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 Kathy Kelly
published in the All Times Union

The first President Bush, at a 1992 energy conference in Rio de Janeiro, declared that the American way of life is nonnegotiable. Twelve years later, led by his son into unending war and unending impoverishment, an unwillingness to change a dangerously wasteful lifestyle has locked the people of the United States into a terrible conundrum.

Enormous talent, creativity and money are poured into military spending, ostensibly to defend us. And yet the luxurious way of life available to the majority of people in the United States is considered morally indefensible by people in lands held hostage by U.S. policies designed to control their resources. Meanwhile, Western culture continues an ongoing war against Mother Earth as we contaminate the water, land and air, ravage the soil and burn fossil fuels.

Johan (photo by Cathy Breen)

By Kathy Kelly

Shortly before sunrise, this morning, a small band of us gathered at a busy Chicago intersection and unfurled vinyl banners bearing enlarged pictures of Iraqi children. One banner called for an end to US warfare in Iraq. On my banner was Johan, smiling wanly, a 14-year-old child who weighed 75 pounds shortly before she died of cancer in the oncology ward of a Baghdad hospital on September 21, 2003. As our banners flapped in the wind, I tried to compose a letter in my head to her teenage brother, Laith, who recently wrote to tell me how much he misses her.

Had Johan lived in a country that wasn’t reeling from 13 years of economic sanctions, she might have survived childhood leukemia. She is one of hundreds of thousands of children who died while economic sanctions and war shattered Iraq’s health care delivery system.

by Kathy Kelly

In the past year, several groups have asked me to facilitate retreats for people who want to further explore nonviolence. At the retreats, I ask volunteers to role-play situations likely to generate discussion about challenges people face when involved in peace activism. One of the most reliably difficult scenarios stages a spouse raising with his or her partner a decision to become a war tax refuser and stop paying federal income tax.

In one such scene, an anguished husband implored his wife to understand his reasons for stopping payment of federal income tax. “How could you do this to our children?” she asked. “And why didn’t you think of this before you became a father?” The husband responded, “Honey, I just want to do something for peace,” to which the wife blurted out, “At Christmas?!” The room filled with laughter. Cut! Point well taken.

Last night, after spending Thanksgiving Day with family, my mother and I groaned over TV news clips that anticipated today’s shopping binge. Many progressives refuse to participate in the orgy of shopping that accompanies the Christmas season. But what about the appropriations for weaponry that are so hard to eliminate from our personal budgets?

by Kathy Kelly

“Two days an’ a wake-up, Ms. Kelly,” sings a prisoner as my out date approaches. In 90 days at Pekin Federal Prison Camp I’ve spun through a revolving door compared with realities experienced by most of the 2.1 million inmates currently housed in US prisons.

A friend sent me an inscription carved over the entrance of a Polish prison. “When you enter here,” it reads, “do not despair. When you leave here, do not rejoice.”

I shared this quote with my co-defendant, Cynthia Brinkman, whom the whole compound calls “My Nun.” (”Where’s my nun?” someone yells. “I need a prayer.” “She’s not your nun,” another argues. “She’s MY nun!”) Cynthia read the inscription, gave me a knowing look, and said, “You’re rejoicing.”

She’s right. I’m ready to leave, and perhaps I’ve had one foot out the door during much of my time here. But I’m also subdued by the realization that by any rational assessment I shouldn’t be the next one out the door � not when many mothers incarcerated with me haven’t seen their children in years. Lupe, for instance.