Kathy Kelly’s Anti-war Crusade Has Taken Her To Hot Spots Around The World-from Midwest Missile Silos To Baghdad Bomb Shelters.

By Don Terry
Published October 17, 2004
Chicago Tribune Magazine

If jailbirds were listed in an avian guide, Kathy Kelly would rate a special entry for “Dove.” She has been arrested more than 60 times at home and abroad in her remarkable journey from St. Daniel the Prophet parish on the Southwest Side to the forefront of the American peace movement.

Though nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize, she is not well known beyond the world of anti-war activists and jailers. Writer Studs Terkel, the chronicler of quiet heroes, calls her “The Pilgrim.”

“She has visited more countries, cities and small towns not listed in Baedeker’s guide than anyone I have ever known,” Terkel writes in his latest book of oral history, “Hope Dies Last.” “Her hosts have been the men, women and children whose homes have been under constant fire. Her pilgrimages have one purpose: to reveal the lives of war’s innocent victims.”

Her sometimes lonely path was set a long time ago at St. Paul-Kennedy High School, though she didn’t realize it at the time. She sat in the dark with tears streaming down her cheeks as she watched a film about the Holocaust called “Night and Fog,” Afterward, she felt the stirrings of resolve, as she would tell Terkel many years later. “I never, ever,” she said, “want to be sitting on the sidelines or sitting on my hands in the bleachers and just watch some unspeakable evil happen.”

After humanitarian trip, Sacks was ordered to pay $10,000

Published on Thursday, January 15, 2004
by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

A retired engineer is suing the U.S. government after being fined $10,000 for making a humanitarian trip to take medical supplies to Iraq.

Bertram Sacks, a 61-year-old Seattle resident who has made nine such trips since 1996, filed a 40-page lawsuit in U.S. District Court yesterday, alleging that the federal Office of Foreign Assets Control overstepped its authority, violated the U.S. Constitution and flouted international law when it penalized him for humanitarian missions.

Since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the United States has imposed economic sanctions on that country that have slowed the delivery of food and medicine and had a “devastating humanitarian impact” on civilians there, Sacks’ lawsuit says.

Daily Illini via U-Wire
September 30, 2003, Tuesday
Champaign, Ill.

By Molly Stephey, Daily Illini

With a weathered face and a thick mass of curly hair, Kathy Kelly sings an Arabic song translated from English — one she sang with schoolchildren in Iraq. The three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and member of the Catholic Workers’ Union spoke Monday afternoon at the University of Illinois YMCA. Kelly was part of a peace team in Iraq during the U.S. “shock and awe” campaigns and founded Voices in the Wilderness, an organization dedicated to ending U.S. economic sanctions on Iraq.

“I think Janis Joplin was right when she said ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,’” Kelly said.

Northern Star via U-Wire
September 26, 2003, Friday
Dekalb, Ill.

By Deanna Cabinian, Northern Star

Activist Kathy Kelly, founder of Voices in the Wilderness and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, spoke to a packed house Thursday night at Northern Illinois University. Seats could not accommodate the crowd that came to see Kelly. About 80 people, young and old, attended the event, forcing some to stand against the wall or sit on the floor.

Cele Meyer, a member of the DeKalb (Ill.) Interfaith Network, which co-sponsored the event with the Northern Coalition for Peace and Justice, introduced Kelly, calling her the most wonderful person she knew in the world.

Kelly began her speech by saying, “Much of what I say can be condensed into one sentence: Where you stand determines what you see.”

Agence France Presse
August 28, 2003 Thursday
SECTION: International News
BAGHDAD, Aug 28

Two activists from the “Voices in the Wilderness” group were thrown out of a press conference in Baghdad Thursday by the top US commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez.

The two demonstrators unveiled a poster, which read “The Killing Continues”, as they asked about a family of four Iraqis allegedly killed by US soldiers at a checkpoint in Baghdad August 7. They were immediately escorted out by US soldiers.

Voices in the Wilderness, a US-based group, was active over the last decade in protesting against the UN-enforced trade sanctions on Iraq, which were repealed only in May after the US-led invasion which toppled Saddam Hussein.