NEWS

By Helen Jaccard, WILPF Disarm/End Wars Issue Committee

Join WILPF and other peace groups March 4-6 to protest drone warfare at Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas.  This convergence, organized by Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Nevada Desert Experience, Veterans for Peace, Voices for Creative Non-Violence and CODEPINK, is a mass mobilization to stop drone wars and directly confront US militarism.  We are expecting hundreds of people at this non-violent direct action.

Since 2005, drone operators at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada have completed thousands of assassinations of “suspected terrorists” thousands of miles away from the comfort of their computers north of Las Vegas.  Despite this claim, they have in fact killed thousands of civilians–– including more than 200 children in Pakistan alone and are terrorizing communities in several countries.  Recent independent research indicates that the identity of only one out of 28 victims of U.S. drone strikes is known beforehand. Though officials deny it, the majority of those killed by drones are civilians.

This is hurting the United States' standing in the international community –– take it from Ret. Colonel Ann Wright: 

“As a former US diplomat, I am very sensitive to the perceptions of the international community toward US foreign policies. The US.assassin drone campaign is a source of great anti-American sentiment around the world, not just in the Middle East. The moral and ethical aspects of illegal extrajudicial executions should be weighing heavily on those men and women in our government who make the decisions to kill and those who implement those decisions.”

This ends in 2015. Save the date to shut down killer drone operations and demand an end to Obama’s covert wars around the world. Get inspired by photos and a video  of previous Creech protests! To get involved, please contact Helen Jaccard at helen.jaccard@gmail.com or (206) 992-6364.

WILPF has been involved with many anti-drone projects.  MacGregor Eddy (Monterey County Branch) and others from the San Francisco Bay Area branches have been attending monthly vigils and civil disobedience actions at Beale AFB for years.  WILPF organized drone death walks  and participated in a petition   to Ban Weaponized Drones from the World.  WILPF member Leah Bolger is a key Drones Quilt Project quilter and coordinator.  She displayed the quilts at the 2014 Triennial Convention in Detroit, and the quilt display will be at the Shut Down Creech event.  Marge Van Cleef is also available to facilitate workshops and help with other anti-drone resources.

PS: If you are considering attending #ShutDownCreech  please also consider heading to Los Vegas to support the Boycott RE/MAX: No Open House on Stolen Land Campaign, March 2 – 3. Email NoOpenHouse@codepink.org for more info.

Helen Jaccard, WILPF Creech Event liaison and Shut Down Creech steering committee member
Photo: Shut Down Creech! national mobilization
 

By Earth Democracy Issue Committee  

Earth Democracy’s Hattie Nestel posts her interview videos of people telling how a gas pipeline would devastate their property and community, and Mary HH joins St. Louis Branch members to rally at Monsanto’s annual shareholder meeting to tell her family’s story of serious health impacts from toxic chemicals.

The power of story-telling is that it connects the personal with community from the local to the global. And, it is the power of story-telling that can move our elected representatives, at all levels of government, to represent real people and not corporations. 

Hattie Nestel has produced some amazing videos. Here’s her inspiring interview with 12-year-old Alice and more new videos are here.

Here Hattie tells her own story of becoming a videographer.  “In late 2013, after the Kinder-Morgan gas pipeline across Massachusetts, www.nofrackgasinmass.org  was announced, almost immediately across Massachusetts, local groups formed to oppose it and organizers sponsored a walk across along the pipeline route to the Statehouse in Boston in July 2014. Now diverse groups from New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire have formed a multi-state alliance to oppose this 350 miles pipeline.  

During that walk, I heard stories from homeowners about the devastating impact the pipeline would have on their properties. Most of them felt they would have to relocate, since they feared the danger of fracked gas coming through a 36-inch pipe that could affect their wells, soil and health.

I decided these landowners’ stories must be heard throughout the state as the needed easements would cross over 1500 private properties and so I took the Local Community Access Television’s course to learn how to use a video camera. I wanted to film these interviews and post them to Community Access Stations across the state and to YouTube.

I produced the interviews to show not only the impact on property owners, but the effects the pipeline would have the beautiful pristine and rural areas of the state as many state forests would be cut down and many waterways rerouted.

I have completed 28 interviews including with our Congressional Representative Jim McGovern and two state representatives, and I have interviews coming up with several state senators. I have also interviewed the executive directors of the Mount Grace Conservation Land Trust and the Nashoba Land Trust talking about the important restriction on that conservation land that must not be violated.  

Presently, more than 40 towns have passed referendums prohibiting the pipeline from coming through their towns. And, importantly, most state officials with people in their districts who oppose the pipeline have spoken out in opposition, as have US Senators Warren and Markey, and US representatives. To learn more about taking a course at your community TV station and how to get started on interviews, contact Hattie at Hattieshalom [at] Verizon.net

Photo: Hattie Nestel by Marcia Gagliardi.

By Advancing Human Rights Issues Committee (Barbara L Nielsen, chair)

It is with great sorrow that we inform you of the death of Lucinda Tate, on January 17, and with bittersweet hope for the future that we announce plans for the establishment of the Lucinda L. Tate Human Rights Education Fund of the [WILPF US] Advancing Human Rights issues committee (AHR), as a memorial tribute fund in honor of Lucinda, whose passing in Portland, Oregon, was a shock of immense loss and sadness to all of us who knew her and her work. Services will be held Saturday, February 28, 2015, at 2 p.m. in her parish of St. Andrew Catholic Church, 806 Northeast Alberta Street, Portland, Oregon.

Lucinda Lilly Tate, the embodiment of compassion, civility and courage, was chair and later co-chair of the national AHR Issues Committee and locally served as convener of our Portland, Oregon Branch. Lucinda made substantive contributions spanning many decades of her time and energy to Portland-based activities that advanced peace, social and economic justice for all and honored her African-American, Cherokee, Cree and Blackfoot heritages in all of her work. A native Oregonian, she grew up in Montana, earned a bachelor’s degree in education and a teaching certificate from Montana State University in Billings, then earned an Oregon teaching certificate at Portland State University and spent two years as a classroom teacher.

Lucinda Tate worked tirelessly for more than 40 years advocating for Oregon’s poor and underrepresented communities in remunerative as well as volunteer capacities. A long-time board member of the Oregon Food Bank, she also worked for and served in leadership positions in organizations such as the African American Catholic Community of Oregon, the Janus Youth Program, the Metropolitan Alliance for the Common Good and the Portland Rainbow Coalition. She held formal positions in the District of Columbia for the US Department of Labor, and back in Oregon at the Mount Hood and Portland Community Colleges and the City of Portland, and was active in Service Employees International Union Local 88, as shop steward. Serving on the board of the Oregon State Education Association, she had been the first Black woman elected as district president, representing more than 1,500 state employees. She retired from her active and varied working career after 10 years of service working as the community outreach coordinator and community center director at Portland’s St. Andrew Catholic Church.

As co-chair of the AHR issues committee, Lucinda Tate worked collaboratively to establish its Human Trafficking subcommittee and to coordinate WILPF’s anti-trafficking work in coalition with the campaign of the United Methodist Women to “Intercept Human Trafficking” around the Super Bowl. She further “acted locally” in Portland, while she brought attention to the global issues of the spectrum of human trafficking that intensify around this iconic event that has become so emblematic of excessive celebratory conspicuous consumption in many forms, and had planned on educational leafleting again in February 2015 at a local sports bar.

At the 2014 WILPF US Triennial Congress in Detroit, she skillfully melded and excellently facilitated a half-dozen members’ disparate presentations into a lively, coherent and well-received panel workshop on Violence Against Women, including human trafficking. At the time of her untimely death, she was eagerly looking forward to participating in the WILPF US Local 2 Global practicum at the United Nations 59th Commission on the Status of Women, working on a Cities for CEDAW project within her branch simultaneously while mentoring a young Portland branch member in these activities. She is sorely missed.

Contact Barbara Nielsen bln.sf.ca@gmail.com for information on plans for the education fund.

Photo: Lucinda Tate on Super Bowl Sunday 2014, in photo she had one of the sports goers take outside a Portland sports tavern showing the game.

A lively guide to activities for celebrating WILPF’s 100th anniversary is now online and ready to put into practice.  Choose from an array of ideas to mark the occasion your community. As the Centennial Coordinator Heather Wellman points out:

Whether you are a branch or an at-large member, there are strong benefits to making this a public event to crow about! 

The visibility will help WILPF in so many ways.  And it can make a big difference in your community too!

Your event could mean new members for existing branches, or increased interest in starting a new branch!

It’s a great way to get young people and folks with an interest in history involved.

And it’s a strong reason to connect with local media!

Click here for suggestions for doing all of that.