Building Empathy and Addressing Racial Oppression

Our upcoming 3-part workshop Building Empathy and Addressing Racial Oppression looks to tackling an issue that runs deeper than many are able to comfortably address. Myriad issues around white fragility, privilege, and holding meaningful discussion that transcend feelings of guilt and shame are central to asking ourselves how we can move toward an anti-oppressive society.  Facilitators Francine Serwili-Ngunga…

Vigil to Shut Down the School of the Americas

In 1946 The School of the Americas (currently known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security and Cooperation  began training Latin American soldiers in “counterinsurgency operations” out of Fort Benning Georgia. Upon returning to their home countries, many of these soldiers used the training the received at SOA to support or lead brutal military dicatorships in Latin…

Campaign Nonviolence Conference 2015 Report from PJC Director Rachel Siegel

I had the pleasure and fortune to attend the Pace e Bene Campaign Nonviolence training and conference in Santa Fe August 7th and 8th. The name of the conference was “Mobilizing the Nation for the Times We’re In: Ending War, Poverty, Nuclear Weapons and Environmental Destruction – Building a Culture of Peace.” Audacious? Clearly. Possible?…

Drone wars: the gamers recruited to kill

Check out this new video made and published by The Guardian: In tiny bunkers in the United States, young pilots are operating unmanned drones targeting ‘bad people’ in Pakistan. Recruited at video game fairs by military leaders who know the value of games that glamourise ‘militainment’, drone pilots are left traumatised by the civilian casualties –…

Peace Activist Kathy Kelly Heads to Prison for Protesting U.S. Drone War

Check out this story and video from Democracy Now! Peace activist Kathy Kelly is about to begin a three-month prison sentence for protesting the U.S. drone war at a military base in Missouri earlier this year. Kelly, along with another activist, was arrested after offering bread and an indictment against drone warfare. Kelly is the…

Join the PJC in Boycotting Honeywell

We Boycott Honeywell because of their manufacture of navigational and propulsive technology for Reaper drones, making them hundreds of millions of dollars for their work supplying one of the most potent tools there is for extrajudicial killing and American imperialism. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia- for communities throughout the middle east U.S. drones have become synonymous…

Response to the shooting of Michael Brown and racism in Vermont

When heinous acts of racist violence happen elsewhere, many well-intended people use that as evidence that there isn’t racism in Vermont. The staff and board of the Peace & Justice Center disagree. There is more to discrimination than just the dramatic acts of violence that saturate our media. The shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, as well…