June 13, 2012

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has announced that it will award this year's Rachel Corrie Award to Veterans for Peace member Ann Wright.

The Rachel Corrie Award is an annual award given to a person who shows dedication and commitment for a just and lasting peace in Palestine.

"I am accepting the Rachel Corrie Award," said Wright, "on behalf of all the international citizen activists who have heeded Rachel's 2003 call before her death by Israeli bulldozer, for the world not to forget what the Israeli government was doing to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank."

Corrie was a U.S. college student who was attempting to nonviolently protect a Palestinian home, when she was crushed to death by a Caterpillar D9R armored bulldozer.

Ann Wright is a former U.S. Army Colonel and a career diplomat who received the State Department Award for Heroism in 1997, after helping to evacuate several thousand people during the civil war in Sierra Leone. She served the State Department in Micronesia, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Grenada, and Nicaragua. She helped reopen the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan in 2001 and publicly resigned the day the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. Wright has been a fulltime peace activist since 2003, and a member of Veterans for Peace. She managed Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, in 2005, participated in Camp Democracy in Washington, D.C., in 2006, and has been part of countless nonviolent campaigns for peace and justice since.

Wright has repeatedly gone to jail for justice. She has repeatedly interrupted Congressional hearings. Wright served as one of five judges at the January 2006 sessions of the International Commission of Inquiry On Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration. She was also one of three recipients of the first annual Truthout Freedom and Democracy Awards. She testified at an Article 32 hearing on behalf of U.S. Army Lt. Ehren Watada who refused to deploy to Iraq.

Wright was one of 38 arrested in 2007 at the Nevada Test Site protesting U.S. development of nuclear weapons. She was one of the Hancock 38 arrested in New York State in 2011 protesting the U.S. development and use of killer drones and was arrested for protesting the deplorable conditions in which alleged whistle blower Bradley Manning was held in Virginia.

Wright has been a leading organizer of the Gaza Freedom March which brought 1,350 people from 55 countries to Cairo to challenge the Israeli blockade of Gaza. She was on the Gaza Flotilla in 2010 and was an organizer for the 2011 Gaza Flotilla and the US Boat to Gaza, theAudacity of Hope. She has been in Gaza three times since the Israeli attack of 2008, most recently in November 2011.

Wright is the co-author ofDissent: Voices of Conscience,subtitledGovernment Insiders Speak Out Against the War in Iraq, which includes a forward by Daniel Ellsberg.

Veterans For Peace is also thrilled that ADC will be awarding the Hala Salaam Maksoud Leadership Award to Mr. Anas "Andy" Shallal, an Iraqi-American businessman and activist whose Busboys & Poets restaurants have become Washington, D.C., landmarks and have hosted countless events promoting peace and justice, including numerous events in which Veterans For Peace has played a role.

Veterans for Peace was founded in 1985 and has approximately 5,000 members in 150 chapters located in every U.S. state and several countries. It is a 501(c)3 non-profit educational organization recognized as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) by the United Nations, and is the only national veterans' organization calling for the abolishment of war.

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