Kathy Kelly
Kathy Kelly (Kathy.vcnv@gmail.com) is a peace activist and author working to end U.S. military and economic wars. At times, her activism has led her to war zones and prisons.
Articles by this author
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Views Tuesday, March 02, 2021 Operation Desert Storm: Blood for Oil Thirty years ago, when the United States launched Operation Desert Storm against Iraq, I was a member of the Gulf Peace Team. We were 73 people from fifteen different countries, aged 22 to 76, living in a tent camp close to Iraq’s border with Saudi Arabia, along the road to Mecca. We aimed to... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, January 19, 2021 About Suffering: A Massacre of the Innocents in Yemen In 1565, Pieter Bruegel the Elder created "The Massacre of the Innocents," a provocative masterpiece of religious art. The painting reworks a biblical narrative about King Herod's order to slaughter all newborn boys in Bethlehem for fear that a messiah had been born there. Bruegel's painting... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, November 25, 2020 The Unending War in Afghanistan Is America's Shame Late last week, I learned from young Afghan Peace Volunteer friends in Kabul that an insurgent group firing rockets into the city center hit the home of one volunteer’s relatives. Everyone inside was killed. On November 24, word arrived of two bomb blasts in the marketplace city of Bamiyan, in... Read more |
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Views Thursday, August 06, 2020 A Reversal in the Name of Human Survival Today, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the atomic attack on Hiroshima, should be a day for quiet introspection. I recall a summer morning following the U.S. 2003 “Shock and Awe” invasion of Iraq when the segment of the Chicago River flowing past the headquarters of the world’s second largest... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, July 29, 2020 Yemen: A Torrent of Suffering in a Time of Siege When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out ‘Stop!’ When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable, the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.” —Bertolt Brecht In war-torn Yemen, the crimes pile up. And children who... Read more |
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Views Friday, June 26, 2020 Battleground States: The Time for Manufacturing Weapons of War Has Passed as a Viable Industry for Our Nation The time for manufacturing of weapons of war has passed as a viable industry for our nation, despite the way some of our political leadership clings to economies of the past.—Lisa Savage, U.S. Senate candidate in Maine On Thursday, June 25 th , President Trump’s re-election efforts took him to the... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, June 10, 2020 Weapons That Protect White Privilege Prevent Sustainable Community Change In her poem, “The Revolution Will Rhyme,” Buffalo Black Lives Matter activist Jillian Hanesworth writes about the movement for change we now see sweeping across the world: It will not be developed just to be displaced Its focus will not be extracted and refocused or repurposed And the burden of... Read more |
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Views Monday, June 01, 2020 Our Disaster: Why the United States Bears Responsibility for Yemen’s Humanitarian Crisis An entire generation of Yemeni children has suffered the traumas of war, many of them orphaned, maimed, malnourished, or displaced. The United Nations reports a death toll of 100,000 people in that nation’s ongoing war, with an additional 131,000 people dying from hunger, disease, and a lack of... Read more |
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Views Saturday, May 30, 2020 The Glory and Duty of Beating Swords to Plowshares Inscribed on a wall across from the United Nations in New York City are ancient words of incalculable yearning: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation,nor will they train for war anymore.”—Isaiah 2:4 I’ve stood... Read more |
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Views Friday, April 03, 2020 'He’s Got Eight Numbers, Just Like Everybody Else': An Anti-Nuclear Activist Behind Bars On April 4, 2020, my friend Steve Kelly will begin a third year of imprisonment in Georgia’s Glynn County jail. He turned 70 while in prison, and while he has served multiple prison sentences for protesting nuclear weapons, spending two years in a county jail is unusual even for him. Yet he... Read more |