Conference addresses sex,
violence, military and peace
Mayor Kitty Piercy read a speech by Barbara Lee,
and author Guryn Kirk was among the panelists
BY NICHOLAS WILBUR
NEWS REPORTER
The University hosted prominent
authors, professors and community
activists from across the country at
“Gender, Race and Militarization,”
an all-day conference Friday. The
speakers discussed sexual violence
in wartime, what they called deceit
ful military recruiting tactics and the
peaceful efforts from international
communities to change in political
priorities worldwide.
In the keynote address Master of
Ceremonies Sandra Morgen, director
of the Center for the Study of Women
in Society, said gender, race and mili
tarization are terms combined to help
build power against the various kinds
of fundamentalism.
“We were asking questions
(about) how these dynamics produce
ill results,” Morgen said. “But you
can also put the antitheses together.
It is only when we put all of this to
gether that we don’t have one group
over here and one group over there.”
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., was
called back to Washington, D.C.,
and was unable to personally deliv
er her speech, but the event spon
sors asked Eugene Mayor Kitty Pier
cy to read the speech to the crowd
of nearly 200 people.
Lee is the only U.S. House of Rep
resentatives member to vote against
President Bush’s Sept. 15, 2001 war
resolution authorizing the use of
“all necessary and appropriate
force” in preventing terrorist attacks
against the United States. She intro
duced House Resolution 82, which
would renounce the Bush adminis
tration’s doctrine of pre-emptive
war. She recently joined Dennis
Kucinich, D-Ohio, and other Con
gress members to reintroduce legis
lation to create a United States
Department of Peace.
“From the war in Iraq to the
genocide in Sudan, there is a clear
need for a government body that
will create and implement policies
that support peaceful resolution,”
Lee said in September.
In her speech, Lee wrote that
America is the richest country in the
world, “yet we spend less on inter
national aid per capita than virtual
ly any other country,” an amount
equal to two months’ expenses for
the military operation in Iraq.
“We would get a lot more security
out of increasing foreign aid and ad
dressing the root causing of terror
ism than by fanning the flames of
anti-Americanism in Iraq,” her
speech said.
She also said the racism that exist
ed during World War II still exists in
the war in Iraq. Just as Japanese citi
zens were portrayed as militarized
enemies in posters, racism in Iraq, al
though more subtle, portrays Iraqis
as a more primitive, violent people.
“It serves to justify the detentions
of Guantanamo and the atrocities of
Abu Ghraib and reinforces the no
tion that some lives are more ex
pendable and that some deaths are
just inevitable,” she added.
Lee’s address emphasized the his
tory of sexual violence in wartime.
In 1937, more than 20,000 women
were raped and killed during
Japan’s assault on the Chinese city
of Nanking. In 1994, as many as
500,000 women and girls were vic
tims of sexual assault in the
Rwandan genocide.
A panel followed the reading of
Lee’s speech.
Panelist Gwyn Kirk, co-author of
“Greenham Women Everywhere:
Dreams, Ideas, and Actions from the
Women’s Peace Movement,” com
pared the United States government
to a massive vacuum, sucking up
justice, creativity, imagination and
physical resources.
She encouraged people to get in
volved in local peace efforts and to
think about what it means to be pa
triotic “when the government is
committing such atrocities.
“The community has bought the
idea of the military,” she said.
“We need to put out there what
we envision.”
Citing the fiscal year 2006 mili
tary budget of $419 billion, Kirk, in
closing, asked the crowd: “How
would we spend more than a billion
dollars a day?”
Contact the campus and
federal politics reporter at
nwilbur@dailyemerald.com
EMU Board of Directors
Special Budget Committee meeting.
Immediately following will be
a Full Board meeting.
November 2,4 p.m.
EMU Board Room
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