Pages tagged "Militarism"

Leah Bolger is a former National Board President of Veterans For Peace and continues to serve on the VFP board.  She is currently touring the U.S. to promote the work of VFP’s “Drones, Robots, and Future Weapons Working Group.”  Leah has worked with Quakers on many common causes over the years, and she spoke with Western Friend by phone on January 25, 2013.

The Friends Peace Testimony challenges us to find alternatives to war and violence and create peaceful approaches to resolving conflict creatively and without harm.  For the past ten years, Friends from around the world have put these words into action by creating the Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP), an international organization that places teams of civilians from all over the world into conflict zones, where they work with local groups to protect civilians and support local initiatives for peace.  NP teams are strictly non-partisan, and they form connections with all recognized stakeholders in conflict situations.  By forming these broad alliances, NP teams can broker dialogues, protect civilians, and create space for all sides to develop constructive and amicable solutions to conflicts, without resorting to violence. 

Dear Friends: During WW II, on February 14, 1945, I walked with my childhood friend from our school in Prague and he invited me to go to his house to play. For some reason, I decided rather to go home. When I came to the door of our apartment, suddenly an explosion occurred on the street I had been walking on just one or two minutes earlier. Had I been slightly delayed, an air bomb would have killed me. The following day I learned that another bomb had killed my friend on his way home. That day I escaped death twice.

Excerpts from a presentation to Intermountain Yearly Meeting; June 12, 2014; Ghost Ranch, Abiquiú, New Mexico