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5 resister communities Syracuse, New York, and Hartford, Connecticut S ome cities are blessed with cohesive resister communities. These groups can plan large local actions together, host out-of-towners who come to attend actions or trials or to stand trial themselves, and most importantly , support each other in psychological, spiritual, physical, and sometimes even economic ways. Such communities are also conduits for education and information—about actions, trials, and the process of doing time, both inside and outside of prison. They’re even places for the glue of gossip about who’s doing what and where. I was able to visit three such communities while collecting narratives for this book—Ithaca, New York, animated by the Ithaca Catholic Worker, Cornell University, and a vibrant progressive milieu; Syracuse, New York; and Hartford, Connecticut. Voices from Syracuse and Hartford appear in this chapter.1 Since 1936, the Syracuse Peace Council (SPC) has worked faithfully against war. Rae Kramer told me proudly that it’s “the oldest locally based continuously running peace and justice organization in the country.” Many in the group focus on the campaign to close the School of the Americas (SOA; now called WHINSEC, or Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). This campaign, called SOA Watch (SOAW), was founded by then–Maryknoll priest Father Roy Bourgeois in 1990.2 As a missionary in Bolivia, he had learned from the poor how US foreign policy favored the rich in countries throughout the Southern Hemisphere and how our country trained foreign soldiers and police officers in techniques used to torture and kill their own people. This training takes place at the SOA in Fort Benning, located in Columbus, Georgia. Over sixty-one thousand foreign military have learned counterinsurgency , sniper training, psychological warfare, interrogation techniques, and other “dirty war” applications at the base. Graduates of the school have been linked consistently to human rights violations and to the suppression of popular movements throughout Central and South America. SOAW’s coordinated campaign to close the school includes education, lobbying Congress, persuading nations not to send their soldiers and police officers to the United States for training, a large nonviolent vigil at Fort Benning every 203 November, where the death caused by the SOA are commemorated, and direct action, both at that vigil and at other times and places throughout the year. This chapter tells the story of five very different members of the Peace Council and the varied ways they approach peace and justice work, both through SOAW and in other campaigns. What doesn’t come through in my questions, but should have, is how closely the members of the Peace Council support each other in their endeavors. With a paid staff and a storefront, it’s a busy place, with three focus areas: the US global agenda and militarism, Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation (NOON), and a monthly newsletter published at www.peacecouncil. net that provides information and analysis on local, state, national, and international issues. The group plans frequent actions, especially against the Reaper drones that fly from nearby Hancock Field. They vigil together with Peace Action four times a week and raise the money for their staff and activities through a large craft fair and peace festival every December. Below are five stories of SPC members: Ed Kinane, Ann Tiffany, Andy Mager, Rae Kramer, and Kathleen Rumpf.3 Ed Kinane has worked to build a nonviolent world for most of his life. He’s taught math and biology in a one-room Quaker school in rural Kenya and anthropology in a community college near Seattle. He’s also worked as a peacekeeper with Peace Brigades International in Sri Lanka and other countries, and he’s been imprisoned for a creative action protesting the SOA. With his partner, Ann Tiffany, he’s extremely active on the council. Ed Kinane “Both going to a war zone and going to jail are investments of your body. ” Ro: ed, you were in iraq with Kathy Kelly and Voices for creative nonviolence during the“shock and awe”bombing of Baghdad in 2003. Why did you risk being killed by your fellow americans? Ed: Well, if you’re going to be an antiwar activist, i think you should know something about war, so that was part of it. i also felt there should be alternative media voices covering the invasion—alternative to the embedded journalists, who would have a skewed and inadequate vision. But part of it . . . you mention risk, and part of it may also...

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