May 2005

Thank you so much for all of your prayers and support. The trial of the “Sudan Seven,” as we have been referred to, was an incredible show of nonviolent witness at its best. I was honored to be a part of such a group. The Holy Spirit no doubt was speaking through the testimonies of witnesses Dr. Eric Reeves, Dr. Mark Lance, Mwiza Munthali, Barbara Wien, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, and each of the seven defendents as they each took the stand to testify to their area of expertise.
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Seven American activists were found guilty of unlawful assembly today in D.C. Superior Court before Chief Judge Rufus King III. They were on trial for a February demonstration at the Sudanese embassy to protest the ongoing genocide in the Sudanese region of Darfur.

May 25: Tom Lewis, Harry Duchesne, Brian Kavanagh, Liz Fallon, Brenna Cussen, Ken Hannaford-Ricardi, and Scott Schaeffer-Duffy are happy to be outside after a day in D.C. Superior Court. Click on the photo to download a high-resolution version.
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Worcester’s Bob Flanagan, of the Ron Kovic chapter of Veterans for Peace, was profiled this week in Worcester Magazine:

. . . the Vietnam War was going on and we had a friend, Flipper, and he joined the Marine Corps and he never came home; he was blown away. Then there was another guy in Westboro, then Georgie Adams and Paul Bellino. About six or seven guys I knew as a kid never came home. Probably being the sensitive type, I never knew what to do with the anger.

Bob’s weekly vigil at the Armed Forces Recruiting Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, was profiled at Worcester Indymedia. Bob’s also active with the Worcester Veteran’s Shelter.

Today is a notable one for counter-recruitment activists, as the U.S. Army has suspended all recruiting for the day in order to “emphasize proper conduct” to recruiters who have been accused of conning potential recruits.

Bob Flanagan, of Veterans for Peace, vigils against war at the Armed Forces Recruiting Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. Photo: Mike Benedetti.

Last February, I attended a day school on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) here in Oxford, organized by the Christian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; it was helpful and made me start working with fellow activists.

Today, Dr John Sloboda of the Oxford Research Group gave a short report to the United Nations Association’s Oxford Branch to update us on the 2005 Review Conference of the NPT, taking place this month in New York. The group produced very good briefings on the topic.
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Botox: Cosmetic or Chemical Weapon? is a forceful Christian critique of vanity and violence in the form of a crazy tract. It was written by Mike Ciul and designed by Jim Speer. They hail from Philadelphia, a city of many crazy tracts.

• Download “Botox” (.pdf file, 183KB), suitable for printing on letter-size paper, 2 tracts to a page

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Sally Schwab, age 2, stands up for herself in West Philadelphia. Button redesigned by Katrina.

Sunday, the House of Grace Catholic Worker community in Philadelphia opened a new house of hospitality, Kassie Temple House.

The house is named after long-time Catholic Worker Kassie Temple, who died in 2002 after being part of the New York Catholic Worker community for 27 years.

The house has five bedrooms and will house mostly refugee families.
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