 
policies but those policies are never fundamentally immoral, illegal, and 
imperial in nature. We (the U.S.) are Good.
	"People who die or are otherwise harmed by U.S. state terror and Washington’s 
clients and allies (Saudi Arabia, Israel, Columbia, Turkey, and Indonesia, to 
name a handful) are 'Unworthy Victims.'  They do not merit much attention, 
personalization, empathy, or concern.  Their sufferings elicit no alarm and 
distress.  They take place on the wrong and invisible side of the intrinsically 
noble guns and policies of honorable Uncle Sam and his friends.
	"Narrow and elite-managed elections that take place in U.S.-allied regimes are 
treated as legitimizing evidence of enlightened democracy.
	"Things are different for Washington’s official enemies. The United States’ 
'free press' dutifully repeats and disseminates Uncle Sam’s charges against 
governments and groups the White House and Pentagon oppose. They are bad. 
Elections in 'enemy' states are always treated as illegitimate exercises in mass 
deception. The tribulations of those who die and suffer at the hands of enemy 
regimes (the former Soviet Union and bloc, Cuba, Nicaragua after the Sandinista 
Revolution, North Korea, North Vietnam, post 1979-Iran, Iraq under Saddam after 
1990) and forces (the 'Viet Cong,'  'Marxist' organizations forces everywhere, 
al Qaeda, and other non-state actors who dare to resist U.S. occupation and/or 
influence across the world) are a source of great media focus and concern.  They 
are 'Worthy Victims.'
	"Along the way, those who criticize U.S. foreign policy as immoral, illegal, 
and/or imperial are seen as beyond the pale of acceptable debate – as 
'ideological' extremists who do not deserve to be taken seriously."

***Howard Zinn's "The People Speak" (film) will be shown at 5pm, after the panel 
discussion***


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