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The Ban Killer Drones campaign has been launched in large part through the efforts of, in alphabetical order:
Chelsea Faria – Chelsea has been an active opponent of US drone warfare when she became outraged when uncovering the calculated attempts of the Obama Administration to keep its realities hidden from the American public. While an undergraduate student at Hampshire College, she wrote her senior thesis on how the Obama administration mobilized the mainstream press and interpreted international law to promote and perpetuate US drone assassination. In October of 2012, after graduating from Hampshire, Chelsea joined the CODEPINK peace delegation to Pakistan, protesting US drone attacks and bearing witness to the stories of Pakistanis negatively impacted by drone attacks in their communities, many who lost loved ones in indiscriminate attacks. Chelsea is a graduate of Yale Divinity School, where she also participated in drone war protest. She is a 2017 graduate of the Smith College School for Social Work, where she wrote her master’s thesis on veterans’ stories of substance use, recovery, and moral injury. She is the clerk of the demilitarization committee for the Resistance Center for Peace and Justice in Northampton, MA.
Kathy Kelly – Kathy credits investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill with raising her consciousness about weaponized drones. In 2009, he asked her, rather adamantly, when she was going to get in touch with 21st Century militarism. She began learning about Reaper and Predator drones and then helped assemble activists who held a weeklong fast and vigil outside of Creech AFB, in Nevada, (2009), prior to committing civil disobedience by entering into the base to seek a meeting with the Commander. In visits to war zones in Gaza, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Kathy has written eyewitness accounts about consequences of drone warfare. She served three months in prison in 2015 for attempting to deliver a loaf of bread and a set of questions to the commander of Whiteman AFB which operated weaponized drones over Afghanistan. She has also been arrested for protesting drone warfare at Beale AFB, in California, Volk Field AFB in Wisconsin, and Hancock AFB in NY. Kathy co-founded Voices in the Wilderness which organized 70 delegations to defy economic sanctions against Iraq. She lived in Iraq, as a peace team member, during the first weeks of both U.S. wars against Iraq, in 1991 and in 2003. She is the author of Other Lands Have Dreams, from Baghdad to Pekin prison. Through writing, speaking, and demonstrating, she has campaigned to end all wars, share resources equitably, and protect human rights.
Nick Mottern – Nick became aware of drone warfare in 2010 and has been actively working to end drone attacks and drone surveillance since then through: creation of Knowdrones.com; speaking tours in 2012 and 2013; creation of 1/5 scale models of the MQ-9 Reaper drone for use in protests around the U.S.; and publication of the Drone Organizers Bulletin, a newsletter for anti-drone war organizers. He has had experience in countries colonized by Western powers, first as a member of the U.S. Navy assigned in 1962 to what was then called Saigon, South Viet Nam, and then while working for Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers in visits to Sudan, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. While with Maryknoll, he organized, with Jerry Herman of the American Friends Service Committee, speaking tours in the U.S. opposing apartheid and U.S. military involvement in Africa that included Africans who came to the U.S. expressly for these tours. He is a graduate of Wabash College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has also worked for the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs and the anti-hunger lobbying organization Bread for the World.
David Swanson – David is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is executive director of World BEYOND War and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org, and he hosts Talk World Radio.
David’s books on war and peace include Leaving World War II Behind (an argument against the use of WWII as reason for more wars), War Is A Lie (a catalog of the types of falsehoods regularly told about wars), War Is Never Just (a refutation of just war theory), and When the World Outlawed War (an account of the 1920s peace movement and the creation of the Kellogg Briand Pact), as well as (co-author) A Global Security System: An Alternative to War (a vision of a world of nonviolent institutions). He is a Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and was awarded the 2018 Peace Prize by the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation, and he is on the advisory boards of: Nobel Peace Prize Watch, Veterans For Peace, Assange Defense, BPUR, and Military Families Speak Out. He is an associate of the Transnational Foundation. In 2013, he successfully campaigned for the passage of law against the use of police surveillance drones in his hometown, Charlottesville, VA.
Brian Terrell – Brian participated in the first protest in the U.S. against killing by remote control in 2009, shortly after newly elected President Obama made assassination by Predator and Reaper drones the cornerstone of his military policy. Since his arrest at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada that spring, Brian has participated in nonviolent protests around the country and abroad as this deadly technology has been proliferating. At these protests he has been arrested many times, serving jail sentences in New York and Nevada and in 2013, Brian spent six months in federal prison for presenting a petition against drone war at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. Brian has traveled extensively, making several visits to Afghanistan where he met with drone victims and their families. He has spoken about drones at universities, high schools, churches and rallies in the United States, Europe and Asia and his writings on the subject have been widely published and translated into several languages. A peace activist for more than 45 years, Brian lives on a Catholic Worker farm in Maloy, Iowa.
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