War and preparation for war has been a constant feature of the world in which I have lived. Over the course of half a century, I have participated in movements for nuclear disarmament, peace in Vietnam, accountability for war crimes, and many others.
In the early 1960s I barnstormed with an American Friends Service Committee “peace caravan” and was active in SANE, the Student Peace Union, and the Peace Research and Action Project of Students for a Democratic Society. I helped staff Vietnam Summer and participated in the Committee to End the War in Vietnam (later National Mobilization Committee, then the New Mobe). In the late 1970s I helped found Commonwork Pamphlets, which published my writings opposing reinstitution of the military draft and the U.S. war in Central America. I was arrested for occupying the office of Rep. Nancy Johnson in a protest against the mining of Nicaragua harbors.
At the outset of the Iraq war I participated in a global campaign for a “Uniting for Peace” resolution in the UN General Assembly to forestall the imminent US attack. In the 2000s I helped organize the Iraq Pledge of Resistance, the Iraq Moratorium, and War Crimes Watch, and with Jill Cutler and Brendan Smith edited the collection In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond.[1]
[1] Jeremy Brecher, Jill Cutler, and Brendan Smith, eds., In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005).