• Taken for a Ride on the Interstate Highway System

    The 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s signing of the Interstate Highway Act on 29 June 1956 is a good time to watch a 1996 PBS documentary Taken for a Ride again. Ten years ago, President Clinton visited my city during the 1996 presidential campaign.  Riding a “Presidential Special” from Columbus to Toledo on tracks that no […]

  • Witness against Torture

    Washington – Fifteen people were arrested on March 1 in front of the White House after winding their way for two hours through the streets of the nation’s capital, demanding the U.S. stop torturing detainees in military prisons. Members of Witness Against Torture began their protest at the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, continuing […]

  • There Are Lives in the Balance

    Washington – 2/22/06.  Today is Day Eight of our 34-day fast for peace at the U.S. Capitol, the Washington component of the Winter of Our Discontent campaign organized by Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org). The four of us in D.C., Maureen Foltz, Jeff Leys, Ed Kinane, and I are doing a liquids-only fast.  Maureen and […]

  • Pentagon Database Leaves No Child Alone

    Click on the image for a larger view. Doug Minkler, “Campus Predator” (3 February 2006) All over the country, organized citizens are fighting to restrict the military’s presence in schools. But having recruiters troll high school cafeterias is just one way the Pentagon inundates our youngsters with messages to “Go Army!” Since 2002, the U.S. […]

  • Not Even to Save Our Lives

    On a Thanksgiving visit home two years ago to his family in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Jim Loney tried to explain to his father why he wanted to go to Iraq with Christian Peacemaker Teams.  He told his Dad about a grade school chum, Rick, sent to Afghanistan with the Canadian Armed Forces, who narrowly […]

  • Beware Iraqization

    I half-suspected NPR to exhume Henry Kissinger (he is dead, isn’t he?) the other day when they did a promo about a story on “Iraqization,” but no, they spared us the sonorous tones of Doctor Strangelove, only to give us his pin-headed sidekick, former Nixon Defense Secretary, Melvin Laird. Since it’s clearly too much to […]

  • Arlington Midwest

    “Arlington Midwest,” a memorial of over 2,000 tombstones on display on the grounds of the Immaculate Heart of Mary motherhouse, in Monroe, Michigan, November 18-19. The IHM national headquarters building is in the background. Inspired by VFP Santa Barbara’s “Arlington West,” this memorial has been displayed three times in the Toledo area since the second […]

  • Parental Guidance Suggested

    A rare moment of truth — several of them, actually — occurred at last week’s meeting of the Toledo Board of Education’s Policy Committee when school officials, peace activists, and military recruiters assembled to discuss a draft policy to control recruiters in public schools. Thanks to the federal No Child Left Unrecruited Act, kicking the […]

  • Bringing the War Home to the Pentagon and the White House

    Washington, D.C. — In a pre-dawn civil disobedience action Monday morning, forty-one War Resisters League members and others sat down and were arrested at a pedestrian entrance to the Pentagon, slowing foot traffic at that location and prompting officials to close the U.S. military headquarters’ sole stop on Washington’s Metroline for a period. Protesters — […]

  • Will We Use the Power We Have on September 24?

    All last week I had a rare opportunity — to join several impressive speakers on the “Bring Them Home Now” tour’s northern route.  Al Zappala, whose son was killed in Iraq last year; Tammara Rosenleaf, whose husband is due to deploy to Iraq this fall; Stacy Bannerman, whose husband has already served a tour in […]

  • Waiting for the Outside World

    In the “old days” of the U.S. peace movement, when many people focused on the threat of a global nuclear “exchange,” an organization called Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) foretold what would happen if a major American city was actually blasted by an atomic bomb. Horrific scenarios extended far beyond the numbers of dead and […]

  • What One Mom Has to Say to George Bush

    “That lying bastard, George Bush, is taking a five-week vacation in time of war,” Cindy Sheehan told 200 cheering members of Veterans for Peace at their annual convention in Dallas last Friday evening. She then announced she would go to Bush’s vacation home in nearby Crawford, Texas and camp out until he “tells me why […]