Nobel-nominated peace activist coming to Elgin

Three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly says the best way she knows to promote nonviolence is to travel to war-torn countries, and then return to share stories of desperate mothers and frustrated youth.

"I think many people in the U.S. have been conditioned to see a kind of cartoonized version of foreign policy - good guys versus bad guys - and that's not really what goes on."

Kelly, a co-coordinator for Voices for Creative Nonviolence based in Chicago, will give a free talk titled "Confronting State Violence" at 2 p.m. Sept. 18 at Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren, 783 W. Highland Avenue, Elgin.

She has made 15 trips to Afghanistan as a guest of the group Afghan Peace Volunteers, and she has traveled dozens of times to Iraq, where she lived during the 2003 U.S. bombing campaign. She also has experienced warfare in Gaza, Lebanon, Bosnia and Nicaragua.

Last year, she served three months in prison after trespassing at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri while protesting U.S. drone warfare.

The Elgin event is sponsored by Fox Valley Citizens for Peace & Justice, Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren, First Congregational United Church of Christ in Elgin, and Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva.

Kelly is "an extraordinary human being," said Mary Shesgreen of Fox Valley Citizens for Peace & Justice.

"She's very gentle and very careful in what she has to say, but she knows her stuff," she said. "She reads intensely, she has traveled widely, she has studied Arabic. She thinks very deeply and seriously about matters of peace and war, and justice."

Kelly's most recent trip was in June to Russia, where she said she met with journalists, business owners, former military staffers and schoolteachers. Kelly said she objects to recent U.S.-backed NATO build up of military presence near the Russian border. Poland had pushed for that after Russia's actions in Ukraine and its 2014 annexation of Crimea.

But instead, the U.S. should forge more cooperation with Russia, and also China, Kelly said, pointing to a recent article by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as U.S. national security advisor in the late 1970s.

Kelly said she is well-aware that her talks can turn into "preaching to the choir."

"I very much hope people outside the choir will come," she said. "This is not lefties playing 'Henny Penny, the sky is falling.' This is coming from observables happening now."

So what does she hope ordinary residents will do?

"What people have done for centuries," she said. "Grassroots organizing, finding kindred spirits, talking to elected officials, religious leadership and university professors. For people to come together and create a better world for their children."