Green Mountain Global Forum

Joseph Gerson addresses Indian Anti-War Assembly, Hyderbad, Dec. 18, 2004. Photo courtesy of Akahata

Joseph Gerson will discuss China’s rise in the current global era, Chinese nationalism, the plight of the Tibetan people and the current situation with the 2008 summer Olympics. Gerson will address the crises surrounding both Tibet and the Olympics while focusing on the deeper and ultimately more important and decisive dynamics involved in China’s rise and the United State’s policies on Asia.

Joseph Gerson has served the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) since 1976 and is currently Director of Programs and Director of the Peace and Economic Security Program for the AFSC in New England. His program work focuses on challenging and overcoming U.S. global hegemony: its preparations for and threats to initiate nuclear war, and its military domination of the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. The primary focus of Gerson’s Asia-Pacific work for the past 20 years or so has related to U.S. regional dominance, issues of regional security and insecurity, and common security alternatives.

His work with AFSC has included helping to launch the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s, preventing New England harbors from being transformed into nuclear weapons bases, helping to build the U.S. and global anti-bases and nuclear weapons abolition movements, and helping to create peace and anti-war coalitions in the Boston area, across New England, and to a lesser extent nationally and internationally. His most recent book, Empire and the Bomb: How the United States Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World, was published by Pluto Books and the University of Michigan Press in April 2007. His previous books include The Sun Never Sets…Confronting the Network of Foreign U.S. Military Bases and With Hiroshima Eyes: Atomic War, Nuclear Extortion, and Moral Imagination.

Over the past year he has given keynote talks at the World Conference against A- and H- Bombs in Hiroshima, at the No Bases Conference in Quito, Ecuador, and the Movement de la Paix conference in Istres, France. In the same period, he has published articles analyzing the U.S. Congressional election, U.S. nuclear weapons and war policies, alternatives to the U.S. war in Iraq and threats against Iran, U.S. efforts to create permanent military bases in Iraq, and the global infrastructure of U.S. military bases. He is currently working with AFSC, Peace Action and the N.H. Council of Churches to influence the content of the 2008 presidential election -- especially on U.S. nuclear weapons and war policies. Gerson is currently leading a delegation of leading figures from the U.S. peace movement to China for two weeks.

Joseph Gerson is a Vietnam era draft resister who received his under graduate degree from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in 1968 and his PhD in Politics and International Security Studies from the Union Institute and College in 1995.

Venue: Valley Players Theater in Waitsfield, 7pm start.