THURSDAY, JUNE 23: Stand at Coolidge Bridge & demonstrate against Obama’s announcement! Thursday, June 23 7:30-9:00am and 4:30-6:00pm. The AFSC office is open until 5pm today—come make signs. See you there!

SAVE THE DATE next WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29 at 6pm for our “Civil Write-In” in the basement of the Unitarian Universalist church of Northampton and Florence. We will discuss the Preserving our Civil Rights campaign, and sign and bring cards over to the city council. Food will be served. See you there!

Paul K. Chappell is Director of the Peace Leadership Program for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF). He graduated from West Point in 2002, was deployed to Baghdad, and left active duty in November 2009 as a Captain. In the army he served in numerous leadership positions such as platoon leader, battery commander, and deputy chief of doctrine, training, requirements, and lessons learned for the air defense branch.  He is the author of Will War Ever End?: A Soldier’s Vision of Peace for the 21st Century. 

Paul Chappell Flyer4[1]

BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

Reserve your bus ticket ASAP!

Come rally on April 9 to bring troops home from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and decrease U.S. military involvement worldwide!  The demonstration is sponsored by the United National Antiwar Committee, and will take place at noon in Union Square at 14 Street and Broadway, NYC.  Stand up to demand jobs, education, social services, environmental protection, racial justice, and an end to torture!  Support the end of all wars at home and abroad!

Bus leaves UMass Haigis Mall (in front of the Center of Fine Arts) at 7:00am; 2nd pick-up at Gazette parking lot at 7:45.  Free parking is located in lot 34 across from Haigis Mall. 
The rally is at Union Square in NYC and the bus is scheduled to drop us there. We will depart NYC at 5 PM for the trip back. The seats are $30 round trip. You can reserve your seat by emailing sherridl2004@aol.comor by mailing/dropping payment off at the AFSC office (2 Conz Street, Suite 2B, Northampton). Checks should be made out to “AFSC”, and seats will not be confirmed until payment is received!

For more information, visit www.UNACpeace.org  or contact Sherri Long at 413-695-5903.

(Pictures by Lynn Martin)

Barry Sanders, author of “The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism” and professor emeritus of history at Pitzer College, will give a talk at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 9, in Smith College’s Neilson Library Browsing Room. The event is free and open to the public.

In “The Green Zone,” Sanders examines the environmental impact of U.S. military interventions overseas. In a period of scrutiny surrounding the social and economic impacts of the defense policies of the U.S. government, Sanders explores a completely different aspect of the situation and positions military activity as the single-greatest contributor to the worldwide environmental crisis, looking at everything from fuel emissions to radioactive waste to defoliation campaigns.

Sanders is a Fulbright Senior Scholar Grant recipient, has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize and is the author of 11 books, including “Alienable Rights: The Exclusion of African Americans in a White Man’s Land;” “A is for Ox: Violence, Electronic Media and the Silencing of the Written Word;” and “Sudden Glory: Laughter as Subversive History.”

Sanders will also give a public talk on Thursday, Feb. 10, at Greenfield Community College.

Sanders’ talk at Smith is co-sponsored by the Environmental Science and Policy Program, the Department of Anthropology, Smith Spirituality in Action, Five College Peace and World Security Studies, Five College Sustainability Studies Program, Mount Holyoke Miller Worley Center for the Environment, the Alliance for Peace and Justice and the Smith College Lecture Committee.

Join the American Friends Service Committee for presentations and performances on MLK, Jr. Day. This year’s celebration will be a kickoff of a regional campaign to keep intact the rights of everyone in our communities, given assaults on immigrant rights, FBI raids on activists, and confronting the legacy of racism in the United States.

• Featuring soloist Evelyn Harris
• Hear from a range of community organizers from Northampton to Hartford about contemporary barriers to civil rights

Co-sponsored by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee

Walking Tour of Florence’s African American History
Sojourner Truth Memorial Statue (corner of Park and Pine Streets, Florence)
January 17, 10:00 a.m.

Join guide Steve Strimer to visit the homes of Sojourner Truth, Basil Dorsey, and David Ruggles. See the Mill River dam where David Lee and Lydia Maria Child processed sugar beets as an alternative to slave-grown sugar cane. Hear about David Ruggles’ Water Cure, the visits of Frederick Douglass to early Florence and resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law.