Last Friday and Saturday, several of us participated in “Faithful Witness in a Time of Endless War: Drone Warfare and God’s Call to Peacemaking.” You can see the original flyer here. Shane Claiborne, Medea Benjamin, and former counterterrorism officer for the CIA’s drone program, Christopher Aaron, were main resource people at this educational, equipping, and demonstrating event up at Christopher Dock Mennonite High School in Lansdale, PA.
Blew Kind opened the second morning with her moving spoken word piece “Buzzing of a Bee” (available to stream or download here on the last Circle of Hope Audio Art record). Those gathered were moved (many to tears) as she led us to consider the vantage point of a woman losing her family to buzzing drones that kill 10 brown-skinned people for every one suspected terrorist. There are now estimated between 2,500 and 4,000 total dead due to drone warfare. In addition, Circle of Hope musicians Stephen Landis, Jay Beck, Joby Morey, and Joshua Grace accompanied her, setting a tone of tension and resolve.
L
ater on, the whole conference went to the Horsham Air Guard Station, now an operational US military drone command center to demonstrate that peace is possible and drones aren’t helping.
People from Circle of Hope have been actively part of the Philadelphia Interfaith Network Against Drone Warfare. We’re talking with the Leadership Team Core about how to make a process of how a group can become our “ally.” We regularly collaborate with some of these other good groups who sponsored the event:
1040forpeace; American Friends Service Committee; Brandywine Peace Community; Center on Conscience & War (CCW); Franconia Mennonite Conference; Germantown Friends Meeting; Interfaith Network on Drone Warfare; LEPOCO; Mennonite Central Committee East Coast; Mennonite Church USA Peace and Justice Network; National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee; Peace Action Education Fund (PAEF); Peace Tax Foundation; PA Council of Churches; Pennsylvania Interfaith Network Against Drone Warfare; Philadelphia-Area Anti-Drone Network; Plains Mennonite Church; Salford Mennonite Church & the Justice & Peace Ministry of Salford, PA; The Simple Way.