Iraq: Battlefield Without Borders, Consequences Without End

Three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly and activist poet David Smith-Ferri will report from their visit with Iraqi refugees in Amman, Jordan, including video shot recently in Iraq. Their presentation will bring the Iraqi people they’ve encountered into our midst. Kathy will discuss the consequences of war -- for Iraqis, for Americans, for the environment -- and call us into a campaign of sustained resistance. David will read from his newly released volume of poetry, Battlefield Without Borders. (All proceeds from the sale of the book will go directly to needy Iraqi families and to a school for Iraqi refugee children.)

Kathy Kelly helped found Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end the UN/U.S. sanctions against Iraq, in 1996. Voices brought medicine and toys to Iraq in open violation of the sanctions and has continued to work in solidarity with the people of that country throughout the current occupation. Kelly has served time in prison for actions against nuclear weapons and the School of the Americas and has participated in nonviolent direct action teams in Haiti, Bosnia, Palestine, and Lebanon as well as making twenty-four visits to Iraq.

David Smith-Ferri first visited Iraq as part of a Voices in the Wilderness humanitarian and fact-finding delegation in 1999. He returned to Iraq in 2002, where he became inspired to give voice and form to his experiences through poetry. Many of the poems that make up Battlefield Without Borders were written in Iraq.