UNC’s first “Alternative Commencement,” held to honor graduating students sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement and similar movements. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was the speaker for the main ceremony, and he had ordered the forced closure of the OWS encamplent-demonstration at Zuccotti Park. This group chose alternative speakers including three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly.

by Buddy Bell
May 17, 2012

On what is now the 17th day of our walk from Madison to Chicago, the number 165 does not seem to encapsulate all the progress we have made. We are 17 days and 165 miles away from the day I drove into Madison, where news arrived that Air Force One had descended on pre-dawn Kabul for the forging of the Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement.

When I spoke at the May Day rally later the same day, I denounced what all indications show to be Obama’s continuing-for-another-decade war in Afghanistan. Almost immediately a lone man in the dwindling crowd started shouting vulgar slurs at me, with a lack of decency that was amazing considering young kids were present.

AAGSTAW

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By Robert C. Koehler
May 5, 2012

The city of Chicago and the federal government will be putting on a $55 million security extravaganza later this month to protect NATO delegates, representing the most powerful military force on the planet, from nonviolent protesters who want to see an end to war.

Sallamah Aliah
May 8, 2012

How do I relate to conflict? I tend to either challenge or avoid it. But, today I search and struggle for an alternative. To retaliate or avoid the truth creates more discomfort in my own life and for those around me. To challenge my default, I must work hard to acknowledge the conflict and take responsibility for my own actions. My professor once asked our class to contemplate the question: “What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?” The answers to this question never stop coming. This question challenges me, however slowly, to see what role fear plays in my life. Fear of failure, violence, rejection, but most importantly how my perceptions, filtered through fear create the world in which I live and consequently the actions I take or don’t based on this view.

An Afghan Okinawa
by The Afghan Peace Volunteers
May 7, 2012

There is no U.S. troop withdrawal in 2014.

We are ordinary Afghans wishing for peace, and we have eyes and ears and feelings of love and despair, so please read on.

The Washington Post, in reporting the recent signing of the “U.S. Afghan Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement”, stated that HYPERLINK U.S. trainers and Special Operations troops that remain beyond 2014 will live on Afghan bases.”

By Rebecca Kemble
The Progressive
May 3, 2012

On Tuesday, six people set off from the state capitol in Madison, WI, on a 170-mile walk to Chicago to protest the NATO summit scheduled for May 20. They will be sleeping in people’s homes, churches and community centers in 25 cities along the way, educating people about drone warfare, the suffering of the Afghan people and the need to shift our social and economic priorities away from war production.

The walk is organized by Buddy Bell and Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a Chicago-based group dedicated to nonviolent resistance to U.S. war-making.

Members of Voices have led over 70 delegations to Iraq to challenge the economic sanctions and were present in Baghdad in resistance to the 2003 U.S. military invasion. Since 2009, Voices has led five delegations to Afghanistan and two to Pakistan to listen and learn from nonviolent grassroots movements and to raise awareness about the negative impacts of U.S. militarism in the region.