Program: Saturday, June 1, 2024

12:15 PM EDT 

Kelly Lundeen
Monticello, Minnesota  Nuclear Waste in Water

Kelly Lundeen (she/her) is a mother of three and staff member at Nukewatch since 2015. She is of Swedish and Bohemian descent, living on Wisconsin land stolen from the Anishinaabe Ojibwe. She became radicalized through her work with the Catholic Worker and Earth First movements. Later she did international accompaniment for three years during the war in Colombia. She has been arrested seven times for direct actions to advance justice and peace for humans and Earth.

Program Summary
Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are two sides of the same coin. The lies about nuclear power have graduated from “atoms for peace” and “too cheap to meter” to the modern-day “clean and carbon-free.” Old reactors are getting license renewals rubber stamped to run until the ripe old age of 80 years by the federal government and bailed out to the tune of tens of billions of dollars by taxpayers. The U.S. and international partners recently committed to tripling nuclear energy production by 2050. Uranium mining in the U.S. is being revived. What is the cost to humanity, the Water, and Earth?

12:45 PM EDT 
War on the Planet: An Exploration of the Local, National, and Worldwide Connections Between Imperialism, Militarism, Environmental Destruction, and Climate Chaos
 

Sue Ann Martinson

Sue Ann Martinson is a member of Women Against Military Madness. She is co-chair of WAMM's End Military Madness Against the Earth Committee and an associate member of Veterans for Peace, Chapter 27, Minneapolis. Sue Ann is the editor of Rise Up Times, Media for Justice and Peace, which publishes thoughtful articles about current issues that bypass the sensationalism and use of violence that characterizes the mainstream corporate media. Established in 2010, and covering varied issues with a focus on media and militarism, RiseUpTimes.org encourages thoughtful discussion of issues as a basis for the voices of the people to be heard.

Program Summary
The twin specters of imperialistic militarism and neo-colonialism haunt the earth. Together these forces are warring on planet earth, some in hot wars, others in the forms of environmental and climate chaos, and nowhere are they now more obvious than in Palestine with Israel’s genocidal attacks. What is often ignored is how the military, who we are told protects us, is endangering the people and the planet. All are driven by an economy that promotes the opposite of the security people deserve. Instead inequality of rights and blocking of fulfillment of ordinary needs that bring security to ordinary people is flagrant, beginning with nature’s commons. The earth, the air, and the water are being destroyed in the imperial quest for empire that promotes war, death and destruction instead of the collaboration and cooperation necessary for a secure planet and for the people who live on that planet. Local, national and international destruction continues to occur as people worldwide increasingly challenge the gatekeepers and those who profit from others suffering. The military, the policemen of the world, are glorified and military spending, especially by the U.S in the trillions, is deemed necessary as in the quest for hegemonic empire it wreaks havoc in hot wars with destruction of land and homes and buildings, by continued use of fossil fuels in obtaining and using them, and by water pollution. These destructive forces take many forms and are being challenged in many ways at many levels by individuals and groups seeking a just economy and a just and safe world.  

Chris Knopf

Chris Knopf has had a lifelong passion for environmental conservation, stemming from his childhood experiences of playing in lakes and streams and fishing.  This interest led to a legal career where he practiced environmental law.  His background in law combined with his love for the environment has shaped his career dedicated to preserving natural resources and advocating for conservation efforts.  He has run the state office of a national, nonprofit land conservation organization and worked on Native American land conservation projects before becoming Executive Director of the Friends in 2017. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Chris is a graduate of Georgetown University and the University of Virginia School of Law.
 

Lee Vue

Lee Vue brings a thoughtful, creative and data-driven lens to her professional work in communications. Her career spans multiple industries, including startups, academia, consulting agencies, small businesses and nonprofit organizations. She spent her formative teenage years on wilderness trips in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Quetico and Canadian tundra. These experiences inspired her deep love for the environment and rivers, and nurtured her confidence. Despite not knowing how to swim, she’s an avid paddler and has paddled thousands of miles including the Yukon River, Quetico Provincial Park, St. Croix River, Minnesota River, Kazan River, Kunwak River, and the entire Mississippi River and Illinois River.

As a board member of Camp Menogyn, Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness and Ann Bancroft Foundation, she’s dedicated to uplifting the voices of communities of color to the climate, philanthropy and social justice movements. Even though she calls Minnesota home, she was born and raised in Fresno, California where she spent her childhood in fields and farmlands among undocumented and immigrant communities. These experiences shaped her mission-driven mentality and the work she does now in communications, outdoors and community engagement.
 

1:15 PM EDT 
DISARM Committee
History of Conflicts Over Water and Strategies to Avoid Conflict for the Future

The Disarm committee will show a powerful 15 minute video on conflicts and wars related to water. It is by expert, Peter Gleick, from the Pacific Institute think tank. His presentation provides some strategies to reduce the risks of conflicts in the future and we will have a guided discussion after the video on what WILPF members could be doing about current conflicts over water. The discussion will be led by DISARM members Cherrill Spencer and Eileen Kurkoski.

Cherrill Spencer

Cherrill Spencer is a retired experimental physicist who was born and educated in England and has lived in Palo Alto, California since 1974. She joined WILPF in 2012 to work against war and for disarmament. She is a member of the Peninsula/Palo Alto, California, branch of WILPF through which she works on CEDAW, nuclear disarmament and the Poor People’s Campaign. Spencer’s major projects for WILPF have been: an extensive exhibit celebrating WILPF’s centenary; a detailed report on treaties; coordinating the 2020 Solidarity Season; co-creating the online 1945 timeline; coordinating the 2021 Call for Peace campaign and co-chairing the DISARM/End Wars Issue Committee since mid-2020. Spencer has been an official delegate for WILPF to United Nations conferences on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Dr. Peter Gleick

Dr. Peter Gleick is a leading scientist, innovator, and communicator on water and climate issues. He co-founded the Pacific Institute in Oakland,California in 1987, one of the most innovative, independent non-governmental research centers, creating and advancing solutions to the world’s most pressing water challenges.Dr. Gleick is a scientist trained at the intersection of hydrology, climatology, and policy. His work has redefined water from the realm of engineers to the world of social justice, sustainability, human rights, and integrated thinking.  He authored many books including “The Three Ages of Water Prehistoric Past, Imperiled Present, and a Hope for the Future” on which this presentation is based.
 

2:30 PM EDT 
Water is Life! Especially During Wartime

Barb Taft, Moderator

Barb Taft is former co-chair of our WILPF Middle East Committee (now called MEPJAC).  She visited the Middle East 10 times from 1967 to 2009, and co-authored our Hamas booklet.  More recently, she wrote an article for Disarmament Times.  She has served on the WILPF national board, as well as the board of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America (BPFNA) and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). In Arizona, she is convenor of the Greater Phoenix branch of WILPF and owner of a private school, The Accent Expert.
 

Mazin Qumsiyeh   

Mazin Qumsiyeh was born in 1957 in Beit Sahour (known in English as Shepherds Field).  He is a Palestinian scientist and author. Currently, he serves as founder and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History (PMNH) and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS) at Bethlehem University, where he also teaches. He served on the faculties of the University of Tennessee (1989–1993), Duke University (1993–1999), and Yale University (1999–2005).  Dr. Qumsiyeh now researches and teaches at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities since returning to Palestine in 2008. He joined other professors to introduce the first Biotechnology Masters program in the region. Over the course of his career he has published well over 150 scientific papers on topics ranging from cultural heritage to biodiversity, as well as several books. He also serves on the board of a number of Palestinian youth and service organizations.

Rabbi Arik Ascherman  

Rabbi Arik Ascherman is an American-born Israeli Reform Rabbi, and Executive Director of the Israeli human rights organization Torat Tzedek—Torah of Justice. For 21 years, starting in 1995, he served as Co-Director (1995-1998), Executive Director (1998-2010), Director of Special Projects (2010-2012) and President and Senior Rabbi (2012-2017) for Rabbis for Human Rights, an Israeli organization.  He is also affiliated with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and has been attacked by both the Israeli military police and by settlers, as well as arrested for his nonviolent activism.  He is currently working to protect sheep-herders from being forced out of their grazing areas and their occupations.

3:30 PM EDT

Rachel Betesh, Poet

Rachel Betesh is a registered nurse and poet - as well as a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and Jewish Mothers Against War Crimes. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, Poetry Northwest, Wildness, and Bennington Review.

3:45 PM EDT
Cuba, State Sponsor of Peace

Program Summary
In  2014, Cuba hosted and led the 33 nations of the Community of Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC) in reaffirming the world’s first nuclear-free zone and again declaring Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.  The US has over 70 military bases in the region and illegally occupies Cuban territory as a naval base and torture prison.  Yet, the Trump administration placed Cuba on the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism and the Biden administration has refused to remove Cuba from the list.  This has harshened the economic impact of US foreign policy.  Meanwhile, Cuba continues to implement advancements in gender rights, expansion of the definition of families and protections of children’s rights.  What can we learn from Cuba and their efforts to build a zone of peace and a strong inclusive democracy, and what can we do today to change US foreign policy towards Cuba?

Leni Villagomez Reeves, M.D

Leni Villagomez Reeves, M.D. is a former United Farmworkers volunteer who went to school, then did pediatric emergency medicine for many years in the Central Valley of California. She is active in WILPF, both in the Fresno Branch and nationally, co-chairing the Cuba and the Bolivarian Alliance Committee. She is also involved with other Cuba solidarity actions and spends significant time in  Cuba, where she has close ties.

Cindy Domingo

Cindy Domingo, a long-time social activist, has used her skills as a writer, speaker, organizer, and community bridge builder to create fundamental change and to build international solidarity between her communities and working people around the world. Currently, Cindy is Co-chair of WILPF's Cuba and the Bolivarian Alliance Issues Committee and Chair of US Women and Cuba Collaboration.  Over the past 17 months, she has been in the leadership of the International US-Cuba Normalization Conference Coalition and the Saving Lives Campaign.  She has been a member of WILPF since the 1980s and served on the National Board and various WILPF committees.

4:45 PM EDT
Earth Democracy
The True Cost of PFAS Contamination/ Saving Gaza Begins With Its Water
 

Program Summary
While providing some basic information about PFAS, Marguerite's presentation will focus on the true personal and economic costs of PFAS to our health and our environment, as well as the difficulties of passing legislation to curb or ban PFAS. PFAS chemicals are cheap to buy, but enormously expensive to clean up. The U.S. chemical industry spent over $110 million during the last two elections, sending out lobbyists to kill or gut dozens of pieces of PFAS legislation; they were successful. Every day of delay in legislation leads to more PFAS contamination that irreversibly accumulates in the environment, harming our health and the health of future generations. We need to treat the PFAS pollution crisis as the emergency that it is, turning off the PFAS tap now and forever. 
 

Marguerite Adelman

Marguerite Adelman, a Vermont resident, is a retired non-profit administrator (education, social services, and government).  Marguerite served on the WILPF US Development Committee and attended the 100th Anniversary Conference of WILPF at the Hague in 2015 and the UN Commission on the Status of Women Conference in NYC in March 2018.  As an experienced grant writer and past Communications Director for the Cook Department of Public Health (Illinois), she became interested in per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in 2019. For the past 5 years, she has served as the Coordinator for the Vermont PFAS/Military Poisons Coalition. Marguerite has given presentations on PFAS to citizen groups, WILPF branches across the U.S., and WILPF International's Earth Democracy Committee. The VT Coalition includes diverse groups (peace, social justice, economic justice, religious, and environmental) that collaborate to provide education on "forever chemicals" and advocate for legislation to ban PFAS forever.

Pat Elder, Military Poisons

Elder and his associates with Military Poisons have tested surface waters flowing from 50 U.S. military bases worldwide and have reported dangerous levels of the toxins in the rivers. Pat has tested seawater, crabs, oysters, and fish and found levels of the cancer-causing compounds that are many times greater than the levels allowed in drinking water,  The presentation will examine various ways the military uses PFAS on its bases around the world. It will look at measures that must be taken by municipal and state authorities to protect human health from the perpetual scourge of these chemicals. 

Finally, this segment will look at the military’s reckless use of Agent Orange and comparable herbicides at bases in the US where many thousands of veterans and their dependents suffer from diseases attributed to Agent Orange exposure.  See this reporting in USA Today Elder is known for his work on per-and poly fluoroalkyl substances, (PFAS). His articles may be found on www.militarypoisons.org  Since 2019, Pat has been focused on the understudied role of PFAS exposure from food. He believes there is too much emphasis on PFAS levels in drinking water, with too limited a focus on PFAS exposure from food, particularly seafood. Recently, Elder has been documenting Agent Orange contamination at military installations like Fort Ord, California while the VA and the DOD refuse to admit they used the carcinogens and continue to deny compensation to thousands.

Patricia Hynes, Saving Gaza Begins With Its Water

Pat Hynes is a retired environmental engineer and professor of environmental health from Boston University School of Public Health, where she c0-directed community-based environmental justice projects in Boston Public Housing and diverse, low-income neighborhoods in Boston. For her work, she has received many regional and national awards. She works, writes and speaks on peace, social justice, women’s equality and environmental justice issues and directed the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice in western Massachusetts from 2010-2021 and currently serves as a board member. The impact of US militarism on countries and people, especially women, across the world, is a major focus of her writing, speaking and activism. She is a member-at-large of the Women’s International League for Peace and Justice and has partnered with WILPF Sierra Leone and WILPF Cameroon since the WILPF 2018 Congress in Ghana.

5:45 PM  EDT
Bottled or Tap Water?

Ellen Kurkoski

Eileen Kurkoski is a co-chair of her Boston WILPF branch, a former WILPF board member, and an active member of WILPF issue and administrative committees.  She has been a long time activist and a co-chair in her church Social Action committee.

Program summary 
As a member of the Congress committee I already had a big concern about plastic water bottle pollution, and began wondering about the quality of the water being sold.  What I learned in my research surprised me and may surprise others.  I hope my presentation increases your thirst for more information about our drinking water and stimulates you to action.
 

6:15 PM  EDT
Water Scarcity and the Future

Moses West

Moses West is a retired Army officer. He is currently the CEO and Founder of AWG Contracting, and his Non-profit 501c3 The Moses West Foundation. He works closely with the U.S. Military, universities, and municipalities to mitigate the prolonged effects of drought, water contamination issues and food shortages by advancing the technology of Atmospheric Water Generators. He has worked endlessly over the past 10 years to manufacture the most energy efficient high-volume water producing Atmospheric Water Generator units available for Military use, disaster recovery, and normal everyday usage for a myriad of other solutions where water has become difficult to obtain. He has proven that the Atmosphere is an endless, inexhaustible source of pure water that is limitless in its ability to provide for a growing global population. This is necessary source of water for many critical areas of society today and well into the future. He has developed mass production water facilities as well as small units for emergency use. He has made it his mission to prove that the atmosphere is a limitless source of water that will help provide for society well into the future. He has been the first to successfully the largest AWG unit for the first in a any major water crisis event. Moses deployed the technology in Puerto Rico on the Island of Vieques to supply all the island with potable water, He has deployed one AWG unit to Flint Michigan and Jackson Mississippi. These missions are recorded as the first time that any large Atmospheric Water Generator has been deployed in recovery efforts from a natural disaster or water contamination issues within the United States.

7:00 PM  EDT
Navigating Toward Peace: Overcoming the Militarization and Climate Crisis of our Oceans with Ann Wright on RIMPAC

Program Summary
Tamara will talk about the crisis in the oceans from militarism and climate change. Through, the expansion of NATO, the new Indo-Pacific Strategy and the formation of AUKUS, the oceans are increasingly becoming militarized spaces for warmaking, though they are dangerously warming and acidifying. However, this militarization of the oceans is ignored at the United Nations climate and oceans conferences and reports. Tamara will explain some of the adverse environmental and social stressors to the marine environment of regular naval war exercises like the US-led RIMPAC in the Pacific, NATO’s BALTOPS Exercise in the Baltic Sea, NATO's "Cold Response" Exercise in the Arctic, Exercise Talisman Sabre in Australian waters among others. She will discuss how activists and anti-war groups are coming together to navigate toward peace and protection of the oceans. Ann Wright will speak on issues surrounding the RIMPAC movement. 

Tamara Larincz

Tamara Lorincz is a PhD candidate in Global Governance at the Balsillie School for International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University. She has a Masters in International Politics & Security Studies from the University of Bradford and a Law degree and MBA specializing in environmental law and management from Dalhousie University. Her research is on the climate and environmental impacts of the military. She’s a member of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-Canada. Tamara is also on the advisory committee of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, and the No to War, No to NATO Network. She’s a long-time environmentalist, feminist and peace activist and a mother with two teenage boys.

Ann Wright

Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S Army and retired as a Colonel.  She was also a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in U.S. Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia.  She resigned from the U.S. government in March 2003 in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq. As an anti-war activist, she has been on delegations to Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, North Korea, South Korea and Cuba.  She is the co-author of "Dissent: Voices of Conscience." Ann lives in Honolulu, Hawaii and has been active in the campaigns Shut Down Red Hill, the US military fuel contamination of the drinking water  aquifer of Oahu and Cancel RIMPAC, the largest military naval war exercises on the planet held off the islands of Hawaii.
 

8:00 PM EDT

Helen Jaccard
The Golden Rule and Ending the Whole Nuclear Era
Veterans For Peace Golden Rule Project Manager, Jane Addams branch, member of WILPF Disarm/End Wars Issues Committee

Helen Jaccard is a non-veteran member of Veterans For Peace and a member of the WILPF Disarm/End Wars Issues Committee.  She co-founded the Veterans For Peace Nuclear Abolition Working Group and manages the Golden Rule Project.  She is an author and public speaker and travels internationally, most recently a second trip to Guatemala to investigate the cultural and environmental harm caused by US and Canadian mining.

Program Summary
Veterans For Peace's anti-nuclear sailboat, the Golden Rule, "Sails for a Nuclear-Free World and a Peaceful, Sustainable Future".  

Learn about:

• The history of the boat, which in 1958 helped to stop nuclear weapons tests.  
• Voyages and educational campaign since 2015, when the rebuilt boat sailed again into the Pacific Ocean.  
• Nuclear issues and solutions -
• The whole contaminating nuclear chain
  • Hope through taking action.  Support Eleanor Holmes Norton’s bill to eliminate nuclear weapons and move the money to support non-carbon, non-nuclear energy and human needs
• Actions can be at the local, state and federal level through interaction with politicians, political parties and organizations , groups of faith, and Indigenous groups including Marshall Islands Communities. 
  • Protest against weapons manufacturers.
  • Push pension funds, cities to Divest from weapons companies and banks that support them.
  • Educate the community through presentations, letters to the editor, resolutions in support of nuclear disarmament

9:00 PM EDT

George Friday
Virtual After Party

George Friday grew up in a rural low-income community in North Carolina in the 60s. She holds degrees in Political Science, Economics, and African American Studies from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, from which she graduated in 1982.

George was the fundraiser for SANE (then SANE/FREEZE, now National Peace Action) in the latter half of the 1980s and Development Director, then Assistant Director of the Piedmont Peace Project in North Carolina in the first half of the 1990s. She directed a National Office of Juvenile Justice project from 2000-2004.  George served as co-chair of UFPJ from 2005 to 2008.

They began working as National Field Organizer for the Bill of Rights Defense Committee/Defending Dissent Foundation in 2008. George was one of the founding members of Move to Amend in 2009. Since 2017, George has been staff to NC Peace Action and UFPJ