As a part of the Counter Summit for Peace and Economic Justice, The Network for a NATO-Free Future presents “Vision and Campaigning for the Future.”
Kathy Kelly co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV), a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare. During late June and early July of 2011, Kelly, 58, was a passenger on “The Audacity of Hope” as part of the U.S. Boat to Gaza project. Since May 2010, she has visited Afghanistan four times with small delegations to learn more about conditions faced by Afghans and to work closely with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. In 2009, Kathy lived in Gaza during the final days of the Operation Cast Lead bombing. Later that year, VCNV formed a small delegation to visit Pakistan, aiming to learn more about the consequences of U.S. foreign policy and drone warfare on the civilian population. From 1996–2003, 70 VCNV delegations defied economic sanctions by bringing medicines to children and families in Iraq, and Kathy lived in Baghdad throughout the 2003 “Shock and Awe” bombing. Kathy was sentenced to one year in federal prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites (1988–89) and spent three months in prison in 2004 for crossing the line at Fort Benning’s military training school. As a war tax refuser, she has refused payment of all forms of federal income tax since 1980.
Kathy was joined by Alejandro Villatoro (Iraq Veterans Against the War) and Tania Unzueta (Immigrant Youth Justice League). George Martin (WI Peace Action) and Jacqueline Cabasso (Western States Legal Foundation) faciliate the event.
American Friends Service Committee is a part of the Network for A NATO-Free Future.
