A Teach-in on Iran

Saturday, April 28, 1:00 pm
Suffolk University Law School, 120 Tremont St., Boston
Park Street T

Live Video Stream

 
The situation in the Middle East is tense and dangerous. The US wants oil, strategic position and regime change in Iran. Already there are harsh economic sanctions, assassinations and naval patrols of the Persian Gulf. Israel warns of a possible military attack on Iran’s nuclear installations as “all options are on the table.” We must stop a big new war in the Middle East!

Andrew Bacevich Boston University	Elaine Hagopian Simmons College	Irene Gendzier Boston University
Gary Goldstein Tufts University	Alex Shams Graduate Student, Harvard University	Denise Provost State Representative, Somerville
Afshin Razani Berkeley College, New Jersey	Jeff Klein Dorchester People for Peace	Shahrzad Noorbaloochi Boston University Anti-War Coalition

 
Themes:
o the war danger
o Iran’s nuclear program
o economic sanctions
o history of US/Iran relations
o Israel, Palestine and Syria
o opportunities for dialogue and peace

 
ACTION PANEL TO STOP THE WAR

 
$5 donation; no one turned away
Free for Suffolk University and Faculty with ID
info@justicewithpeace.org • 617-383-4857

 
Live Video Stream: masspeaceaction.org/1980

 
Sponsored by: United for Justice with Peace, Dorchester People for Peace, Boston University Anti-War Coalition, and the Suffolk University Department of Government

Occupy Boston Community Gathering

Monday, April 23, 6:00 to 8:30 pm
St. Paul’s Cathedral, 138 Tremont St, Boston &bull Park St T

Presentation: The Price of War

A short presentation from the New Priorities Network

Panel: Community Impact

A discussion with activists from the local community, peace,
labor, and veteran movements about how the war impacts their communities:

• Tyrek Lee | Vice President, 1199 SEIU Massachusetts
• Oliver Hendricks | City Life / Vida Urbana, Coalition to Fund Our Communities / Cut Military Spending by 25%
• Duncan McFarland | United for Justice with Peace
• Rachel McNeill | Veterans For Peace

Discussion: Where do we go from here?

ORGANIZED BY THE FREE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY
For more information, email fsu@lists.occupyboston.org, or visit wiki.occupyboston.org/wiki/fsu.

Do your part to fund our communities — just like the rest of us.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Dewey Square • Summer St & Atlantic Ave, Boston • South Station T

 
For most Massachusetts residents, April 17 is the deadline to file our income taxes — but for some Boston-area corporations, Tax Day never comes.

Military contractors like General Electric are among the worst corporate tax dodgers. Taxpayers will pay GE $421 million this year to build aircraft engines in Lynn, Massachusetts — principally engines for jet fighters like the F-18, which are used for wars we don’t need — and GE doesn’t even pay taxes on it income.

Despite billion-dollar profits, these corporations have managed to avoid taxation altogether, with some even raking in hundreds of millions in tax refunds. This rampant corporate tax dodging is bankrupting our communities, forcing mass layoffs, slashing vital services and closing schools and community centers.

 
Enough is enough. It’s time for big businesses and the wealthiest amongst us to pay their fair share, just like the rest of us do. On Tax Day — Tuesday, April 17 — Boston is taking to the streets to send a clear message to corporations and the 1%: PAY YOUR TAXES!

Tax Day March & Rally

 
3:00 Rally at General Electric, 125 Summer St., one block from Dewey Sq. Please let us know you’ll be there!
5:30 Rally at Dewey Square (Summer St & Atlantic Ave)
6:00 March through the Financial District

 
BRING A NOISE MAKER! (Ie: drums, pots, pans)

 
Sign-up to participate: taxdayboston.org.

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Janet Johnson

Massachusetts Peace Action will join with other groups to present the documentary “Pray the Devil Back to Hell”, about women’s nonviolent struggle to end the Liberian civil war, along with a talk by Janet Johnson.

 
The film will be shown Thursday, March 29, 6:30 p.m., in the lecture hall of the Cambridge Public Library, main branch, at 449 Broadway. The event is cosponsored by the Cambridge Peace Commission, Congo Action Now, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom – Boston Branch.

 
The documentary gives a summary of women’s use of nonviolent actions in 2003 to end Liberia’s 14 year civil war. The war started when Charles Taylor and his National Patriotic Front of Liberia, NPFL, invaded Liberia on Christmas Eve 1989. By March 1990, one of Taylor’s rebel generals, Prince Johnson, broke away to form the independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia, INPFL, the faction that eventually caught and killed President Samuel Doe on September 9, 1990.

 
For 14 years women, men, children and the elderly were harassed, raped, killed even massacred or burnt alive in churches and in their own homes. Thousands more were fed to alligators and crocodiles. Babies were snatched from their mothers and cut into pieces or fed to reptiles. The lucky ones had their limbs cut off in stages – long sleeves, short sleeves or sleeveless arms. Hundreds of pregnant women died as rebels cut open their stomach after placing bets over the sex of the unborn child. Others complained of having been gang raped until they gave birth to their child. Hundreds of thousands of survivors may have survived the war with their limbs intact but remain psychologically traumatized for life.

 
The role of the United States still remains unclear to many. There are rumors that the U.S. freed Taylor from jail with the aim of sending him to Liberia to depose Dictator and President Samuel Doe who had fallen out with United States. The United States has denied the allegation but gives no reason why Taylor was not rearrested after his whereabouts was disclosed.

 
It has been widely speculated that the United States was responsible for Taylor’s war machinery and his unleashing of terror against Liberia and its people. While the Pentagon remains tight lipped about its relationship with Charles Taylor, Taylor has confessed that United States did aid his escape from its maximum security prison near Boston (Plymouth County Correctional Facility) in 1985. After his breakout in Plymouth, Taylor told the court, he recruited 168 men and women for the National Patriotic Front for Liberia and trained them at a former US military base in Libya.

 
The horrors of the war may seem a thing of the past but Liberia as a nation is still grappling with its effects. Liberians also remain grateful to the U.S. for finally being responsible for Taylor’s trial in The Hague for his involvement in the 11 year war in neighboring Sierra Leone.

 
Janet Johnson, a Liberian journalist who is featured in the film, will give a talk after the film. The president of the Female Journalists Association of Liberia at the time, Johnson was one of the strategic leaders in the Peace Movement. She is now a Master’s student at the University of Lowell and an intern with Massachusetts Peace Action.

 
The President of the Women’s Movement of Liberia at the time, Leymah Gbowee, who is also extensively interviewed in the film, and the current President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for their part ending Liberia’s civil war.

 
Congo Action Now will give an update on the Congo Conflict Minerals bill which is currently pending in the Massachusetts Legislature. The Congo conflict has several similarities with that in Liberia: both are driven by the scramble for mineral resources, and both conflicts have been especially destructive of women’s lives.

by Reaching Critical Will, a project of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

 
Since December 2002, when Iran’s previously unreported development of a nuclear site at Natanz (uranium enrichment plant) became public knowledge, Iran has been under fire from key players in the international community. Iran agreed to allow enhanced inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the agency responsible for inspections of nuclear facilities of all states parties of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As Iran is a member of the NPT, it has a Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the Agency. By November 2004, then-IAEA Director General Mohammed ElBaradei announced there was no evidence that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.
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