Rally for Peace and Accountability!

 

Peace rally planned in Greensboro March 17

Lately people have a lot to say about stopping the violence in the Middle East, but when it comes to peace, Ed Kinane doesn’t just talk the talk. Kinane has been walking the walk, from South America as a supporter of civil rights in the 1980s, to Iran just last week as a member of a civilian diplomacy delegation. On March 17, Kinane’s journey will bring him to Greensboro as the keynote speaker in the Rally for Peace and Accountability.

“These days, saber rattling is bringing the world to the brink of further war. We civilians can’t sit by and let governments destroy us all,” Kinane said recently.

The 62-year-old retired anthropology professor has long been an advocate of non-violence and social justice. During the 1980s and 1990s, when death squads threatened local activists in Guatemala, El Salvador and Haiti, Kinane was providing protection as a member of Peace Brigades International. It was also during those years that he supported attempts to resolve bloody civil ethnic conflicts in Sri Lanka as a member of PBI’s national coordinating committee and as chairman of the organization’s Sri Lanka Project.

Throughout his career, Kinane has also found time to teach math and biology at a one-room Quaker school in Kenya, become an effective spokesman as a member of Voices for Creative Non-Violence, and has twice been jailed in federal prisons for his involvement in protests against U.S. military activities.

Kinane traveled to Iraq as a peace advocate and civilian observer in February 2003 and remained in Baghdad throughout the U.S. ‘Shock and Awe’ invasion. He returned to Iraq in August of that year where he stayed as part of an observation team for 10 weeks. When he arrives in Greensboro, it will be just 48 hours after his return from a 14-day peace mission in Iran.

Kinane’s appearance here will be to support a peace rally being held as a companion event to an anti-war march planned at the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Also among speakers at the Greensboro rally will be local activist and author Ed Whitfield as well as Blogging poet and StreetBike inventor Billy Jones. The event is slated from 12 noon to 2 p.m. at the Government Plaza on Green Street.