Speakout on Ethical Peace Officers, an open and honest (virtual) discussion on standards of conduct, use of force, and DE-ESCALATION.
Tuesday, June 9th, 7-9 PM on Zoom (see details below).
Mayor Byron Brown, Commissioner Byron Lockwood, Deputy Commissioners Barbara Lark and Joseph Gramaglia, and the community have all been invited. Hosted and organized by the WNY Peace Center’s Racial Justice Taskforce. Cosponsored by We Are Women Warriors and SSJ Sr Karen Klimczak Center for Nonviolence. The Mayor’s office has said either he or a representative will attend.
Our siblings of color suffer death and oppression after centuries of racism and violence. However, through Unarmed Truth and Unconditional Love we can work for a culture of peace. Peace through Justice.
We invite your participation.
Zoom info:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83544437863?pwd=a0RlQWE5NjEyK096eHQydUJtWTNDUT09
Meeting ID: 835 4443 7863
Password: 683731
Dial by your location
+1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kdu3MYCMIL
Dear Friends,
Thank you to those who attended the Annual Meeting on Saturday. We would also like to congratulate our newest board members! Please help us welcome them – you can find their details on our updated Coordinating Board page.
This week we would also like to highlight a few very important upcoming events:
– Tomorrow at 10AM, join the car action in Buffalo to call on the state legislature to reconvene and pass the HALT Solitary Confinement Act! People in Rochester, Albany, Yonkers, NYC, and Long Island will be doing the same thing at the same time. The event will be streamed as a single, statewide event narrated by our own Jerome Wright. Please come in your car with members of your household; your presence will matter and it should be a fun chance to get out of the house to do something meaningful, safely. Please register at ly/HALTsolitaryMay6
– Tomorrow at noon, join PeaceJam in the first in this series of powerful (online) conversations hosted by the One Billion Acts of Peace Campaign and four Nobel Peace Laureates with young people from around the world to talk coping, taking action, and creating a vision for the future. Featured Laureates include: Jody Williams (USA, 1997), Rigoberta Menchu (Guatemala, 1992), Leymah Gbowee (Liberia, 2011) and Shirin Ebadi (Iran, 2003). Register here (space limited).
– On Saturday, the Kings Bay Ploughshares 7 will speak with special guests Medea Benjamin, Code Pink co-founder, author, and global activist; Cornel West, Harvard Divinity School, author, activist, and social critic; and Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept co-founder, investigative journalist, and author. Moderated by Norman Soloman, RootsAction co-founder, author, and political columnist. The panel will discuss the need for civil resistance disarmament actions such as the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, the continued build-up of militarism, and the destitute condition of our world before and during the pandemic. They will also speak on divesting military funding to serve human needs during COVID-19 and beyond. The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 are facing sentencing on May 28 and 29 for their nonviolent symbolic disarmament action at the largest nuclear sub-base in the world, on April 4th, 2018. Kings Bay Naval Station houses one-quarter of the US deployed nuclear weapons. Watch the webinar live on CODEPINK’S YouTube channel or via Zoom from 12-1PM.
Lastly, today is #GivingTuesdayNow! We cannot do this important work without you, and we truly appreciate all of your support. If you are able to contribute to our continuing work, please donate here.
Please see details and much more below, including special events this week, regularly scheduled events, campaigns, fundraisers, and more at wnypeace.org, on our Facebook page, Twitter (@wnypeace), and Instagram (@wnypeace)! *** And lastly, a reminder to pace yourselves – do only what you can without engaging in digital overload. No one call do it all. Let us know what kind of help you might need from the WNYPC; please feel free to reach out!
Peace, thanks, solidarity and yes – love.
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3
Trident nuclear disarmament activist Steve Kelly, a Jesuit priest, begins his third year imprisoned in a county jail as he and his companions await sentencing. (Photo from previous Plowshares action 7 years ago.)
By Kathy Kelly
April 3, 2020
On April 4, 2020, my friend Steve Kelly will begin a third
year of imprisonment in Georgia’s Glynn County jail. He turned 70 while in
prison, and while he has served multiple prison sentences for protesting nuclear
weapons, spending two years in a county jail is unusual even for him. Yet he adamantly
urges supporters to focus attention on the nuclear weapons arsenals which he
and his companions aim to disarm. “The nukes are not going to go away by
themselves,” says Steve.
The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 now await sentencing for their
action, performed two years ago inside the Kings Bay Trident Submarine
base in southern Georgia. They acted in concert with many others who take literally
the Scriptural call to “beat swords into plowshares.” Commenting on their case, Bill Quigley, a member
of their legal team, told me “their actions speak louder than their words and their words are very
powerful.” Bill encourages us to remember each of them in our thoughts,
prayers, and, hopefully, through our actions. “The legal system is not big
enough for the hearts, minds and spirits of these folks,” he adds. “The legal
system tries to concentrate all of this down to whether you cut a fence or
sprayed some blood.” Bill believes we should instead look at the impending
disaster nuclear weapons could cause, and the continuing disaster they do cause
by wasting crucially needed resources to potentially destroy the planet.
“You’ve got eight numbers just like everybody else.” Jailers
sometimes use this line to subdue or humiliate a prisoner who complains or
seems to ask for special treatment. I learned this during a two-month stint in
a Missouri county jail, (for planting corn on top of nuclear missile silo
sites).
Once inside the prison system, your number is more useful to
the Bureau of Prisons than your name, and you grow accustomed to responding
when your number is called. The eight numbers help blur personalities and
histories.
I think jailers have a hard time finding any instances when
Steve Kelly tries to pull rank or claim extra privileges. He’s a well-educated
Jesuit priest who has traveled the world. Outside the prison, he’d often be
found walking alongside people who migrate from one difficult situation to the
next, blending in, trying to help. Inside a jail or prison, he has often preferred
solitary confinement to “general population” which requires obedience to all
rules. The cramped confines of the Glynn County Jail don’t have a more punitive
space in which to put him. Amid the jail’s crowded, noisy, unhealthy conditions,
he uses his time remarkably well. I surmise this from reading his weekly post
cards which are always humorous, thoughtful, and encouraging.
From his vantage point, amid people immiserated by poverty
and mass incarceration systems, he yet sees the nuclear threat as the one that
most endangers people. When “nuclear states” insist on superiority because they
can menace non-nuclear states, a dangerous nationalism arises. Using arsenals
to back up a fortress mentality undermines our capacity for international
cooperation now massively needed to tackle the major problems we face. “You’ve
got eight numbers just like everybody else” could point to a humbling yet
helpful reminder that we are confined together on this planet and constrained
by the prospect of real crises like the pandemic we’re now weathering.
I can recall walking through wet markets in far-away places and
shuddering at the sight of slaughtered, bloody carcasses hanging from hooks in
the open air. I imagine Steve would catch me, with a certain glance and nod,
and ask what could be more savage and destructive than a lab creating nuclear
weapons to incinerate people.
At the end of World War I, soldiers emerged from trenches in
the front lines and felt puzzled by the silence. Realizing the terrifying,
horrific explosions had ended, that the war was over, they didn’t clap or
cheer. Exhausted, they slumped over their packs, awaiting migration back to
their homes.
When the COVID-19 pandemic ends, global silence may be appropriate.
A new biological threat will still be conceivable, one that could equal climate
change and a nuclear meltdown or nuclear winter. Climate catastrophes could exacerbate
our human immunological vulnerability. It’s grim to reckon with the potential for
a new, mutated wave of coronavirus or another virus altogether to cause further
sorrow and death.
We’ll all need to pick up our packs and go back to work,
determined to be far better prepared for life saving actions as we move into an
uncertain future. Ideally, nuclear weapon arsenals will be recognized as a
crazed burden we must finally shed if we’ve any hope of surviving our past recklessness.
At some point, hopefully, my friend Steve Kelly will hear a
voice over a loudspeaker telling him to pack his belongings. He’ll have
survived this chapter of punishment. He won’t very likely be released, as there
is a warrant for his arrest for a previous protest action, but he’ll carry a
small pack beyond the confines of the Glynn County Jail. More importantly, he’ll
carry the challenge to continue dedicating his life to ridding the world of
nuclear weapons. In these challenging times, those eight numbers distinguish
him as a fine and invaluable leader to follow.
Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org)
co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org)
