Here’s a link to the opinion piece in the Ithaca Journal several days ago if you would like to know more about the reasons for the walk.

http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20100323/VIEWPOINTS02/3230303/1129/viewpoints/Walking-the-anti-nuke-walk

Ithaca Schedule

TUESDAY MARCH 30th:

Walk arrives in Ithaca in the late afternoon at De Witt Park

Welcoming Circle at 7:15PM at the Unitarian Church (corner of Buffalo and Aurora St)
we will hear from Jun san and walkers and Frida Berrigan*.

WEDNESDAY MARCH 31st: Rest Day in Ithaca

morning and early afternoon talks with middle and high school students and late afternoon talk at IC, with Jun san and Frida Berrigan, in Williams 225, from 4-5:30PM

Evening Interfaith Service at the First Baptist Church 7-8:30PM

THURSDAY APRIL1 st:

walk leaves Ithaca, departing from De Witt Park btwn 8:30 and 9AM.
12 NOON, talk at TC3 with Frida Berrigan and a few walkers (in the Student Center 12 noon to 1PM)
evening circle in Dryden TBA

Any questions call clare 273-6257, poco 277-7442, tom 277-7426, ellen 277-6932
PEACE

Walk for a Nuclear-Free Future 2010
(Last updated 11/19/09)

Northern Route (3/7/10-5/2/10)

Date             Point of Departure                     Destination                                     Miles
3/6 Sat Opening Ceremony (Streamburg)
Day 1 3/7 Sun Steamburg (Cold Spring Territory, Seneca Nation) Salamanca (Allegany Territory, Seneca Nation) 12
Day 2 3/8 Mon Salamanca Ellicottville 12
Day 3 3/9 Tue Ellicottville Rt. 219 & County Rd. 85 10
Day 4 3/10 Wed Rt. 219 & County Rd. 85 Springville (via Rd. 85, West Valley Nuclear Waste Site) 10
Day 5 3/11 Thu Springville Gowanda (Cattaraugus Territory, Seneca Nation) 16
Day 6 3/12 Fri Gowanda Irving (Cattaraugus Territory, Seneca Nation) 16
Day 7 3/13 Sat Irving (via Rt. 20) Wanakah 14
Day 8 3/14 Sun Wanakah Buffalo 15
Day 9 3/15 Mon rest day
Day 10 3/16 Tue Buffalo Town of Tonawanda 11
Day 11 3/17 Wed Town of Tonawanda Lewiston (Tuscarora Nation) 18
Day 12 3/18 Thu Lewiston Lockport 15
Day 13 3/19 Fri Lockport Akron (Tonawanda Territory, Seneca Nation) 18
Day 14 3/20 Sat Medina Albion 12
Day 15 3/21 Sun Albion Brockport 15
Day 16 3/22 Mon Brockport Rochester 18
Day 17 3/23 Tue rest day
Day 18 3/24 Wed Rochester Victor 18
Day 19 3/25 Thu Victor Canandaigua 15
Day 20 3/26 Fri Canandaigua Geneva 16
Day 21 3/27 Sat Geneva Seneca Falls 13
Day 22 3/28 Sun Seneca Falls Union Springs (Cayuga Farm) 15
Day 23 3/29 Mon Union Springs (Cayuga Farm) King Ferry (Rt 90 & NY 34B) 15
Day 24 3/30 Tue King Ferry (Rt 90 & NY 34B) Ithaca 16
Day 25 3/31 Wed rest day
Day 26 4/1 Thu Ithaca Dryden 10
Day 27 4/2 Fri Dryden Cortland 14
Day 28 4/3 Sat Cortland Tully 12
Day 29 4/4 Sun Tully Onondaga Nation 12
Day 30 4/5 Mon Onondaga Nation Syracuse (National Guard Hancock Airport) 14
Day 31 4/6 Tue rest day
Day 32 4/7 Wed Syracuse Chittenango 15
Day 33 4/8 Thu Chittenango Oneida Nation 12
Day 34 4/9 Fri Oneida Nation Rome 16
Day 35 4/10 Sat Rome Utica 16
Day 36 4/11 Sun Utica Herkimer 16
Day 37 4/12 Mon Herkimer East Creek 14
Day 38 4/13 Tue East Creek Palatine Bridge 13
Day 39 4/14 Wed Palatine Bridge Fonda (Mohawk Community) 12
Day 40 4/15 Thu rest day
Day 41 4/16 Fri Fonda Amsterdam 14
Day 42 4/17 Sat Amsterdam Schenectady 17
Day 43 4/18 Sun Schenectady Albany 16
Day 44 4/19 Mon Albany Ravena 15
Day 45 4/20 Tue Ravena Athens 16
Day 46 4/21 Wed Athens Saugarties 17
Day 47 4/22 Thu rest day
Day 48 4/23 Fri Saugarties Kingston 13
Day 49 4/24 Sat Kingston Highland 16
Day 50 4/25 Sun Highland Newburgh 16
Day 51 4/26 Mon Newburgh Highland Falls (Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant) 13
Day 52 4/27 Tue Highland Falls Stony Point 12
Day 53 4/28 Wed Stony Point Nyack 12
Day 54 4/29 Thu Nyack Englewood, NJ 15
Day 55 4/30 Fri rest day
Day 56 5/1 Sat Englewood, NJ New York City (United Nations Plaza) 13
Day 57 5/2 Sun National Rally at United Nations Plaza, New York City
5/3 Mon NPT review conference starts

Total miles; 706

Supported by:

Catholic Workers; Center for Health, Environment & Justice; Citizens Campaign for the Environment; Citizens’ Environmental Coalition;
CODEPINK; Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR); FootPrints for Peace; Global Network Against Weapon and Nuclear Power in Space;
Grandmothers for Peace; Indigenous Women’s Initiatives; Mayors for Peace; New York Regional AFSC; Nuclear Information & Resource Service
(NIRS); Pax Christi; Peace Action; Sierra Club; Syracuse Peace Counsel; Veterans for Peace; Western New York Peace Center.

* Frida Berrigan is Senior Program Associate of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. Previously, she served for eight years as Deputy Director and Senior Research Associate at the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute at the New School in New York City. She has also worked as a researcher at The Nation magazine.

Ms. Berrigan is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus and a contributing editor of In These Times magazine. She is the author of reports on arms trade and human rights, U.S. nuclear weapons policy, and the domestic politics of U.S. missile defense and space weapons policies. She has been a featured expert on national and regional radio outlets, and regularly speaks on national security issues to citizen’s organizations and at major conferences throughout the United States.

Peter Meiers sent the following:

Hi folks: (apologies for cross-posting)
Am sending this to some of the activist lists that both Kenny Ritter, Linda Holzbaur (his wife) are a part of, thinking that there would be a fair amount of people on these lists that might not otherwise have heard…… I am incredibly sad to say that yesterday morning, (Saturday) Kenny passed away at the hospital. Below are the details that Linda just posted to Facebook of services on Tuesday……

Kenny was a great friend. I met him when he convinced me to run for Sheriff back in 2002. He then became my campaign manager, and he helped to inspire me personally to get as involved as I have in community organizing……When Kenny became sick with Multiple System Atrophy we went to over 75 minor league baseball games ‘tween 2003 and 2006. Truly a great guy and an inspiration to myself and many in the larger community.
In loving solidarity
Pete
(from Linda Holzbaur) Kenny Ritter, 57, died 9/5/09 from complications of Multiple System Atrophy. His children Grace (Josh Dolan), Nat (Kim Wheelock), Anna, Eleanor, granddaughters Vienna, Leona and wife Linda Holzbaur live in Ithaca. Burial will be at Greensprings Natural Cemetery, Newfield at 11:00 Tuesday 9/8/09. A memorial and dish-to-pass will follow at 2:00 at the Ithaca Farmers’ Market, Steamboat Landing.

On the night of May 30th of this year, we found ourselves stuck in the middle of a police riot against the crowd of queer & trans folks in Chicago, which has left us now in a very sensitive situation. In short, while in Chicago for a queer & trans activist convergence, we were part of an approximately 100 queer and trans folk-crowd walking in Boystown, or, the ‘gay nightclub district.’ Police showed up, and without rhyme, reason, or warning, hit people in the crowd with patrol cars. More cops ran into the crowd and grabbed queers, seemingly at random, and proceeded to beat them with batons and extendable asps. What followed can only be described as bedlam and a bloody evening.

Dear Cornell students, staff, faculty, and alumni bisexies, transfolks, two spirits, queers, genderqueers, lesbians, gays, anomolies, friends, family, allies, and distant relatives, etc.,

We hope this letter finds you all well, but unfortunately it does not contain the best of news. This is a follow up to the update sent out a month ago about Cornell queers who were bashed by the police in Chicago.

Our names are Rye (Aly) and Kristin. Some of you may know of us through various queer/anti-racist/sexual violence social justice organizing/actions/workshops, general rabble-rousing, or through our house: Watermargin Co-op. Rye has organized and co-facilitated workshops, shows, and events with the Women’s Resource Center, Direct Action to Stop Heterosexism (DASH), and worked with an anti-discrimination coalition of Cornell students in attempts to safeguard resources for marginalized groups. Kristin took a leave from Cornell the past school year, moving to Minneapolis where she worked on legal support and media strategy against immigration raids & RNC prosecutions; and gained valuable experience learning & participating in sexual assault community restorative justice processes. While in Ithaca, she organizes with the Campus Anti-War Network, Iraq/Afghanistan Vets Against the War & the Sexual Violence Resistance Network; having edited a zine for the latter.

On the night of May 30th of this year, we found ourselves stuck in the middle of a police riot against the crowd of queer & trans folks in Chicago, which has left us now in a very sensitive situation. In short, while in Chicago for a queer & trans activist convergence, we were part of an approximately 100 queer and trans folk-crowd walking in Boystown, or, the ‘gay nightclub district.’ Police showed up, and without rhyme, reason, or warning, hit people in the crowd with patrol cars. More cops ran into the crowd and grabbed queers, seemingly at random, and proceeded to beat them with batons and extendable asps. What followed can only be described as bedlam and a bloody evening.

In short personal summary, Kristin was thrown to the ground and beaten with batons by cops, and came out of the night with many abrasions and bruised ribs which developed into pneumonia. Rye (Aly) was thrown by the police onto the hood of a car, beaten from behind, and then thrown on top of a fence, and beaten again. (Both Rye and Kristin sought medical treatment in the ER). Rye was also one of the 4 arrested after being beaten bloody. The 4 arrestees spent the remainder of the night being harassed and tormented in police custody. Please visit http://www.chicagofabfour.blogspot.com/ for a more detailed account of the Fab4′s abuse while in police custody.

As a result of these events, there are now heavy, bogus charges levied against the Fab4: 2 felonies & 6 misdemeanors, collectively. We are in a very tight position, and are working hard to find a free/affordable lawyer. To fight these charges in court, we must raise the majority of the funds to cover the legal fees at hand, as we absolutely cannot afford to pay for this otherwise (not to mention the need to cover travel expenses for the arrestees who cannot even afford to travel to Chicago for our court date, and medical expenses that have consequently arisen from the events of 5-30). It is because of this troubling course of events that we are in great need of direct community support and solidarity.

If any of you are able to contribute financially towards covering the costs that the involved parties are now facing, any amount large or small would be immensely appreciated and go directly to mitigating the costs that have arisen and towards defending Rye and the Fab4 from serious charges. If you have lawyer contacts in the Chicago area, please pass those along to us! If you have some time to organize a show/dinner/workshop benefit, or to do legal support, get in touch! Our top priority is to keep the Fab4 OUT OF JAIL!

Police repression of the LGBTQ community is nothing new, with LGBTQ people of color often bearing the brunt of abuse. Chicago’s Boystown is not an exception, with a long record of police brutality against LGBTQ people of color intertwined with a gentrification process which erases diverse working class and LGBTQ neighborhoods.

More generally, we ask that you stand up for queer & trans rights on a daily basis, both with your actions and materially when our greater communities are faced with bogus charges such as these. A lot of people contributing small amounts really adds up. Regardless of how your solidarity manifests, please spread word of what happened in Chicago and do what you can.

For more info & how to make a secure Paypal donation online, check our website at http://www.chicagofabfour.blogspot.com/ If you feel uncomfortable/are unable to make an online donation, please email us for further info on other $ options.

Lastly, THANK YOU to those of you who have expressed your support and also who have donated already. We appreciate every ounce solidarity and compassion that you’ve shown, and have really felt the community’s presence in incredible ways thus far. Please feel free to contact us, any time! Keep up the good fight!

In Solidarity,

Rye (Aly) Blum
One of the Chicago Fabulous Four,
Cornell University ’09
atb33-at-cornell-dot-edu

Kristin Herbeck
Littlejohn68-at-gmail-dot-com

Podcasts are/will be available on the WHCU web site.

We are at a loss for words to describe what we are feeling about the sudden and tragic death of our dear brother Peter De Mott. Without knowing the ways in which each one of you has been touched by Peter we welcome each of you to share your grief and love with us. Below are moving words shared by our friend Art Laffin from the D.C. Catholic Worker and words from Peter himself.

Please join in coming together with the De Mott Grady family to celebrate Peter’s life.

There will be a wake on Sunday, Feb. 22, at the Women’s Community Building, from 3 to 7 p.m. http://www.lightlink.com/womens/

Father Simon Harak, S.J. will celebrate the Mass for Peter, Feb. 23rd, Monday at 1 p.m., Immaculate Conception Church, 113 N. Geneva St (corner of Geneva and Seneca Sts.) in Ithaca, NY, 14850. http://www.immconch.org/

The burial will be at 3pm at Greensprings Natural Cemetery, 293 Irish Hill Road, Newfield, NY 14867. Dress for very cold and muddy conditions at the cemetary. Directions to Greensprings can be found on their website: http://naturalburial.org. Their phone number is 607-564-7577.

We will be gathering again at the Women’s Community Building afterwards at approx. 5pm, for a potluck meal. Bring food for the Monday evening potluck, by 4:45 pm.
In lieu of flowers please send donations to:.

The De Mott Grady Family.
133 Sheffield Rd.
Ithaca, NY, 14850

For out of town travelers please call Leslie Schultz at 607-272-6482 for a place a stay.

We best remember Peter by holding each in the circle of love, a love that he shared with all of us.

Peter De Mott, Presente!

Dear Friends,
As we grieve the loss of our beloved friend and peacemaker, Peter J.DeMott, we take great inspiration from his steadfast commitment to Gospel peacemaking and nonviolence. The below excerpt from an article that Peter wrote was read today at the “100 Days Campaign to Close Guantanamo” White House vigil.
Peter Demott, father and laborer, pray for us.
Peter DeMott, peacemaker and faithful follower of Jesus, pray for us.
Peter DeMott—Presente!!!

With deep love and gratitude,
Art

From Warriors to Resisters —U.S. Veterans on Terrorism

Welcome to ResistersBook.org. You can read our book entirely online or order a paperback copy, whichever you prefer. Sixteen U.S. warriors-turned-resisters tell very important stories in this book, stories we want to be read in every living room, library, coffee shop, and classroom throughout the land. If you agree, please help spread the word.

Click here to read the Preface or Introduction.

Thanks and Peace, Margaret Knapke, editor

Attribution for the photos is given when known, and many belong to the resisters themselves. If one of these photos is yours and you would rather we not use it, contact the site manager and it will be removed

Finding My Way

While in Vietnam I attended Roman Catholic Mass regularly and on occasion would go to confession, as I had been brought up to do. As a dutiful young Marine who followed orders well, I had no idea that my work in Vietnam was helping to bring about the deaths of some two million people there, maim and displace countless others, and severely damage and degrade the local environment. That sad realization came to me only much later. While in Vietnam I operated under the influence of a training film my fellow recruits and I viewed in boot camp,which justified U.S.involvement in the war as a defense against communist aggression. (We were told the communists were struggling to extend their”evil empire.”) Like millions of other soldiers down through the course of history,we were taught by the power elite to look at ourselves as heroic patriots willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our native land and its cherished ideals.

After a tour of duty in Vietnam, I found myself serving as a military policeman at the Marine Corps base atTwentynine Palms,California.

There I became more and more disillusioned with life as a Marine, with its stultifying duties and inflexible discipline. I left the Marines in the summer of 1970 and about a year later joined the United States Army,after signing an enlistment contract which promised me a course of study at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California.

For a year I applied myself to acquiring Turkish there, and then received orders for a NATO assignment in Ankara, where I worked in a three-man office in the Turkish General Staff Building. My duties could be described as primarily clerical in nature and did not prove particularly demanding. What I liked most about Turkey were the frequent trips all over the Anatolian Peninsula as well as Thrace,visiting areas of historical or archeological significance. From Turkey I also traveled to the Soviet Union, Germany, Syria, Ireland, Italy, and Greece. In those years I viewed the Army as an interesting job, which provided me with training and travel experience and an opportunity to meet and know other cultures. My role as a pawn in a geopolitical struggle for global resources did not intrude upon my consciousness.

Finally I had an eye-opening experience during my trip to the Soviet Union, when I realized that the people there had the same hopes and dreams as the folks back home. Having grown up on a diet of propaganda that the Russians made up a godless country bent on world domination, I saw and experienced instead their common humanity, which helped to change my perspective profoundly.

Once again feeling rather disaffected with the sterility and bureaucracy of military life, I turned my back on the Army in February l976, and returned to my hometown to complete my college education. Following graduation, I explored the possibility of becoming a diocesan priest by going to a seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota—but dropped out after a year and got involved in the Catholic Worker movement.

---

The Catholic Worker taught me many things I’d never heard before: pacifism, nonviolence, voluntary poverty, personal responsibility for contemporary injustice, and service to Christ in the person of the victims of military and corporate violence and greed. The Catholic Worker also introduced me to nonviolent civil disobedience and its history and practice in our country. A process of conversion had begun in me, as I began to question authority and realize the need to make myself as marginal to evil as possible.

My arrest at an “arms bazaar” was the initial outward, visible act of my conversion process, an ever-evolving journey leading me (please, God) on the Via Crucis (the Way of the Cross). Christ tells us that if we wish to be His disciples, then we must deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow Him in faith and obedience. The cross represents both the lot and the glory of those who nonviolently resist systemic, institutional injustice, and then experience the retribution of the high and mighty as a consequence. Jesus commands us to love one another, and He tells us that no one has greater love than a person who lays down his or her life for a friend. Every act of civil disobedience (which is equally aptly termed “divine obedience”), performed in a spirit of love, helps to restore humanity to a communion of solidarity, unity, and mutual aid.

So, with this consciousness, I took part with Father Roy Bourgeois and others in a protest at an arms bazaar in Rosemont, Illinois (by Chicago O’Hare International Airport) in February 1979. An arms bazaar amounts to nothing more than a marketing event put on by weapons manufacturers, who invite members of the “defense departments” of various countries to view and then purchase the weapons systems on display there. The United States sells billions of dollars worth of weapons annually all over the world. Expenditures for these lethal instruments of war deny life to those whose basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and education then go unmet.

As President Dwight Eisenhower put it: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius

of its scientists, the hopes of its children…. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

Since my first act of civil disobedience more than two decades ago, I have undergone arrest many times at the Pentagon, the White House, the School of the Americas, and various military bases and weapons manufacturing sites. Participation in two Plowshares disarmament actions (which symbolically yet concretely beat the nuclear sword into a plowshare, in accord with the vision of the prophet Isaiah), are included in that list. These acts have resulted in periods of incarceration in a variety of jails and prisons, cumulatively about two years in all. Separation from family and friends has been difficult, conditions behind bars less than ideal.

I realize, however, that nothing of good and lasting value comes without a price, and I have been privileged to be part of the world-wide struggle for peace and justice, along with so many others who have done so much. To the extent that we sit passively by during these challenging times—when the fate of the earth and all its life forms hangs in the balance, to that very extent we give our tacit approval to the forces amassed to destroy us.

–

Mary Anne Grady Flores

514 N. Plain St., Ithaca, NY 14850

1-607-273-7437/ 1-607-280-8797

Ithaca Catholic Workers

“If you think one person can’t be effective, you’ve never been in bed

with a mosquito”-War Resister’s League

www.hebronorphans.blogspot.com

www.puertoricotopalestine.org

www.stpatricksfour.org

www.democracynow.org

www.cpt.org

Live Station <http://www.livestation.com>

You can download a free video player at this website. Once you download
and install this player you will be able to watch live feeds of news
from such sources as and BBC World News and Al Jazeera English .

Al Jazeera <http://english.aljazeera.net>

(you can also watch a live stream in English on Live Station)

The Guardian <
target=”_blank”>http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gaza>

Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions <
href=”http://www.icahd.org” target=”_blank”>http://www.icahd.org>

Gush Shalom <http://zope.gush-shalom.org>

Electronic Intifada <
target=”_blank”>http://electronicintifada.net>