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Take Action For Standing Rock
Leaders at Standing Rock are calling for solidarity actions around the country and around the globe to protest the recent order and for a large demonstration on Washington on March 10.
Check out our Standing Rock page for ways to take action!From the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Indigenous grassroots leaders:
We call on our allies across the United States and around the world to peacefully March on Washington DC. We ask that you rise in solidarity with the Indigenous peoples of the world whose rights protect Unci Maka (Grandmother Earth) for the future generations of all.
Standing Rock and Native Nations will lead a march in prayer and action in Washington D.C. on March 10th 2017.
VFP-ROCK and VFP Hawai'i Deliver Letter to Japanese Consulate
 Today (3/2/17) representatives of HOA, Veterans for Peace, Hawai`i Peace & Justice, Amnesty International & Women?s Voices, Women Speak met with the Consul of Defense at the Japan Consulate in Honolulu and issued the following statement:
A coalition of concerned people within Hawai`i, including the NPOs the Hawai`i Okinawa Alliance (HOA), Veterans for Peace and Hawai`i Peace & Justice are alarmed about the use of force and arbitrary arrests of non-violent peace activists, such as Hiroji Yamashiro, while exercising their human right of peaceful assemblage in Okinawa. We are concerned by the mandated military base construction in Henoko and corresponding helipads at Takae that precipitated Okinawan citizens to assemble in the first place.
Veterans For Peace Delegation to Palestine: Week 2
Veterans For Peace delegation spent six hours at the Tent of Nations, a private farm on a hilltop overlooking the village of Na-Haleen, on the outskirts of Bethlehem. The village is surrounded by hilltops, all but one of which are occupied by illegal Israeli settlements, the exception being the farm, known to locals as “Daher’s Vineyard.” The farm was started in 1916 by the Nassar family, which has deeds signed by Ottoman authorities at its founding, and subsequently by British Authorities during the protectorate and by the Jordanian authorities in the Transjordan period. We were greeted by Daher Nassar, a grandson of the founder, one of three brothers who continue to operate the farm.
See Ken Mayer's full reflection "Walking the Talk of Nonviolence"
If you missed week one, make sure to check that out too!
Project Renew Featured in a New Article!
VFP Member, Chuck Searcy was invited by the editors of The VVA Veteran, publication of Vietnam Veterans of America, to submit an article reviewing the history of mine action efforts in Viet Nam, including the role of American veterans and U.S. veterans organizations.
"For most Americans, the Vietnam War ended in 1975. But for too many Vietnamese, the war didn’t end then. They continued to suffer death, injury, and lifetime disabilities from munitions that remained on the surface or just under the soil. These weapons posed a constant danger to unsuspecting residents throughout the country—but especially along the former demilitarized zone.
In 2001, when Project RENEW was launched, Quang Tri Province had been experiencing sixty to eighty accidents involving unexploded ordnance (UXO) every year since the war ended. Vietnam’s Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs reported that more than 100,000 Vietnamese had been killed or injured nationwide by bombs and mines."
Shut Down Creech in April 2017!
Join actvists April 23 - April 29, 2017 at Creech Air Force Base, Indian Springs, Nevada for a 2nd national mobilization of nonviolent resistance to shut down killer drone operations in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan,Yemen, Somalia and everywhere.
In the last two years we had nearly 150 activists each year join us from 20 different states across the country, including over 50 veterans. In a very successful resistance action, we were able to interrupt business as usual for nearly an hour, with 34 activists ultimately arrested. Let's make SHUT DOWN CREECH 2017 an even more powerful stance against illegal drone killing. Please join us, and help spread the word. Together we are PEACE!
Peace In Our Times Winter Edition Available for Download!
The Winter Edition of the PIOT is sold out but is now available for download!
Peace In Our Times is a Veterans For Peace publication. It is a great outreach tool and getting the message of peace out!
Minneapolis VFP Chapter at Standing Rock
 Four members of Veterans For Peace Chapter 27 in Minneapolis drove to Standing Rock Indian Reservation on February 21 to stand in solidarity with First Nation People, environmental activists and other veterans and help out.
We were met by police at a road block just south of the Oceti Sacowin Camp on HWY 1806 Tuesday afternoon and asked what we we're going to do down the road. I told them that we came to visit some friends and VFP member Barry Riesch mentioned that we also came to work at camp. We were told we couldn't proceed on that public road unless we consented to a vehicle check. Apparently it's against the law in certain North Dakota neighborhoods to drive around with a tent in the trunk.
VFP Member, Freeman Hobs Allan, Reflects on Standing Rock
"Cheyenne River camp, sits on a hill south of Cannonball River. On this hill are the "standing rocks", very ancient boulders polished by glacier and incised with small pictographs. A sacred place to the Lakota of these immense prairies. As we raised out first large fallback tent on Feb 16 to house COS refugees, a stunning bald eagle flew over, skimming these rocks and blessing our work."
Highlight: At 72, Freeman was the oldest vet on site!
Do You Have a Great Resource?
We want to hear from you!
We are hoping to include a helpful resource in our weekly VFP E-News Do you have a resource that you have found useful in your work for peace? A great movie? Good guides to build organizing skills? Let us know!
Please send Resources that can be accessed online or are available to folks across the country.
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In This Issue:
Petition: Fund People's Needs, Not Trump's Military Greed
Trump’s misdirected White House is putting military profiteering before public needs and putting future generations at risk. Trump’s proposed budget would slash social services that we depend on to raise the military budget by 10%. The United States already spends more on its military than the next 7 countries combined." Sign the United for Peace and Justice petition to call for funds to be spent on human needs here at home, not military and war-making abroad.
Sign the petition! Tell Democrats and Republicans in Congress that we value and support a system that prioritizes public needs over wars and corporate profiteers.
Save the Date! VFP Annual Convention
The VFP Annual Convention is titled "Education Not Militarization" and will be held in Chicago, Aug 9-13 at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago.
Tabling/ Registration begin on Wednesday, August 9, 2017
Workshops will be held on Thu/Fri (Aug 10-11th)
Saturday - business meeting/banquet
Sunday: Late concert
More details to follow!
National office contact is Shelly Rockett
Veterans For Peace: Healing and Inspiring Through Music
A Short film by Chris Smiley, (who is currently traveling with the VFP Delegation in Palestine) recently made this short film.
50th Anniversary of Beyond Vietnam Speech
April 4, 2017 will be the 50th anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. In confronting the deeply rooted racism, militarism and materialism of the United States, Dr. King described the United States as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.
In honor of the 50th anniversary of the reading of Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech, we are asking local VFP chapters to organize speech-reading events.
Drone Resisters from Big Books Action at Hancock Airbase Acquitted
Veterans For Peace member Ed Kinane and three others were recently acquitted from an action they participated in March of 2015, where they brought some books to block the front gate at Hancock Air National Guard Base. The United Nations Charter, Living Under Drones, Dirty Wars and You Never Die Twice.
Ed Kinane told the jury in clear and powerful language about his time living in Iraq during the war and about the terror sown by drones.
Zinn Fund Request for Proposals!
 The Howard Zinn Fund for Peace and Justice was founded to support grass-roots projects that make demonstrated changes for greater peace and justice.
The Howard Zinn Fund for Peace and Justice seeks proposals from VFP Chapters and members working on bold new approaches to resisting the causes of war. While we are open to funding any project which fits the VFP mission, we are particularly interested in working with chapters to:
- Increase diversity of membership and build new coalitions at the chapter level,
- Resist fossil fuel projects at a local level,
- Promote reconciliation and reparations for war crimes.
We will fund projects not related to the above items, and we do not want to dissuade any chapter or national member with a good idea and a plan of action from applying.
Get Your VFP Hoodie!
Show your VFP pride at winter actions, events, and meetings!
Front: VFP Logo
Back: Eisenhower Quote -"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
Vicki Ryder: "What True Defense is About"
 Letter to the Editor by Vicki Ryder of Tri-Cities VFP (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill in North Carolina), Chapter 157. The original letter was printed in the Durham Herald-Sun.
"Throwing money at the Pentagon, as we have been doing for years, won't protect us from the dangers we face as our infrastructure crumbles, as affordable health care moves beyond reach for more and more of us, as hate crimes rise, and as our sources of clean air and clean water are jeopardized by fossil fuel profiteers. Nor will the Pentagon defend our Constitutional rights or protect us from militarized police and private security forces who turn their weapons on those who stand against injustice, as they are doing at Standing Rock today."
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