Iraq War Veteran and Resister, Camilo Mejia Will Speak In Providence October 30

WAR RESISTER CAMILO MEJIA TO SPEAK IN PROVIDENCE

Contact: Brian Chidester, 401-525-1957

(Providence, RI)—Iraq veteran and war resister Camilo Mejia will speak
at two engagements in Providence on Thursday, October 30. Mejia will
give presentations at Rhode Island College at 12:30pm in the Student
Union, room 307; and again at 7pm in List Art Building room 120 at
Brown University. Both events are free and open to the public.

Mejia gained prominence when he became the first U.S. soldier to refuse
deployment to Iraq. Mejia, whose family came to the U.S. from
Nicaragua in 1991, served a six- month tour of duty in Iraq, during
which time he turned against the war. As he writes in his memoir, Road
from ar Ramadi: the Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia
(Haymarket Books, 2008), “I would find myself riding in the back of a
truck through the dusty streets of war-torn ar Ramadi...I was supposed
to be giving all my attention to watching out for the insurgents...But
then I would catch sight of the children running to the front gates of
their homes to watch our vehicles rolling by and they would remind me
of the children I had seen back in Nicaragua.”

Mejia refused deployment in October 2003, filing for conscientious
objector status and going AWOL. He was convicted on a charge of
desertion and served nine months in military prison. Since his release
in February 2005, Mejia has continued to speak out against the
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. He is now on tour to promote his
memoir as part of the Resisting Empire Tour, a project of Haymarket
Books. His appearance in Providence is one of dozens of tour events
happening around the country in October and November.

The Resisting Empire Tour is sponsored nationally by Haymarket Books
and the Center for Economic Research and Social Change, as well as by
Iraq Veterans Against the War, Alternet.org, and Nation Books. It is
sponsored locally by Operation Iraqi Freedom (the student antiwar group
at Brown University), the Rhode Island Mobilization Committee to Stop
the War, the American Friends Service Committee, and the International
Socialist Organization. For more information, go to
www.resistingempire.org.