By Kathy Kelly, Library and Research Centre of Sevagram Ashram Pratishthan, Wardha, Mahrashtra, India, August 18, 2026

Thank you, Dr. Michael Sonnleitner, for that kindly introduction. Lovely to be with all of you. Dr. Siby Joseph, thank you for welcoming us and for putting us in the mindset of the ashram where Gandhi helped so many people desire that true prayer for peace. On this day to celebrate the independence of India from the colonial rule of Britain, we do have reason to find great hope in much of our history.

I would go back and forth to New York from where I live in Chicago from time to time and almost every time I would visit there, I’d get a chance to spend some time with a woman named Maryanne Goldscheider. Maryanne has since died, but toward the end of her life, this woman recounted how she escaped Nazi Germany after being sent to a concentration camp.

She would sometimes ask me or ask whomever might be joining her in conversation, “Why didn’t people stop Hitler? He was a madman. Why didn’t people who were still in Germany try to stop him?” I think we now should ask ourselves the same question. Why don’t we stop the madness of nuclear weapon proliferation in our time when you might say that each one of the nuclear warheads that Dr. Siby Joseph mentioned the world possesses is like a holocaust in a can? If there’s one exchange of nuclear weapons, it could mean omnicide for the entire planet.

So, I asked to begin our time together today to orient us with the first two minutes of a concert that was called Songs Against Genocide. In these two minutes, you’ll hear a young woman who is representing Anne Frank, the young girl who was killed by the Nazis in a concentration camp who experienced hunger and fear and forcible dislocation. You see this young girl with the yellow star on a prisoner’s uniform singing her longing for people to understand one another—that her blood is the same as the blood of her Palestinian sister, her Palestinian brother. Then she summons up the desire for millions of people to say, “We are one humanity.”

The young woman is singing to say that they took away her dreams. They took away her food. But she believes that the capacity of humanity continues and millions could rise to say we are all part of one another.

There was a speech that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King gave in which he called on people internationally to become maladjusted. Dr. King said he never intended to become adjusted to racism, to segregation, or to accepting nuclear war. In Dr. King’s vision, being maladjusted was a very positive dimension.

At American University, President John Kennedy in 1963 delivered a speech in which he said that basically where we would find our peace and our security would be in respecting the human rights mutually between ourselves and our so-called enemies, but really of people all over the world.

What we see now is that countries that had been neutral countries, countries like Sweden, have now been racing very hastily to join NATO, saying, “We are so afraid of Russia that we now have to get entangled in these military alliances that could mean we end up acquiring nuclear weapons.” As a result, we’re in an even more dangerous time as more and more countries start to say, “We want the bomb.”

That’s why it’s so important to show support for the treaty for the prohibition of nuclear weapons, and to keep pressing every nation to rid themselves of any armaments, and to press toward non-violent ways to solve problems.

I’ve been part of an effort for some years really that’s called the ploughshares movement. I have to confess that when I first engaged in what involved a challenge to a nuclear weapon, we didn’t do damage to the weapon itself. We decided that our group would go to silo sites, underground nuclear weapons buried underneath the ground, and we would try to do something similar to what the farmers did in that area. They would plant corn. We planted corn on top of nuclear missile silo sites. For my corn planting action, I was sent to federal prison for one year.

Please recall with me that day in August—it was actually 1988, so it was a long time ago—when I and a group of friends fanned out to different nuclear weapons sites. There were 150 intercontinental ballistic missiles surrounding Kansas City in the Midwest of the United States, and there were 1,000 in the entire Midwest. We went out to various sites and I went by myself to one of those missile silo sites. My heart was pounding. I was actually kind of nervous because I’d never done this before. But I had six pellets of pink corn in my pocket and a tablespoon. When I got into the nuclear missile silo site, I hung some banners that said, “Farms, not arms,” and, “You can’t hug a child with nuclear arms.” Then I planted my corn with the tablespoon, trying to plant it reasonably.

Afterward, I calmed down and noticed it was a beautiful day. The birds were chirping, the crickets were creaking, so I hummed a little tune. Not long after that, a car was speeding down the gravel way toward where I was. It skidded to a stop, pebbles were flying, and out came four men in full military garb with helmets, rifles, walkie-talkies, and combat boots. One said into his microphone, “All personnel, please clear the site.” Then he told me, “Stand up, put your arms in the air, step to the left.”

They handcuffed me and I was instructed to kneel on the ground. Three of the soldiers left in the vehicle and they left one soldier with me with his weapon. He was behind me and I never really turned around. I just sort of stared into the distance and started talking to him. I told him why we did what we did, expressing our hope that our action might affect children that he loved, as well as innocent children in what at the time was the Soviet Union.

I told him about the neighbourhood where I lived, where a lot of people were hungry and homeless because we were choosing to spend so much of our country’s resources on taking care of nuclear weapons like the one that was beneath where we both were. Then I asked him, “Do you think the corn will grow?”

He said, “I don’t know, ma’am, but I sure hope so.”

I asked him, “Would you like to say a prayer?”

He said, “Yes, ma’am.”

So, I said a memorized prayer, the prayer of St. Francis: “Lord, make me a channel of your peace. Where there is darkness, let me sow light; where there is despair, hope; where there is sadness, joy. Master, grant that I may never so much seek to be loved as to love with all my soul.”

He said, “Amen.” Then he asked me a question: “Ma’am, would you like a drink of water?”

I said, “Yes, please.”

He said, “Ma’am, please tip your head back.”

I did. All I can tell you is I noticed he had two hands on his canteen as he poured water down my throat. What did he do with the gun? I think that soldier, in order to perform an act of kindness, disarmed himself.

His question, “Would you like a drink of water?” should be our question. Would we prefer to make sure that every child around this world has access to clean water and has their right to a safe future guaranteed, rather than protecting these nuclear weapons? I remain throughout my life intensely grateful for that experience. Right now, in my life, I am also feeling intensely grateful to Korean brothers and sisters, people who are themselves second and third-generation survivors of the radiation sickness that occurred for their ancestors who were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, undergoing a kind of double punishment.

They had been taken as conscripts into the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forced to labour in munitions manufacture and in factories inside Japan. When the bomb hit in Hiroshima, they were doubly affected by their imprisonment and by the radiation sickness that survivors experienced. This was passed on to second and third-generation Korean people. Rather than saying we just have to adjust to this, this group of Koreans is compassionately maladjusted.

They have been working intensely to develop a tribunal that will come to fruition quite soon in Seoul at the Hanshin University’s Graduate School of Theology from November 13th to 15th. The Korean A-bomb survivors will hold their tribunal and hear testimonies, which they hope will lead toward an approval of their insistence that an apology be issued by the United States, along with reparations and a commitment to abolish all nuclear weapons. I want to uphold our Korean brothers and sisters as they plan and work to bring about this tribunal, a project they have built over two and a half years.

I also want to draw attention to the International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons plans for both a September action at the United Nations and then an initiative from November 29th to December 4th. They will be upholding the treaty for the prohibition of nuclear war.

I’ve had an opportunity through most of my adult life to join with Michael’s spouse, Chris, in trying to show our resistance to nuclear weapons by challenging our government’s insistence that we pay for these arsenals. I lowered my salary beneath the taxable income tier for many years. Any time the Internal Revenue Service wished to come and collect from whatever salary I was earning, I would just quit the job and finish it out as a volunteer. I successfully resisted payment of all forms of federal income tax for 40 years. That was a blessing because each of us longs for a chance to resist what we believe to be deeply wrongful in our world.

One of the most important components of that resistance is community. That’s exactly what you are forming in these monthly meetings—an ongoing sense that you can catch courage from one another, learn from one another, and orient yourselves the way that little girl’s voice orients me, and I hope you as well, to believe that we are all part of one another. At this point, when India is still trading with Israel and helping Israel to acquire more and more weapons, we have a profound responsibility in our world today to say we want to liberate all of our countries from any kind of entanglement in genocide and any kind of preparation for nuclear war.

It is a monumental task. One of the places from which we can draw great encouragement is actually in India when we see what the Cockroach movement was able to accomplish. Young people who were dismissed as being like a group of cockroaches took that very image, turned it around, and with great colour, display, and flair, showed the world we can make a difference. Special thanks go to all of the people who have helped to enable that kind of transformative energy and hope.

I want to close with a mention which I know I’ve referred to before, but one of the greatest hopes for non-violence I am seeing in our world today is the Gaza Freedom Flotilla movement. This miracle on the Mediterranean is going to happen again. They are organizing right now for a new set of boats to converge in October, trying to open up a humanitarian corridor into Gaza. I hope we can all join in our different ways to support the Flotilla movement.

I also want to offer a special invitation to everyone on this call to consider forming a local chapter of World BEYOND War. I’ve been incredibly grateful for all that we’ve been able to learn from the African chapters who are increasingly celebrating their capacity for Pan-Africanism, showing they don’t have to be bound by borders drawn by colonial powers in a previous era when people were stealing from them and enslaving them. We have a profound capacity to learn from one another.

We are now seeing an Afghanistan chapter of World BEYOND War form, comprised of people who are far-flung all over the world. Everyone in this Afghan chapter is actually an Afghan in diaspora. I hope we can see more of these chapters form, and I think World BEYOND War would be fortunate if anyone who is a fellow or a part of this alumni association considers tuning into our efforts.

Thank you for this time. I look forward to our discussion and to continuing to learn from you.

Acknowledgement: This is the transcribed text of the speech delivered by Kathy Kelly during the inaugural monthly International Dialogue of the online Fellowship Program on Nonviolence and Peace. The event was organized by the Sevagram Ashram Pratishthan, India, in association with the International Centre of Nonviolence , Durban University of Technology, South Africa, Academic University College for Non-violence and Human Rights (AUNHOR), Lebanon, Gandhi International, France, and Portland Community College, USA. The text was edited by Dr. Siby K. Joseph, Director of the Program. This first International Dialogue, held on August 15, 2026, centred around the theme, “Nuclear World: Hiroshima to Now.”

About the Speaker

Kathy Kelly is a renowned American peace activist and the current Board President of World BEYOND War. After earning a Master’s degree in Religious Education from the Chicago Theological Seminary and volunteering at the St. Francis Catholic Worker House in the 1970s, she transitioned into outspoken activism in 1986, serving a nine-month prison sentence for civil disobedience at a nuclear silo. Over a career marked by more than 60 arrests, she co-founded Voices in the Wilderness to challenge U.S. sanctions against Iraq—work that heavily contributed to her three Nobel Peace Prize nominations—and later worked with Voices for Creative Nonviolence in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Gaza. Known for her courageous presence in conflict zones, including Baghdad during the 2003 “Shock and Awe” attacks, her recent leadership includes co-coordinating the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal, which found major US weapons contractors guilty of aiding war crimes. She has remained a pivotal voice for Gaza through public fasts at the United Nations and prolific reporting for outlets such as Counter Punch and Common Dreams.

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