Author: novices

September 29—October 2, 2006

Stopping Merchants of Death

A Strategic Conference for Grassroots Activists

Conference Site:
University of St. Thomas
Summit Avenue & Cleveland
St. Paul, MN 55105

Concert Site:
College of St. Catherine
The O’Shaughnessy Auditorium
2004 Randolph Street
St. Paul, MN 55105

War Resisters League 339 Lafayette Street New York NY 10012-2725
212-228-0450; Fax: 212-228-6193;
www.warresisters.org ; wrl@warresisters.org

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Schedule of Events

Friday, September 29:
O'Shaughnessy Education Center, UST
6:00 p.m.: Registration for Conference
7:00 p.m.: Video: “Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers” (1 hour)
After Video: Welcome from Marv Davidov & Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer
Creating a time line (Mimi LaValley introduces)
Two parallel charts: History of war profiteering, and History of Resistance
Laying the groundwork: description and analysis of the issues (Deidre Hughes facilitates)
Contribution to time line by Frida Berrigan (Arms Trade Resource Center), MacGregor Eddy and Loring Wirbel (Peace in Space), David Meiran (Uprise Tour)
Saturday, September 30:
O'Shaughnessy Education Center, UST
8:15 – 9:30 am: Registration for Conference
9:45-11:15 am: Welcome from St. Thomas University Representative
Introductions and Panel on Case Studies (Joanne Sheehan facilitates)
Carol Urner- State of Oregon
Brian Payne- Student / Farmworker Alliance
Marv Davidov- Honeywell
11:15 am- 12:15 pm: Time Line
Continue to document history of war profiteering and resistance using appreciative inquiry
12:15- 1:15 pm: Lunch (Interest Group facilitators meet with Organizers)
1:15 – 1:30 pm: Musical Interlude
1:30- 2:45 pm: Mutual Mentorship
Interactive exploration of the basics of building intergenerational coalitions
= 30 minute break =
“Blog” your report to: g.simon.harak@earthlink.net

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Schedule of Events

Saturday, September 30 (Cont.): O'Shaughnessy Education Center, UST
3:15- 5:00 pm: Interest Groups Session I
Youth Organizers Meeting (Wittstruck & Theberge) [Room 204]
Stop CATerpillar (Carr) [Room 203]
People Power and Profiteering (Meiran and Parkin) [Room 206]
Peace in Space (Eddy & Wirbel) [Room 209]
Colombia (Zarate) [Room 302]
Basic strategy questions:
Ω What are the short, intermediate and long term goals of your group? Ω What do you need to reach those goals? Ω How does your group’s work relate to the movement overall? Ω What resources can you provide to others?
“Blog” your report to: g.simon.harak@earthlink.net

Saturday, September 30:
7:00 – 11:00 pm
Murray-Herrick Hall, Room #304
University of St. Thomas

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Schedule of Events

1:30- noon Prepare notes and wall charts for plenary
Noon – 1:00 pm: Lunch (Organizers & Interest Group representatives meet during lunch to plan for final Sunday all- conference network building piece)
1:00 – 1:15 pm: Musical Interlude
1:15 – 2:30 pm: Plenary: Sharing strategic questions, building on time line, bringing insights together.
= 15 Minute Break =
2:45- 3:15 pm: Reflection on Mutual Mentoring
3:15- 5:30pm: FINAL SESSION: WEAVING THE WEB – NEXT STEPS
Goals for this session: a) Common analysis and goals for stopping MoDs Where do we want to be in 5 years? b) Strategies & Tactics Support for local organizing- Watchdog groups, shareholder actions, etc. Immediate next steps- nationally coordinated actions in the coming year? c) Networking Needs and Resources Sharing resources; how do we continue to link up as a movement face to face and on the internet? Building a broader base for the movement as a whole Resources e.g.: WRL, web sites, WILPF manual, WRI global initiative against war profiteers (Javier Garate) Networking need e.g.: base and weapons manufacturing site mapping d) What kind of a process for working together Next steps? conference planning? Network coordinating committee? e) Closing Announcements: “Weaving the Web” Monday morning at ATK, etc.
Patting ourselves on the back for all of our hard work!

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… and many more ...

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Interest Groups

Mutual Mentorship
- Steve Theberge & Naomi Sea Young Wittstruck
Why is our movement segregated by age? How can we stop tokenizing young activists and dismissing older activists? The Fellowship of Reconciliation's nonviolent youth collective will facilitate a plenary workshop on intergenerational reconciliation through Mutual Mentorship. The interactive workshop will prepare SMoD participants to put "big" anti-oppression principles into tangible practice through intentional, intergenerational and multicultural relationship building. We see this work as a foundational step in creating a vibrant, cohesive anti-corporate movement to stop the merchants of death.
Merchants of Death and Colombia
- Cecelia Zarate of Colombia Support Network Multinational corporations (MNCs), especially mining and food corporations such as Coca-cola and Nestlé's, have always taken advantage of the favorability to them from the Colombian government. Lawyers from moving from MNCs moving to the government have changed laws. Worse, some MNC ‘s have worked with the army, the elite and the nouveau rich drug people to form paramilitary groups in order to evict people from their lands to start their business. This has produced 3.6 million internally displaced people, second only to Darfur, while the world is silent. It is important to consider the “Colombian model” since to President Bush has said in an interview with Jim Lehrer he would like to develop a similar model in Iraq. The model has a perverse attraction, since it is the cheapest and does not represent bad publicity, given the fact that the Colombian army is used as a proxy army to do the killings, so people does not have to worry about American boys being killed.
People Power and Profiteering I (Saturday) - David Meiran & Scott Parkin
This workshop will explore people-powered anti-corporate campaigns. It will provide a history, reflection and analysis of the Houston-based campaign led by Houston Global Awareness Collective (www.houstonglobal.org) against Halliburton, supplemented by a discussion of the national campaign against Bechtel that was recently launched during August's Hiroshima/Nagasaki anniversaries (www.August6.org), as well as Rainforest Action Networks's campaigns against Wells Fargo.

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People Power and Profiteering II (Sunday)
This workshop seeks to broaden our understanding of "war profiteering" in the context of corporate globalization, homeland security, and the militarization of academia.
Using Carnegie Mellon University as a starting point, presenters will chronicle academia's increasing role in the military-industrial complex thanks to a funding bonanza inspired by the "Revolution in Military Affairs" doctrine, the "Future Combat Systems" initiative and the post-9/11 war on terror. The workshop will explicate "active" and "front-end" war profiteering rooted in forced market expansion aided and abetted by the IMF, World Bank, WTO, free trade agreements or outright military intervention. Focusing on the examples of Halliburton/KBR and Bechtel, presenters will argue that to fully understand the systemic function of the military-industrial complex one must look to neoliberal and neoconservative philosophies and the related intermingling of corporate and government interest with one overarching goal: to create conditions in which corporations can extract natural and human resources and/or the unfettered control and consumption of those resources.
Presenters will suggest that to heed Eisenhower's warning about the "total influence" the military-industrial complex, today's antiwar activists will need to consider a people power strategy that uses creative direct action to weaken the pillars of war and empire.
Youth Organizers Meeting
- Maryrose Dolezal, Steve Theberge & Naomi Sea Young Wittstruck
The National Youth Student Peace Coalition (NYSPC) agenda is Books not Bombs, Military out of Schools and Campuses for Peace not War. Leaders from member groups working on these campaigns are invited to come and network with War Resisters, AFSC, FOR, The Uprise Counter-Recruitment Tour, Coalition Against Militarism in Schools and grassroots groups challenging war profiteers and recruiters on campus. With historical information provided by Alliant Action as well as a representative of Student/ Farmworker Alliance to highlight successes of well-known counter-corporate campaigns, youth and campus organizers can use this space to talk campus specific strategy for pooling the resources and strengths of counter-recruitment, counter-corporate and anti-war student movements.

Interest Groups

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Interest Groups

Peace in Space
- Macgregor Eddy and Loring Wirbel of Citizens for Peace in Space Global Network and WILPF will have considerable background information available on the specific aerospace corporations pushing the space program, their lobbies, contributions to Congress, profits, etc. Participants are encouraged to bring their own resources and experiences to share. The slide presentation is participatory; we encourage questions and contributions as it proceeds. There will also be time to discuss strategies including (as at Vandenberg Air Force Base) demonstrations and civil disobedience. This presentation will link local war profiteers and military bases with the world system of "full spectrum dominance" in a clear visual presentation. The participant will contribute ideas as well as learn how to make the new high tech military system clear and understandable as it affects our everyday life. The workshop will give each participant the basic slide show which they can adapt to their local struggles. It is an interactive workshop for discussion and development of organizing tools that participants can take home, adapt and use.
Stop CATerpillar and the Palestinian Rights Movement
- Joe Carr The Caterpillar Corporation provides the armored heavy equipment the Israeli Government and military uses to destroy Palestinian homes and property and to build illegal Israeli settlements and its apartheid annexation wall. There have been growing calls from Palestinian society for boycotts, sanctions, and divestment (BDS) against companies profiting off the oppression of Palestinians, and CAT has been the first target. The CAT Campaign is multi-faceted including media, legal, political, and direct action challenges, and has repeatedly received national media coverage. In this workshop, Joe will share his experiences in Caterpillar Campaign, with a particular focus on nonviolent direct action tactics. He will reflect on the role of the CAT Campaign in the Palestinian Rights and BDS Movement, as well as how it relates to larger campaigns against corporate war profiteers. This campaign is winnable! CAT’s sales to Israel are insignificant compared to their global image. We can make them stop! More info at www.lovinrevolution.org, www.stopcat.org, www.catdestroyshomes.org, www.bootcat.org, www.endtheoccupation.org

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Biographies

Frida Berrigan is a Senior Research Associate with the Arms Trade Resource Center of the World Policy Institute, and a member of the War Resisters League Coordinating and National Committees. A graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, Frida worked with a Central America solidarity organization for two years before coming to the World Policy Institute. Maintaining an interest in U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America, she also focuses on nuclear weapons policy, weapons sales to areas of conflict (particularly in SE Asia), and military training programs. Most recently she has published articles in the Providence Journal, the Nonviolent Activist and the Hartford Courant.

Joe Carr is a 25-year-old activist from Kansas City, MO. He has been a vocal Palestinian rights activist for the last four years, and has made four long trips to Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement and the Christian Peacemaker Teams, and has completed three national speaking and organizing tours. He was with American activist Rachel Corrie when she was she was crushed to death by a CAT Israeli bulldozer as she nonviolently stood protecting Palestinian homes. Joe has since been a leading organizer in the Midwest-based Stop CAT Coalition. He has been repeatedly arrested during actions against CAT bulldozers both in Palestine and in the US.
Oskar Castro heads up the National Youth & Militarism Program of the American Friends Service Committee. He has been involved in human and civil rights discussions related to the U.S. colonization of Puerto Rico, college anti-war activism and support for U.S. political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. Oskar works to educate young people about the risks, horrors and misconceptions of military life including: Recruiter Lies, Conscientious Objection, Selective Service Registration, U.S. Militarism around the Globe & in the Public Schools.

Maryrose Dolezal is the national program coordinator of the US Fellowship of Reconciliation’s Nonviolent Youth Collective. She trains with a team of national youth facilitators at nonviolence and anti-oppression trainings around the country, including the Peacemaker Training Institute and Advanced PTI Trainings for Trainers, and coordinates other aspects of FORs youth work including Drop Beats Not Bombs Tours, Freeman Internships, and Intergenerational Anti-Oppression Gatherings. When Maryrose isn’t on the road with FOR, she spends her time in Minnesota dancing, swimming, and working with her family and friends on two green building projects.

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Biographies

MacGregor Eddy is the major organizer at Vandenberg Air Force Base, a Space Command center integrated planning by the four major branches of the Armed Services, as well as the major site for missile defense testing, etc. etc. She has been arrested twice for crossing the line at the front gate, and most recently for trying to present copies of the Nuremberg Principles and information on international laws being broken at the base. In this version she also has a special focus on Alliant, but she says local groups can adapt the show to include their own favorite aerospace corporation
Javier Garate is on the staff of War Resisters International, based in London. He coordinates WRI’s Nonviolence Program, which includes the Global Initiative Against War Profiteers. Javier was the first declared conscientious objector in Chile. He was a founder of Ni Casco, Ni Uniforme, an antimilitarist conscientious objection group in Santiago.
G. Simon Harak has been active for many years in the Peace Movement and helped found Voices in the Wilderness, which was nominated in 2000, 2002, and 2003 for the Nobel Peace Prize. He has traveled to Iraq three times with VOICES, where he openly and publicly violated US/UN sanctions, to bring medicine and toys to Iraqi hospitals. In September, 2003, Simon became Anti-Militarism Coordinator at the National Office of the WRL. In 2004 he organized and launched the Stop the Merchants of Death speaking tour, which examines the companies who profit - and profiteer - from invasions and occupation. He has delivered 2,500 presentations internationally about Iraq. Among other book-length manuscripts, he has published Nonviolence for the Third Millennium: Its Legacy and Its Future (Mercer University Press, 2000), and co-edited Beyond Boundaries: Student Volunteers in the Developing World (JASPA, 1998).
Deidre Hughes served as an intern for the WRL, and was vital in setting up its “Stop the Merchants of Death” Campaign. She “graduated” to serve on the Administrative Coordinating Committee and the National Committee of the WRL. She is presently writing her doctoral dissertation on the power of protest songs and singers in the civil rights and peace movements of the 60s & 70s.
Arlene Inoye is a coordinator and founder of CAMS which began after the global protest to stop the war in 2003. A bilingual Speech and Language Specialist in East Los Angeles, she has spent her life working for social change in education, multiculturalism, human relations, nonprofit organizations and parent /community activism. She is on the Steering Committee of the national network NNOMY and on the Human Rights Committee, UTLA. Arlene lives in a blended family which includes a neglected snail puppet named Slimy. Free moments are spent working on her second degree black belt in karate.

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Biographies

Mimi LaValley was born and raised in the Iron City, Pittsburgh, PA. She now lives in Queens, New York and works part time for the War Resisters League as a Freeman Intern. She has organized for School of the Americas Watch, The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and The Unitarian Universalist Association's youth social justice network. She is a founding member of that organization's Groundwork Collective for anti-oppression resources and trainers. She is a professional guitarist and songwriter; her music is available at www.mimilavalley.com.
David Meieran is a Pittsburgh-based activist who has worked on AIDS, queer, antiwar, civil liberties and global justice issues. For the past few years, David has been a volunteer organizer with the Thomas Merton Center as well as the Pittsburgh Organizing Group, where he has worked on both a campaign against Carnegie Mellon University's war profiteering and a counter-recruitment campaign that has drawn national attention and intense scrutiny from the powers that be.
David is a also member of the United for Peace and Justice Steering Committee. Working in both Pittsburgh's and the national August 6 coalitions, David played a lead role in the recent Bechtel-focused actions that marked the beginning of a coordinated campaign against that corporation. David is also a member of the UPRISE Counter-Recruitment Tour, tour of mid-west and mid-Atlantic states aimed at advancing regional counter-recruitment efforts and linking the issues of war and military recruitment to corporate globalization and environmental sustainability.
Scott Parkin has been part of environmental and social justice movements since 1990. He is a co-founder of Houston Global Awareness, a grassroots global justice and anti-war group that campaigned against corporate war profiteer Halliburton. He was a key organizer in the protests at 2004 and 2005 Halliburton shareholder's meetings. In 2005, while traveling in Australia and speaking out about Halliburton and the war in Iraq, Australian authorities assessed him to be "direct or indirect national security risk," detained him for 5 days and then forcibly removed Scott at his own cost. He now works at Rainforest Action Network as a organizer on their Global Finance campaign.
Brian Payne After graduating from the U. of Florida in 2000, Brian started working with a handful of students across the state of Florida to form the Student / Farmworker Alliance. From 2000-2004 he bounced in and out of Immokalee, coordinating student solidarity with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Currently Brian lives in Minneapolis and works with SEIU.

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Biographies

Joanne Sheehan staffs WRL’s New England Regional Office. She has been involved in numerous campaigns against nuclear power, weapons and for economic conversion, including Clamshell Alliance, the Trident /Conversion Campaign and the Community Coalition for Economic Conversion. She is on the coordinating committee for War Resisters’ International’s Global Initiative Against War Profiteers. Joanne also works with high school students and adult allies on counter-recruitment. She is a nonviolence trainer who emphasizes strategy development.
Loring Wirbel is an activist, adventurer and dad in Monument, Colorado. He is a member of Citizens for Peace in Space and has been active in anti-militarism and civil liberties issues for 29 years. He is also a writer and editor and frequently speaks on space issues. Loring has a new book called Star Wars: U.S. Tools of Space Supremacy.
Naomi Sea Young Wittstruck is currently the year-long, interfaith program associate for the United States branch of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). Activities such as the Peacemaker Training Institute (PTI), the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition (NYSPC) fall campaign work, and other exciting transformative organizing opportunities will be the central focus of her work for the year. In her spare time, Naomi Sea Young loves to travel, spend time with friends and family, read, listen to music, play her violin, and exercise.
Naomi Sea Young has a Bachelor of Special Studies in Social Justice with a concentration in racial & economic justice/horizontal oppression issues, with minors in religion and philosophy from Cornell College. She recently (as of May), graduated with her Master of Divinity (MDiv) from Candler School of Theology at Emory University, where she received a certificate in “Church and Community Ministries.” She also received two certificates focusing on “Church and Public Policy” work from Emory, and “Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy” from Wesley Theological Seminary in D.C.

Cecilia Zarate from Santander, Colombia, graduated from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in 1966 with a degree in nutrition and dietetics and received a master’s degree in nutrition from UW-Steven’s Point in 1975. She served as a consultant for the Colombian Ministry of Education from 1980 to1982. She co-founded the Colombia Support Network in 1988 to address U.S. foreign policy toward the war in Colombia and to help foster a national solidarity movement in the U.S. with the Colombian people. She has been active with CSN since its inception and has been the program director since 1997. Throughout that time, she has spoken and written extensively on the violence in Colombia.

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Food!

THE GRILL
Murray-Herrick Hall, UST (Cheap Food!)
TROTTER’S – CAFÉ AND BAKERY
232 Cleveland Ave N (BETWEEN MARSHALL AVE & DAYTON AVE)
OPEN MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY 7AM – 7PM, SATURDAY 7AM – 4PM, SUNDAY 8AM – 2PM
651-645-8950
DAVANNI’S PIZZA & HOT HOAGIES
41 CLEVELAND AVE S (CORNER OF GRAND AVE)
OPEN FRIDAY & SATURDAY 11AM – 1AM, SUNDAY 11:30AM – 11PM, MONDAY THROUGH THURSDAY 11AM – 11PM
651-690-4848
128 CAFÉ (RESERVATIONS NEEDED)
128 CLEVELAND AVE N (BETWEEN LAUREL AVE & SELBY AVE)
OPEN MONDAY THROUGH THURSDAY 5PM – 9PM, FRIDAY & SATURDAY 5PM – 10 PM, SUNDAY 5PM – 9PM, SUNDAY BRUNCH 10AM – 2PM
651-645-4128
KIM’S CHOW MEIN
2048 MARSHALL AVE (BETWEEN WILDER ST N & CLEVELAND AVE N)
651-646-4964
A FINE GRIND
2038 MARSHALL AVE (BETWEEN WILDER ST N & CLEVELAND AVE N)
OPEN MONDAY THROUGH SATURDAY 6:45AM –12MIDNIGHT, SUNDAY 8AM- MIDNIGHT
651-645-9700
IZZY’S ICE CREAM PRODUCTION
2034 MARSHALL AVE (BETWEEN WILDER ST N & CLEVELAND AVE N)
OPEN MONDAY THROUGH THURSDAY 12NOON – 10PM, FRIDAY & SATURDAY 12NOON – 10:30PM, SUNDAY 12NOON – 9PM
651-603-1458
GRANDVIEW GRILL
1818 GRAND AVE (CORNER OF FAIRVIEW AVE S)
OPEN MONDAY THROUGH SATURDAY 6:30AM – 3PM, SUNDAY 7:30AM -3PM
651-698-2346

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Maps

St. Kate’s (Venue of Concert and Rally)

Here

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Some Contact Info

G. Simon Harak: Cell: 646-644-7076; g.simon.harak@earthlink.net
Mimi LaValley: Cell: 304-224-8494; mimi@mimilavalley.com
Marv Davidov: Ho: 612-874-7715
Tom Bottolene (Monday Action at ATK): Cell: 612-701-5227
Alliant Action
www.circlevision.org/alliantaction.html
Catholic Worker
www.catholicworker.org/
Coalition against Militarism in Schools
www.militaryfreeschools.org
Colombia Support Network
www.colombiasupport.net
Corporate Watch
www.corpwatch.org
Democracy Rising
www.democracyrising.us
Fellowship of Reconciliation
www.forusa.org
The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
www.space4peace.org; lwirbel@aol.com
Citizens for Peace in Space www.space4peace.org
Rainforest Action Network
www.ran.org
Student / Farmworker Alliance
www.sfalliance.org
Veterans for Peace
www.veteransforpeace.org
The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
www.wilpf.org
The War Resisters League (See front cover)
www.warresisters.org

Sunday, October 1 O'Shaughnessy Education Center, UST

9:30 am – 11:30am: Interest Groups Session II
1. Colombia (Zarate) 3. People Power and Profiteering (Meieran & Parkin) 3. Peace in Space (Eddy & Wirbel) 4. Stop CATerpillar (Carr)