Summer Days: Covering Ground to Ground the Drones in Iowa with VCNV

Voices for Creative Nonviolence is organizing a walk of about 190 miles from the Rock Island Arsenal (where drone and bomb parts are made and stored) to the Iowa Air National Guard Facility at Des Moines Airport, planned site of a new drone command center. The walk will take place between June 8 and June 24, 2013.

Participants will spend time with Brian Terrell, a Voices activist from Iowa, who will have just completed 6 months in prison for nonviolent civil resistance at a drone base, and Kathy Kelly, who will have just returned from Afghanistan, where U.S. drones have tragically impacted so many lives.

Read the full description of Covering Ground to Ground the Drones -- including details about how you can get involved as a walker and/or a local sponsor -- on the VCNV website.

Read more about ways that people
are protesting drones during Summer Days 2013!

Des Moines: May 1, 2013, Protest Against Drones

The Iowa Air National Guard has a new mission: drones.

The grim reaper is thrilled.

The grim reaper in Iowa: "I LOVE DRONES"

On May 1, 2013, protests against drones were help outside the Iowa Air National Guard’s 132nd Fighter Wing:

Holding signs with phrases like, "Drones are for bagpipes," and "No more video game warfare," members of the Des Moines chapter of Veterans for Peace, the Des Moines Catholic Worker and Catholic Peace Ministry gathered to hear Robert Naiman, a Huffington Post columnist and policy director at Just Foreign Policy speak about the impending mission, which is intended to replace the current F-16 program.

"The military is trying to convince people in our community that this is just another business," Naiman said. "This is not just, well we lost manufacturing, now we have the military. This is a special kind of business that's about killing innocent people in other countries."

(Full story in the Des Moines Register, May 1, 2013: "Protesters hold anti-drone rally at Iowa's 132nd Fighter Wing" and Video: "Drone protest at Iowa Air National Guard Base")

For more information on upcoming protests against drones in Iowa, see: Summer Days: Covering Ground to Ground the Drones in Iowa with VCNV.


(Photos by Frank Coradaro and the Phil Berrigan CW House. View full photo gallery here.)