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.

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.

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:

Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace Award, 1998

Newberry Library Free Speech Award, 1998

Detroit City Council Testimonial Resolution commending humanitarian efforts, February 1999

Robert O. Cooper Fellowship in Peace and Justice Award, Southern Methodist University March 1999

University of the Incarnate Word Distinguished Speaker Award March 1999

California State Assembly Certificate of Recognition for Founding of Voices in the Wilderness November 1999

Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award, 1999

Consortium on Peace Research and Development Social Courage Award, 1999

Dan Berrigan Award, DePaul University 1999

Office of the Americas Peace and Justice Award November 1999

International Fellowship of Reconciliation Pfeiffer Peace Award, February 2000

Nobel Peace Prize Nominee with Denis Halliday 2000

Arab American Anti Discrimination Committee Humanitarian Award June 2000

Nobel Peace Prize Nominee 2001

Chaldean Iraqi American Association of Michigan Appreciation Award for Dedication in Lifting Sanctions Against Iraq July 2001

Newberry Library “1st place” orator – Bughouse Square Debates August 2001

Life for Relief and Development Humanitarian Services Award September 2001

Global Exchange International Women’s Rights Awardee May 2003

Archbishop Oscar Romero Award, Mercyhurst College March 2003

Nobel Peace prize Nominee, with Voices in the Wilderness 2003

Call to Action Leadership Award, with Voices in the Wilderness 2003

Thomas Merton Center Award, Pittsburgh, PA 2003

Adela Dwyer St. Thomas of Villanova Peace Award, Villanova University, Voices in the Wilderness 2003

William Scarlett Award from The Witness, Voices in the Wilderness 2003

Association of Chicago Priests, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Common Ground Award with Voices in the Wilderness 2004

First Annual Award for Justice on behalf of the Religious Orders Partnership given to Kathy Kelly and Voices in the Wilderness

Cranbrook Peace Foundation Annual Peace Award 2004

Houston Peace and Justice Center National Peacemaker Award

Peace Seeker of the Year 2005, Montana Peace Seekers Network

Doctorate of Theology, honoris causa, from Chicago Theological Seminary, awarded May 14, 2005

Doctorate of Humanities, honoris causa, from Lewis University, awarded May 15, 2005

Ceylon Mooney, co-coordinator of Voices in the Wilderness and the Wheels of Justice Tour, has traveled to Iraq twice in violation of U.S.-led economic sanctions. In December 2001, Mooney spent three weeks in Baghdad and Basra living with ordinary Iraqi families; on his return to the United States he completed his second 40-day fast at the U.S. mission to the United Nations, bringing home a small portion of the deprivations imposed on Iraqi civilians in their everyday lives. In January 2003, Ceylon and his wife, Amy, moved to Chicago to work at the Voices in the Wilderness office full-time. With a renewed and escalated war against Iraq on the horizon, Mooney and other Chicago-area war resisters spent early 2003 repeatedly taking nonviolent direct action at Boeing World Headquarters, home of the world’s largest exporter of war weapons. One of these actions will go before a jury trial in 2004.

Mooney has traveled throughout the United States and Europe speaking out against war and sanctions as a lecturer and member of Pezz, Akasha and Bury the Living, bands tied to human rights campaigns.

Bitta, an Iranian-American, has been involved in activism and social work for years. She has participated in a wide variety of social justice work, ranging from human rights campaigns to tutoring Spanish speaking prisoners with such groups as Amnesty International and the ACLU. For the past two years Bitta has been active with Voices in the Wilderness. Upon completion of a Bachelors degree in Political Science, from DePaul University in Chicago, she helped coordinate the Iraq Peace Team and traveled to Iraq in November and December of this year. In Iraq Bitta was able to tour the country visiting hospitals, schools, water treatment facilities, and meeting with United Nations humanitarian coordinators, assessing both the impact that twelve years of economic sanctions and continued bombing have had on the lives of ordinary Iraqis and what the effect of the pending US war might be. Most importantly, she was able to establish relationships with Iraqi people and get personal accounts of their experiences. Since returning home and while in Iraq Bitta has been an active figure in the media, with appearances on Fox News, CNN, BBC, NPR, Democracy Now, local NBC, ABC, CBS, WGN affiliates, and a variety of newspapers and radios. She also has had extensive speaking engagements, including a speech at the March 15, 2003 march on Washington D.C.