We’re half way, and we just got a $2,000 matching grant, effectively doubling your contribution right now. If you’ve been thinking about supporting Courage to Resist, now is the time to do it!
We’re writing to you at the end of a very long year and there’s a lot to update you on. But first we want to thank you. Your attention, solidarity, and support is what enables Courage to Resist to have the impact we have on militarism. And now is exactly the time to lean into our strategies and knowledge.
In this past year a national commission on the draft law has been gathering data. I actually was just on a call with the commission to advocate for draft registration changes and to give Courage to Resist’s official statement. Basically Congress will have to make a choice: Either expand the system to women, or end it altogether. We have a great breakdown of the issue in the newsletter.
As you likely know we’ve been producing incredible heart-moving GI resistance interviews all year. These podcasts are focused on the Vietnam era and we’ve recorded 30 so far! Keep sending in your stories and help us by financially supporting this effort to record our stories for the next generations of resisters.
In 2019 whistleblowers have been the heroes and heroines that our country has needed. With your support and people power, we leverage our platform and network to advocate for those with the courage to resist: Daniel Hale, Chelsea Manning, and Reality Winner.
Daniel Hale, an Air Force veteran and former US intelligence analyst turned anti-war activist, was arrested this May and charged with violating the Espionage Act. A well-known anti-drone activist featured in the documentary, “National Bird,” Daniel has plead not guilty and his legal team is expecting a long legal proceeding.
Chelsea Manning will remain behind bars for another 10 months for refusing to give grand jury testimony regarding the thousands of top-secret documents she leaked in the spring of 2010. Courage to Resist led a successful campaign to free Chelsea from imprisonment from 2010-2017. And now again Chelsea chooses to resist and speak truth to power. Read more in our newsletter.
The F.B.I.’s transcript of their interrogation of Reality Winner is being used as the script for a new theater production and America magazine has just published a brilliant review.
“This nightmare-in-broad-daylight scenario, with its mix of the everyday and the extreme, is the gist of a remarkable new play, “Is This a Room,” at New York’s Vineyard Theatre . . . Not a word is added to or subtracted from the transcript, with the text’s redactions indicated by quick blackouts and a lightly booming sound cue . . . The concerns raised by the play could hardly be more timely—the fate of would-be whistle-blowers within the “deep state,” the leaking and weaponization of classified documents, the security of elections from foreign interference. But in its tiny, economical frame, “Is This A Room” also bottles the anxieties of our post-9/11 world, with our endless war on terror and our bulked-up national security state.”
For the past fifteen years, Courage to Resist has resolutely stood side by side with those bravely speaking out against the U.S. war machine. We’ve seen first hand the incredible accomplishments possible when people mobilize, even in opposition to the seemingly monolithic Pentagon.
The youth are now demanding that we address climate change because they believe they have a right to a future. Climate justice is peace justice: the U.S. military is the largest single source of climate-destroying pollution. There’s lots to do for the peace and justice we seek and we move mountains when we work together. Now’s not the time to sit idly by. Send your year-end donations in, knowing that we are pushing back with all that we have.
Towards a World Without War,
Jeff Paterson, Project Director
First US service member to refuse to fight in Iraq, USMC 1986-1990
Anya de Marie, Project Manager
Organizer / artist
ps. Thank you for standing with the troops who refuse to fight or who face consequences for speaking truth to power. Your end-of-year donation of $35 or more today is critically important to our ability to move forward with our mission.
“As an Army veteran, I’m so glad there’s an organization like Courage to Resist that really cares about people in the military and brings the whole community together in support of the heroes that follow the call of conscience and resist war…”
