NOVANEWS
Army Col. Wright, later a diplomat, left the State Department in protest against the Iraq War; Benjamin founded activist group CodePink.
Peace activists Medea Benjamin and Col. Ann Wright. Photos by Alan Pogue / The Rag Blog.
Two of the country’s most prominent peace and justice activists — Medea Benjamin and Col. Ann Wright — are Thorne Dreyer‘s guests on Rag Radio in a very important discussion about Donald Trump and U.S. foreign policy. They also talk more generally about the Trump presidency and the growing resistance to it.
From left: Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer, Medea Benjamin, Col. Ann Wright, and engineer Tracey Schulz.
Photo by Alan Pogue / The Rag Blog.
- Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of the women-led peace group CodePink and the human rights group Global Exchange. She has been an advocate for social justice for more than 40 years. Described as “one of America’s most committed — and most effective — fighters for human rights” by Newsday, she is the author of nine books, including Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control and her most recent, Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-SaudiConnection.
- Ann Wright is a retired United States Army colonel and former diplomat who publicly resigned from the U.S. State Department in direct protest of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Col. Wright received the State Department Award for Heroism in 1997, after helping to evacuate several thousand people during the civil war in Sierra Leone. In 2016, Ann was captured in international waters and imprisoned by the Israelis on her fourth Gaza Flotilla attempt to reach shore, this time on the Women’s Boat to Gaza. She is the co-author of the book, Dissent: Voices of Conscience, and has written frequently about sexual abuse in the military, the refugee crisis, and U.S. militarism around the globe.
- Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright have each been arrested multiple times during anti-war demonstrations and they were both denied entry into Canada because of their arrest records related to their peace activities.
Rag Radio is produced in the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer, cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas, in association with The Rag Blog and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The host and producer of Rag Radio, Thorne Dreyer, is a prominent Austin-based activist and writer who was a pioneer of the ’60s underground press movement. The show’s engineer and co-producer is Tracey Schulz and the staff photographer is Roger Baker. The syndicated show is broadcast (and streamed) live Fridays, 2-3 p.m. (Central) on KOOP in Austin, is streamed live at Radio Free America, and is later rebroadcast and streamed on WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA., on Houston Pacifica’s KPFT HD-3 90.1-FM, and by KKRN, 88.5-FM in Round Mountain, CA — and is a featured podcast at Veterans Today. All Rag Radio podcasts can be found at the Internet Archive. Contact: [email protected].
