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On May 28th, 2019, anti-war activists from Rhode Island, some affiliated with the burgeoning Rhode Island Peace Alliance (RIPA), met with Sen. Jack Reed (D., RI) to discuss US foreign policy. Reed is the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee and is known for his support for Rhode Island military industry –notably manufacturers of nuclear-armed and -powered submarines–and his calls for a return to pre-Trump defense protocol.

For example, Reed has called for more briefings on the US’s increasingly aggressive posture towards Iran, though naturally has not declared anything approaching unequivocal opposition to war with the besieged nation of 82 million. Similarly, both Reed and his colleague Rep. David Cicilline (D., RI) have demanded that any invasion of Venezuela be approved by the congress, effectively reiterating what is already the constitutional procedure for warmaking. Neither of them has questioned why the US regularly discusses the invasion of a distant, sovereign nation unfortunately ensnared by US orbit since the Monroe Doctrine. Adherence to procedure is as far as Reed and Cicilline seem to go.

In light of these and other concerns, the aforementioned activists delivered the following letter to Reed during the course of a long conversation:

Contrary to his campaign rhetoric and to no one’s surprise, President Trump has continued and intensified his predecessor’s attacks on whistleblowers and publishers. In the span of a few weeks, both Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, the sources of perhaps the most significant revelations about American warmaking in the last fifty years, have been thrown in jail to the cheers of the mainstream press. Meanwhile, the violent abuses that Manning and Assange revealed continue apace across the globe.

In solidarity with Manning and in preparation for similar events for Assange, Brown War Watch is hosting “Chelsea Solidarity Weeek” from April 22nd to 26th. The week will feature two main events and several smaller events spread across New England. First is a panel discussion on April 24th from 5:30 to 7:00 pm in Smith-Buonanno Rm. 106 entitled Whistleblowing in American Empire. The panel will feature legal and academic experts Naoko Shibusawa, Lida Maxwell and Sonali Chakravarti and will treat Ms. Manning’s centrality to the whistleblower movement.

On the following day, April 25th, from 5:30-6:30 pm, students and activists from across New England will demand Manning’s immediate release during the #StandOutForChelsea protest. Activists near Providence will convene on the Faunce Steps on Brown’s main green.

We hope you will join us for these important events and help us resist the corrosive foreign policy consensus. Please look forward to related updates here on the website.

Please join Brown War Watch on February 11th, at 5:30 PM in Friedman Auditorium at 190 Thayer Street on Brown’s campus for a screening of The Nuns, the Priests and the Bombs, a documentary about daring Catholic anti-nuclear activists. A panel will follow featuring the film’s director, Helen Young, investigative journalist Alex Nunes, and activist Frida Berrigan. Admission is free.

Are they criminals or prophets sending a wake-up call to the world?
The Nuns, the Priests and the Bombs, which has been shown across the country including at the UN, follows several religious activists, even an 82-year-old Catholic nun, who risk long jail terms in their efforts to move the world away from the nuclear brink.
Since 1980, activists in lay and religious life have undertaken dramatic Plowshares protests, derived from the biblical injunction, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares,” incurring long prison sentences in an ongoing campaign to deter nuclear disaster. Two cases are documented: the July 2012 break-in at a site known as America’s “Fort Knox of Uranium” where the intruders were an 82-year old Catholic nun and two fellow peace activists, and the 2009 Plowshares action at a US naval base near Seattle, WA. The film follows the activists’ legal efforts to justify their actions under international law and highlights the power of their moral conviction.

We hope that you will consider joining us for this important event sponsored by the Department of Middle East Studies and Department of Religious Studies.

Speaker Biographies

Helen Young is an Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist who has forged a career as a filmmaker and writer by blending a passion for investigative reporting with a commitment to illuminating critical issues of the day. Over the course of an esteemed career, Helen has directed and produced documentary films on subjects ranging from the childhood obesity crisis in America and illegal gun trafficking, to the U.S. space program. She has won a National News Emmy award and three New York Emmys for her work, as well as awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, United Press International, the National Commission on Working Women, and the Red Cross. She is currently a contributor to Huffington Post.

Frida Berrigan is a writer, activist, and mother whose work has appeared in The Nation, Waging Nonviolence, and TomDispatch. She is the daughter of Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister, a former priest and nun whose lifelong peace activism has made them central to the American anti-war movement. Frida’s book, It Runs in the Family: On Being Raised by Radicals and Growing into Rebellious Motherhood, details growing up with her activist parents and her own experiences becoming a mother in a violent world. Frida lives in New London, Connecticut, with her husband Patrick and their three children.

Journalist Alex Nunes is an adjunct professor at Rhode Island College and a producer for The Public’s Radio, an NPR affiliate for Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts. He is well-known for his coverage of Rhode Island’s close alliance with Electric Boat, a General Dynamics subsidiary and manufacturer of military submarines. He is currently researching and interviewing sources for “Mosaic,” a 30-part podcast series on immigration told through the individual stories of local immigrants and their descendants. Alex is based in Westerly, Rhode Island.