Sunday, November 28
Mortar rounds falling into the Green Zone woke some team members at 6:45am. The view from the rooftop indicated that the mortars did little damage.

Team members Tom Fox, Cliff Kindy, and Maxine Nash met with the head of public relations of Iraq’s Communist Party (CP). Founded in 1934, and often suppressed, it is the oldest political party in Iraq. The CP opposes the U.S. invasion and occupation because they feel that Saddam’s regime could have been overcome with nonviolent opposition. They recognize the concerns but oppose the violence of the insurgency because the killing of innocent civilians cannot be justified.

(See “Party Politics” by Cliff Kindy, released on Dec 2, 2004, for more information).

Monday, November 29
An Iraqi human rights organization asked the team for contacts to whom they can refer medical cases of children injured by the U.S. occupation. The team agreed to facilitate such contacts.

A mother ponders her son’s future and imagines what would happen if all members of her highly trusted profession pushed together for peace

By Geraldine Gorman.
Geraldine Gorman is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health, Mental Health and Administrative Nursing at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Linda’s eyes rouse me from my lethargy. On the early mornings when our swimming times intersect, their pale blue clarity accentuates my own confusion, rankles the remnants of my conscience.

Her locker is 2 feet from mine. We face each other, dry ourselves with white towels, and try to bridge the chasm the separates us. Her son is in Iraq; my son is a senior in high school, momentarily shielded from the mayhem that consumes her family’s life.

Two middle-aged mothers from Rogers Park, we swim our laps in the same university pool, know many of the same faculty members and neighborhood people, shop at the same stores, and share the same listservs and cultural reference points, with some variations.

UIC College of Nursing Vigil for Peace
and Witness Against War-December 10, 2004

Contact: Gerry Gorman, R.N. , Ph.D.
December 8, 2004
312-413-9013
Cell: 847-845-4597

Chicago-University of Illinois at Chicago nurses and health care professionals have invited Chicagoans to join them in a “Vigil for Peace, Witness Against War” in front of the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center at 820 South Damen Avenue from 4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. on December 10, 2004. Their invitation states: “If you believe war is a public health emergency, that soldiers and veterans need our support and that peaceful protest is essential, please join the vigil.” Planners announced their intent to hold regular Friday evening vigils, holding candles and banners in front of medical centers, and to encourage health care professionals throughout the Chicagoland area to develop similar public action.

In an op-ed entitled “A nurse wonders: What if we united to oppose war?” published on Sunday, November 7, 2004, in the Chicago Tribune, UIC Nursing School professor Dr. Gerry Gorman pondered her own son’s future and imagined what would happen if all members of her highly trained profession pushed together for peace. After receiving numerous responses to the essay, she and several colleagues decided to welcome sympathizers to a peaceful protest against U.S. warmaking. “We are mandated to teach our students a primer on ‘bio-preparedness,’” Gorman wrote. “But, we shy away from the disastrous health consequences of depleted uranium and assault weapons…What if we said we will not practice our healing art so that our children can be bandaged and sent back to battle to be killed or to kill the children of other mothers on the other side of the world.”

For more information, call the contact numbers listed above.

by Kathy Kelly

In the summer of 1994, I was part of a four-person Christian Peacemaker Team dedicated to filing reports on human rights conditions in Jeremie, located in the southern finger of Haiti. When I arrived, I spent one day in Port au Prince, waiting to travel by ferry to the tiny coastal town of St. Helene. That day, eager to be Helpful Hannah, I joined some young girls to haul Hinckley Schmidt size water containers, destined for a neighborhood center in Port au Prince’s appalling Cite Soleil, across a ravine. My arms were trembling almost immediately. When we reached the cement ledge where the plastic water containers were lined up for vehicle transport, I dropped mine down with an exhausted hurrah and then watched in horror as it split. The girls flew into action trying to save some of the precious water. “Si ou cache verite, ou enterre dlo” – the Haitian proverb says that to hide the truth is like trying to bury water. The truth was gushing out. Throughout that summer I watched women carry water, on their heads, walking miles uphill. One day my friend Madame Ti Pa nearly fainted from the ordeal.

By Dahr Jamail

Two weeks ago someone was allowed into Fallujah by the military to help bury bodies. They were allowed to take photographs of 75 bodies, in order to show pictures to relatives so that they might be identified before they were buried.

These pictures are from a book of photos. They are being circulated publicly around small villages near Fallujah where many refugees are staying.

The man who took them was only allowed to take photos and bury bodies in one small area of Fallujah. He was not allowed to visit anywhere else. Keep in mind there are at least 1,925 other bodies that were not allowed to be seen.

Warning: The following photos are extremely graphic