Lawrence University SLA hosts Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly for speech

Kathy Kelly, a peace activist, social justice advocate, and three-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, will visit Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin Jan. 31 to deliver a speech titled “To Counter Terror, Build Justice: Reflections About Security in a Time of War.” She will present a workshop the following day, Feb. 1. The Lawrence community and the public at large are encouraged to attend both events.

Kelly will be hosted on the Lawrence campus by the Students for Leftist Action, a political student organization at Lawrence.

“The presence of Kathy Kelly on campus is one of the highlights of SLA’s program for the year,” said Michael Schreiber, treasurer of SLA. “Her speech will hopefully bring fresh insight into an issue [war] that is often talked about without much real passion and that most people feel they have heard enough about.”

Schreiber added that Kelly provides a unique perspective in that she “addresses poverty at home and abroad as one of the root causes of conflict.”

Kelly is co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and is one of the foremost members of Voices in the Wilderness. As a pacifist with these groups, she has been to Iraq 24 times in 11 years. Kelly has been involved with the Catholic Worker movement and, as a war tax refuser, she has paid no Federal income tax for the past 26 years.

Based in the Chicago area, Kelly acts as both activist and educator. She has also written passionately about her social justice message in books such as “Other Lands Have Dreams: from Baghdad to Pekin Prison.”

Kelly will give a workshop Feb. 1 titled "Courage for Peace, Not for War: the Further Invention of Nonviolence.” The workshop will be “an interactive workshop designed to build empathy for people most burdened by U.S. priorities that direct our resources toward war and weapons,” Kelly said.

Kelly intends to use role-playing and other dramatic techniques to help those attending the workshop understand the struggles of the people involved in the Iraq War.

Noting the proximity to the MLK holiday, Kelly said that King “urged civil rights activists to challenge the triple evils of racism, militarism, and poverty” and that she hoped to do the same with her lecture and workshop.

The speech will take place Thursday, Jan. 31 at 7:30 p.m. in room 102 of Lawrence’s Science Hall. The workshop the following day will take place at 3 p.m. in the Riverview Lounge of the university’s student union.