Kathy Kelly

Kathy Kelly is a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a Chicago based campaign to end U.S. military and economic war in Iraq. In 1996 she was a co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness (VitW), a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated human rights group formed in Chicago that worked to lift the UN/US economic sanctions against Iraq. The VitW delivered medical supplies to Iraqis and helped organize over 70 delegations as part of a campaign of civil disobedience from 1996 to 2003. In October 2002, Kelly joined the Iraq Peace Team members in Baghdad, where with the team she maintained a presence in Iraq throughout the 2003 "Shock and Awe" campaign, and the first few weeks of the initial occupation phase of Iraq after the invasion.

She has also been active with the Catholic Worker movement, and peace teams efforts in Nicaragua, the West Bank, Bosnia, Haiti, and Lebanon. As a pacifist and war tax refuser, she has refused payment of all the US Federal income tax since 1980.

Her book, Other Lands Have Dreams, is published by CounterPunch/AK Press.