Dingman Dinner

14th Annual Dingman Peace Award Dinner

Another terrific celebration!

Don’t miss it!

Internationally-known peace ambassador Kathy Kelly will be the keynote speaker at Catholic Peace Ministry's (CPM’s) Dingman Peace Award Dinner on Saturday, April 4, 2009. This marks one of her first appearances following her return to the U.S. from the war-torn Gaza region. In January of 2009, Kelly joined other companions to maintain a presence at the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, urging authorities to open the border for humanitarian reasons during the period when Israel continued to attack and blockade Gaza.

Kelly co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence, (www.vcnv.org) a campaign to end military and economic warfare against Iraq. As a co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness, she helped form 70 delegations—from 1996-2003—that openly defied economic sanctions by bringing medicines to children and families in Iraq. Kathy and her companions lived in Baghdad throughout the 2003 "Shock and Awe" bombing, and Voices maintained a presence there during the first year of U.S. occupation.

During five months of the past year, in Amman, Jordan, Kathy lived amongst Iraqis who fled violence in their country.

She was among the first westerners to enter and report from the Jenin camp while it was under siege in April of 2002; she and others Voices activists stayed in Beirut during the final days of Israeli bombing during the summer of 2006 and then visited villages throughout southern Lebanon immediately following the cease fire.

Kathy was sentenced to one year in federal prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites (1988-89) and served three months, in 2004, for crossing the line at Fort Benning's military training school.

She and her companions at the Voices home office in Chicago believe that nonviolence necessarily involves simplicity, service, sharing of resources and nonviolent direct action in resistance to war and oppression. Kathy hasn't paid federal income taxes since 1980.

In the video above Kathy Kelly is interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now about her recent visit to Gaza.

Chuck Day and Harold Wells to Receive Dingman Award

by Bob Brammer

The Catholic Peace Ministry Board has selected Chuck Day and Harold Wells to be co-recipients of the 2009 Maurice J. Dingman Peace Award. The Peace Awards will be presented Saturday, April 4, at CPM’s annual Dingman Dinner at Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart in Ankeny.

For many decades, Harold Wells and Chuck Day have worked for justice and worked for peace. Like Bishop Dingman, they answered God’s call to be instruments of peace.

Rev. Harold Wells came to Des Moines forty years ago to be Methodist Campus Pastor at Drake, and director of the Wesley Foundation. (He came from Little Rock, Arkansas, where he held similar posts and was essentially invited to leave by his bishop because Harold was such an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, which his bishop supported.) Like Bishop Dingman, Harold worked ecumenically and even inter-faith for peace: his closest allies in that anti-war work were his colleagues, the rabbi and priest.

Harold kept up his work for peace and justice when he came to Des Moines. Thirty years ago he founded the Thoreau Center at 35th and Kingman Blvd., a haven and headquarters for work to protect the environment, foster peace, and build community. Later it housed offices for groups seeking justice for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender persons. Harold hosted dozens of international guests over the years for the Council for International Understanding, usually for two weeks. He helped organize a breakfast discussion group with Bishop Dingman that met at the Bishop’s home. Harold is the long-time Iowa Chair of STAR*PAC, the Stop the Arms Race Political Action Committee, which has sought to raise war and peace issues in congressional and presidential campaigns since 1980.

Chuck Day also has quietly given more than half a century to waging peace, a commitment rooted in his Quaker pacifist tradition. He was a conscientious objector during the Korean War and worked as a hospital mental health facility worker. Even though he farmed and taught full-time for many years (high school chemistry and life sciences), Chuck always has made time to be the behind-the-scenes force behind many efforts for peace in Iowa.

He worked against the Vietnam War. He led organizing efforts for teacher-rights and benefits. He was a founder of Iowans against the Death Penalty (1962), led efforts that succeeded in abolishing the death penalty in Iowa (1965), and was a stalwart force opposing efforts to reinstate the death penalty especially in the 1990s. He founded and led numerous peace organizations over the decades, including the Des Moines Committee on World Peace (early 1960s), Iowans for Peace in Vietnam (late 1960s-early 1970s), Iowans to Reverse the Arms Race (late 1970s), and STAR*PAC (1980 to present.)

Chuck has organized innumerable public meetings and addresses for influential speakers such as former Gov. Harold Hughes, Seymour Hersh, Sen. William Fulbright, Sen. George McGovern, and numerous retired military “brass” who were calling to halt the nuclear arms race. Like Bishop Dingman, Chuck Day believes in bringing peace issues into public affairs. Like Bishop Dingman, Chuck very often has collaborated with other people of faith and peace and justice organizations.

These are just a few of the many gifts Harold and Chuck have shared and continue to share with our community and state, our nation and the world. They truly have waged peace for many decades. Please join us in honoring them at the Bishop Dingman Peace Award Dinner in April.

About the Dingman Peace Award Dinner

Catholic Peace Ministry will host its fourteenth Bishop Maurice J. Dingman Peace Award Dinner, Saturday, April 4, 2009, with Kathy Kelly as keynote speaker. Held at Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart Catholic Church (510 First Street in Ankeny) the annual dinner is a tribute to the memory of Maurice Dingman, the late bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Des Moines. Bishop Dingman remains revered for his deep commitment to justice, peace and equality.

An increasingly popular tradition, Keynote speakers of the event have included America’s most widely known (and often controversial) scholars, theologians, poets and musicians from many faith traditions including: Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Jim Wallis, Rev. William Sloan Coffin, Sr. Helen Prejean, Sr. Joan Chittister, Rev. John Dear, Ched Myers, Rosemary Radford Reuther, Sen. Tom Harkin, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, Rev. Roy Bourgeois, and, last year, Liz McAlister.

The Bishop Dingman Peace Award is awarded each year to an Iowa person or community with exemplary service on behalf of peace and justice. Previous recipients include Helen Tichy, Sister Gwen Hennessey, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Phil Riley and Paul Stanfield, Bill and Jean Basinger, Rev. Gil Dawes, Rev. Bob Cook, American Friends Service Committee, Bishop Gregory Vaughn Palmer, Sherry Hutchison, Eloise Cranke, Rev. Chet Guinn, and the Des Moines area JustFaith group.

The Dingman Dinner is consistently a rich evening of inspiration, spiritual challenge, good music, and great food and fellowship. Your presence undoubtedly will make it even better.

The suggested donation for the event including dinner is $35 per person. Of course larger gifts will also be gratefully received. Tables of eight may be reserved. (There is no admission fee for the 7:30pm program without dinner.) Sponsorships of $100 or more will be listed in our program.

No one is ever turned away from a Catholic Peace Ministry event because of inability to pay. Those who cannot afford this (or any of our events) are also invited to the table, and their presence will be a blessing for all of us.

“The Dingman Dinner is truly one of the most important things that go on in this community and one of the most ecumenical things going on in the state of Iowa.”

Bishop Gregory Vaughn Palmer (Iowa Conference, the United Methodist Church and recipient of the 2005 Peace Award)

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515-255-8114

Chuck Day

Bishop Maurice Dingman