"I admire Veterans For Peace for one central reason above everything else," said Phil Donahue. "Veterans For Peace walks the walk."
Donahue introduced and screened his film, "Body of War," Wednesday evening, leading a discussion after the film with members of Veterans For Peace, some of them featured in the film. Hundreds of veterans with knowledge of war and dedicated to the abolition of war were gathered for the opening night of their 27th national convention -- also their first international convention as VFP has opened a chapter in the U.K. from which members are attending. VFP also has a chapter in Vietnam.
The convention continued with remarks by Co-conveners and Iraq war resisters Camilo Mejia and Victor Agosto, as well as Carlos and Melida Arredondo, Marlene Bastien, DeAnne Graham, and VFP's first-ever female president Leah Bolger. Also on Thursday: reports from Haiti, Honduras, and Guatemala, a panel on G.I. resistance, and a Hiroshima/Nagasaki commemoration, followed by a screening of "American Autumn: an Occudoc."
More workshops and plenaries followed on Friday. The convention concluded with a Saturday evening banquet, featuring Pullitzer Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker (on this 30th anniversary of her novel, The Color Purple) and Father Roy Bourgeois (founder of the School of the Americas Watch at Ft. Benning, GA).
Alice Walker and 15 others left on Sunday, August 12th on a fact-finding investigative 6-day tour into current U.S. involvement in Haiti.