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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As we approach the 9th anniversary of the U.S.-led war on Iraq, we are once again seeing American politicians claiming that an oil-rich nation in the Persian Gulf might soon build nuclear weapons. Top U.S. and many Israeli intelligence and military leaders, and all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies agree that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, is not building a nuclear weapon and has not even made the political decision of whether to move in the direction of building a nuclear weapon. And yet politicians are ratcheting up calls for military threats and even military strikes, this time against Iran – and the result could lead to war.

 
An attack or war against Iran would be a disaster and a crime. Just as United For Peace and Justice worked to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we strongly oppose any attack on Iran, and are calling on all to take action. It took several years to build majority opposition to those earlier wars. We must quickly express the majority sentiment that already exists against the possibility of any new wars, calling for justice at home and abroad instead! We need a foreign policy based on diplomacy and negotiations, not crippling economic sanctions and dangerous military strikes. So far the Obama administration has held less than an hour’s actual talks with an Iranian diplomat – diplomacy means engaging, negotiating, talking – and talking some more. It is time to urge family, friends, and people of good will – everyone who cares about people in Iran, in Israel, or here in the United States – to do all they can to stop military action before it starts.
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Afghanistan, Libya, Russia, China, the Global Economy & Economic Justice

Wednesday, April 4, 2012, 7:00pm
Cambridge Friends Meeting, 5 Longfellow Place, off Brattle St. near Harvard Square

Vijay Prashad, Professor of International Studies, Trinity University; author of Arab Spring, Libyan Winter
Elaine Bernard, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at the Harvard Law School and a Vice Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Joseph Gerson, Director of the Peace and Economic Security Program, American Friends Service Committee.

Peace and justice organizations, community based groups and Occupy are preparing to challenge militarism and austerity when the leaders of the NATO nations meet in Chicago, and the G-8 meets in Camp David, this May. Join us to learn what NATO and the G-8 have to do with the world’s wars, economic crises, and making the world safe for the 1%. For information about the Counter-Summit in Chicago May 18-19, see www.natofreefuture.org.

Read Joseph Gerson’s just published article NATO in Crisis and Agendas for Chicago.

With a second aircraft carrier group steaming toward the Persian Gulf, tens of thousands of US troops stationed throughout the region, and the sale of tens of billions of dollars in US weapons to Iran’s neighbors in the Gulf region, it seems that war with Iran could be imminent.

But we won’t wait for the bombs to drop to make our voices heard. Over the next two weeks, we want to generate thousands of signatures to counter the war drums. On February 16th, we will deliver our first batch of petitions to the White House.

Please take a moment to sign Peace Action’s petition calling on the President to use all means at his disposal to prevent a military strike on Iran – by either the US or Israel.
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