Kathy Kelly is constantly on the frontlines. Whether in her Chicago neighborhood, where she lives in a tight-knit community, or in the Middle East, Kelly is determined to document firsthand the plight of people whose countries have been torn apart by war. As founder of the Nobel prize–nominated anti-war group Voices for Creative Nonviolence—and before that Voices in the Wilderness—Kelly travels extensively to war-torn countries to see the effects of US foreign policy in order to better tell the stories of those who suffer from it. Though her actions have resulted in numerous arrests and heinous government fines, nothing seems to stop her.

I caught up with Kelly at her home in Chicago this fall, before she left on a trip to Pakistan. [She is currently with a delegation in Afghanistan]. The packed house, with both residents and strangers coming and going, was emblematic of the activist’s constantly bustling world. In our conversation, she discussed her influences, the ever-changing neighborhood in which she lives and its impact on her, surviving prison life, and the meaning of tax refusal.

James M. Russell: What kindled your activism?
Kathy Kelly: I was an impressionable child and I can think of two things that impressed me the most. When I was a child, hands down, it was the nuns. Most of the ones assigned to my South Side Chicago parish were young and cheerful; we didn’t have mean nuns that were wrapping our knuckles. The ones I grew up with shared everything in common and lived a simple life. There wasn’t a question in my mind that I would become one of them. And then things changed radically. Then everything changed in the Catholic Church and nuns were living independently and driving cars.

Watching the film “Night and Fog” in high school, about the remains of the Nazi death camps, was a very transformative moment for me. Seeing it evoked a sense of never ever being a passive bystander … but nevertheless, I went through the Vietnam War like Brigadoon in the mist. I never got involved in the anti-war activism at that point in my life. Later in life, what changed me was coming up to the soup kitchen in this neighborhood and realizing that there was tremendous poverty in my city. I think that when people are directly in touch with impoverishment, there’s a conversion that almost has to happen.

JMR: How have you continued to change?
KK: I didn’t grow up with a very strong sense of personal courage. But in my adult life because of very wonderful mentors and some situations that kind of demanded the jump, I now understand it: that courage is the ability to control your fears. So in evolving, I’ve been able to identify some fears and learn about controlling them so that I wouldn’t be governed by it. And that was mainly though watching people who I admired very much and realizing, “well I would rather have what they’ve achieved in their lives.” And I learned that they had achieved by governing life through their values.

So there’s that and there’s also the joy of dropping out of consumer culture. I haven’t dropped out completely, but in the ways I have, I’m very happy. There’s just a lot of time that gets consumed in consuming and owning. If you don’t have to do it, there’s a certain sense of release.

JMR: Why did you decide to become a war-tax refuser?
KK: When it dawned on me that my neighbors didn’t have food, that the youngsters would be remarkable if they made it though their teenage years, and that people in my neighborhood were sleeping in abandoned buildings. There’s no way I was going to go to a teaching job and spend much of my teaching day trying to teach youngsters about opposition, radical opposition to nuclear weaponry and then take a third of my income and then pay for nuclear weapons and the rest of it. It wasn’t even a question once I realized, and I thought “Of course! What a relief! I don’t have to pay those taxes.” I never will pay those taxes and since the day that I first made that determination, there hasn’t been a doubt in my mind. I will never pay federal income tax.

JMR: Do you identify not just as a war-tax refuser but as someone who ultimately exists to refuse, or in better terms, resist the oppressive systems under which we live?
KK: I do not want to be too speculative but refusal affects one’s personality. I can say when I went to maximum-security prison for one year I didn’t refuse to work. I worked. I got fired from just about every job I had until I ended up picking up cigarette butts in the middle of the prison. I somehow emerged from that situation with a little more backbone in terms of readiness to refuse, almost with a kind of an edge to it. You know, the edge that would say, “Are you gonna make me?” I don’t want that to be my approach so I get opportunities to work on that when I’m in public settings and people disagree with me. I think that’s one opportunity to really try to reach out a friendly hand. And also when we get hate mail to try and answer it in a respectful way without, you know, communicating that you’re buckling. So it’s a skill, maybe almost an art form to learn how to engage in refusal and resistance without creating enmity… or deepening enmity.

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I recently interviewed a radical queer activist who told me that he believed his actions – stampeding upon churches that preached anti-gay messages, staging a kiss-in at the Academy Awards – were the only way for his cause to be acknowledged.  After all, in his time (the 1980′s and 1990′s), many of his friends were dying of AIDS, and no one was paying attention.  While many mainstream GLBTQ groups called their actions defaming, this group of activists believed that the silence surrounding the disease was the true problem.  That acting nice, in short, got them nowhere.

You could say the same thing about the recent step taken by members of the group Veterans for Peace, who recently, as seen above, “dropped [a] banner down the front of the Newseum, while others distributed special edition copies of the War Crimes Times, explaining the action and what they considered obscene,” according to this piece in Common Dreams.

While militant, and even shocking, the veterans of VFP, you could say, are shaking the boundaries of nonviolence by explicitly using one of the most derogatory, inflammatory terms in the English language.  And that they are hanging the banner on the building’s First Amendment wall says something, too: the obscenity, they indicate, is not the foul word (“fucking,” in this case) but the act of war.

I think it’s an effective, multi-dimensional message.  You have to think for a second.  But you also have to know what the reference is to, so the effect may not be immediate.  It may only appeal to a small group.  (For instance, would a tourist who is visiting DC for the first time know that this wall has the First Amendment on it?)

I’m torn on this one, folks.  What do you think?  Do you think this is nonviolent, considering the language?  That the confrontational manner is effective?  I’m curious, drop me a line on here.

Last week, Act Now!, The Nation’s activism blog had a nice post on the work of Food Not Bombs. Described by one of its founders Keith McHenry as a “franchise collective,” it:

…in thirty years has grown from a small idea in which eight young antinuclear protesters cooked for their friends in Harvard Square to a global food movement dedicated to the principle that access to food is a right, not a privilege. Beginning as a protest against military and nuclear spending while the basic needs of so many Americans were still unmet, Food Not Bombs now boasts more than 1,000 chapters worldwide.

FNB is not merely an activist group though, but one that re-envisions every aspect of American life.  It resists taxation and bureaucracy by organizing as non hierarchical, unincorporated collectives.  It acts on its moral imperative as well, by serving meatless meals to people who need food regardless of income. FNB is an extraordinary actor of nonviolent social change.  As the article’s author Jennifer Mahoney writes:

Each chapter provides free meals—activists collect food from bakeries, grocery stores and restaurants who agree to give them any surplus, and then cook in visible outdoor locations, keeping regular hours so that their most frequent customers, often mothers with children, know when to find them—but also organizes around local issues like affordable housing, transportation alternatives, joblessness and militarism and supports related radical initiatives being staged by other groups.

It has inspired countless groups, from Bikes Not Bombs in Boston to the Campus Anti-War Network which declares loudly at their rallies, “BOOKS NOT BOMBS.”  FNB’s influence is unprecedented for such a radical idea, but it’s one that deserves mimicking everywhere.

Last week, CNN.com ran an interesting piece by Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, the outreach director of the Dar Al-Hirjah Islamic Center near the Pentagon and the Capitol, in which he draws a connection between the role of the black church in the lives of African-Americans and the present hostility toward Muslims in the United States.

The struggle for equal access, for the right to build mosques in America — not just in lower Manhattan — is reminiscent of the pain and struggle of black Americans for churches, housing, employment and, actually, public acceptance.

By the letter of the law, blacks had the right to live or work anywhere, but they were often segregated to certain areas and specific jobs. Similarly, American Muslims have the right to worship anywhere, but some Americans say we’re not ready yet for mosques being built in certain areas.

Reading this evokes in me the need for a powerful, progressive civil rights movement for Muslims.  If we are not careful, I believe, Muslim-Americans will be fiercely marginalized – more than they already are.

In my community, a large Texan city that is cordial and largely suburban– often called a “big city with a small town feel,” where many people will not be vocal about their feelings – local Muslims are accepted, at least on the surface.

Mosques have sat quietly, without much thought. Often set back behind apartment communities, off main roads, and away from the naked eye’s view, these places are not prominent – nor are they politicized.

That was until the playground of a local mosque and Islamic educational center was vandalized.  The playground was set on fire, a pipe was cut, and a raunchy image of Allah and Uncle Sam appeared.  On the article covering the vandalism in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the following statement now appears:

Editor’s note: Comments have been disabled on this report because of repeated violations of our stated policy.

The imam’s message is, in short, a call to action to those who have endured struggle.  With an anecdote, he describes one way in which we can open our hearts to the Muslim-American community:

In March of this year, a group protested my leading an opening prayer for the Virginia General Assembly.  I called the delegate who was responsible for the official invitation – Adam Ebbin, who is white, Jewish, and gay.  He said he looked at the work I had been doing for almost a decade, and said “I will stand by you.”

As he emphasizes, if we do not stand by the Muslim-American community, we will all lose in the end.