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Camp Peace Pilgrim
Middle Earth, Byfield
22 July - 5 August 2013
As Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and all the great advocates for peace attest, non violent direct action works!
Come join us at Camp Peace Pilgrim and help us cultivate non violent direct action aimed at disrupting the 2013 Talisman Sabre war rehearsals in the Shoalwater Bay military exercise area.
Camp Peace Pilgrim will gather:
from 22 July and go through till 5 August,
Middle Earth, Castle Rock Road, Byfield.
From this base activists will walk onto the Exercise Area, preferably into live fire zones, to blockade military transports and, if needs be, get arrested.
This will be undertaken as a sacred duty, a sacred walk; a wilderness peace pilgrimage.
There have been inspiring precedents for this.
In 2007 Simon Reeves, Krystal Spencer, Sarah Williams and Carole Powell and Simon Moyle walked on, invited the troops they met to exchange their war games for peace games (frisbee). They called themselves the Frisbee 5.
Jess, Kristy and Carey also did a walk on action in 2007 though they didn't do media . June Norman also went in for a few days, causing a minor freakout by the authorities because of her age but she was fine of course.
In 2009 three different groups walked. They called themselves:
The Bonhoeffer 4 (Margaret Pestorius, Simon Moyle, Jarrod McKJenna and Jessica Morrison) ,
Jaegerstaetter 3 (Culley Palmer, Jim Dowling, Bryan Law)
and the Grana Four (Yulangi Bardon, Emily Nielsen, Mark Palmer, Jake Bolton). Here Rockhampton Morning Bulletin report.
In 2011 a group calling themselves the Jaegerstaeter Amigos (Margaret Pestorius, Andy Paine and Robert Jones) walked on and, during the night and again the next day, blockaded tanks and trucks and effectively halting military manoeuvres for the day.
Margaret, Andy and Robert introduced a new theme to the resistance tactic by carrying with them a 10kg plaster angel and setting up a shrine to Blessed Franz Jaegerstaetter, the Austrian peasant who peacefully resisted the Nazi military and was executed by them in 1945.
We have the GPS location and the challenge they have set for others is to go find the Jaegerstaetter shrine and offer a prayer there.
Or maybe go built your own shrine to your exemplar of non violent direct action.
Let's populate the Shoalwater Exercise Area with generations of shrines dedicated to peace making saints and martyrs and make it our biennial exercise to go honour them.
For this i know, if we build resistance this way, honouring the peace makers past and calling on new generations of peace makers to have the courage and faith to resist the war rehearsals at Shoalwater Bay, it will only be a matter time before the military will have to shut up shop and leave.
Indeed non violent direct action such as this is the only way that the Shoalwater Bay, an area of pristine coast rainforest the size of Denmark, will ever be returned to the people as a sacred wilderness park.
Further information
Greg Rolles 0439 823 898
Graeme Dunstan, Peacebus.com, 0407 951 688
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