Welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast. I'm
John, Father John Deere, and today I'm speaking
with my friend. one of our strongest voices for
peace and against war, Anne Wright. This is a
project of www .beatitudecenter .org, where you
can find many other podcasts and regular Zoom
programs on the nonviolence of Jesus and practicing
nonviolence and working for a more just, more
nonviolent, more peaceful world. So let's begin
with a little prayer, as we always do here. So
I invite you, wherever you are, just to take
a deep breath. and to relax and to recenter yourself.
And together, let's enter into the presence of
the God of peace who loves you personally and
infinitely and everyone everywhere. And we welcome
the nonviolent Jesus here with us and ask for
whatever graces we need to do God's will and
become the peacemakers we were created to be.
God of peace, thank you for all the blessings
of life, love, and peace that you give us. Be
with us now as we reflect together on your call
to follow the nonviolent Jesus and work for a
more nonviolent, more just world. Bless us, inspire
us, disarm us, strengthen us, and send us out
to do your will and to do our part to help end
war and poverty, racism, greed, injustice. fascism,
nuclear weapons, and environmental destruction,
that we might be your holy peacemakers and welcome
your reign of universal love, nonviolence, and
peace on earth. In Jesus' name we pray. Well,
friends, it's a great blessing to welcome today
my friend Anne Wright to speak with us about
her life of working to end war and to promote
peace and disarmament. Anne Wright is a retired
U .S. Army colonel who worked in the military
for 29 years, 13 on active duty and 16 in the
Army Reserves, as well as a retired U .S. State
Department official. She was a diplomat for 16
years and served in U .S. embassies such as Nicaragua,
Granada. Somalia, Uzbekistan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia,
Mongolia, and including Afghanistan. In 1997,
Anne was awarded the State Department Award for
Heroism after helping to evacuate several thousand
people during the Civil War in Sierra Leone.
Now, Ann achieved a lot of notoriety in March
2003, just when George W. Bush started the massive
bombing war on Iraq. She was one of three State
Department officials to publicly resign in protest
of the U .S. war in Iraq. Since then, she has
become a full -time activist working to end war,
often working with organizations that I'm involved
with, too, such as Veterans for Peace, Code Pink,
the International Peace Bureau, World Beyond
War, No to NATO, and Women Across DMZ, many other
groups. She regularly travels to places the U
.S. government does not want U .S. citizens to
go, such as Iran. North Korea, Yemen, Afghanistan,
Nicaragua. She's about to leave for Cuba, and
she's often going there to study the effects
of U .S. policies and the effects of our wars.
She's been a coordinator in particular with the
Gaza Freedom Flotilla for 16 years and has been
jailed in Israeli prisons twice. She travels
and speaks widely on war and peace. especially
Palestine and the Israeli genocide in Gaza and
the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. She's
coming to us from Hawaii, where she lives, and
is the co -author of the book Descent, Voices
of Conscience, and many other articles. Please
check out her website, which is voicesofconscience
.com. Anne Wright, welcome to the Nonviolent
Jesus Podcast. Well, thank you, John. It's a
pleasure to be with you. Great. Well, I was just
trying to recall, you know, knowing you, and
we've been together all around the world several
times, including places like Cairo during the
Gaza Freedom March, Kabul, Afghanistan together.
You came out to Los Alamos at one of our... protests,
at least one, maybe more. But we've been in a
lot of other demonstrations at the White House
and I think the United Nations. Your journey
is remarkable from being in the military and
then being a really a career diplomat, even in
the embassy at Afghanistan, toward resigning
and then becoming a full -time activist and advocate
for peace in March 2003. I really want to get
into your activism, but can you tell me something
about that journey and especially why you resigned
and so publicly? And how is it that you did and
how come thousands of others aren't? You know,
what happened? Well, John, thank you very much.
You know, it was quite a journey. I spent most
of my adult life in the U .S. government. I joined
the military, as many young people do, to get
away from something. And I was getting away from
the state of Arkansas, where I grew up. I wanted
to go see the world. And back in the 60s, the
jobs for women, you know, were very honorable.
School teachers, secretaries, homemakers. I wanted
to get moving out of Arkansas. So when the Army
recruiter came through, like so many other young
people, join the Army, see the world, and that's
what I wanted to do. And I was very lucky that
I had good leadership. I was not sexually assaulted.
I was certainly harassed as a woman because less
than 1 % of the people in the military at the
time were women. Now it's up to 17%. But right
now, well, it's always been difficult, but under
the current administration. Pete Hegseth as Secretary
of Defense. They're really going after the role
of women in the military. All that to say, then
I joined the State Department and became a U
.S. diplomat in all those places that you said.
It was finally when the Bush administration decided
to invade and occupy Iraq with no real evidence
at all. weapons of mass destruction. I and three
others, two others actually, decided that we
would resign. And why more people didn't? Well,
it's part of the realities of life that you've
got kids in college, you've got mortgages, you've
got the need for a steady income. And just like
right now, for the genocide in Gaza, we've only
had 14 people from the federal government that
have resigned. However, now with the massive
slicing and burning of the federal government,
there are plenty of people, I think, who probably
in their moral compass knew they should be resigning.
Well, they're kicked out of government anyway.
So I hope because of the slashing and burning,
and I hope they're out on the streets to use
their conscience for saying to this administration,
no to. all of the crazy things that are happening
right now, including immigration detentions and
killings because of witnessing abuses that ICE
and other federal agents are doing, much less
an invasion of Venezuela to kidnap the leader
of Venezuela, the attacks on Iran, and apparently
the need for us to invade and occupy Greenland.
So if that isn't enough for people to get busy
and get out on the streets, I don't know what
is. Hey, Ann, thank you. So what a journey then.
Now, to the friends listening, Ann travels. around
the world into war zones more than anybody I
know. And if she's not around the world, she's
on the street somewhere. I know this because
I keep running into her and I hear reports of
sightings. She's like the risen Jesus in the
underground movement popping up here and there.
So in other words to the listeners, there's so
much to talk about with Anne. What I propose
is going through several countries. Because it's
not chronological with Anne. So, Anne, I'd like
to ask you a little bit about Iraq and then Afghanistan.
Then we'll talk about Palestine and so forth.
Okay. So you stepped down in March 2003 when
this horrific bombing war in Iraq begins. Tell
me about all your experience and what you did
to try to stop the war in Iraq. Well, I was the
deputy ambassador in Mongolia. when the lead
-up to the war in Iraq was going on. I had just
come from being in Afghanistan, helping reopen
the embassy there. But I was in Mongolia, and
there was all this hype about weapons of mass
destruction. We needed to go in and take them
out, take Saddam Hussein out. And it was like,
you know, it just didn't meet the smell test.
Over the years, from the 1990s, we had been hearing
from the UN inspectors, many of whom were US
intelligence persons who were on the UN team
looking for weapons of mass destruction. And
those members of that team said, the weapons
of mass destruction Iraq had have already been
destroyed. There are none. And finally, it was
like, well, they're just lying through their
teeth again. And I'd been in the government,
you know. for almost, well, 35 years at that
point between the Army and the State Department.
And it's like, you know, I've had enough. I am
not going to go along with this next thing that
an administration is cooking up. By that time,
that was the eighth presidential administration
that I had been in and held my nose to plenty
of policies but never resigned. So this one,
it was like, well, I just decided I was going
to. going to resign. And whether or not my resignation
got any publicity, you know, we didn't know.
That wasn't why I was resigning. It was on my
own morality and my own conscience that I just
could not be a part of what I knew was going
to be a horrific, horrific death of so many people
in Iraq. So that's what, you know, a cold, cold
morning. The winter of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia,
I finally finished what they said later was the
longest letter of resignation that the State
Department had ever had. That was three and a
half pages. So I let them have it for all the
other things I was concerned about, too. And
then did you ever go to Iraq on a peace mission?
Nope, I never did. I never joined so many peace
people who were there during the actual. shock
and awe, like Kathy Kelly and all the people
that had spent years since Gulf War I, and then
the attack, Kathy and so many others had gone
to Iraq. But I just had a feeling in my stomach
that that was one place, because I had resigned
over it, that I just felt that, you know, I just
felt that wanted to be the end. If I went there,
I'd be a target. I want to live my life to do
some other things, too. Good. I remember you
reminding me I was you know, I went to Iraq in
the 90s with some Nobel Peace Prize winners.
It was so clear that this was way before 2003.
There were no weapons of mass destruction. But
when that war started, I'm living in New Mexico
and we have Los Alamos in our backyard. And that's
when we were starting the campaign there. And
our main message for years was. President George
W. Bush, there are no weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq, so stop the war. Don't bomb them. But
we found them. They're here in New Mexico. Don't
bomb us. Just come and get rid of them. And then
we would issue just outrageous statements that
would get tons of publicity. Well, then the Afghanistan
war. And you had actually helped reopen the embassy.
Tell us about your experiences in solidarity
with the people, the suffering people of Afghanistan.
Well, yes, I volunteered to go to Afghanistan
to help reopen an embassy that had been closed
for 12 years. And one of the reasons I wanted
to. to go is that, well, first I'd had experiences
in opening and closing embassies. That happened
in Sierra Leone. We had to close an embassy because
of a civil war, and then we reopened it eight
months later. So I'd had that experience. Plus,
I'd been in the military, and I know that we
had a large number of military people that were
starting to move into Afghanistan. following
the massive CIA presence that was there. The
CIA really went in first with its own Air Force
and brought in lots of paramilitary CIA, and
then U .S. Special Forces came. And I wanted
to see what was happening because it seemed to
me like after 9 -11 that we were going after
the leadership of al -Qaeda, but why in the world
were we starting to put military in? Because
it sure seemed to me like it was like a... a
police, a law enforcement, that sort of operation
rather than invading a whole country over this
thing. So I wanted to go to see what was happening.
And I ended up being there for, well, almost
two months before they started bringing in people
who were going to be more of the permanent staff
of the embassy. But during that two -month period,
I got to travel around quite a bit of the country
because the Taliban had... had started laying
low. Some of the leadership had headed to the
hills with the al -Qaeda group, but most of them
just buried their weapons and just hung out at
home and didn't really take potshots at the U
.S. forces until quite a bit later. So we could
travel throughout most of Afghanistan in those
early days. And it was getting to meet the people
throughout the country, getting to meet the senior
leadership of the new civilian government that
was coming in and all of these people all they
wanted was a little peace after this the soviets
were there for 10 years then the taliban took
over and then here comes the u .s and it's like
please can't you all just leave us alone and
let us have some time for peace for ourselves
and that didn't quite happen that way i did go
back Several times after I resigned from the
government, I went back to meet with organizations
in Kabul primarily. And at that time, the hope
was that even though the U .S. was in there massively,
that indeed the structures of government would
become very, very strong and the U .S. could
leave much sooner than the 20 years that it did,
that it would get out and that... the civilian
structures of Afghanistan would be able to continue,
well, begin really the leadership for that country.
Well, it didn't turn out that way. With the Trump
administration negotiating with the Taliban for
the removal of U .S. troops in Trump 1, and then
Biden and his gang implementing a departure that
was a very bad way to end the U .S. there, that
the structures that should have been in place
were definitely not. And the people of Afghanistan
now are suffering again under the very, very
restrictive government of the Taliban. I remember
when we were there together. And I don't even
remember the year, maybe 2014 with our friends,
Mairead McGuire, the prestigious Nobel laureate
and Shane Claiborne. We were mainly with youth.
And most of that week, as I recall, Anne, and
I wanted to see if you'd share any thoughts on
this. We heard testimonies from these poor kids
in Kabul who told about how their families out
in the country. you know, might be gathered around
the fire one night. And a U .S. drone would fly
at 30 ,000 feet over them and drop a bomb and
kill everybody in the village, and the kids survived.
And so this just went on all day for a couple
of days. And I learned so much about the horrors
of the U .S. drone warfare, which was really
full -on in Afghanistan and maybe one of the
future things of... Do you have any thoughts
or recollections or stories about all of that?
Well, yes. And, you know, particularly the youth
that came from the outer parts of the country
and then had come into Kabul to try to get out
of all of the drone warfare that was going on
not only in Afghanistan but on the border with
Pakistan. Then the U .S. was already well deep
into the drone warfare in Iraq, and they had
started it in Yemen. So it was heartbreaking.
And in fact, several of us had gone not only
to Afghanistan, but we went to Pakistan on an
assassin drone. time to talk to people in Afghanistan
up along the border of what what was happening
there and then we took another trip and that
was to Yemen to talk with people from Yemen about
what the U .S. assassin drone program was doing
to them in their country so we've been all over
the place as the as the U .S. continues to use
these drones and as we're seeing right now it's
the drone warfare on boats in the Caribbean,
supposedly going after drug runners, but no evidence
being presented to anyone that that's what is
on the boats that they're blowing up. But they're
using the drones there, and they're going back
into Afghanistan and blowing people up again
in Afghanistan with these assassin drones. You
know, Ann, remember that front page New York
Times report that on Tuesday mornings, First
thing, Obama would come down to his office, have
his coffee after sending the kids off to school
and review the assassination list and approve
the top 30 or 50 assassinations for that week.
This went on the whole time he was president.
And there you and I were over in Kabul. And these
kids would be sobbing, saying. I don't even know
what the Taliban looks like. I just want to remember
one of them. And you're telling me that there's
a plane 30 ,000 feet above the Hindu Kush mountains,
which is like the Himalayas, and there's no human
being on this plane. It's full of gasoline, bombs,
and cameras. And some kid in Las Vegas said...
like literally a teenager at the Creech Air Force
Base, is looking at the video and deciding that
that light from that fire in that village up
in the mountains must be Taliban, and they blow
everybody up, and nobody's Taliban there. Nobody
has uniforms. And you just go... What have we
become, Ian, you know? Well, indeed, when the
president of the United States was doing exactly
what you were saying, that every week he was
identifying people by name that those drones
were going to go after. It just, you know, he,
for the good that he did, he sure did a lot of
bad, too. And this identification of people to
be assassinated, I mean, it's just like Trump
who assassinated the... the top general in Iran
during his first time in power and now doing
the assassinations of these people that are in
these boats in the Caribbean. I will mention
that there are opportunities in the U .S. for
people to protest against these assassin drones.
We still have times now in Holloman Air Force
Base, New Mexico, part of your old stomping grounds.
We are now doing protests out there because that
has turned into being another training hub for
the U .S. military, for the pilots of drones,
as well as Creech Drone Base. Outside Las Vegas,
yeah. Outside Las Vegas, there is an opportunity
for people to come out and help us challenge.
the U .S. assassin drone program. So I want to
talk now, Anne, about Israel, Palestine, West
Bank, and Gaza. So tell me about your trips and
your thoughts about that, and then we'll talk
about the flotilla, okay? Well, I first went
to Gaza in 2009. Was that on our trip? No, that
was early, in January of 2009. Gaza Freedom March
was in December of 2009. And the 10 months, 12
months between those two, I went back to Gaza
five different times, taking groups of people
with Code Pink Women for Peace. And we brought
groups of 50 people in to see the level of destruction
that the Israelis had caused with their Operation
Cast Lead that happened in December of 2008 and
January of 2009. And it was just... The reason
that Medea Benjamin and I went in the very beginning
was that we saw the level of destruction. We
were actually at Fort Benning going to the School
of the Americas watch when the Israelis were
attacking Gaza. And we watched on TV and saw
this destruction. It was like, holy smoke, this
is unbelievable. It's like World War II. So we
went, but we weren't the first internationals
to get in there. Kathy Kelly. actually went the
week before we did. And then all of us were trying
to get as many pictures, talk to as many people,
and come back to rally people in the United States
and other places to go to Gaza, see with your
own eyes, and then go after the Israeli government
for what they're doing to Gaza. So five trips
later, then we decided, well, let's bring lots
of people to Cairo. and then arranged for them
to go into Gaza for only 24 hours as a commemoration
for that year that the Israelis had bombed Gaza.
But we were foiled by the Egyptian government,
who did not let anyone but actually one busload
of people go into Gaza. So the rest of the 1
,500 people... were in Cairo. And I think at
the end of the week, the Egyptians wish they'd
let all of us go into Gaza because people were
having hunger strikes all over Cairo. They were
climbing the pyramids with big Palestine flags.
They were at every one of the embassies with
the banner saying, stop killing in Gaza, stop
your complicity. So it really was a momentous
time. And it was kind of one and a half years
before the Arab Spring hit. And Tahrir Square
became well known throughout the world for the
square of attempting to have freedom in Egypt.
But it didn't quite work out that way. And now
they're under another severe dictatorship. I
was on that trip with Anne to the listeners.
It's hard to describe. There were 4 ,500 people
from around the world. We're all going to go
into Gaza. This was a long trip, and then Mubarak
prevented it. And then I was one of the 50. Mubarak
announced that I and a few others, like David
Hartz, would be allowed into Gaza. But the last
minute, about half of us, Anne, decided not to
because we were getting direct messages from
Gaza, don't come. You've got to be in solidarity
with everybody. And some of our friends, Anne,
violated that request and went ahead. And there
was just 25 or 30. I kind of still wonder today
whether I should have done that because I've
never been allowed in Gaza. Anyway, incredible
time. And then you, was it then that you started
the flotillas or you kept going to Palestine
after that? Well, the actual, the first groups
that actually tried to send boats into Gaza and
were actually the only ones who've ever been
successful started in 2008. And it was called
the Free Gaza Movement. And they've sailed five
small little boats over a two -year period into
Gaza. And for whatever reason, the Israelis let
them in. And then after Kasled, it was like,
well, we've got to buck this thing up. We've
got to get some more boats. So that was when
the Marvi Marmara, the large, large ship from
Turkey, plus seven other ships. In 2010, I had
a real flotilla, a large number of boats going
at the same time toward Gaza. And that's when
the Israeli commandos came down on the Marvi
Marmara, killed people, 10 people on the boat,
wounded 50. I had left that boat 10 hours before
the attack happened and went on to a smaller
boat called Challenger 1. The Israelis... It
came onto all seven of the boats, beat people
up, but it was on the Marvy Marmor that they
killed people. So that was the beginning of the
flotillas. And then in 2011, we had 10 ships
that were ready to sail from Greece, and then
the Israeli government paid off the Greek government
to keep our boats in Greece through administrative
things, although our U .S. boat tried to escape
one day, and we were stopped about three miles
outside the port of Piraeus. with a Greek Coast
Guard boat with commandos on it that looked a
lot like the Israeli commandos. And we were stopped,
but we did make a break for it. But from there,
in the successive years, we've now sailed over
35, well, 35 ships until 2025. And then in 2025,
we sailed the Madeline ship, which had Greta
Thunberg on it, only 12 people on that boat.
then the gondola that had 22 people on it, and
then here came the friends who had been on various
ones of our boats, helped organize what's called
the Global Samud Flotilla, and they were able
to get donations to the extent that they had
42 boats that set sail from Barcelona, they went
through Tunis. then to Sicily, then off Crete,
and then finally headed toward Gaza in a 30 -day
sail with over 600 people. Then we had another
boat called the Conscience, which had earlier
been bombed in Malta when we were about ready
to put 50 people on board that boat. It got bombed
the night before, and I mean really bombed. The
whole bow of the boat was just... blown up. And
then we had it taken back to Turkey and had it
repaired. And we sailed the conscience with 92
people on board and then seven other small sailboats
that had another 40 or so people. This was last
year, 2025? This was in 2025. During the killing?
The genocide. It was all during that time. And
you got materials into Gaza? Nope. None of the
boats have gotten in. And despite the Israelis
always saying, oh, if you'll just kind of give
up, we'll make sure whatever it is that you're
carrying, whether it's medical supplies, whether
it's construction materials, we'll make sure
they get in. Well, of course, that will never
happen. Everybody last year. They would be arrested,
so the Israelis would come and storm the boats
and take everybody away to jail. They stormed
all the boats and took them to Israeli prison
and treated them not as bad, but in the same
manner that they treat Palestinians, which is
pretty brutal. And we had people that were beaten
up, that were sexually assaulted, that were...
that went on hunger strikes and then were beaten
up for being on a hunger strike. Many of them
came back with intestinal problems because of
the dirty water, the bad food, which is all,
and it's nothing more. I mean, the Palestinians
get that all the time, and they're in there for
months, if not years at a time. So our folks
got a little taste of what the Palestinians get
every single day. Wow. I'm not changing the subject.
You can reflect however you want. But I don't
know that people realize that in the year 2025,
last year, the Trump administration, in my counting,
bombed nine places. And I'll list them. Syria,
Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria.
But see, I include Gaza, Palestine, and I include
Sudan because that war has been going on forever.
We sell weapons to all sides. Tell me your thoughts
or activities or suggestions about how we can
oppose these wars and what you've been doing
about them. I mean, because there's so many countries
and it's going to continue. Well, certainly we
have to, as you have just mentioned, all these
countries. And here we have a president that
says he's the peace president. He wants the Nobel
Peace Prize. And he's bombing all these countries.
More than any year in U .S. history. We never
had nine countries bombed in U .S. history. And
then he just renamed the U .S. Institute for
Peace in Washington, D .C., which actually was
not much of an institute for peace. carried on
a lot of whatever administration was in power.
They kind of parroted what that administration
had. But Trump has now named the U .S. Peace
Institute the Donald J. Trump Peace Institute.
So using all of these things out on the streets,
making sure you write your congressmen and women
every day before breakfast with one more thing
that they can add to the list of things they
ought to be contacting the White House about.
and to mobilize your own community to stand up
to say we strongly oppose what's going on. And
then we've got to figure out how to make this
opposition really hurt in terms of nonviolent
hurting. hurt the administration to make them
stop this stuff. Can you say a word about, on
the top of all of that, nuclear weapons and your
efforts to stop abolished nuclear weapons? Oh,
my God. And having the fingertip of a guy that
is the war president, again, another one of them.
continuing what the Biden administration had
done. Well, I'm starting with the Obama administration,
this renovation of all of our nuclear weapons
that has caused at least three new industrial
plants to be built to modernize our nuclear weapons,
of which one or two of them can cause a nuclear
war that will eliminate us from the face of the
earth. So I, along with tons and tons and tons
of people, do what we can to try to bring the
information to the American public. And in fact,
there have been some new books that have come
out that are really scary. The Nuclear War, Ann
Jacobson, I think is her name. That's a wild
one. It's at the House of Dynamite, which is
on Netflix, actually done by a person that's
very pro -war. She's done a lot of administration,
various administrations, plotting of the U .S.
military. But the House of Dynamite does give
you a pretty good view of what would happen if
we start having nuclear exchanges. This last
year, I was invited to go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki
as a part of the international conferences. on
the abolition of nuclear weapons and speaking
at the very large conferences that they have
in both of those Japanese cities. I think we
in the United States kind of, well, we definitely
are not aware of how much that the nuclear or
the atomic explosions in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
are still part of the living memories of the
people of Japan. And at each one of the conferences
I went to, there were thousands and thousands
of people that were attending the various sessions
of it. We did have U .S. prisoners of war that
were in Japan that were killed by our own atomic
weapons. We do have our own U .S. military folks
who have been injured by the explosions, the
testing that we did out in the Marshall Islands.
other places, but bringing home to the U .S.
public that we have in our arsenals, as do the
Russians, the ability to blow this whole planet
off out of the universe. I mean, it's just crazy
how much stuff, how much nuclear power we have
that if any, really, if any of the nuclear powers
start. one or two missiles, then it's all over
for all of us because nobody will know who's
going to be going after whom next. And so I think
they're just going to blow us up. And we don't
want that. So what suggestions do you have for
us as ordinary peacemakers? And you've said a
lot we can do already, but any a few thoughts,
but also your suggestions about how we can sustain
ourselves. I think we need peacemakers who just
don't give up. And you've been a model for me.
You're just relentless and persistent. And that's
really critical to peacemaking and nonviolence
and what is needed now. That is to say people
working for the abolition of war who are in it
for the long haul. But how do you sustain? What's
your advice about sustaining yourself? Well,
I think for sustaining all of us. We have to
make sure that we're around people who share
the same views, that are so concerned about the
future of humanity. We need people that we can
talk to, to develop ideas, to see what we can
do in our local communities. Where are the pressure
points in our communities? Is it the churches?
Do we need to talk more with the various denominations?
Is it our local or state -level governments where
we need to have at least a resolution saying
no nuclear weapons? Is it having campaigns for
writing specific members of Congress? Is it having
a peace? demonstration or a peace walk. You know,
right now we have, what is it, 20 Buddhist monks
that are walking from Texas to Washington, D
.C. They don't have signs. They don't have megaphones.
They're just walking and seeing the YouTubes
along their course. of the thousands, tens of
thousands of average Americans who have taken
the time to go out and observe, to be there in
silence with these silent monks as they walk
along. It's just amazing that that peace march
is causing such a reaction in rural communities
as they're walking through the southeast part
of South Carolina, the northern part of Georgia.
Hundreds of people going out on these rural roads
that the monks are walking along. You know, it's
incredible the things that we can do. You know,
Veterans for Peace had a march for Gaza that
went all the way from Maine to Washington, D
.C. in 2024. And the same thing happened. There
were people all along the way that came out.
So I never underestimate trying to get. five
people, 10 people, 20 people together to do something
that will galvanize the rest of your community.
Well, our time is up, Anne. And so my last question
would be, besides that, what you just said, do
you have any other closing words of encouragement
for our listeners about carrying on this great
mission of justice and disarmament and nonviolence?
Well, I think the last message is it's our own
conscience that we have to watch out for. And
I think we all want to be able at the end of
the day to say, I've done what I could on this
particular day in some way. to try to stop the
violence in our world. And whether it's violence
that's happening with ice raids in our local
communities, whether it's the violence our national
government is wrecking on other people, that
we can do something every single day. It may
not be the most stellar thing. It may not be
the thing that stops whatever it is. But we have
to be consistent and we have to keep moving with
this. So it's for our own good, our own. our
own psyche and our own mental health that we
do this, as well as for trying to stop these
issues that are dangerous to our world. Well,
thank you, Anne. Thank you so much for all you
do and for speaking with me today. And friends,
I invite you to check out Anne Wright's website.
Again, it's VoicesForConscience .com. And thank
you, friends, for listening to the Nonviolent
Jesus podcast. And I hope you'll check out other
podcasts and programs at BeatitudeCenter .org.
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on following the Nonviolent Jesus. See you next
time.