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Kathy Kelly, 52, 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 $20,000, 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 two 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 bombardment and invasion. Kelly left Iraq on April 19, 2003 and has returned there twice, for 17 day visits with team members who’ve remained in Baghdad. She most recently traveled to Iraq from December 21-2003 — January 8, 2004.
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 25 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.
In the spring of 2004, she served three months at Pekin federal prison for crossing the line as part of an ongoing effort to close an army military combat training school at Fort Benning, GA.
She currently helps coordinate the Voices in the Wilderness campaign. Other Lands Have Dreams: from Baghdad to Pekin Prison (2005) by Kathy Kelly is available through Counterpunch or Voices in the Wilderness.
Education:
- B.A. Loyola University at Chicago 1974
- Masters in Religious Education, Chicago Theological Seminary; part of a consortium of schools which included the Jesuit School of Theology at Chicago where Kelly took courses each quarter
Publications:
- Other Lands Have Dreams: from Baghdad to Pekin prison (Counterpunch Press, 2005)
Publications, Editor and Contributor:
- War and Peace in the Gulf (Cornerstone Press, 2001)
Publications, Contributor:
- Iraq Under Siege (Seven Seas Press, 2000)
- Live from Palestine (Edited by Nancy Stohlman and Laurieann Aladin, 2003)
Articles, essays and interviews printed in:
America, The National Catholic Reporter, Columbia Journal of International Affairs, The Link, Fellowship of Reconciliation Magazine, Lapis Magazine, The Jordan Times, The Washington Report on the Middle East, The Capitol Times, MERIP Magazine, Satya Magazine, Hope Magazine, Common Dreams website, Counterpunch Website, Electroniciraq.net website, Voices In The Wilderness website, and Antiwar.Com website
Awards:
A Jesuit since 1970 and a passionate advocate for peace in the Middle East, Harak has traveled to Iraq three times with Voices in the Wilderness where he openly violated UN sanctions to bring medicine and toys to Iraqi hospitals. In Iraq, he met with local religious leaders, leaders of human rights organizations and representatives of UN relief operations. In 1998, Harak resigned his full professorship at Fairfield University to work full time against the sanctions with Voices in the Wilderness, delivering over 1500 presentations on Iraq for TV, radio and live presentations in the US and abroad. A distinguished scholar in his field, Harak has published four books, most recently Nonviolence for the Third Millennium: Its Legacy and Its Future, and is currently writing Vicious Passions, a study of addiction and violence. He currently resides in New York City.
Since 1998, Jeff has co-coordinated Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end the economic sanctions against Iraq. He has spoken to community and student groups across the United States and has led seven delegations to Iraq, including a delegation of religious leaders in 2000 and a delegation of five congressional aides in 1999. Also in 1999, he helped organize and lead a peace walk from the Pentagon to the United Nations, petitioning for an end to sanctions, and toured Western Europe, bringing the anti-sanctions message to activists and government officials in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and France.
As a volunteer for the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty, he helped organize several visits to death row where he met with prisoners and advocated for their rights.
In 2001, Jeff worked with teachers at Prologue High School in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood and Mundelein High School in Mundelein, IL to develop and teach a five-week high school class on the criminal justice system in the United States.
During Israel�s April, 2002 invasion of the West Bank, Jeff joined nonviolent activists coordinated by the International Solidarity Movement to visit cities under military closure and curfew. He and two companions were among the first internationals to witness the devastation in the Jenin Camp.
Jeff’s writings on Iraq, the Middle East, the death penalty, U.S. foreign policy, and food politics have been published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Punk Planet, National Catholic Reporter, The International Socialist Review, The Indianapolis Star, and the Utne Reader.
Angela Garcia is a queer, Latina, organizer and student who focuses her work and studies on race and militarism. She relocated from Texas in 2002 and has worked in the Chicago area as a peace network community organizer, against gentrification, has created large scale puppets for street theater performances and served on several outreach committees to turn out activist for anti-war rallies. Angela is a member of Chicago Incite! Women of Color Against Violence and a newly formed collective of anti-authoritarian people of color. She is currently working on counter recruitment education and is a coordinating member of Voices in the Wilderness.
John, 30, grew up on a farm in rural Iowa and has worked as a teacher, prison chaplain, campus minister and a coordinating member of Voices in the Wilderness. He is living on the South Side of Chicago with his spouse, Megan, and he is currently teaching 8th grade. John is interested in connecting with other radical teachers in the Midwest! Since his travel to Iraq in August of 2003, where he developed friendships with ordinary Iraqis and did grassroots advocacy for human rights, John has spoken at rallies, conferences and retreats to convey in some small way the experiences of ordinary Iraqis today under US military and economic occupation. As a peace educator, John believes in the power of nonviolence as a way of life and as a tactic for promoting social justice in local communities and in the world.
