Kathy Kelly is one of the most important voices for peace in the US. Her pacifism and peace activism has placed her on the frontlines of the resistance to US war and empire. The following interview came after twenty-four peace activists were acquitted of charges against them relating to a January 2010 protest in the Capitol Building. The protest marked the passage of President Barack Obama's promised one year deadline to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo remains open and Kathy Kelly and her fellow peace activists remain determined to close it and end the wars and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this first of a two part interview she discusses Guantanamo, Afghanistan and the importance of citizen resistance to empire.

Billy Wharton - I heard there was an important victory in court on Monday for the folks who were doing the anti-Guantanamo Bay protests. Can you tell us about what happened?

Kathy Kelly - We might not call what happened exactly a victory because we honestly didn’t believe we had broken the law in this instance. I know that most of us have engaged in civil disobedience, but we believed that we were holding up our First Amendment rights and even under international law, our duty to expose and protest what has happened in Guantanamo and we wanted really wanted to use the courtroom theater, the courtroom drama, to bring out more information.

It was clear that the judge really didn’t know much about the cases we were raising. He was interested and I think what happened was that the judge realized that the prosecution had a weak case against us and he didn’t want it on his conscience that he had totally sidelined our claims and so I think he looked for a way to acquit us. He could do that by saying that the prosecution had not proven that and it didn’t look like it was going to be able to prove given the evidence it had presented that we were a credible threat that would constitute a breach of the peace because that’s a threat to incite violence. But, had he wanted to, he could have looked at the whole of the statute and said well, you know, they were disorderly or they were boisterous.

Anyway, it was clear that he didn’t want us to be found criminal by a prosecution that had seemed to have launched a very weak case. And, compared to the very considerable skill and eloquence that Bill Quigley demonstrated to the court, the prosecution seemed almost hapless.

BW - It seemed like the judge was trying to limit it to some kind of technical decision that it was the wrong charge filed.

KK - Right, that the prosecution wasn’t prepared to convict us on the charge that had been filed and had another charge been filed maybe he would have been able to uphold that. The lawyers who were present, one of whom who knows the judge, and both of whom are very familiar with the legal system in this country, felt very strongly that this judge did not want it on his conscience to have taken the very important matters that we were trying to raise and kind of subordinated them to a charge that we acted rudely or we acted boisterously.

BW - I think it is important that you tried to run a political trial from the get go.

KK - It was also significant that we were all acting as pro-se defendants. I think a lot of times, people feel intimidated by the courts, and they think, “Oh, I can’t afford a lawyer and then I’ll be found guilty and then what.” I think it is very very good for people to feel confident that they can enter into the judicial branch, just as we try to enter into the legislative branch and executive branch, that we have a role to play and a responsibility going into the judicial branch as well and going right into these court rooms and being assertive and you can start to figure out the language and the rhythm of these courts as well. Or not. I think it is fine to disrupt the courts too.

BW - What's the next step in the campaign to close Guantanamo and how can people reading this help out?

KK - The Witness Against Torture (WAT) campaign has, every year now, gathered in January for some kind of activity. This is a group that went to Cuba and sat outside the the base at Guantanamo and they did a 100 days campaign two years ago during the first 100 days of the Obama administration. Last year was a 12-day fast which culminated in going into the rotunda and also an action outside of the rotunda.

I think it is very very important that we begin to build more linkage with people from Central and South Asia living here in the United States. I think there are many families who have been fearful that their loved ones could be accused of being terrorists, could be sent to Guantanamo. There’s a sense of intimidation and fear every time something like the car bomb in Times Square happens. Every time something like that happens, it raises the specter of people seeing Muslim brothers and sisters as terrorists, as enemies. So, I think it is important to build those links.

If people decided to locally plan a WAT action or an action to close Guantanamo it is important to ask people in the local Muslim and Arab communities will you join with us. I think we can do more along that line. I am also hoping that another delegation from Voices for Creative Nonviolence will be able to go over to visit in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Three of us left in May to go to Pakistan and then two of us stayed on and went over to Afghanistan as well. It’s very expensive, it’s energy consumptive, but I think it is important to try and put a human face on the people who are bearing the brunt of our wars. Quite often those are the faces of children.

850 children die every single day in Afghanistan and these are, by and large, the poor children. They are such hard workers, my God, they never get a day off, they just work and work. They work in the fields as they go to school and they get a day off and they just go right out to the fields. At age five and six they are working hard. Over ¼ of these children don’t live beyond the age of five. We are talking about a country that is second only to Sub-Saharan Niger in terms of poverty.

The US is spending this obscene murderous amount of money, wealth and resources to maintain an occupation and attack people in that country. So, all of us can do more to protest this war. There is an assembly happening in Albany in July, at the end of July, and I hope that if people can get there, they will go to that assembly and say, “Hey, I want to be part of the group that is really going to really press in an organized and determined fashion to bring these troops home.” I think that people can go into their elected representatives’ offices and make themselves known and go back with a bigger delegation the next time. And, maybe decide that they are going to occupy the office, that has certainly been done before, we have had occupation campaigns.

We have to up the anti for our own non-violent resistance to this ongoing warfare. I think that the place to start is with the recognition of who is bearing the brunt, particularly children. In Pakistan next door, same thing, horrendous poverty. People are begging us “how will we fill our bellies?” Their country is told by the IMF and World Bank, you have to impose an even higher tax on citizenry so you can spend even more money on your police and military.

BW - Can you tell us how your delegations have been received by people in these countries?

KK - Last year when we went, people were very afraid to be responsible for us going say to Peshawar and the Swat valley. There was a sense that it was such an unknown, that it would be a risk to us and a risk to the people we visited. I think in the year that ensued there have been so many violent acts, either retaliation after the Taliban groups were dislodged, I think there were retaliatory acts happening in Islamabad and Lahore that were the result of the Pakistani military offensives that the US pressed for. There have been uprisings and attacks against small sects that have been undertaken by groups and people are not even sure who is organizing them. There have been attacks on military convoys, there have been explosions in many different places including universities.

My sense, this time, was that people thought that no place was particularly safe. If you want to take the risk and go there take the public bus, go ahead. There was a different sense, there was a more muted sense that the government had to provide security for people by eliminating the Taliban. I think that the people who were saying that last time, who tended to be the affluent and elite group, were realizing that it hadn’t brought more security for them, in fact, it brought less security. I think there is more a sense that there will eventually have to have more negotiation with these Taliban groups.

BW - I recently listened to Johann Galtung on Democracy NOW! He argued that the American Empire will end in 2020. He also stated that he loves the American Republic but despises the American Empire. How do you respond to his prediction and his separation of the Republic from the Empire?

KK - I long had a sense that we in the US are collaborators. We are not asked to give our bodies over to fight in these wars, we are not even asked to give our consent, but we are asked to pay for it. Most people go along with that. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I haven’t paid my taxes since 1980. I can’t and I won’t, I just don’t. I don’t think this is something people think about very reflectively.

I also think that there is a certain convenience that people like in our society. It’s almost as though there is a hidden message that says to those who exercise this menacing imperial might, “Look, do what you have to do, but don’t tell us that much about it. But don’t rock the boat of our lifestyle.” I’m sort of haunted by something that George Bush Sr. said in January of 1991 at an energy conference in Rio De Janeiro “The American way of life is a non- negotiable.” I think that if we want to rescue ourselves from being saddled with empire, and all of the bloodshed and the cruelty and the menace that comes with empire, if we want to liberate ourselves from that, we have to change our lifestyles. We have to say we don’t want this menacing might to protect our ability to be the hogs of the world, hogging resources. We don’t, any longer, want to be people that are obscenely over-consumptive. We don’t, any longer, want to presume we can just drive as many cars as we want, as far as we want, and consume as much natural resources and fuel as we want. We don’t want to be able to fly every time we feel like it and take vacations by air travel and encourage our children to do that. It’s almost like a train going over the abyss and we are all in the observation deck saying, “Yeah! Keep going! We like the scenery don’t stop, don’t stop.” This is nuts! This kind of insanity is what characterizes our collaboration, we’re collaborators with war crimes.

So, if you separate the empire from the republic, I’m a little nervous that people will just say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re not part of that empire, those are the elites and we are the sheep and those are the goats.” I don’t think it quite works that way. I think we have all had a hand in living very comfortably and very well as an empire. And tolerating genocide without requiring of ourselves the adult responsibilities that would be necessary to make change. I don’t want to be shrill and I know that speaking in this way is not the way to build the circles of people who will say, “Ok, I know, I would much rather be involved in politics instead of organizing a soccer league.” I want to be careful. I hope that we can be inviting to the people who have these very good skills organizing sports and entertainment for their children. And be inviting to that group of people and say that here is an opportunity to create a better world, a survivable world, an inhabitable world for your children. And here is how you can do it. You can take exactly the skills that you have donated to setting up play dates, organizing soccer leagues and creating family parties and mandatory gift giving events and all these things that take tremendous organizing skills. Transfer that into working for a movement that’s really going to build peace.

BW: I’m guessing you don’t have much access to the White House, so if you had a meeting with President Obama, what would be a few things on your agenda? What message would you give him?

KK: Well, I would tell him to level with the United States people and be clear that although the attack, for instance, had a very strong influence on Congressional Representatives they don’t have a strong influence on the vast population and that if he were to talk with the US public about how much money the United States, how much money and resources and ingenuity the United States has had to put into projects, war projects, in order to secure the interests of Israel and the Middle East, you know, allowing Israel to acquire 200 to 400 thermonuclear weapons and supporting Israel in this war against Lebanon and its siege against Gaza and its attacks on refugee camps in the West Bank and its usages of conventional weapons against civilian populations and that there’s no inherent reason why he should continue to perpetuate that relationship.

And then, I think he should level with the US public about the ways in which corporate control and collusion with the military and the defense sector and say that he as President doesn’t think that a second term presidency is worth the lives and the limbs that would be lost in order to continue this so-called defense project. I think he should level with the US people, I mean, maybe he won’t be re-elected, but he will certainly have a chance to delink with some of those truly prophetic people of our time like the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King and Mahatmas Gandhi and for the sake of a second term presidency to be in collusion with the fat cats and the war profiteers I think is a very bad bargain, so it’s a disappointment to me that he doesn’t speak up.

Editor's Note: Read Part 2 of the interview with Kathy Kelly - CLICK HERE