non-violence

My name is Brian Terrell. I'm co-coordinator of a group called Voices for Creative Nonviolence. We support the petition to ban drones organized by RootsAction. http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6180

On November 30th I report for six months in a federal prison in Yankton, S.D., as a result of protesting drones.

The appearance of war being made easy by drones is resulting in more war. In Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and in places we don't know about, in places where we are not at war, we're sending these unmanned pilotless airplanes into foreign air space to hunt down people who've been accused of crimes only in the private court of the administration. They're hunted down and killed along with anybody who might be in the immediate vicinity.

Drones are creating new wars rather than scaling down old ones. Drone pilots in Afghanistan have been targeted and killed. Drone pilots in the United States suffer PTSD at higher rates than real pilots.

Drone victims are 98% innocent civilians according to the recent Stanford/NYU study. The other 2% are targeted victims of murder without charge, trial, due process, or in many cases even knowing the target's name.

Drones buzzing over houses traumatize children before they kill them. That those children are (in most cases) not American hardly diminishes the immorality.

Drones are rapidly being developed and deployed by other nations. Would you support the equal right of other nations to kill with drones in this country? And if not, why not? And how can that thinking not apply to U.S. policy as well?

Day 23 of Occupy Austin; Saturday, Oct. 29 Snehal Shingavi, English Professor at UT-Austin spoke on "Gandhi and the Politics of Nonviolence". Produced for Austin Indymedia by Jeff Zavala. A ZGraphix production. http://zgraphix.org