Faith Fippinger Introduction Faith Fippinger has led a life that anyone might envy. After college she taught blind elementary school children for 33 years at schools in Australia, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Fiji and elsewhere. She worked in an Aborigine settlement and an Eskimo village. She spent 13 months sailing around the world. In Calcutta she volunteered at Mother Teresa's home for dying destitutes. About nine years ago, she borrowed an isolated cabin far out on the Alaskan tundra; it was nine hours by dogsled to the closest village. She dared herself to last a year without electricity, running water or neighbors but stayed an extra year, net-fishing, gathering driftwood, and melting ice to drink to survive. She also spent nearly a year trekking through sacred places in Tibet, Nepal and India, while the U.S. prepared its case for a war on Iraq. She spent a month in a monastery outside Kathmandu and a week listening to the Dalai Lama. She planned to return to America to protest in the usual way. However, in India, she learned about the human shields who volunteered their lives to protect the innocent so she went to Baghdad. She lived with the Iraqi people first as a “human shield” hoping to prevent the United States bombing, then as a makeshift nurse in hospitals overrun by the casualties of war. When she returned home a letter from the U.S. government was waiting for her. It said she could face up to 12 years in prison and $1 million in fines for violating U.S. rules against private citizens’ traveling to Iraq and spending money, even for buying groceries. The fine is reduced to 10,000 buth Faith refuses to pay. She says that she’d rather go to jail than contribute to the United States military and its arsenal of weapons that are used to kill Iraqi children and other impoverished people around the world. Let me end by pointing out that no sites with human shields were hit. We’re very honored to have Faith with us today as she tells us about her bold witness for peace in the midst of war.