Friday, January 30, 2004

Press Action Hero of the Week: KATHY KELLY

Press Action Hero Even if you possess only the slightest hope of someday witnessing the breakdown of the U.S. war machine or a reduction in U.S. military atrocities overseas, you’d be hard-pressed not to admire the work of Kathy Kelly?

During the last couple of decades, Kelly, co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness, has performed many admirable deeds, including meeting head-on the U.S. government’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and challenging its acts of militarism in Central America, Iraq and elsewhere around the world. Kelly is active in the Catholic Worker movement and has sought to counteract U.S. government horrors by trying to help its victims. Meanwhile, as a pacifist and war tax refuser, Kelly has bravely refused payment of all federal income tax for 23 years.

In the course of her work, especially since the founding of Voices in the Wilderness in 1996, Kelly has found herself in various skirmishes with state authorities. As she has discovered, the state does not look kindly on acts of disobedience against its authority, especially effective acts of resistance by people who do not fear the state’s retaliatory potential.

Kelly and other Voices in the Wilderness members were notified of a proposed $163,000 penalty against the organization and were threatened with 12 years in prison for bringing medicine and toys to Iraq in open violation of the United Nations-imposed sanctions on the country from 1991 through 2003. The U.S. government eventually fined the group $50,000, a sum which it has refused to pay.

Voices in the Wilderness's Kathy Kelly This week, Kelly once again discovered that when you wage a non-violent campaign against the legitimacy of certain terror-related components of the U.S. government, the state will not hesitate to strike back. Kelly, a three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, was sentenced to three months in federal prison on Jan. 26, 2004 for trespassing on the property of the Ft. Benning military base in Columbus, Ga., in November 2003 as a form of protest against the School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

“Antiwar and peace activists are the worst criminals of all according to the Bushites,” commentator Kurt Nimmo wrote this week in reaction to Kelly’s prison sentence. Nimmo continued:

"Crime pays if you’re a right-wing nutter in the Bush administration. Elliott Abrams pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of lying to Congress under oath, in order to avoid felony charges. … Crime obviously pays because Abrams was appointed to the National Security Council by Bush. ... But don’t engage in civil disobedience against the international terrorist organization the School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (SOA/WHISC) in Georgia or you will get sentenced to federal prison."

— Mark Hand

Kathy Kelly Biography

Voices in the Wilderness

Kathy, 50, of Chicago, IL, helped initiate Voices in 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 invasion, bombardment and occupation. Kelly left Iraq on April 19, 2003.

During the first two weeks of the Gulf War, she was part of a peace encampment on the Iraq-Saudi border called the Gulf Peace Team. Following evacuation to Amman, Jordan, (February 4, 1991), team members stayed in the region for the next six months to help coordinate medical relief convoys and study teams.

In 1988 she was sentenced to one year in prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites. Kelly served nine months of the sentence in Lexington KY maximum security prison.

Kelly has taught in Chicago area community colleges and high schools since 1974. From 1980 - 1986 she taught at St. Ignatius College Prep (Chicago, IL ) She is active with the Catholic Worker movement and, as a pacifist and war tax refuser, has refused payment of all Federal income tax for 23 years.

Kelly helped organize and participated in nonviolent direct action teams in Haiti (summer of 1994), Bosnia (August, 1993, December, 1992) and Iraq (Gulf Peace Team, 1991). In April of 2002, she was among the first internationals to visit the Jenin camp in the Occupied West Bank. She presently helps coordinate the Voices in the Wilderness campaign.

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