WILPF members attending the 54th meetings of the Commission on the Status of Women push to reallocate government dollars from military expenditures to basic human needs.  A pamphlet produced as the result of our strategizing at the International Board meeting about how to unify WILPF's talking points is available:  Click here to view or download the pamphlet as a pdf file. 

Bringing the “Most Dangerous Women” to Life:
An Interview with author Jan Maher

Jan Maher, director, professor, author and workshop leader is the co-author of the play Most Dangerous Women and author of the book Most Dangerous Women: Bringing History to Life Through Readers’ Theater. The book is about “Reader’s Theater” as a teaching and organizing strategy. Maher is currently teaching writing, multicultural education, feminist theater, gender and women’s studies at Plattsburgh State University, NY. We caught up with her to talk about her work, past and present.

Tell us a little about your book.

Maher: The book puts the play in context … about how to work with the material that is in the play in a community, and in classrooms. It tells you about how to teach it and how to produce it.

Let’s talk about how this evolved. The idea for the work first grew out of a request [WILPF member] Sylvia Lunt made. She asked Nikki Nojima Louis, your co-author, to develop something for WILPF’s 75th anniversary and then Nikki asked you to help on that project?

Maher: Right. We ended up with the first version of it in 1991, and that was done as a benefit performance in Seattle with a professional cast. And Sylvia and others Seattle members said ‘this is too important to not have it keep going.’ We then went to the national [WILPF Congress] in Bryn Mawr.

Building the Movement for Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions

How Do Companies Further the Palestinian Occupation?

Corporations further the Occupation either by operating in or supporting the Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law, or by supporting the apparatus of control and oppression which is the hallmark of the Occupation.

That apparatus includes the Separation Wall, the hundreds of checkpoints set up to impair Palestinian travel, the system of Administrative Detention (imprisonment without trial for periods of six months, renewable without review), night raids that frighten children and disrupt normal life, a permit system imposing restrictions upon travel and normal building for Palestinians, the confiscation of homes and lands, and the demolition of houses, among others.

Click here to read more about this unique opportunity.

The Situation

The Citizens United decision has been called the "worst Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott."

Untold amounts of corporate and special interest dollars already make free elections difficult and keep otherwise good people from running campaigns that demand obscene amounts of money and media connections.

Corporate Power is an issue that undergirds and creates obstacles for all the issues important to WILPF branches and members. It will take a concerted and strategic approach from all of us towards a unified response in order to move each of our issues forward, through the walls of corporate personhood.

Many are saying that with this decision American citizens will see their civic engagement in the voting process as both unnecessary and irrelevant, since corporate CEOs will be able to hand select our candidates, our priorities and our policies. No further voting or political contributions from ordinary citizens will be required, since none will be
effective against the billions of dollars corporations will be unleashing on our so-called democracy.

Pundits on both the conservative and progressive sides are calling it a dangerous threat to democracy. Even Tea Party founders are recognizing the negative impact this decision will have.

Jean Verthein, NGO Representative for WILPF, US to the United Nations, has written an excellent report on WILPF activities at the United Nations, where WILPF has official consultive status. 

To view and download this report,  click here.

Here is an excerpt from that report:

" WILPFers and Friends of WILPF at UN DPI/NGO Conference, Mexico City

Nuclear disarmament strategies, military budgets and gang use of small arms stirred about 1300 attendees at the recent UN conference for NGOs.  Such issue panels prepared the groundwork for the Review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in May 6 through May 26, 2010.

The whole peace effort to back the NPT, other treaties and initiatives sprang out of the August 6 and 9 US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

As diplomats convene on the NPT itself, side events will occur in buildings around the closed UN building under repair.  Governmental disarmament agencies will track developments under the existing NPT.

NGOs and their coalitions will host thematic meetings.  Torchlight parades and marches will pass through many countries and end up in New York City.

To prepare for the NPT Review in May 2010. six WILPF members participated in this process at the annual United Nations Department of Information this past fall in Mexico City on disarmament."

A protest was held January 16th at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.   
The focus was the increased use of CIA armed drones in Afghanistan and now the Pustun areas of Pakistan.  
The event was organized by Peace of the Action and Cindy Sheehan Cindy@CindySheehansSoapbox.com.