TRIFECTA RESISTA 2014: Creating a Climate of Peace- Resisting a Climate of Fear

PeaceWorksKC and Codepink are collaborating in a three day reproach to U.S. militarism in its many forms that will help conclude this year's Spring Days of Action against drone warfare and surveillance. First, we will converge at Kansas City's NNSA office to protest our nation's continued wasteful and irresponsible production of nuclear weapons. Next, we will meet at Whiteman AFB to speak out against drone warfare and surveillance. The event will conclude with a demonstration at Ft. Leavenworth to demand a pardon for Private Chelsea Manning.

The event will take place from May 30th to June 1st. Additional details TBA. For more information, e-mail TrifectaResista@gmail.com or visit https://www.facebook.com/TrifectaResista and PeaceWorksKC. 

Coalition Launches Drone Free St. Louis Campaign to STOP Police Acquisition of Drones

Drone Free St. Louis is a coalition of groups and individuals who resist the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, by the St. Louis Police Department. The coalition formed after Police Chief Sam Dotson announced last June that the St. Louis Police Department was applying for FAA permission to purchase a drone. This sentiment was repeated again in October when Chief Dotson joined the Holden policy Forum at Webster University as the special guest fielding questions about the program.

Police chief Sam Dotson, who is advocating for drone surveillance by the St. Louis PD

Drone Free St. Louis is launching today to coincide with a national day of protest call "The Day We Fight Back." The national effort aims to end mass surveillance.

Drone Free St. Louis seeks to ensure that people are protected from the privacy abuses that may result from government or private use of drones.

DroneFreeStL wants to promote individual and collective freedom by:

-Stopping the advent of a new era of mass surveillance, which threatens to monitor behavior 24/7 and thereby limit free thought and expression
-Opposing the militarization of the police and the city's part in furthering the military-industrial complex.
-Ensuring that the St. Louis Police Department and the city of St. Louis allocate resources to improve lives, especially for underserved populations, rather than for technology that will most likely be used against those communities.
-Guarantee that there be adequate privacy and safety regulations in place, if such regulation are indeed possible, before consideration of any domestic use of drones for non-policing purposes.

The Draganflyer, a drone already in use for surveillance by PDs elsewhere in the country.

Drone Free St. Louis has created a website with relevant and up-to-date information regarding police usage of drones and a FAQ.

Aprils Days of Action Against Drones: Demonstration at Whiteman AFB

As part of the April Days of Action Against Drones, dozens of demonstrators representing Veterans for Peace, Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation, PeaceworksKC, and other organizations appeared outside of Whiteman AFB, a site at which killer drone pilots are known to operate.

Passing drivers and those entering the base are reminded of the 
implications of drone warfare: "DRONES FLY, CHILDREN DIE"

"DRONES COST LIVES AND MONEY" highlights that supposed
 economic benefits to communities hosting drone programs are 
negligible, while foregrounding the direct human costs of
 these illusory benefits.

Realistic Predator Drone model helps to condense the thousands
 of miles of distance drone operators typically enjoy from 
the "fruits of their labor." 

The demonstration helped to mark the one-year anniversary of the arrest of Ron Faust of Gladstone, MO and Brian Terrell of Maloy, IA as they entered the base on April 15, 2012 to deliver to the base's commander an indictment to all those on the chain of command from President Obama to the drone operators themselves for the human rights abuses implicit in the killer drone program.

Protesters outside the federal courthouse in Jefferson, MO on 
September 10, 2012, when Ron Faust and Brian Terrell were
convicted of trespassing.

While Faust and Terrell joined the company of protestors at Army bases in New York and Nevada, the Whiteman trial was particularly significant as it was the first time such a case had been heard in federal court.

April Days of Action Against Drones continue around the country. Get involved now!

Call for "No Drones" in Missouri Colleges, Universities, and Research Institutions

Friends,

A national call has been made for “April Days of Action” to focus on three key components of U.S. drone work: Drone Manufacturers, Drone Bases in the U.S., and Drone Research. (See the list about nationwide actions and post your own planned actions for April.)

Given the fact that drones are now the primary weapons of warfare used by the US, and for surveillance both domestic and abroad, the research and development of this warfare is growing rapidly at academic institutions, in our towns and neighborhoods. Drones are the perfect instrument for endless war that kills civilians, even as they target “militants” in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan.

Academic institutions often receive large grants from the U.S. Department of Defense, enabling them to build labs within schools of engineering, for instance. We are well aware that without this research in robotics, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), and the accompanying accessories, these drone warfare projects would probably not take place. So there is an interdependent relationship between the universities and the U.S. government and or its Department of Defense and CIA. (CIA drones are used in countries with which the U.S. is not “at war”, ie Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Mali, and others.)

While universities tend to publicize some information on their respective websites regarding the drone work, it is most often said to be for non-military purposes. And there are students working in the labs who are convinced that all the research is for humanitarian purposes. However, history has told us that non-military can quickly and easily become military. Moreover research has shown drones make mistakes on recognizing their targets.

We are therefore asking organizations and individuals, nationwide, to explore any drone research that might be going on at their local university. We are calling for local actions between April 16 and 18, 2013 (Suggested actions are listed below) Our limited research into University and Academic UAV programs indicates that at least one research center is operating in Missouri:

Parks College (University of St. Louis) - St Louis

Before those dates in April we will need to know what information you have acquired about the research and what actions and events your group is planning.This will be shared among groups in the Network. You can send this information to us at notodrone@gmail.com.

We will have a press committee that will receive your press release and any articles you are able to publish before or after the event.

This project will complement other outreach, education and action projects that will be launched in April, focusing on drone bases, April 27-28 and drone manufacturers , April 4-6.

Suggested actions:

1. Learn what research is being done by searching on a university website. Look especially at the Engineering Dept. 
2. Organize a forum, preferably on campus, with speakers and discussion. Be sure to publicize in campus newspapers, and possibly include a professor as one of the speakers. Also include local activists.
3. Plan a small meeting with the appropriate persons in the department working on drone research, both professors and students.
4. Hold vigils and leaflet on or close to the campus, as well as in town.
5. Let us know if you need further tools for your research.

Thanks in advance for your reply to notodrone@gmail.com.

With all good wishes,

Marge Van Cleef, WILPF, Philadelphia
Leila Zand, For USA
Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator, Voices for Creative Nonviolence


Related posts

 Do we really want the American heartland serving as the brain-trust for the U.S. global project of drone surveillance and killing?

Here is a round-up of research, development, and training activity connected to drones at Midwest colleges and universities. I've indicated those schools that are land-grant universities. There appears to be a high concentration of drone work at land-grant universities.

(See Do We Have a Drone Problem at Midwest Colleges and Universities? )



What are some of the forms that campus activism might take? Since Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory has a contract to do drone research, the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance [NCNR], on May 1, sent a letter to Ronald J. Daniels, JHU president, and Dr. Ralph Semmel, director of the APL, seeking a meeting . . . .

(See Anti-Killer Drone Activists Seek Meeting with Johns Hopkins University President ) 

Preliminary research into University and Academic UAV programs indicates that a research centers are operating in dozens of locations.

(See List of U.S. Drone Research Sites)

Brian Terrell: "I go in solidarity with prisoners every place"

The following remarks are excerpted from a letter Brian Terrell shared with friends, family, and antiwar activists everywhere this week, as he prepares to surrender in connection with the anti-drones action at Whiteman Air Force Base. You can also read his interview with the Yankton Daily Press and Dakotan: "Terrell: American Drone Strikes Must Stop": "The challenge of this is, we have the technology to kill at long distances. . . . There is an Arab proverb that says that a true prophet is a person who can love at long distance."

Friends,

A last message as I prepare to 'surrender' to federal authorities in Yankton, SD, for six months on Friday:

Thank you for the outpouring of support, prayers and solidarity in the weeks since my sentencing. My own responses to these many kindnesses have been haphazard and diffuse - if I have not replied to each one individually, it is not for lack of gratitude.

I have tried to use this time well. At home on the farm I have planted garlic, trimmed the goats' hooves. done some winterization, spent time with community and friends here. I have also traveled to Syracuse to support another courageous and creative act of resistance against drone warfare at Hancock Air Field and made a tour of the midwest, speaking in Minneapolis, Madison, WI, Chicago, and Columbia, MO.

There seems to be in these last weeks a new openness to speaking about the issue of the drones. It is as if with the dreadful distraction of the presidential election over, people are wiping the sleep from their eyes and are shocked to see the evil that had been festering while they were not looking.

I have had countless media interviews, both in the 'movement' venues and in the mainstream where I have experienced a more sophisticated level of discourse than usual. One you might want to listen to is with David Swanson.

TeleSUR, Latin American TV out of Caracas included an interview with me in a pre-election news feature. They talked with activists in Occupy, SOAW, etc, on the state of the US. My interview is about 18 minutes in. The footage by Rodger Routh that TeleSUR used is on Youtube.

My timing could not be better and I am happy to have had the opportunity to speak to so many people and to be making a modest contribution to this crucial discussion.

* * *

As I go away I am especially grateful for support of Betsy and our grown children, Elijah and Clara, and to Veronica and Becky at the Farm. I go in solidarity with the many friends working for peace, those around the US, Europe, Pakistan resisting the drones and my colleagues in Voices for Creative Nonviolence, some who are right now in Gaza and in Iraq and with Catholic Workers everywhere. I go in solidarity with prisoners every place, my heart especially hurting for friends I marched with in the streets of Bahrain last February who are now in prison there enduring torture and abuse that I will not be facing in my more privileged cage in Yankton.

I go without regret and with only a little anxiety. I look forward to a time of reflection and contemplation after several busy years. Hold me in the light, as the Quakers say. My love and prayers are with you all.

Brian


The mailing address for Brian Terrell until the end of May will be:

BRIAN TERRELL 06125-026
FPC YANKTON
FEDERAL PRISON CAMP
P.O. BOX 700
YANKTON, SD 57078

Terrell at Wm. Woods, Mizzou: Ground the Drones!

Ground the Drones; End the Wars.
Reflections from Brian Terrell

Thursday, Nov 15

Afternoon event: 4 p.m.
Model Courtroom, Burton Building, basement
William Woods University, Fulton

Evening event: 7 p.m.
Room 113 Arts and Sciences Bldg.
MU Campus – Columbia

On Nov. 30, Brian Terrell will begin a six-month federal prison sentence for nonviolently protesting drones as weapons of war. He was arrested in April at Whiteman Air Force Base in western Missouri for trespassing, trying to deliver an indictment condemning drone flights—controlled from there and several other U.S.-operated bases globally. The weapons, used more than ever under the Obama administration, have killed thousands of people (hundreds of them innocent non-combatants) in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere.

Terrell lives on a Catholic Worker farm near Maloy, Iowa, traveled to Central Asia last year and is co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Learn more about these weapons and why he was willing to risk imprisonment to protest their use.

Sponsored by the William Woods Dept. of Legal Studies, MU Peace Studies Program, Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and the St. Francis Catholic Worker Community. For info, call Jeff at 573-449-4585 or Cynthia at 573-592-4293 or see vcnv.org.


This is on of a series of events where Brian Terrell will talk about the need to end U.S. drone killings. See also:

Madison, WI: Madison: Talk by Brian Terrell on Drone Warfare
Chicago, IL: Doing Time for Peace: Resistance, Family, and Community An Evening With Rosalie Riegle and Brian Terrell

Judge Convicts Civil Resisters Who “Put Drones On Trial”

PeaceWorks, Kansas City;
Trifecta Resista; and Mid-MO Peace Coalition
4509 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64111; 816-561-1181

For immediate release Sept. 11, 2012

Contacts:
Brian Terrell, 773-853-1886;
Ron Faust, 816-582-6893;
Tamara Severns, 816-753-7642

In the first federal trial related to drone warfare, Judge Magistrate Matt Whitworth of the U.S. District Court, Western District of Missouri, ruled yesterday that two civil resisters were guilty of trespass at Whiteman Air Force Base, near Knob Noster, Mo.

On April 15, defendants Ronald Faust of Gladstone, Mo., and Brian Terrell of Maloy, Iowa, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, sought to present to the Whiteman AFB commander an indictment of all involved in drone warfare, from President Obama to the Whiteman officers who, by remote control, direct predator drones in Afghanistan attacks. The defendants said yesterday they were not guilty of trespass but had simply tried to bring a grievance to a government authority about the drone strikes that kill an estimated 49 untargeted persons for every one target. More than 50 supporters of Faust and Terrell packed the courtroom.

During the trial, constitutional law expert Bill Quigley, professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, said the defendants were exercising their rights April 15 under the First Amendment to the Constitution. “My grandfather went to jail in Birmingham to oppose Bull Connor,” said Quigley, noting that when the Supreme Court overturned laws against sit-ins at restaurants and protests outside courtrooms, “there were 3,000 people in jail.” Quigley reminded the court that 100 years ago, the nation had no child labor laws, no vote for women, no civil rights legislation. The First Amendment protects “vigorous dissent,” said Quigley. “The idea of trespass is not more important than the First Amendment. Our Constitution trumps the statutes” for trespass.

Witness Kathy Kelly, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, told the court she came to Whiteman AFB April 15 to support the defendants’ presentation of the “Indictment for Violation of Human Rights”, their statement against drone warfare. Kelly said she and Terrell had visited families of drone victims, and she described how goat-herders at a refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan, had introduced them to a child whose arm was amputated by a drone. Kelly said she felt responsible “to go as close as I could to the people” suffering from drone bombings, and explained that she and Terrell were raising their voices here on behalf of the voiceless abroad.

The defense had proposed that former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and (retired) Col. Ann Wright should testify about the illegality of drone warfare and citizens’ responsibilities under international treaties. The prosecution opposed those topics, and the judge excluded them.

Wright, who resigned her diplomatic post in 2003 to protest the Iraq War, was permitted by Whitworth to testify only on base security issues. She suggested the commander might have assigned guards to Terrell, Faust, and Kenney on April 15 and let them hand their indictment to the commander. Instead, the base arrested the three and had 40-50 military police in riot gear march against about 40 supporters. After the trial yesterday, Wright said the defendants’ and supporters’ work “gives hope to people in other parts of the world that there are Americans who are fighting drones, and we aren’t going to get stopped!”

VIEW THE YOUTUBE VIDEO OF ANN WRIGHT'S REMARKS at the Trifecta Resista Drone Trial Press Conference.

Whitworth’s rejection of Clark marked the first time Clark was not allowed to testify in court as an expert witness. Clark said after the trial, “We are part of a long struggle—I’ve been at it for 84 years. We have to plan harder, work harder. The world is in far more danger than when I was born, probably progressively so. Right now we’re madly designing more efficient ways to take human life. We have to awaken people, with love out front. We need to act boldly, take the opportunity to do our best, and pray for the rest.”

VIEW THE YOUTUBE VIDEO OF RAMSEY CLARK'S REMARKS at the Trifecta Resista Drone Trial Press Conference.

About half the supporters traveled from Jefferson City to Whiteman AFB, gathering under the stars, singing for peace, and holding signs such as “Ground the Drones!” There Clark said the drone operators are allowed “to be judge, jury, and executioner, contrary to all sense of justice.”

After issuing his guilty verdict, Whitworth told Faust and Terrell to meet with probation officers soon for a presentence investigation. “I wonder if I might waive a presentence investigation,” Terrell asked the judge. Terrell recalled that on June 6, Whitworth gave Terrell and Faust’s resistance companion, Mark Kenney of Omaha, a four-month federal prison sentence, out of the maximum of six months, in part because of Kenney’s prior convictions for resistance. Noting that the prosecuting attorney had his arrest record, Terrell said, “It beats out Mark’s 10 to 1. I don’t believe there’ll be anything in a presentence report that would change the situation. If the government suggests even the maximum penalty, I wouldn’t argue against that.” He asked to be sentenced at once, but the judge denied the request. Sentencing is expected in a few weeks.

Terrell e-mailed supporters today, “Our efforts have been and continue to effectively spread questions, doubts, and even outrage over remote-control murder at long distance by drones from Whiteman and other bases. Their willingness to kill from long distance must be exceeded by our commitment to love from a distance.” Faust e-mailed today, “I think about everybody realized that we won the trial. Change is slow, but we got the message out.” Media reports included coverage in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Kansas City Star, news.yahoo.com, AirForceTimes.com, palmbeachpost.com (Fla.), Fox 4 TV in KC, KCTV 5, and other news venues. Henry Stoever of Overland Park, Kan., served as Terrell’s legal advisor. After the trial, Stoever listed several reasons the defendants should not have been convicted, including:

1. the military witnesses failed to specifically identify Terrell and Faust, referring to them broadly as the two at the defense table when three men sat there, along with Ruth O’Neill of Columbia, Mo., Faust’s lawyer;

2. the judge refused to allow the defendants to present a complete defense in which their experts would have had an opportunity to explain drone killings as murders without notice or warning, without due process, outside of a legal process; and

3. by focusing solely on trespass and the limited “law” in that area, the judge excluded the greater evil that is ongoing and missed the injustice of the entire matter.

Terrell noted today that he and Faust were unable to raise an international law defense. Whitworth rejected Clark’s testimony on the U.N. Charter and the responsibility of citizens to resist the crimes of their government under the Nuremberg Principles. Terrell recalled Whitworth’s comment during a pretrial conference call that international law does not “trump” domestic law. This, says Terrell, is in contradiction to the Constitution, Article VI, that incorporates treaties into the “supreme law of the land.” Terrell added that the judge also limited Kelly’s testimony about what she and Terrell had witnessed in Afghanistan.

RELATED PRESS COVERAGE

Anti-Drone Protesters Found Guilty of Trespassing