This event, part of a week of Global Women's Strike events leading up to March 8 International Women's Day, brought a packed and diverse crowd of 50 to the upstairs room at Robin's bookstore on a rainy Saturday afternoon. It was one of those moments where many things got put together for the first time, and people were spell-bound and didn't want to leave. Several people came up afterward and said it was the best event they had ever been to in Philadelphia.

Eric Gjertsen from Payday, which cosponsored the event with the Global Women's Strike, introduced the program, emphasizing that the aim was to bring together people from very different backgrounds and sectors of society and different countries who are refusing the military's priorities in many different ways, and that it is an important part of our work to make these forms of refusal more visible than they have been. Phoebe Jones from the Global Women's Strike then put the event in the bigger picture of what work the Strike has been doing internationally. She made the point that women pay the highest price for war and they have also been the biggest refusers of war since time immemorial.

We then heard from Stephen Funk, the 21-year-old gay Marine Corps reservist of Filipino and Native American descent, who refused to support the war in Iraq and has just finished a six-month sentence in military prison. Stephen said that almost everyone in prison had a great deal of respect for what he did, and that everyone hated Bush.

The Reverend Dorothy Mackey, Executive Director of STAAAMP (Survivors Taking Action Against Military Personnel), former Air Force captain and commander, and a survivor of multiple rape and military abuse, spoke of her experiences and those of other women in her network, exposing that sexual violence in the military is condoned and protected all the way to the top of the military hierarchy and within the justice system itself, and that it forms part of the training for war. She spoke of how her network is bringing together not only women within the military but also spouses, men, and civilians around military bases worldwide who are fighting back against the abuse. Many in the audience were visibly moved. Shirts and jackets that had been decorated by survivors of military abuse were displayed along the sides of the room.

Brad Rubin from the Refuser Solidarity Network then introduced and provided historical context for a statement by Israeli high-school refusenik Asaf Shtull-Trauring that we showed on video.

Linda Dann from Military Families Speak Out spoke of having to buy her son's armor to go to a war she doesn't support because the US was too cheap to buy it. Lori Hamilton, a Black woman and wife of a 45-year-old reservist now in Kuwait awaiting deployment, spoke about how hard it is to effectively live as a single mother, worried about health of her husband who is also diabetic, and how she thought the war was pointless before but now it is personal.

Jack Hallock, a gay man who lost a relative in the attacks on the World Trade Center spoke about how Stephen was twice brave, for coming out as a soldier opposing the war, and for coming out at the same time as gay. He said Stephen has been a big inspiration for him. He made the point that military rape is often directed towards gays or those perceived as gay. Tim Laborie, a man who lost his daughter-in-law on 9/11, performed an anti-war song on guitar that he wrote, "Who Killed Katherine Laborie?", which placed the responsibility all the way up to the Pentagon.

Dana Marks, a woman who had worked in a government job, and whose husband was in the military, spoke about being raped by military officers.

Pat Albright from Every Mother is a Working Mother talked about what work they have done in opposing JROTC and other militarization in Philadelphia schools, and how cuts to welfare and other services in low-income Black neighborhoods make it easier for military recruiters to pull our kids into the military.

At the end of the meeting, people voiced agreement with something Stephen Funk said earlier, that while it was important to vote Bush out of office, it was fundamentally up to us to prevent Kerry or whoever from continuing just the same war policies. In other words, we all need the movement!

Refusing to Kill