Good News!
by Melanie Kellar and Polly Mann, WAMM
Congratulations to WAMM members Marie Braun and Richa Nagar
Marie Braun will be awarded the 2000 Progressive Activist Award by the Minnesota Alliance for Progressive Action (MAPA). The award honors her work with the WAMM Iraq Committee and the Twin Cities Campaign to Lift the Sanctions. Marie Simpson, co-chair of WAMM's steering committee and a member of the board of directors of MAPA, said this recognition of Marie Braun's work was a tribute to her "creativity, dedication, and absolute tenacity in reaching out to young people, religious leaders, politicians, and grass roots activists to call a halt to the ongoing genocide in Iraq that is a result of the U.S./UN sanctions."
Prof. Richa Nagar of the Women's Studies Department, University of Minnesota, has been awarded the prestigious McKnight Land Grant Professorship of 2000-2002. In connection with the award, Richa presented her latest research on women's activism in India at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers.
Landmark Defense Verdict
On July 20, 2000 in Los Angeles a 20-page opinion of the Ninth Circuit Court reversed a judgment entered by a U.S. District Court and ordered a new trial in Joe Kennedy vs. Southern California Edison. Kennedy and his four children filed a wrongful death suit against Southern California Edison and Combustion Engineering, Inc. in 1996 alleging that the exposure of wife and mother Ellen Kennedy to nuclear radiation from the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station was the cause of her terminal cancer at age 43. Don Howarth, one of the plaintiff's attorneys, stated, "We are particularly pleased because this opinion will affect cases across the country."
Women End Antinuclear Protest Successfully
According to a USA Today article on September 6, 2000, the last female campaigner left Greenham Common (England) ending a nineteen-year antinuclear protest. The Women's Peace Camp was set up in 1983 after 96 U.S. cruise missiles were deployed there. In 1992 the U.S. Air Force moved out and in 1998 bulldozers began breaking up the longest runway in Europe. It was the first conversion for peace of a nuclear base.
Vets Provide Drinking Water in Iraq
Minnesota Veterans for Peace president Barry Riesch will join other Veterans for Peace from across the country on a trip to Iraq departing October 2, 2000. There they will begin work with Iraqi engineers and laborers on the Iraqi Water Project. The veterans will be making other trips, eventually reopening four plants that will purify Iraqi drinking water.
Evidence of Gulf War Syndrome
Dr. Asaf Durakovic will tell attendants at an upcoming conference of nuclear scientists in Paris that "tens of thousands" of British and American soldiers are dying as a result of depleted uranium shells fired during the Gulf War. The findings are in contradiction to the British and American governments' claims that Gulf War Syndrome does not exist.
Possible New Trial for Lori Berenson
The Peruvian military court which found U.S. citizen and peace activist Lori Berenson guilty of terrorism and sentenced her to life imprisonment has now decided that they do not have the evidence to hold her. However, she is still being held by the Peruvian government, which is investigating for a new civil trial. In all likelihood, civilian justice will be in as short supply as in the military trial, where the defendant was not permitted witnesses and the judges were hooded. Even though President Fujimori has announced that he will not run for office again, members of the present cabinet support his declaration that she must again be re-sentenced to life. Demands by the U.S. government offer the most hope for her release, but the Clinton Administration has shown little interest in this monumental miscarriage of justice.