The WNY Peace Center’s Annual Dinner Keynote Speaker shares decades of experience in nonviolent direct action

By Irene Morrison

It’s not easy to summarize Kathy Kelly’s work; she is anything but an armchair activist. As co-founder and coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV at vcnv.org), Kelly’s version of activism is one of civil disobedience and direct action against violations of national and international law, and she is one of those rare people willing to go to jail for what she believes in. Unlike so many activists who quickly burn out, Kelly is still going strong after decades of work for peace and justice all over the world.

VCNV came out of Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end UN/US sanctions in Iraq. Kelly and other members of Voices were in Baghdad during the 2004 invasion, after refusing to leave and hoping that they could still help prevent the war. For their humanitarian aid work, which violated the sanctions, Kelly and others faced jail time, but eventually were fined—but refused to pay—$20,000. Additionally, Kelly and Voices were in Beirut, Lebanon, during the end of the Israel-Hezbollah war, providing humanitarian assistance and reporting. They have also spent time in Pakistan with Swat Valley refugees and in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” assault, bringing back the stories of these people to an American public who would often rather not hear about the consequences of their country’s violent actions.

Kelly first became involved in activism through protesting the reinstatement of draft registration and supporting resistors in 1980, and then through “numerous demonstrations, fasts, delegations, and nonviolent direct actions” directed at ending US intervention in Central America. Then, in August 1988, Kelly participated in “The Missouri Peace Planting,” in which she planted corn on nuclear missile silo sites to draw attention to the use of farm-land for violent, highly destructive purposes.

Kelly was sentenced to one year in prison for her role in the action, of which she served nine months. She also served 3 months for direct actions with the School of the Americas Watch (soaw.org) against the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, GA, a military installation which has trained members of brutal regimes in Latin America in violent suppression tactics, including torture.

When asked about her mission, Kelly explains: “Often, our community agrees that my role should also be that of an itinerant teacher.  If other groups invite me to speak, or to offer a retreat or teach in a classroom, we try to arrange our calendar so that I can travel, ideally by train or bus.  When we plan a nonviolent direct action, one or more of us often commit civil disobedience, and so I have spent considerable time in courts, jails, and prisons.  I’ve also tried to nonviolently resist war by going to war zones and living alongside people who bear the brunt of military attacks.”

Her message to the American people: “I want people to embrace chances to change our lifestyles, learning to live more simply, share resources more radically, and prefer service to dominance.  I believe courage is the ability to control our fears and that we ‘catch’ courage from one another, the kind of courage that enables us to live in accord with our deepest values.  Most of us don’t believe in killing people and we would like to stop wars.  We could do this, but it involves big changes in how we approach consumption and the false sense of entitlement that many of us share.”

The fines Kelly often faces for her nonviolent direct action, and for her refusal to pay income taxes for 25 years, do not seem to bother her: “I don’t worry about incurring large fines because I’m certain I have no money to pay these fines.  You can’t get blood out of a turnip.” As far as jail time, Kelly believes that “It’s important for activists to enter the criminal justice system as prisoners, to help narrate the stories of women and men in prison, to help build empathy for them, and to better understand how impoverishment affects our society’s most vulnerable people.”

One of VCNV’s most recent campaigns has been ending the siege of Gaza, and bringing those responsible for the massacre to justice. Kelly relates what she learned while there: “People have asked me, since I returned from Gaza, how people manage? How do they keep going after being traumatized by bombing and punished by a comprehensive state of siege? I wonder myself. I know that whether the loss of life is on the Gazan or the Israeli side of the border, bereaved survivors feel the same pain and misery. On both sides of the border, I think children pull people through horrendous and horrifying nightmares. Adults squelch their panic, cry in private, and strive to regain semblances of normal life, wanting to carry their children through a precarious ordeal.”

Since the US is the primary source of weapons sent to Israel to bombard Gaza, the US has an urgent mandate—and the unique ability through ending military aid—to end the siege: “With the border crossing at Rafah now sealed again, people who want to obtain food, fuel, water, construction supplies and goods needed for everyday life will have to rely, increasingly, on the damaged tunnel industry to import these items from the Egyptian side of the border. Israel's government says that Hamas could use the tunnels to import weapons, and weapons could kill innocent civilians, so the Israeli military has no choice but to bomb the neighborhood built up along the border, as they have been doing.

“Suppose that the U.S. weapon makers had to use a tunnel to deliver weapons to Israel. The U.S. would have to build a mighty big tunnel to accommodate the weapons that Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Caterpillar have supplied to Israel. The size of such a tunnel would be an eighth wonder of the world, a Grand Canyon of a tunnel, an engineering feat of the ages… In truth, there's no actual tunnel bringing U.S. made weapons to Israel. But the transfers of weapons and the U.S. complicity in Israel's war crimes are completely invisible to many U.S. people.”

Kelly sums up the campaigns she is coordinating at VCNV: “Voices for Creative Nonviolence has deep, long-standing roots in active nonviolent resistance to U.S. war-making. Begun in the summer of 2005, Voices draws upon the experiences of those who challenged the brutal economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and U.N. against the Iraqi people between 1990 and 2003. We also look to history as a guide--and try to learn lessons from those who preceded us in far more dire circumstances, who somehow found the ability to form communities of resistance to oppression in Nazi Germany, in apartheid South Africa, in the Jim Crow South of the U.S. and in the super-segregated cities of the North.

“Currently, VCNV is initiating a nationwide Peaceable Assembly Campaign which seeks an end to the U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and an end to U.S. support of the continued occupation of the Palestinian territories. For the next ten months, we will engage in both legal and extralegal (nonviolent civil disobedience/civil resistance) lobbying efforts, urging Representatives and Senators to stop authorizing and funding wars and occupations.”

Hear Kathy Kelly speak about all this and more at the WNY Peace Center’s Annual Dinner on November 7th at the Buffalo/Niagara Convention Center! Tickets online at www.wnypeace.org.

Kelly has two honorary doctorates and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in addition to countless other awards. Her book, Other Lands Have Dreams: from Baghdad to Pekin Prison (2005), will be for sale at the dinner from Talking Leaves…Books! More information on Kelly and VCNV online at www.vcnv.org.