Speakers:
(not listed in order of appearance)

Omar Baddar (Middle East Occupations)
Omar Baddar is the full time Executive Director of the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee. Mr. Baddar is a Palestinian-American who grew up throughout the Middle East. He is a graduate of the
University of Memphis Political Science program, where he earned his MA in International Relations and Comparative 
Politics. He was also recently elected to the Steering Committee of the US Campaign to End the Israeli 
Occupation. 

Gabriel Payan (Resistance within the Military)
Gabriel joined the Army in 1997 and in just under ten years had risen to the rank of Staff Sergeant and held a position a 
Gunnery Sergeant of a firing platoon in the field artillery. His suspicions that the Iraq War was wrong were confirmed during 
his deployment there during Operation Iraqi Freedom III. Gabriel notes that "As I fought overseas in a war against the Iraqi 
people, the government had declared war at home against my people. I watched on television as peaceful pro immigration 
and anti war demonstrators were violently suppressed by police all over the country. Gabriel noticed himself suffering from 
PTSD, and also had to deal with the suicides of his comrades. He deserted while in Visack, Germany believing that his moral 
and legal obligation is to the U.S. Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders, especially if those orders are 
in direct violation of the Constitution and the UCMJ.He highly encourages more soldiers to resist this war and demand the 
immediate withdrawal of all US forces.

Ashley Smith 
(International relations topic under discussion, ISO)

Joseph Gerson & Hiroshia Takakusaki (Global Peace)
Hiroshia Takakusaki (Taka) is Secretary General of the Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (Gensuikyo), 
the largest peace organization in Japan. He joined Gensuikyo in 1984, serving as its International Secretary. Taka has 
played important roles in Japanese peace and justice movements since early in the Vietnam War. His responsibilities as
General Secretary include taking the lead role in organizing the annual World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen 
Bombs held in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the anniversaries of the first atomic bombs. He will be leading a delegation for 
meetings at the United Nations during the first week of October.

Dr. Joseph Gerson is Director of Programs and Director of the Peace and Economic Security Program for the AFSC in New
England. He focuses on challenging U.S. foreign, military and domestic doctrines designed to reinforce global hegemony 
and to replace them with commitments to common security. His program work focuses on preparations for and threats to 
initiate nuclear war, Washington’s global infrastructure of military bases and installations, and its military domination of the 
Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. He has been involved in the U.S. justice and peace movements since the mid-1960s, when 
he became active on the margins of the Civil Rights Movement. He was Director of Arizonans for Peace and Field Representative 
for Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam. Following the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, he joined the staff of the 
War Resisters' International in London and Brussels.His recent work has focused on education, organizing and mobilization 
to end the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq, preventing nuclear war and advancing the struggle for nuclear weapons abolition, 
establishing the global "No Bases Network" and integrating U.S. anti-bases networks, and peaceful resolution of the U.S.-Iran 
confrontation. His book Empire and the Bomb: How the United States Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World was 
published by Pluto Books and the University of Michigan Press in April, 2007. He is a Vietnam-era draft resister who received his 
undergraduate degree from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in 1968 and his PhD in Politics and International 
Security Studies from the Union Institute and College in 1995. This past spring he led a U.S. peace movement delegation to 
China, and he is currently in the midst of organizing two major peace movement conferences: a national no-bases conference 
at American University in Washington, D.C. (Feb. 28/March 1) and the New England-wide Peace Movement Priorities conference scheduled 
for Tufts University March 27 & 28.

Chuck Turner (War at Home, City Councilor)
Chuck Turner is a Boston City Councilor representing District 7 including Roxbury, Lower Roxbury, and parts of the Fenway,
South End, Dorchester. He has worked as an activist for over forty years. During that time, he has served as the director of 
a community development corporation, an organizer training center, and a placement agency for construction workers of color.
He has also worked as a manager/counselor at the nation's oldest batterers' treatment organization and as education director 
at a nonprofit consulting firm, focused on establishing worker cooperatives. He has a BA from Harvard, was a Community Fellow 
at MIT, and was awarded an honorary Associates of Arts degree from Roxbury Community College. 

Meghan Day (Campus resistance, UMB)

Patricia Montes (Immigrants & the War at Home)
Patricia is Executive Director of Centro Presente. Established in 1981, it is a member-driven, state-wide Latin American immigrant 
organization dedicated to the self-determination and self-sufficiency of the Latin American immigrant community of Massachusetts. 
Operated and led primarily by Central American immigrants, Centro Presente struggles for immigrant rights and for economic 
and social justice. 

Performers/Schedule

12:29 - 12:44  Bojah & the Insurrection (political funk)

PAT SCANLON

I am a Vietnam veteran; I was in Army Intelligence, held a top-secret clearance and worked at MACV Headquarters (Military Assistance Command) in Saigon for the year of 1969. Ever since my return from Vietnam, thirty-five years ago, I have been working for environmental, peace, social justice, and anti-nuclear causes. I was, and still am, a member of Vietnam Vets Against the War. I am also a member of Veterans for Peace. I am currently Vice Coordinator of Veterans for Peace, Chapter 9, Smedley Butler Brigade.

As a singer/songwriter I am your basic banjo strumming troubadour, luckily it seems that a lot of people enjoy my music. I happen to be blessed with knowing and playing with many phenomenal musicians. My music is meant to make you think, tap your foot and move your spirit. Hopefully, my songs may also motivate you to get involved. It is amazing what one fired up individual can do. When we all get fired up we can change the world.

Bojah & the Insurrection

         Bojah & the Insurrection is a political funk rock soul band based in Boston. Known for their conscious lyrics, fusion, and live musicianship, for seven years Bojah & the Insurrection have performed at political rallies throughout the East Coast and Midwest before tens of thousands. Their music spans the gamut of topics from war, racism, and depression and is always delivered with a backbeat that gets every crowd moving. The band has recently released their debut studio album Severe Funk Alert available free online at www.bojah.net. Bojah and the Insurrection most recently performed at the May 1 demonstration for Immigrant Rights in the Boston Commons.

SGT. MAXWELL’S PEACE CHORUS

Sgt. Maxwell’s Peace Chorus evolved out of a massive anti-war media event on April 15, 2007 that brought together 44 of Boston’s top vocalists (including John Powhida, Emily Grogan, Casey Desmond, Corin Ashley, and Mick Mondo) and a star-studded 13-piece band that included members of Mission of Burma, Morphine, and Rick Berlin. This group of artists recorded “End War Now” in front of the media in a party-like atmosphere. The song went on to occupy the top ten of Neil Young’s Living With War chart for the entire summer of ’07. When the event ended, the spirit didn’t. More anti-war material was composed by Sgt. Maxwell (a.k.a. T Max, publisher of the Noise, Boston’s longest running music magazine), the author of “End War Now.”  Sgt. Maxwell’s Peace Chorus releases The Military EP (that includes “Children of America,” which reached #1 on Neil Young’s chart in Sept ’08) on October 4 at the Cantab in Cambridge, MA. Hear the EP at www.myspace.com/dreamerswanted.

PETE CASSANI

         Pete Cassani cut his musical teeth on the streets of Boston alongside Mary Lou Lord and Martin Sexton, playing electric guitar through a battery-powered amplifier. His songs meld punk rock with troubadour street-folk, Bob Dylan with Johnny Rotten. Though his band, the Peasants, is known for their rip-roaring garage rock shows, Cassani is a powerful solo artist. He has captivated audiences from NY to LA, Duluth to New Orleans and Holland to Germany. He makes you dance while making you think. Cassani's performances are filled with humor, sarcasm and some harsh truth but always seem to leave people feeling better than when they came, an important skill for a street performer. An honest progressive who's unafraid to talk politics, Cassani scathingly addresses the downward cycle of destruction, fear and hatred in the United States today. In 2004-2005 he walked his political talk, traveling all across the war-crazed US, waging peace in coffeehouses and clubs.

 

CASEY DESMOND

 

MICHAEL BLOOM

Michael Bloom is a veteran of experimental and "post-rock" bands Cul de Sac, Urban Ambience, and the Judas and Natasha Experiments. Nowadays he is most often heard with the Peace Chorus, and with Tim Mungenast & his Pre-Existing Conditions. He works on his solo material when his bandmates show up late to rehearsal. His songwriter heroes include Richard Thompson, Joni Mitchell, Andy Partridge, and Phil Ochs, and he endeavors to emulate the craftsmanship and passion they bring to their work, as well as, like Ochs, telling stories that need to be told. He seldom lets a solo performance go by without playing something by Ochs.

Mr. Bloom used to review music for the Boston Phoenix, and was senior editor for Boston Rock magazine.

 

KIER BYRNES

         Kier Byrnes is a founding member of Three Day Threshold, one of New England’s top Americana bands.  Kier and the lads of Three Day Threshold recently returned from a tour of US military bases overseas, performing for the U.S. troops stationed abroad.  Kier’s music has had a fair amount of commercial success;  featured on shows on such networks as MTV, FOX, Spike TV, ESPN, The Oxygen Network, and Lifetime TV.  In addition, Three Day Threshold, will be releasing a new CD called Lost in Belgium this autumn that features live recordings from their latest European tour which occurred earlier this year. In December of 2008, Kier and the Three Day Threshold boys will embark on their sixth European tour, returning to play dates all over Belgium and the Netherlands, including an “inmates-only” show at a prison in Mechelen, Belgium.

 

RYAN HARVEY

         Ryan lives in his hometown, Baltimore, MD, where he works construction during the day and does anti-war and economic justice work during his lunch breaks. His songs are inspired by his participation as an organizer in many movements and are meant to educate and instigate folks to take meaningful action for positive social change. He looks forward to a new politics, one that combines the better parts of the many old politics and isms with new ideas and understandings. He sees his music not as entertainment, but as another form of media to assist movement-building, political dialogue, and healing. While political hip-hop usually goes into his ears, folks music usually comes out of his mouth and hands. Ryan helped create Riot-Folk in 2004 to combine the efforts of similar activist-musicians. His songs and lyrics, along with those of the other eight members of the Riot-Folk Collective, are available for free at www.riotfolk.org.

 

FLUTTR EFFECT

 

SON OF NUN

         Political hip hop artist, former Baltimore City high school teacher, activist, cancer survivor, sickle cell battler, and recipient of praise from Public Enemy’s Chuck D—“[Leaving] a mean look on somebody’s face” for being “More than relevant!”  S.O.N. doesn’t just entertain his crowds he empowers them. He’s shared the stage with artists like Dead Prez, Immortal Technique, and Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine as well as activists like Howard Zinn, Cindy Sheehan, Rosa Clemente, and Liam Madden from Iraq Veterans Against the War. Music from his 2004 debut CD Blood And Fire  has earned him spots on compilations with iconic artists ranging from The Last Poets to Sonic Youth, won him a “Best of Baltimore” award from the Baltimore City Paper, and took “Best Song of the Week” on NPR’s website. S.O.N.’s newest CD, The Art of Struggle, is a collaboration with producer DJ Mentos.