5 Peace Activists Plan 34-Day Fast at U.S. Capitol in Effort to End Iraq War

Jeff Leys, 41, is co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. He traveled to Iraq in February 2003 with Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign of civil disobedience which existed to end U.S. economic sanctions against Iraq. He returned to Iraq in November 2003 with Christian Peacemaker Teams. Prior to joining VCNV, Leys worked as a labor representative for SEIU District 1199 in Wisconsin and for AFT in Kansas. Leys participated in a Plowshares action in 1985, serving two years in prison for nonviolently disarming a Navy transmitter system (since closed) in northern Wisconsin which served an integral role in U.S. first strike nuclear strategy. His work has also included such issues as: advocacy for Native American treaty rights; issues of homelessness; nuclear weapons; and U.S. involvement in Central America in the 1980's.

Cynthia Banas, retired librarian and longtime UNICEF volunteer, lived in Iraq for a total of 11 months between 2001 and 2003. A member of the Iraq Peace Team whose goal was to prevent the invasion of Iraq and report back to colleagues the situation on the ground, Banas lived in Baghdad before, during and after the three-week Shock and Awe terror bombing. She witnessed first-hand the efforts of peace people who came to Baghdad from countries world-wide to attempt to prevent the USA attack upon Iraq. She witnessed first-hand the invasion, the looting and the ongoing suffering of the Iraqi people during the occupation and the beginning of the resistance during the autumn of 2003.

Ed Kinane formerly worked on Wall Street. In the 70s he taught high school in Kenya (in a remote one-room Quaker school) and college anthropology in Seattle. In the late 80s and early 90s he worked with Peace Brigades International, accompanying threatened human rights workers in Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti and Sri Lanka, helping protect them from death squads. Since the mid 90s, he has been a persistent critic of the U.S. Army's School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, GA. For his nonviolent efforts against the SOA he has twice gone to federal prison, serving a total of 14 months. In 2003 he spent five months in Iraq with Voices in the Wilderness prior to, during and after the U.S. invasion. He has long been active with the Syracuse Peace Council. A long-time conscientious objector to the gas-guzzling internal combustion engine, he avoids driving and has never owned a car.

Mike Ferner has served as an independent member of the Toledo City Council; organized for the public employees' union, AFSCME; and worked as communications director for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), and for POCLAD, the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy. He traveled twice to Iraq, with a Voices in the Wilderness delegation just prior to the U.S. invasion in 2003, and in 2004 for two months as a freelance writer. His book about those trips, Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran For Peace Reports from Iraq (Praeger Publishers), is due out in August, 2006. He served as a Navy Hospital Corpsman during Vietnam, received an Honorable Discharge as a conscientious objector, and is a member of Veterans For Peace.

Joel Gulledge, 26, grew up in Bruce, MS, and studies sociology. Over the years, he has volunteered at homeless and battered women's shelters, worked with the Southern Baptist Convention in a Boston outreach program for youth and homeless, organized benefit concerts, and is a regular volunteer with the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center, SUSTAIN, and Food Not Bombs. From December 2004 to January 2005, he traveled the Occupied Palestinian Territories with the Memphis Peace Team. He picked olives, planted olive trees in demolished groves, confronted Israeli checkpoints, and worked and socialized with ordinary families. He then joined the Wheels of Justice speaking tour to bring these stories of occupation, nonviolence and dignity in the face of humiliation and violence back to the US. He is currently a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

For information about Voices for Creative Nonviolence, call 773-878-3815 or visit www.vcnv.org.