With annum’s end here again, it’s time to bring out paper and pen – iPod or -Pad? – to begin another list of good intentions for the new year. For me it’s a challenge to make it past the first days or weeks of January with resolutions intact. Most of us are stretched with our individual […]
Diane Hughes
Posted inOpinion
Springfield joins global action for climate change
Glaciers that provide drinking water for hundreds of millions of people are disappearing more rapidly than originally predicted. According to the United Nations, 325 million people are already affected by drought, disease, floods, loss of livestock, decline of fish stock and loss of agricultural productivity. Ninety-eight per cent of the people who will be most […]
Posted inOpinion
A peace activist’s concern about Obama’s war
Finally, the change we’ve all been waiting for; the light at the end of the tunnel. Now we can sit back and relax, right? Well, at this moment, pundits vie for the cleverest visuals to mock the size of the economic stimulus package just signed into law. Naysayers are saying “Nay!” President Barack Obama has […]
Posted inOpinion
Reverse course
Untitled Document You leave home for your cousin’s wedding. En route, you are grabbed by armed men, blindfolded, shoved into a truck, and moved to a storage tank with so many others that your captors shoot into the tank so that some of you can breathe. The unlucky ones are killed by the bullets. Or […]
Posted inOpinion
Raising the bar
Contemplating nonviolent civil disobedience at the office of U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin isn’t easy. On the one hand, Durbin is one of the senators most supportive of ending the Iraq War; on the other, he has consistently voted to fund the war. As I find myself increasingly angry and frustrated about the lies, torture, disregard […]
Posted inOpinion
Lift the ban
If I hadn’t just returned from Cuba, I would have read about John Bolton’s recent confirmation woes with a bit less apprehension. Bolton wanted a U.S. biological-weapons specialist to substantiate his claim that Cuba has biological weapons. Refusing to back up the erroneous and dangerous claim, the expert disclosed that he was being harassed by […]
Posted inNews
Why we speak out
On March 15, 2003, just days before the United States went to war against Iraq, more than 70 of us stood vigil in front of the Paul Finley Federal Building to speak out against the coming attack. We’ve been there almost every Saturday since. Our numbers have dwindled considerably, but the dedicated few who remain […]
Posted inNews
A peace marcher’s progress report
On February 15, I was in New York City for the international day of protest called “The World Says No to War.” It was biting cold, and I had to double up on everything: two pairs of socks, long underwear plus my warm pants, earmuffs under a hood, finger gloves covered by mittens. The huge […]
