The Resource Center for Nonviolence is hosting the annual Northern California Peace Centers Conference at the Louden Nelson Center in Santa Cruz starting Friday and lasting until Sunday afternoon. Everyone is invited to get acquainted, hear updates from other people and organizations, take part in workshops, learn from keynote speakers, sing songs, reflect on the struggles, and eat delicious foods!

Friday evening includes a briefing on Peace Group Surveillance; learning lessons from the Peace Fresno Infiltration by Local Law Enforcement.

Saturday is packed with great workshops and speakers, including “Solidarity in Contentious and Critical Times", Dr. John Brown Childs, Professor of Sociology at UCSC.

Details for the Peace Centers Conference in Santa Cruz April 16 - 18

Audio: Interview with Nicolas of Peace Fresno

Protest zones are important classrooms. Attending protests with kids is different than attending protests without kids. But going to a protest with an affinity group, or as a street medic, is also different than going alone. How should we prepare to take kids with us?

Groups of parents have banded together in protests, worldwide, over the last 2 years. Baby blocs showed up at Feb. 15 anti-war rallies, as well as FTAA protests last Nov., in Miami. Families are protesting together, from “Babies, Not Bombs� anti-war rallies in Melbourne, Australia, to protests in France, with signs displaying children’s drawings and their words, “Porquoi la guerre! Faites la paix!� People with children care greatly about their futures, enough to raise kids, and enough to protest bad international policies with their kids.

[ Articles by Kirsten Anderberg I Parenting versus Protesting: Are They Mutually Exclusive? I Is There A Legal Age for Political Dissent? Teens at Protests! ]

Sahar Saba, a soft spoken young woman, stood firmly as darkness fell. She spoke of the hell that is her home; where 'everyone has a story to tell’ about a sister, a brother, a parent, or a child who was tortured, raped, killed; sometimes before their eyes.

She repeated several times that the problem of fundamentalism persists in Afghanistan. That RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, sees the persistence of fundamentalism as the major problem for women, children, and the Afghani culture in general. That the US attack and presence has done little to improve the situation, that indeed the situation has gotten worse under the US supported warlords.

Audio: Rockin' the Boat: Interview with Sahar Saba

[ Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan I Afghan Women's Mission ]

Brian Avery spoke at the Resource Center for Nonviolence on Sunday, March 15.

Avery arrived in Jenin as a member of the International Solidarity Movement on April 5, 2003. He had been in the West Bank for two and a half months when, after spending six days in Jenin, there were gunshots outside of the apartment where he’d met with two Swedish activists. When the gunfire quieted down the three went out to check the streets. They were about two blocks from the apartment when two armored Israeli vehicles approached the roadside. At thirty meters the vehicle’s occupants opened fire with approximately 230 rounds. The two Swedes were unharmed but Avery was shot through the face.

The bullet entered the upper right side of his nose and blew out the bones of the left side of his nose, cheek and upper jaw. He lost most of his teeth and his left eye was permanently damaged.

Audio: Rockin' the Boat: Brian Avery Talk
>> Brian Avery Interviewed by George of FRSC

comments from Brian Avery: "There were some miscommunications going on in this string, I'd like to clarify that there were not 230 shots fired at myself and Tobias Carlsson but rather 20-30. Also the comments about there being a "fighting zone" at the border when the ambulance was trying to get through is false. There was no combat activity at the time and the detention of the ambulance is standard policy against Palestinian medical crews."

related article: Zionism, Nazism, and Radical Islam

The turnout for this event was good. On March 13, about 200 people showed up, most dressed in black, and carrying small signs with the names of dead soldiers or dead Iraqis on them. As the people marched through the town, the names of some of the dead were read over the megaphone while others chanted "(name).... Died in Iraq" or "(name).... Killed in Iraq". At the end of the procession, people assembled at Mission park where Mike Rotkin read a Mayor's proclamation naming March 13th a day of remembering the dead in Iraq.

On Friday November 18th, from 3-5PM, TAKE SOME TIME OUT TO HELP STOP THE WAR IN IRAQ!

Enough is Enough. It is Time to Say NO louder and stronger to the War and the Bush Regime!!! Our tax dollars are funding it - WE must stop it!

Please join us on these events if you can!! And if you haven't watch this
film please do!

Fallujah the Hidden Massacre
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10907.htm

The Bush administration exploited FAKE intelligence to sell Congress on the Iraq war. FAKE intelligence, not faulty intelligence. We show photos of the forgeries here and point out the glaring errors in them, so you can see for yourself. The CIA and intelligence community let the forgeries slip by until after the war started. Then Joe Wilson exposed the forgeries, and his wife, Valerie Plame, got outed to pay him back and shut him up. WHAT ELSE DID THEY LET SLIP BY? 9/11 MAYBE?

Project for a New American Century (P.N.A.C.)

Let's face it, today's society is a form of 'low intensity war'; we are a colonized lot, compelled away from our pre-colonized imaginations long ago. We are bred to fight, and we regularly fall back on all we know. Then, to evolve the situation, to "wage peace", some of us are going to go to a kind of "peace war". This war is the war of cRuciaL aRts, not Martial Arts. Sections include: intro scenario, a craZy sketch, then a realistic sketch; after that is 'seeking to articulate'