Please see speaker bios below listed in order of their appearance. The panel was moderated by Rich Whitney.

Yamakawa Yoshi Yasi of the Zenko Peace Group

Representative from Zenko, National Assembly for Peace and Democracy. Zenko believes that unemployment and the war promote environmental destruction and work to the detriment of Japanese society, peace and democracy. Zenko works to promote peace on a global scale. They look to the causes of the so they may join forces with others in the world to dismantle the system of war without end, creating a society which facilitates democracy for the people where people can live in peace. They also work against the economic exploitation of globalization to combat discrimination against foreign residents and with human rights movements to counter the suppression of workers through unemployment and layoffs. They work to protect the environment for humanity’s survival and to protect the natural environment and biodiversity of the earth. To this end, they seek to link up with people all over the world to advance the power of international solidarity.

Aaron Hughes

Aaron Hughes is national Organizing Team Leader for Iraq Veterans Against the War and a former Illinois Army National Guard (ILNG) Sergeant who after serving six years was discharged in June of 2006. Raised predominantly by his single mother, a member of the Chicago Teachers Union, he joined the ILNG in order to serve his community and get an education. In 2003 he was involuntarily deployed to Kuwait and Iraq with the belief he would provide humanitarian relief for the Iraqi people. As a truck driver he traveled throughout much of Iraq and quickly came to the realization that he was not providing any type of humanitarian relief, but in stead was contributing to the oppression, destruction, and dehumanization of the Iraqi people. Following a fifteen-month deployment Aaron returned home guilt stricken and committed to end the occupation and US corporate pillaging. He has dedicated his life to fighting dehumanization and oppression; and has worked to build alliances between veterans and unions in Chicago.

Brock McIntosh

Brock McIntosh of Veterans for Rethinking Afghanistan, is a specialist in the Army National Guard and Military Policeman from Bloomington, Illinois. He has just returned from a twelve month tour in Afghanistan ending in August of this year.

Kathy Kelly

Kathy Kelly co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence, (www.vcnv.org) a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare. As a co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness, she helped form 70 delegations, from 1996 - 2003, that openly defied economic sanctions by bringing medicines to children and families in Iraq. Kathy and her companions lived in Baghdad throughout the 2003 “Shock and Awe” bombing.
More recently, she has visited Gaza and Pakistan, writing eyewitness accounts of war’s impact on civilians.
Kathy was sentenced to one year in federal prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites (1988-89) and served three months, in 2004, for crossing the line at Fort Benning’s military training school.
She and her companions at the Voices home/office in Chicago believe that non-violence necessarily involves simplicity, service, sharing of resources and non-violent direct action in resistance to war and oppression. Kathy hasn’t paid federal income taxes since 1980.

Dr. Doug Rokke

Doug Rokke, PhD. is a Depleted Uranium expert who has been subjected to ongoing retaliation from Department of Defense officials who do not want information regarding actual adverse health and environmental effects of uranium weapons and their mandatory but ignored requirements to provide medical care to all casualties and to clean up all environmental contamination. Now retired, Dr. Rokke has taught elementary school, middle school, and high school as well as undergraduate and graduate courses in environmental science, environmental engineering, nuclear physics, and emergency management. He was a staff physicist at UIUC for 19 years. His military career spanned 4 decades to include combat duty during the Vietnam War and Gulf War 1. He has been an advisor and expert for numerous government agencies and mainstream media outlets on effects of nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare and depleted uranium.

Rev. Geri Soloman

Rev. Geri Solomon of Aurora Urban Ministries and Aurora for Peace and Justice, has been a peace, civil rights, community and human rights activist since the days of Dr. King (over 40 years), opposed to the War in Iraq since its inception. She has helped to organize many political campaigns including those of Jesse Jackson and Dennis Kucinich who was her special guest at one of the largest Illinois Speak-out rallies for Single Payer health care. Solomon, born in Mississippi and raised in Chicago, published 136-page Soul Winner’s Handbook designed to show lay Christians how to prepare and be witnesses of the Gospels. “This isn’t being preached enough. If more Christians would realize their responsibility to build the Kingdom of God, the world would become a place of peace and fellowship.” Her aim is to revive the peace movement in the US.