Witness for Peace: A Story of Resistance

By Ed Griffin-Nolan

Book Overview

In this graphic, thought-provoking book, Ed Griffin-Nolan depicts the experiences of Witness for Peace (WFP), a group of Americans who bore witness to the war in Nicaragua--an event that resulted in the killing and wounding of many innocent Central American civilians. Griffin-Nolan explains how WFP participants spent weeks in the war zones in order to understand the impact of U.S. policy on simple people living, as one member of the group phrased it, "at the end of a gun barrel." He describes how WFP participants labored to bring stories of war back to the United States, and how many of them lost their jobs and even their marriages in the process. He concludes by showing that the efforts of WFP saved lives and possibly prevented "another Vietnam" from developing in Central America.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 066425179X
• ISBN13: 9780664251796
• Release Date: May 1991
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.93 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

witness for peace, a pacifist's manual...

I haven't finished the book yet, ... but I really liked the courageous stories that it told. It breaks my heart what happened, .. but I'm proud to read of how so many tried to stop it. I feel bad that so many people bought the Reagan administration's myth that communism is so horrid, it's worth it to try and anihilate people who live in its path. How dumb can people be to buy that garbage? I wish WITNESS FOR PEACE were required reading in all high schools and junior highs... Maybe we wouldn't have had the fiasco that was George W. Bush, if we'd learned our lessons from Nicaragua, .. or if Iraq had been closer and the witnesses had gone there too. People really need to wake up and see war for what it is: a chicken hawk's way to make you or your kid die for their financial gain. Sick, but that's what the bottom line is. Nobody can die for their own freedom, it's physically impossible. And people who say FREEDOM isn't FREE, drive me the most nuts. Freedom HAS THE WORD FREE IN IT!@ Of course freedom is FREEEEEEE! It's OIL that's not free, it's Gasoline that's not free, !!!, ... it's politicians like W Bush who aren't free. Did he do one thing for California in his 8 years in office? Probably not... we didn't give him any money, why would want to help us or listen to us, .. or god forbid, learn from us? Oh no, .. he's rather see the world heat up,m ... etc etc etc etc I'm rambling, sorry, .. mg.

Our torture of innocent civilians at Abu Ghraib & Gitmo are not new: see Reagan's invasion of Nica

When we remain blind to our history we repeat it ever more blindly. May this book begin to reopen our blinded eyes, our stuffed ears and our callous hearts stopped up all by the monopolistic, immoral, evil warmonger's bloody and profitable cries. May this book reopen our souls to our Faith and her pursuit upon the path of peace as prayed in the Magnificat. May this book awaken us once more to life in its fullness, and our call to action. Why do these resources for peace get plastered with the camouflaged face of the Teuton warrior, both here as in One of the Guys: Women as Aggressors and Torturers. Here at least the face of a resolute , unarmed and watchful peaceworker seems more fitting to the topic, as in the excellent and well-researched Witness for Peace publications, but certainly the great Griffin-Nolan, contra investigator, reporter and one time kidnap victim on the Rio San Juan, had little say as to the cover of this more commercial publication, which cover the Westminster/John Knox Press for its Practical Theology/Peacemaking/Social Issues series confided to Julia Comer. Mr. Griffin-Nolan, who served in Nicaragua from 1985 to 1988, is an experienced journalist and reporter and a lively writer; this book serves as proof. His close friend, Paul Dix is a noted photojournalist as well as commercial photographer, and his excellent pictures, some of which I assisted in the black and white chemical lab work under the punishing ninety-plus degrees and high humidity of Managua, including the photo of contra kidnap victim Richard Boren with his armed contra escort shortly before his release. I also in the Managua office assisted Mr. Griffin-Nolan archive the many reports flowing in from the field of contra crimes against humanity, which we filed upon then state of the art portable Kaypro computers, which did not nevertheless have the then common cassette tape filing system employed by the Tandy TRS-80, etc. This book presents the totality of Mr. Griffin-Nolan's personal experience, including as contra kidnap victim. In this book we find as well Mr. Griffin-Nolan's comprehensive account of Witness for Peace's history in the field in Nicaragua. God knows we need them now in new unjust, immoral battlefields worldwide, as reported in A Stupid, Unjust, and Criminal War: Iraq, 2001-2007. Each chapter presents not always in chronological order this history, with commentary and interpretation, and is impossible to put down, reports from a time when individual US citizens could make a difference in working nonviolently and directly for peace and justice. Each chapter begins with a salient quote, including this quote from Bill Casey in Bob Woodward's "Veil: the Secret Wars of the CIA 1981 - 1987": "If Tip O'Neill didn't have Maryknoll nuns who wrote letters, we would have a contra program." Now we have little to no Maryknoll nuns writing letters, only the great and Reverend Father Andrew Greeley and Jesuit Father John Dear, and we have profitable war