Dec 30, 2012 By Doug Hostetter Forty years ago, as a conscientious objector, I worked for the Mennonite Central Committee in Tam Ky, Vietnam, organizing literacy classes for Vietnamese children whose schools had been destroyed by theU.S. Air Force. As a Mennonite, I...
Year: 2012
Creating a Conscience
By Ethan Vesely-Flad The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience. (Mahatma Gandhi, 1922) As a first-time father, I am newly attuned to the issues of social, spiritual, and ethical formation that consume the minds...
Strengthening young people’s resistance to violence: Why I support FOR
By Michael Harrington Saturday, December 29, 2012, 1:36pm I turned 18 in 1970, and was registered for the draft for the Vietnam war. To the dismay of my father, a career Army officer, I requested conscientious objector status. My Methodist youth pastor helped me walk...
Rhetoric and Reality
The Iraq War Seven Years On By Josh Stieber The simple days are gone where I could recall with fondness the words of a once-beloved leader and feel the inspiring chills toward a noble cause. “America is a friend to the people of Iraq,” the commander-in-chief had said,...
Conscience: Two Soldiers, Two Pacifists, One Family; To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918
By Mark C. Johnson Louisa Thomas never uses the word quixotic to describe the lives and passion of her great-grandfather, Norman Thomas, his pacifist brother Evan, or their soldier siblings Ralph and Arthur. But the nostalgic, ambivalent echo of lives largely...
Unraveling Justice: Military Jurisdiction Expanded in Colombia
By Lisa Haugaard, Latin America Working Group On December 11, the day after International Human Rights Day, the Colombian Congress approved a justice “reform” bill that will likely result in many gross human rights violations by members of the military being tried in...
Proposals for an End to the War
By John Lindsay-Poland By Alfredo Molano Jimeno Originally published in El Espectador, December 6, 2012 A holistic agrarian reform, deconcentration of property ownership, policies for food and land sovereignty, strengthening of peasant and indigenous economies,...
Coal Pollution Displaces a Community
By Emily Schmitz Weaving a concrete thread through red dust and boiling sun, a winding two-lane highway curves through the northern department of Cesar, Colombia, carving out a familiar route. Passing between housing settlements of mud and brick stained the color of...