The Red Wing area VFP chapter held its 10th annual Peacestock (formerly Pigstock) retreat on July 14, 2012 at Paul and Trudy Schaefer’s Windbeam farm in Hager City, Wisconsin.  The 2012 theme was Religion and War/Peace and featured Father Roy Bourgeois as key note speaker.   Plenty of time was also allotted for the (normally shy?) audience to speak their minds.

The 14th offered hot, yet relatively cool and humid 85° day (yes, even in Minnesota and Wisconsin), welcome relief from the near 100° days the area had been experiencing during the month of July.  Nonetheless, a large tent and very large fans provided some relief from the heat for the 125 attendees.  Speakers and attendees still managed to work up a lot of enthusiasm and passion for peace, amidst goats and gardens and nature.   Noticeably absent this year was an unnamed gray tabby cat who has graced Peacestock with her presence in past years.   This writer neglected to inquire about her well-being.

Pastor Duane Kamrath

Pastor Duane Kamrath, a veteran and retired minister, opened the day by sharing his work with “Wisdom About War and Violence”, a discussion tool for youth that features a month-long, daily topic on the issue.  The ecumenical source offers wisdom from both religious and non-religious voices.   Kamrath comes from a military family and yet is active in teaching about war and US foreign people versus Jesus’ message of nonviolence and the cross as a symbol of nonviolent love.  We must see the divine in every face.  Kamrath closed his presentation with small group discussions of selected readings from the book.    It set the perfect mindset for the rest of the day.

Josh Ruebner

 Josh Ruebner, Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, spoke next.   Ruebner started with an excellent primer on the history of the creation of Israel and the ensuing Israeli/Palestinian conflict that continues still, 64 years later.  The UN sanctioned partition (without Palestinian consent) promised much to parties involved, yet the result has been ethnic cleansing and displacement of millions of Palestinians.  In 1948 the Palestinians owned and occupied 93% of the land.  To date, they have been dispossessed of most of their land, including the occupied areas, as Israel deliberately has built settlements in a checkerboard fashion to weaken Palestinian ties and cohesion, much like that practices employed against indigenous people in the US.    Ruebner described US policy as one that’s ostensibly fair to both parties, but in truth is intentionally highly biased towards Israeli and dispiriting to the Palestinian people.

Leah Bolger

After a lunch of singing, Leah Bolger, VFP President, rallied attending VFP members to unite with other VFP chapters and members, as well as with other organizations, particularly on the issues of depleted uranium and PTSD (especially in children).  When asked about priorities, the public has named health care and education as priorities.  VFP needs to take action and put our name and positions out there.  Bolger has developed two initiatives to enhance communication:  Monthly electronic town halls and Keeping In Touch memos with updates, events, etc.

Sami Rasouli

Local Iraqi activist Sami Rasouli shared a message of hope through the experience in his return trips to Iraq.  He feels education is very important, as the mainstream public is very ignorant about not just Iraq but also the rest of Arabia.   The Iraqi occupation has greatly benefited Israel, particularly with oil.  Iraq is a failed state now, but positive things are happening such as the Songs of Hope, an international children’s group, doctors helping with the effects of depleted uranium, US/Muslim peacemakers, and a friend ship agreement between Minneapolis and Bagdad – recognizing each other as friends and not as enemies or terrorists. Rasouli described trips to Ramadi where local people offered their homes to him and his American comrades, stating, “Our home is the best hotel in town”, one example of the hospitality of ordinary Iraqis recognizing that ordinary Americans are not their enemies.

Father Roy Bourgeois

Father Roy Bourgeois, Catholic priest, peace activist and founder of the School of the Americas Watch was keynote speaker.   Soft spoken almost to a whisper, he related his journey from a segregated LA childhood and his escape from LA by joining the military where he bought into the Vietnam conflict.  “They will take evil and call it good and take the lie and call it truth; such is the nature of war”.  Humanity is not made for war.   Bourgeois recognized war is not an answer and joined the Mary Knolls upon recommendation of a chaplain.  Upon ordination, Bourgeois traveled throughout Latin America advocating for the poor and for Liberation Theology and shared his experience of working with the poor who chose to fight for justice and liberation against the elites who are armed by the US and the Vatican.   Later he brought this message to the US through direct action and speaking. Bourgeois also traveled on a healing mission to Vietnam to apologize to the people, where he learned that the ordinary people had no anger towards the American people because they recognized the difference between the government and the people.

Bourgeois recognized the tie between the violence in Latin America, particularly the assassinations of prominent clergy, and the School of the Americas in Georgia.  He founded the School of the Americas Watch, which educates the public on what SOA does and sponsors direct action every year.  Several Latin American countries have vowed not to send personnel to Georgia for training.   Bourgeois also has fought for the ordination of women in the Catholic church, knowing that there will never be justice in the church until women have power in it.

Bourgeois left the audience with a message of hope, “When we follow our connection to the divine we are free and when we don’t we are tormented   Silence is the voice of complicity – but the truth cannot be silenced”.

David Swanson

The last speaker of the day, David Swanson, was timed perfectly – his passion and energy ignited the crowd at a time of the day when one has the urge to nap and tummies are calling to dinner.  Swanson is a dedicated peace activist and author of several books, including “War is a Lie” and “When the World Outlawed War”, as well as the founder of Roosaction.org.  War is the second oldest profession, one waged for economic purposes to benefit the wealthy and pacifism is treason.   Although seventy five percent of the population claims to favor peace and getting out of Afghanistan and a large majority favor less defense spending, war has been the official US policy for decades.  Since Bush, war is bigger, more secretive, and professional than ever.

In 1927/28 the War Outlawry movement worked to outlaw war and make peace the law of the land through the Kellogg-Briand Pact.  Frank Kellogg, a Minnesota republican and firebrand, came to support the effort reluctantly, but lent his fire to its support.  The movement relied heavily on new female voters and on August 28, 1928 the peace pact was signed. After the pact became law, nations were prevented from waging war.  In WWII the pact was used to make war a crime, obviously unsuccessful, yet the Kellogg-Brain Act is still good law.

War is humanitarian since evil is in the world and we can do nothing or bomb people, especially if the “enemy” is darker skinned.  While civilians are the biggest casualty of war, suicide is now the top killer of US troops.  War depends on being something other than murder – witness the rise of drones.   Most telling is the outrage over troops urinating on bodies, rather than the murders themselves.   The standard of living would rise for all if we gave up some billionaires and bombs – we’d have jobs, not wars.  Swanson closed his talk by reminding us that there are more of us than them – “We are many, they are few”, we must realize and remember out strength.

The retreat closed with a burrito dinner, accompanied by yet more music.

David Swanson graduated from the University of Virginia in 1997 with a Masters Degree in Philosophy. In 2000 he became the communications coordinator for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) until 2004 where he became the press secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s presidential campaign. After that he became a media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association.

His activism switched into high gear in 2005 when he made the Downing Street memo known in the United States and led to its discussion in Congress. This later led David to co-create the After Downing Street website which was named the Most Valuable Progressive website by The Nation magazine, John Nichols in 2005, 2006 and 2007. This website is presently is known as WarIsACrime.org

David helped lead the effort to impeach President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and he wrote the introduction of Representative Dennis Kucinich’s The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush.

Because of David’s outstanding knowledge and skill at communications, he is able to tell it like it is and stirs people into action and he does this in various ways. He hosts the Talk Nation Radio show. He blogs at his websites: davidswanson.org and warisacrime.org

David Swanson is author of Daybreak; Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union (2009); War is a Lie (2010); When the World Outlawed War (2010); The Military Industrial Complex at 50 (2012). Daniel Ellsberg, a speaker at Peacestock 2011, calls David “a very valuable American and human being”.

Rev. Duane Kamrath is the author of Wisdom about War and Violence.

Josh Ruebner is the National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a national coalition of more than 380 organizations working to end U.S. support for Israel’s illegal 44-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, and to change U.S. policy toward Israel/ Palestine to support human rights, international law, and equality.


Ruebner is a former Analyst in Middle East Affairs at Congressional Research Service, a federal government agency providing Members of Congress with policy analysis. He holds a graduate degree in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.

Ruebner’s analysis and commentary on U.S. policy toward the Middle East appear frequently in media such as NBC, ABC Nightline, CSPAN, Al Jazeera, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Hill, Detroit Free Press, Huffington Post, Middle East Report, and more. 


On July 14th, 2012, the 10th Annual Peacestock: A Gathering for Peace took place at Windbeam Farm in Hager City WI. Peacestock (formerly “Pigstock”) is a mixture of music, speakers, and community for peace in an idylic location near the Mississippi. Peacestock is sponsored by Veterans for Peace, Chapter 115 and has a peace-themed agenda. Sami Rasouli, American-Iraqi, formerly from Minneapolis, MN, founder of The Muslim Peacemaker Team, spoke on conditions in Iraq today.

Fr. Roy Bourgeois

Born in Louisiana in 1938. He graduated from the University of Southwestern Louisiana with a Bachelor of Science degree in geology.

After college Fr. Roy served as a Naval Officer for four years–two years at sea, one year at a NATO station in Europe, and one year of shore duty in Vietnam. He received the Purple Heart.



After military service, Fr. Roy entered the seminary of the Maryknoll Missionary Order. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1972, and he went on to work with the poor of Bolivia for five years before being arrested and forced to leave the country, then under the repressive rule of dictator and SOA grad General Hugo Banzer. 



In 1980 Fr. Roy became involved in issues surrounding US policy in El Salvador after four US churchwomen–two of them his friends–were raped and killed by Salvadoran soldiers. Roy became an outspoken critic of US foreign policy in Latin America. Since then, he has spent over four years in US federal prisons for nonviolent protests against the training of Latin American soldiers at Ft. Benning, Georgia.



In 1990, Roy founded the School of Americas Watch, an office that does research on the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC, at Fort Benning, Georgia. Each year the school trains hundreds of soldiers from Latin America in combat skills – all paid for by U.S. taxpayers.



The School of the Americas Watch, located just outside the main entrance of Fort Benning and in Washington, DC, informs the general public, Congress and the media about the implications of this training on the people of Latin America. 

Roy has worked on and helped produce several documentary films, including 1983′s “Gods of Metal” about the nuclear arms race and 1995′s “School of Assassins.” Both films received Academy Award nominations.

Fr. Roy was the recipient of the 1997 Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace Award. 



In December of 1998, Roy testified in Madrid before Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon seeking the extradition of Chile’s ex-dictator General Augusto Pinochet.

From 1999 to the present time, Roy has and continues to travel extensively, giving talks at universities, churches, and other groups around the country.

“I joined the U.S. Navy in 1980 and served on active duty for the next 20 years relatively ignorant of the vastness of the U.S. military machine and its deep-seated entrenchment with our government and economy. I had little understanding of the “military-industrial complex’ that President Eisenhower warned us about 50 years ago, and I certainly didn’t know what Major General Smedley Butler meant when he said that “War is a racket.”

“Now I am beginning to understand the enormity of the power that the U.S. military machine holds. Capitalism is supposed to be an economic system”not a foreign policy–but war making has become very profitable. Profit means money and it is money that controls the power in our government. It doesn’t matter to the government that wars are immoral, illegal or ineffective. Government policies are shaped by the will of the corporate interests who have direct, immediate and in some cases, almost exclusive access to them.”

CircleVision attempts to inform and educate by providing the connections between justice and peace issues, while connecting individuals and organizations. We advocate the use of all nonviolent actions, from political lobbying to supporting or engaging in direct action and civil disobedience. Photos by Tom Bottolene. More info at www.circlevision.org

As a senior CIA analyst, Ray McGovern was in charge of preparing daily security briefs for President Reagan and later for President George H.W. Bush. Since retiring, he has became a vocal peace advocate. He came to Peacestock 2011 at a farm near Hager City, Wis., from the Gaza Flotilla, which has been detained by Greek authorities in Athens. About two-thirds of the planned group has returned, but one-third still remain and hope to succeed.

On Feb. 15, as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke on issues of free speech at George Washington University, 71-year-old McGovern was assaulted, dragged from the room and double handcuffed, causing profuse bleeding. What had he done to elicit this treatment? He stood in “silent witness.” McGovern offered a grim view of the outlook for the American Empire and the results of current attacks on U.S. civil liberties, but he also described positive actions that are needed and possible.

Part 2

Former Congresswoman and 2008 Green Party Presidential Nominee Cynthia McKinney spoke at the Hager City, Wis., farm gathering of Peacestock 2011, an annual celebration of peace and music. McKinney has an international reputation for her peace efforts including receiving The Munich American Peace Committee Peace Prize in 2010. She recently returned from Libya where she appeared on Libyan TV. She has earned the enmity of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for attempting to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip. Her craft was sunk on the high seas, endangering her life.