International activists in Kildare today to talk about Donald Trump and terrorism

Two  international peace campaigners will speak at the annual Féile Bhríde conference organised by the Afri peace and justice organisation today. Speakers include Kathy Kelly, a US peace activist, author and founder member of Voices in the Wilderness.

A resident of Obama’s home town of Chicago, she has travelled to Iraq over 25 times, including during the early days of the recent Iraq war and she has spent time in Afghanistan and Palestine. Kathy has been arrested over 60 times and several prison sentences including a 3 month term for attempting to deliver a loaf of bread in a symbolic act to U.S drone operators. Kelly is also a ‘war tax resister’ and has refused to pay U.S federal taxes on pacifist grounds since  1982.

Also visiting is Alastair McIntosh, a well-known Scottish author, Quaker, activist and visiting professor at the University of Glasgow who speaks passionately about climate change, land, peace, and justice issues.

“I am from the Isle of Lewis, the island that gave birth to Trump’s mother. All 4 sides of his maternal ancestry were cleared from off their land in the 19thcentury," said McIntosh.

"I see Trump as the product of an imperialism that led some of our people to become radically uprooted. He is a man no longer held by the humanitarian norms of his community, though he understands how to communicate with fellows of émigré stock. He is the heir to a religious worldview that traditionally divided the world into the Damned and the Elect, and I fear that the wall with Mexico is more a wall that runs across his own mind. On the positive side, Trump illuminates the American shadow, and the shadow in us all. We need to understand the forces that put him there, and that means entering deep into the psychology and spirituality of the human shadow.”