BRANDYWINE PEACE COMMUNITY - P.O. Box 81, Swarthmore, PA, 19081--(610)544-1818

 

2005
Sunday, January 9, 2005 - Monthly Potluck - "Four More Years with the War President: What to Expect and Is There Any Hope?" Frida Berrigan, Senior Research Associate at the World Policy Institute's Arms Trade Resource Center , and board member of the War Resisters League. 

 

Monday, January 17, 2005, Noon - Martin Luther King Day of Nonviolent Resistance - Lockheed Martin, Mall & Goddard Boulevards, Valley Forge , PA. January 17, 2005, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, three days before the outrage of George W. Bush's 2nd Inauguration. Resisting "the giant triplets of American society: racism, materialism, and militarism" (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, April 4, 1967).
  
February 13 - Monthly Potluck - "After the Planned Elections: What Now Iraq", an expert panel discussion that included Jim Fine, long-time American Friends Service Committee staff in the Middle East, who was the former co-director of the AFSC Legal Aid office in Jerusalem.

March 13 - Paul Lyons, who teaches social work and history at The Richard Stockton College of NJ, will speak on his new book "The People of This Generation:  The Rise and Fall of the New Left in Philadelphia" published by the University Of Pennsylvania Press.

Sunday, March 20 Anti-War March

Friday, March 25, Noon, Good Friday Stations of Justice & Peace, a Trail of Mourning & Truth and Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at Lockheed Martin, the Iraq War's #1 profiteer. Lockheed Martin, Mall & Goddard Blvds., Valley Forge , PA (behind the King of Prussia Mall). A Trail of Mourning & Truth, walking the length of the Valley Forge site with stops for reflection on the war, militarism, Lockheed Martin, faith and resistance; Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the world's largest weapons corporation and the Iraq War's #1 profiteer.

Sunday, April 3, 2005 3:30 PM, Episcopal Cathedral, 38th and Walnut, Phila., PA "Prophets & Martyrs: Interfaith Service Remembering Archbishop Oscar Romero and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.", marking the 25th anniversary of the  death of  Archbishop Romero (March 24, 1980) and the 36th anniversary of the death of Dr. King (April 4, 1968), an Interfaith Service honoring their lives and remembering their prophetic vision and call for peace and justice.  Keynote <>speaker: Princeton Theological Seminary Prof. Mark Taylor. In addition to Professor Taylor, the audio-visual Interfaith Remembrance and Service will feature the audio broadcast of excerpts from sermons by both Archbishop Romero and Dr. King, music from both El Salvador and the civil rights movement, and  <>testimonies will be given from people impacted by the legacies ofboth Romero and King, including Luis Ramos, a Salvadoran who came to Philadelphia in the 1980s as part of the sanctuary movement and who has been a key figure in Central American solidarity work for 17 years, and Judy Claude, a former member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the south in the early 1960s and former Director of the Bread and Roses Community Fund in Philadelphia.
The Interfaith commemoration is being co-sponsored by the Romero Interfaith Center and the Philadelphia Area Interfaith Peace Network which includes the Brandywine Peace Community, Catholic Peace Fellowship, Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia, and the Shalom Center. For more information: 610-544-1818

 

Sunday, April 10 - 30th Anniversary of the End of the Vietnam War (April 30, 1975), Panel & Poetry Reading: an historian and peace activist panel of military veterans with: W.D. Ehrhart (www.WDehrhart.com); Paul Lyons, historian and author of the "The People of This Generation: The Rise & Fall of the New Left in Philadelphia";  Tim Lilienthal, former midshipman at the US Naval Academy and Marine Reservist (1996-2000), son of a military family - his grandfather & great uncle served in the Navy & Marine Corps, respectively, for over 20 years, and his father was a Marine in the Vietnam War and is currently a Tech. Sgt. in the Air National Guard,
Since leaving the military, he has been active in solidarity work with Latin America via involvement in the SOA Watch and the US-El Salvador
Sister Cities Network; and Pat Gunn, Navy veteran (1972 - 1972) and Navy reserves (1976 - 1978), a vocal representative member of Military
Families Speak Out [against war in Iraq], whose son, Jason, is a veteran of the Iraq War. Poetry reading by W.D. Ehrhart, decorated Vietnam Marine combat veteran, historian and scholar, renowned and award-winning poet, author or editor of 18 books of prose and poetry including: Passing Time: Memoir of a Vietnam Veteran Against the War (McFarland & Co.; 1989), Just for Laughs (Vietnam Generation Inc. & Burning Cities Press, 1990), Vietnam-Perkasie: A Combat Marine Memoir and Beautiful Wreckage: New & Selected Poems.

Tax Day, April 15, 2005 - "YOU PAY; LOCKHEED MARTIN PROFIT$" - Brandywine Peace Community Tax Day Vigil  11:30 am to 1:30 pm at Lockheed-Martin - World's #1 Weapons Corporation, Iraq War's #1 Profiteer  - Mall & Goddard Blvds., Valley Forge, PA (behind the King of Prussia Mall)

Sunday, May 8, 4:30PM - University Lutheran Church, 3637 Chestnut St., Phila., PA
Anti-War Origin & Proclamation of  Mother's Day - Mary Day Kent Executive Director, Women's International League for Peace and
Freedom, United States Section; "AIN'T I A WOMAN" [Sojourner Truth] Dramatic Presentation by Rev.Hilda Campbell African-American actress and storyteller; Director, Human Relations & Leadership for the Eastern PA. United Methodist Conference; Member of theatre group, TOVA; and minister at St. Daniel's United Methodist Church in Chester, PA

May 15: Counting the Cost; Stopping the War Phila. Area Counts the Cost of The War in Iraq :
May 15, 2PM , Independence Mall Visitors Center .

On May 15, 2005 , protest of the rising death toll and the on-going military occupation of Iraq , wear a number symbolizing one of the 100,000+ Iraqis, U.S. soldiers, and other foreign nationals, who have died since the beginning of the war.

SIGN-UP NOW at www.CountingTheCost.org so we can send you your number right away.

PARTICIPATE in Philadelphia 's Counting The Cost permitted demonstration and anti-war "DIE-IN" dramatizing the human toll of
the war and occupation in Iraq .

JOIN US on Sunday, May 15, 2PM, at the Independence Mall Visitors Center (lawn area), 6th & Market Sts., Phila., PA for music, speakers, names of war dead - Iraqi, U.S.- read and illustrated, and "DIE-IN" ceremony. 

For more information about the May 15 demonstration in Philadelphia , call the Brandywine Peace Community, 610-544-1818
or e-mail brandywine@juno.com
  
Local sponsors include: Brandywine Peace Community, Catholic Peace Fellowship, Delaware County Wage Peace & Justice,
Mishkan Shalom Synagogue, Phila. Regional Anti-War Network, A Quaker Action Group, and the Shalom Center (list still in formation).

For more information about the national campaign or how to sign-up for a number, call the Women's International League for Peace & Freedom 215-563-7110 or e-mail: annie@countingthecost.org  Other National Sponsors include: Global Exchange, National Lawyers Guild, and Veterans for Peace..Register Now! 
Endorsed by Brandywine Peace Community.


Wednesday, May 25 at noon, Broad & Walnut Sts. (Noon - 1:30PM) for an Anti-War Protest with banners, posters, and reading names of the war dead - Iraqi, U.S. Secretary of "Defense" Donald Rumsfeld will be speaking before the World Affairs Council at the Park Hyatt Hotel.
 

Lockheed Martin +  RUMSFELD +  Boeing = War in Iraq & War in Space!


The voice of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, the number # 1 and # 2 leading Pentagon weapons producers and the chief "Star Wars" and space weaponeers, Rumsfeld will not speak of the 100,000 plus deaths in Iraq, victims of his policy of "endless war" that includes
"Star War" missile defense and the weaponization of space. So we must.

(NOTE: the World Affairs Council website annoucing the Rumsfeld Luncheon and Speech states: "The [World Affairs] Council thanks the Boeing Company for support of this event")
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June 12 - "STOPPING TRAFFIC: Putting the Brakes on Illegal Handgun Trafficking in Pennsylvania" with Diane Edbril, Executive Director, CeaseFire PA and Bryan Miller, Executive Director, CeaseFire NJ Prompted by the alarming surge in handgun violence throughout the area, Brandywine's June potluck supper and program - June 12, 4:30PM, University Lutheran Church, 3637 Chestnut St., Phila., PA - will be on "STOPPING TRAFFIC: Putting the Brakes on Illegal Handgun Trafficking in Pennsylvania" with the directors of CeaseFire PA and CeaseFire NJ, Diane Edbril and Bryan Miller.
Diane Edbril is the Executive Director of CeaseFire PA, a state-wide, non-profit organization dedicated to reducing gun violence. She attended law school in New York City and spent several years as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn during which time she first came to understand the impact of guns and gun violence on our society.
Diane Edbril will be joined at the Brandywine potluck supper and program on June 12 by Bryan Miller, executive director of CeaseFire NJ .
After a twenty year career in international business in over sixty countries, Miller left to become an anti-gun violence organizer after his brother, an FBI agent, was gunned down in  November 1994 at the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Headquarters by a lone gunman wielding a concealed assault weapon.

 

Monday, July 11, Noon - Norman Solomon, nationally syndicated columnist, will speak on his new book at  on Monday, July 11 from 12 noon - 1:30PM, at Friends Center (Rufus Jones Room), 1501 Cherry St. , Phila. , PA.

In his just-released book, "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death," Solomon  examines 50 years of press-corps complicity in promoting U.S. military endeavors.  From Vietnam to Panama to Iraq , he reveals a consistent strategy of distorting facts, demonizing the enemy and labeling dissent as “unpatriotic.”

Just back from a trip to Iran during the elections, Solomon will give us the critical tools we need to separate real news from propaganda--to help prevent the next repeat performance.

Norman Solomon is a nationally syndicated columnist on media and politics.  He is the founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a national consortium of policy researchers and analysts. His columns have appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and USA Today.  Solomon has appeared on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, and Book TV and has been a guest on various National Public Radio programs.  His most recent book is War Made Easy and his earlier book, Target Iraq : What the News Media  Didn't Tell You, has been translated into Italian, German, Hungarian, and Korean. 

To read more about Norman Solomon and "War Made Easy," go to www.warmadeeasy.com. 

July 16 - August 9:

60th Anniversary of the Start of the Nuclear Age 1945-2005

 July 16, 1945 - the first atomic test blast, code-named "Trinity";
August 6 and 9, 1945, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki .

60 YEARS SINCE THE TERROR BEGAN
 REMEMBERING HIROSHIMA and NAGASAKI ,
 RESISTING WAR & LOCKHEED MARTIN

 

Saturday, July 16, 12 Noon - Protest in "Lockheed-ville". Noon - Town Square Vigil with banners and leafleting Main & Chester Aves., Moorestown, NJ (map & directions) [[home to Lockheed Martin and its production  of Aegis warship combat systems and Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense - "Star Wars"] 2:30PM - Demonstration at main entrance to the Lockheed Martin Aegis Naval weapons complex, Marne Highway near Bortons Landing Rd.

 

Saturday, August 6, Noon - Area Hiroshima Day Rally Lockheed Martin, Mall & Goddard Blvds., Valley Forge, PA (behind the King of Prussia Mall - map & directions.) Speakers, Music, "Die-in", Ceremony of Remembrance & Resistance Joining hands in a human chain of peacemaking in front of Lockheed Martin & Nonviolent Civil Disobedience.

 

Sunflowers carry the hope of a world free of nuclear weapons and war.  Bright and beautiful, a nutritious miracle from which Native Americans once made bread, sunflowers were even used near the catastrophic Chernobyl nuclear reactor to extract cesium 137 and strontium 90 from contaminated ponds.

 

Sunflowers now carry a new meaning and have become the symbol of a world free of nuclear weapons and war. On June 1, 1996 , Ukraine transferred to Russia for dismantlement the last of the 1900 nuclear warheads it had inherited from the former Soviet Union . The Defense Ministers of the Ukraine, Russia, and the United States gathered at an emptied nuclear base and celebrated the historic act of nuclear disarmament by planting sunflower seeds at a nuclear base that once house 80 long-range nuclear missiles.

 

Next Saturday, Hiroshima Day, as we remember the 60 years of war and continuing nuclear terror, you are invited to bring sunflowers to

Lockheed Martin which incorporates the continuing legacy of Hiroshima and war. As a statement of the reclamation of the land on which Lockheed Martin sits, of the reclamation of our country for peace, of a reclamation of a determined hope for a world free of nuclear weapons and war, bring your sunflowers, bring your friends, bring sun-block and water.

 

Tuesday, August 9, Nagasaki Day Sundown Candlelight Vigil in Philadelphia

7:30PM - SS Peter & Paul Roman Catholic Cathedral*, 18th & Ben Franklin Parkway & Walk to Phila. City Hall, 15th & Market Sts. , for Mayors for Peace Proclamation. 

(*August 9, 1945, Nagasaki 's ground zero was the Urakami Roman Catholic Cathedral)

 

Sunday, September 11 - "CLINGING TO THE PROMISE OF PEACE"

Commemorating the 4th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks:  Complete Program, litany and text of remarks by all the speakers.

 

Monday, September 26th Civil Resistance at the White House: Part of the September 24 - 26  -  Mobilization to End the War in Iraq - Washington , DC . Mass Nonviolent Resistance at the White House. The Civil Resistance at the White House was the first nationally organized expression of resistance to the war. The Brandywine Peace Community organized a Philadelphia Area Affinity Action group to participate in the September 26th action in which people circled the White House and were arrested for Nonviolent Civil Resistance to Bush's War.  See News Reports.

 

Sunday, October 9 - "ANOTHER WAY: A PANEL ON NONVIOLENT ACTION POSSIBILITIES IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE"

with: *Elizabeth Walz and *Shaina Adams, Fellowship of Reconciliation Peacemaking Delegation to Israel/Palestine, and Nonviolence Training in Bethlehem; and *Peter Lems, program associate for Iraq at the American Friends Service Committee [AFSC] who has made a number of trips to Iraq and the Middle East, including a delegation to Palestine/Israel in August.

 

About Sunday's panel:

 

Elizabeth Walz is currently the Director of Lay Formation at St. Vincent de Paul Parish.  In 1999, along with Phil Berrigan, Susan Crane and Steve Kelly, SJ, she participated in the Plowshares vs. Depleted Uranium disarmament action for which she spent a year in prison.  

 

Shaina Adams graduated in May from Trinity University , where she majored in Sociology and Religion.  She is currently doing a year of service as an AmeriCorps  VISTA , working with the SHARE Food Program in North Philadelphia .

 

From May 24 -June 11, Elizabeth Walz and Shaina Adams traveled in Israel and Palestine with a Fellowship of Reconciliation's [FOR} Peacemaking Delegation. The delegation met with numerous groups of Israelis and Palestinians working for a nonviolent resolution to the conflict there. Walz and Adams did nonviolence training in FOR's Creating a Culture of Peace, Nonviolence Training for Personal and Social

Transformation program, working with Palestinian nonviolence trainers in Bethlehem .

 

Peter Lems is the program associate for Iraq at the American Friends Service Committee advocating and educating around issues of Iraq and U.S. foreign policy. Since 1988 he has worked for a variety of organizations focused on the Arab world, including the Palestine Human Rights Campaign, the Palestine Human Rights Information Center - International, and the Association of Arab-American University Graduates. A graduate of Earlham College in history and peace & global studies, Lems travelled in an AFSC delegation to Israel/Palestine in August.

 

Wednesday, October 26 - NOT ONE MORE DEATH - NOT ONE MORE DOLLAR candlelight vigil at Phila. City Hall (west side), 15th & Market Sts. followed by a candlelight procession to the Phila. Federal Building with a stop enroute at the office of Senator Rick Santorum.

 

Sunday, November 13 - "Overcoming Oiloholic Addiction: Going After the Oil Pushers"  - Charles Lenchner

Charles Lenchner is the coordinator of Philly Beyond Oil, a new coalition working on energy and oil related issues. Charles is an Israel-American who grew up in Israel . In 1987 he was a founder of the 'Shministim', draft age group of refuseniks. He later served two short terms in military prison for refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories . Since then he has worked and consulted for a variety of nonprofit and politically progressive groups in Israel and the United States .

 

Sunday, December 11 (a Human Rights Day Observance) "Health & Human Rights in Haiti " A panel presentation and discussion with Dr. Robert Boucher and Johanna Berrigan, both of whom as health care professionals, have

traveled over the past year to Haiti investigating massive human rights violations and health care from the perspective of human rights, and Tom Griffin, human rights and immigration attorney recently back from another fact finding trip to Haiti.

 

Mon, Dec 12 Protest the Bush Agenda of War & Militarism, of "Staying the Course" of Death and Occupation

George Bush is Coming to Phila. on Monday (December 12) to speak to the Phila. World Affairs Council at the Bellvue Hotel, Broad and Walnut Streets. His words about war will not be the only ones heard on Monday in Philadelphia .

Gather from 10 am to 1 pm at Broad and Walnut Streets for a reading of the names of war dead - Iraqi and U.S. - and voices of war resistance and justice.  We will take a message of public opposition to this war to the world's chief war-maker! Bring your sign, bring a friend, bring your voice to Phila. on Monday. (Inquirer article)

 

Thursday, December 22, 7 PM, Christmas Candlelight Vigil for Peace at Lockheed Martin, Mall & Goddard Boulevards, Valley Forge, PA. (off Rt.. #76, behind King of Prussia Mall) (Directions and Map.) In this time of empire and war:  to us a child is born! Christmas Candlelight Vigil for Peace with: Reading of Names of

War Dead - U.S. and Iraqi - bell-tolling, caroling Christmas Story, and "To Us a Child is Born, Then & Now" homily by Elizabeth Walz* and litany. 

[*Elizabeth Walz is director of Lay formation at St. Vincent 's dePaul Parish. In 1999, along with Philip Berrigan, Susan Crane, and Steve Crane, SJ, Liz participated in the "Plowshares vs. Depleted Uranium" anti-war action disarming delivery systems for depleted uranium munitions at a Naval Air Station in MD for which she served

a year in jail. It was legendary peace activist, Philip Berrigan's last Plowshares act of resistance. Last summer, Liz Walz traveled to Israel and Palestine conducting nonviolence training for Fellowship of Reconciliation.]