Bruce Gagnon
Veteran, Organizer: b. 1952
“The role of the U.S. in the new world corporate order is going to be to export security. That means endless wars and weapons in space. The Pentagon will send our kids off to foreign lands to suppress opposition to corporate globalization. How will we ever end America’s addiction to war and violence as long as our communities are dependent on military spending for jobs? We must work to convert the military industrial complex to sustainable technologies like windpower, solar, and mass transit.”
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Biography
Getting his start as a state coordinator of the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice, Gagnon has worked on space issues for more than 20 years. Valuable resources on the moon and planets form the next battleground for corporate profit, he says, and “defense” programs such as “Star Wars” actually are conceived as offense. “The U.S. intends to control…and dominate space and deny other countries access,” says Gagnon, adding that the nuclear threat used to seize this control threatens everyone on Earth and diverts funding from the common good.
Gagnon speaks internationally on this high stakes topic and has written for publications such as Earth Island Journal, CounterPunch, Z Magazine, Space News, National Catholic Reporter, Asia Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, andCanadian Dimension. He has produced two videos, Arsenal of Hypocrisy(2003) and Battle for America’s Soul (2005) and he published a book, Come Together Right Now: Organizing Stories from a Fading Empire (2005). He is host of “This Issue”, a cable TV program that airs in five communities in Maine, his home state. In 2003, Dr. Helen Caldicott named Gagnon a senior fellow at the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, where he also serves on her advisory board.
Gagnon’s work does not yet draw the attention it warrants. Television’s “60 Minutes” tuned in to his Cancel Cassini Campaign against the 1997 launch of plutonium into space. But Project Censored (based at Sonoma State University in California) found articles by Gagnon to be among the most censored stories of 1999 and 2005.
Remembering that his own shift in consciousness began with a handful of Vietnam War protestors who stood outside an Air Force base in California where he was stationed, Bruce Gagnon perseveres—and finds new ways to enlist others’ concern.
Robert Shetterly (born in 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is an American artist. Shetterly is best known for his portrait series, “Americans Who Tell the Truth,” a project begun in response to U.S. government actions following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Towers in New York City. Shetterly undertook the project as a way to deal with his own grief and anger by painting Americans who inspired him. He initially intended to paint only 50 portraits, but by 2013 more than 180 portraits were included in the series. Portions of the series tour widely across the United States, being shown in schools, museums, libraries, galleries and other public spaces.
[Source: Wikipedia]
For more biographical information and awards: TheArtist
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