Matthew Hoh is a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy and is the former Director of the Afghanistan Study Group, a network of foreign and public policy experts and professionals advocating for a change in U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. A former State Department official, Hoh resigned in protest from his post in Afghanistan over U.S. strategic policy and goals in Afghanistan in September 2009. Prior to his assignment in Afghanistan, Hoh served in Iraq; first in 2004-5 in Salah ad Din Province with a State Department reconstruction and governance team and then in 2006-7 in Anbar Province as a Marine Corps company commander. When not deployed, Hoh worked on Afghanistan and Iraq policy and operations issues at the Pentagon and State Department from 2002-8. Hoh’s writings have appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Politico, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. In 2010, Hoh was named the Ridenhour Prize Recipient for Truth Telling. Hoh is a member of the Board of Directors for Council for a Livable World and is an Advisory Board Member for Expose Facts (ExposeFacts.org). He writes on issues of war, peace and post-traumatic stress disorder recovery at MatthewHoh.com.
Nick Mottern has worked as a reporter, researcher, writer and political organizer over the last 30 years. While in the US Navy he was in Viet Nam in 1962-63. He graduated from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in 1966, and he has worked as a reporter for the Providence (RI) Journal and Evening Bulletin, a researcher and writer for the former US Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, a lobbyist for Bread for the World and a writer and co-organizer of speaking tours in the United States on US involvement in Africa for Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers. In this job he visited a number of African nations and war zones in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Mozambique as well as Israel and the West Bank. He is the author of “Suffering Strong”, recounting experiences of his first trip to Africa. He has also been involved in grassroots action in the Lower Hudson Valley. He manages www.consumersforpeace.org and www.KnowDrones.com. He was director of the 2012 national Know Drones Tour and was an organizer of the 2013 April Days of Action and 2014 Spring Days of Action, campaigns to stop drone war and drone surveillance. He is also an organizer of the Boycott and Divest Honeywell campaign, begun in 2014 because of the firm’s involvement in drone war. http://www.badhoneywell.org/ His articles have appeared in Truthout since 2008.
Rev. Felicia Helen Parazaider
Rev. Felicia Parazaider attended the Chaplaincy Institute for Arts and Interfaith Ministry, and was ordained in March 2012. She holds degrees from University of California Berkeley in both Religious Studies and Peace & Conflict Studies. Rev. Felicia is certified as a Reiki Level II pracitioner, and holds certifications in Spiritual Psychology through the Tree of Life Teachings, and Nonviolent Training through Pace e Bene Nonviolent Service. She has ministered extensively to drug addicts and alcoholics, both on the streets of Los Angeles in Skid Row, and as a Hospitals & Institutions (H&I) chairperson of panels going into USC County Hospital. Rev. Felicia also worked at Kaiser Hospital Oakland and Walnut Creek as a chaplain during her Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) training. She is a self described radical sacred activist, traveling to India and the Middle East on peace delegations, walking over 200 miles through the Nevada desert against nuclear proliferation and for peace, as well as being arrested several times for participating in nonviolent civil resistance against drone warfare. Rev. Felicia is the founder of Revolution Of Love (ROL), an interfaith ministry which focuses on inner work of the self and outer work in the world, through the vehicles of agape love and nonviolence. The ministry meets weekly in the San Francisco Bay Area, for diverse, multi-faith, progressive services. She is the creator of “The Prayer Rope” and “The Love Challenge,” both branches of the “Revolution” that are specific ways to begin to transform oneself and this world with compassion, love, and hope. Along with her congregational ministry, she is an inspirational speaker, author, and storyteller.
Born in N.Y.C., a member of the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus since 1950. Serving as a teacher in the US until 1962 and until 2003 in West Africa (Nigeria and Ghana). In 2005 joined the staff of Nevada Desert Experience, an interfaith Peace movement for non-violent resistance to nuclear weapons and war. Sr. Megan is well known for entering into the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Sr. Megan, along with Michael Walli and Greg Boertji-Obed in their Transform Now Plowshares Action, were able to enter the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge' Tennessee to call for the transformation of the nuclear industrial complex into life-enhancing alternatives, and ending the illegal activities for continuing involvement in the production, testing, storage or use of weapons of mass destruction.
For more on Sr. Megan please visit wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Rice
Medea Benjamin is the author of eight books. Her latest book is Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, and she has been campaigning to stop the use of killer drones. Her direct questioning of President Obama during his 2013 foreign policy address, as well as her recent trips to Pakistan and Yemen, helped shine a light on the innocent people killed by US drone strikes.
Benjamin has been an advocate for social justice for more than 30 years. Described as "one of America's most committed -- and most effective -- fighters for human rights" by New York Newsday, and "one of the high profile leaders of the peace movement" by the Los Angeles Times, she was one of 1,000 exemplary women from 140 countries nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the millions of women who do the essential work of peace worldwide. In 2010 she received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize from the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the 2012 Peace Prize by the US Peace Memorial. She is a former economist and nutritionist with the United Nations and World Health Organization.
Since the September 11, 2001 tragedy, Medea has been working to promote a U.S. foreign policy that would respect human rights and gain us allies instead of contributing to violence and undermining our international reputation. In 2000, she was a Green Party candidate for the California Senate. During the 1990s, Medea focused her efforts on tackling the problem of unfair trade as promoted by the World Trade Organization. Widely credited as the woman who brought Nike to its knees and helped place the issue of sweatshops on the national agenda, Medea was a key player in the campaign that won a $20 million settlement from 27 US clothing retailers for the use of sweatshop labor in Saipan. She also pushed Starbucks and other companies to start carrying fair trade coffee.
Her work for justice in Israel/Palestine includes taking numerous delegations to Gaza after the 2008 Israeli invasion, organizing the Gaza Freedom March in 2010, participating in the Freedom Flotillas and opposing the policies of the Israel lobby group AIPAC. In 2011 she was in Tahrir Square during the Egyptian uprising and In 2012 she was part of a human rights delegation to Bahrain in support of democracy activists; she was tear-gassed, arrested and deported by the Bahraini government.
Medea has also been on the forefront of the anti-drone movement. She recently published Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control. She also organized the first-ever international drone summit and lead delegations to Pakistan and Yemen to meet with drone strike victims and family members of Guantanamo Bay Prisoners.
Her articles appear regularly in outlets such as The Huffington Post, CommonDreams, Alternet and OpEd News. Medea can be reached at: medea@codepink.org or @medeabenjamin.
Robert Shetterly was born in 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated in 1969 from Harvard College with a degree in English Literature. At Harvard he took a couple of courses in drawing which changed the direction of his creative life --- from the written word to the image. Also, during this time, he was active in Civil Rights and in the Anti-Vietnam War movement.
After college and moving to Maine in 1970, he taught himself drawing, printmaking, and painting. While trying to become proficient in printmaking & painting, he illustrated widely. For twelve years he did the editorial page drawings for the Maine Times newspaper, illustrated National Audubon's children's newspaper Audubon Adventures, and more than 30 books. He also showed his work in galleries all around Maine & in many other states.
His paintings & prints are in collections all over the U.S. and Europe. A collection of his drawings & etchings, Speaking Fire at Stones, was published in 1993 with poems written in response to them by William Carpenter. He is well know for his series of 70 painted etchings in response to William Blake's Proverbs of Hell, and for another series of 50 painted etchings reflecting on the metaphor of the Annunciation. His painting has tended toward the narrative and the surreal, and he has not been, until 2002, a portrait painterFor the past 13 years he has been painting the series of portraits (numbering now over 200) called Americans Who Tell the Truth. The show has been traveling around the country for eleven years and is scheduled for the next two. Venues have included everything from university museums and grade school libraries to sandwich shops and the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City. It has been in more than thirty states. In 2005 Dutton published a book of the portraits by the same name. In 2006 the book won the top award of the International Reading Association for Intermediate non-fiction.The portraits have given him an opportunity to speak with children and adults all over this country about the necessity of dissent in a democracy, the obligations of citizenship, sustainability, U.S. history, and how democracy cannot function if politicians don’t tell the truth, if the media don’t report it, and if the people don’t demand it. The portrait project began as an act of defiance against a government that was lying to its own people about the necessity of war. It has become a vehicle of education to inspire all people with models of courageous citizenship.He has also engaged in a wide variety of political and humanitarian work with many of the people whose portraits he has painted. In the spring of 2007 he traveled to Rwanda with Lily Yeh and Terry Tempest Williams to work in a village of survivors of the 1994 genocide there. And in 2014 and 2015 he traveled with Lily Yeh to paint murals in the Balata Refugee Camp in Nablus, al Aqaba Village, and al Fara’a Prison, West Bank, Palestine.Since 1990, he has been the President of the Union of Maine Visual Artists (UMVA), and a producer of the UMVA’s Maine Masters Project, an on-going series of video documentaries about Maine artists.In 2005 the Maine People’s Alliance awarded him its Rising Tide award. His book, Americans Who Tell the Truth, of the first 50 portraits won the International Reader’s Association award for intermediate non-fiction. Also in 2005 he was named an Honorary Member of the Maine Chapter of Veterans for Peace. In May 2007, Rob received a Distinguished Achievement Award from the University of Southern Maine and gave the Commencement Address at the University of New England which awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters.In 2009 he was named a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow that enables him to do week long residences in colleges around the country.The University of Maine at Farmington awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters in 2011.The Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine awarded him its Hands of Peace Award in 2012Maine Peace Action awarded him its 2014 Peacemaker of the Year AwardRobert Shetterly lives, with his partner Gail Page, a painter and children’s book writer and illustrator, in Brooksville, Maine.The Americans Who Tell the Truth portraits can be seen at:www.americanswhotellthetruth.org His essays about his work are also available there.
Kay Olan (Ionataie:was) is a Mohawk educator and storyteller. She taught elementary school in New York State for over thirty-three years. During that time, she was often asked to tell the stories that were passed down through the oral tradition of her people and to give cultural presentations about the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) to various community, school and college groups. Upon retiring from teaching, she moved to Kanatsiohareke, a traditional Mohawk Community located in central New York State. She lived and worked there for almost three years coordinating and promoting culturally related conferences, lectures, workshops and programs including the Kanatsiohareke Mohawk Language Immersion Program.
She appeared in the Iroquois segment of the documentary “How the West Was Lost” which aired on The Discovery Channel. She researched and documented Indian artifacts found in the Champlain Valley for the Clinton County Historical Society. Ms. Olan has worked as a consultant for the Iroquois Indian Museum and is on the Native American Advisory Board for the Fenimore Art Museum. She is on the Board of Directors for the Greenfield Center Literary Center. In 2009, The Indigenous Women’s Initiatives presented her with a “Jigonsaseh Women of Peace” award. She was honored in 2010 by the Association of Native Americans in the Hudson Valley for providing cultural bridges between Native and non-Native communities through her storytelling and cultural presentations. The Akwesasne Freedom School honored her in 2012 for her on-going help in promoting the school’s efforts to revitalize Mohawk language and culture. She has written articles about the Haudenosaunee for various publications including Indian Time and Indian Country Today. She recorded two cd’s, “Mohawk Stories” and “…And That’s How That Story Goes: Stories from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). Ms. Olan appeared in the Global Spirit Documentary called “Stories To Remember.” She currently lives in upstate New York where she continues to share the culture and stories of the Haudenosaunee.