FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Judith M. Pasternak
May 25,
2006
347/423-7783
CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR SENTENCED TO PRISON
Will Receive War Resisters League Peace Award
On June 9, the War Resisters League, the
venerable pacifist organization, will give its
2006 Peace Award to women GIs who came to believe
only after they enlisted that they didn't believe
in war or violence. Four extraordinary
womenDiedra Cobb, Anita Cole, Kelly Dougherty,
and Katherine Jashinskiwill represent the growing class of these new COs.
What: War
Resisters League Annual Dinner and Peace Award Ceremony
When: Friday evening, June 9, at 6:30 p.m.
Where: Cyril and Methodius Church Hall
502
West 41st St. (at 10th Ave.) Manhattan
One of the women receiving the award, Katherine
Jashinski, will not be able to accept the award
in person. At her court martial May 23, she pled
guilty to "refusal to obey a legal order," and
was sentenced to 120 days confinement, of which she has already served 53 days.
These women are among the newest wave of
conscientious objectors--the only kind, indeed,
that can exist when the armed services consist
entirely of volunteers--and that, for the first
time in history, includes women as well as men.
"These four brave women will represent the class
of women now refusing, for reasons of conscience,
to continue to serve in the Armed Forces," said
Ellen Barfield of the War Resisters League and
Veterans for Peace. "That Katherine Jashinski
will now serve prison time only underlines the
courage and integrity that brought all of them to
their declarations of conscience."
Among those gathered to lend support to the Peace
Award honorees will be former GI Barfield, and
former U.S. Army officer and diplomat Ann Wright.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel
has also sent a message of support.
"The thing that I revere most in this world is
life, and I will never take another person's life."
Katherine Jashinski, Specialist, Army National Guard
and Imprisoned Conscientious Objector
The WRL Peace Award was begun in 1958 to honor an
organization or person whose work represents the
League's radical nonviolent platform of action.
Jeannette Rankin, the only member of Congress to
vote against U.S. entry into both world wars, was
the first recipient; others have included peace
agitator A.J. Muste, civil rights activist Bayard
Rustin, writer Grace Paley, socialist and many
times presidential candidate Norman Thomas,
feminist and pacifist theorist Barbara Deming,
Catholic Worker co-founder Dorothy Day,
Plowshares movement founder Daniel Berrigan,
Judith Malina and the Living Theatre, and Iraq
War opponent Fernando Suarez del Solar.
Believing war to be a crime against humanity, the
War Resisters League, founded in 1923, advocates
Gandhian nonviolence as the method for creating a
democratic society free of war, racism, sexism,
and human exploitation. (See www.warresisters.org,).
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War Resisters League
339 Lafayette St.
New York, NY 10012
212-228-0450
www.warresisters.org
wrl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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