Noah Dillard

Noah Dillard, a native of Maine, has been working internationally for economic and ecological justice and human rights since 2003, in support of local grassroots struggles in Palestine and Colombia. In 2003, after the US bombing campaign in Iraq intensified, he traveled to the Gaza Strip, Palestine, volunteering as a non-violence trainer and coordinator for the International Solidarity Movement for 6 months. He lived and worked with families in support of their non-violent resistance to the illegal Israeli occupation and destruction of their land and homes.

He returned to the US in late December 2003, and moved to Arizona to begin his graduate studies in Ecology at ASU, but was soon diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and as a result, by the end of 2004 Noah left graduate school to begin working full time for social justice.

In January 2005, Noah entered Christian Peacemaker Teams and joined their Colombia team full time, working in solidarity with campesino and indigenous land rights struggles, and against US foreign policy and military aid to Colombia. He has spent the last two years living and working in Colombia, seeing first hand the devastating effects of free trade and US foreign policy, i.e. Plan Colombia, fumigations, and the so called Drug War -a quieter front of the now global resource war for oil. Most recently Noah led an investigatory delegation to southwest Colombia where he worked with forcibly displaced indigenous communities at continuous threat of massacre and other violence from paramilitary and state military forces as well as from left-win rebel forces.

Noah returns to the US, now, to continue his solidarity activism, outreach, and education, from the trigger end of US foreign policy.

Topics covered

• Colombia and Non-violent Resistence
• Palestine and Non-violent Resistence
• Campesino and Indigenous Land Rights Struggles
• The Devastating Effects of Free Trade and US Foreign Policy, i.e. Plan Colombia, Military Aid to Colombia, Fumigations, and the so called Drug War