Dissent: Voices of Conscience

About Ann WrightSusan Dixon

Ann Wright grew up in Bentonville Arkansas and attended the University of Arkansas where she received a masters and a law degree. She also has a masters degree in national security affairs from the U.S. Naval War College. After college she spent thirteen years in the U.S. Army and sixteen additional years in the Army Reserves retiring as a Colonel. She is airborne-qualified.In 1987 Col.Wright joined the Foreign Service and served as U.S. Deputy Ambassador in Sierra Leone Micronesia Afghanistan and Mongolia. She received the State Departments Award for Heroism for her actions during the evacuation of 2500 people from the civil war in Sierra Leone the largest evacuation since Saigon. She was on the first State Department team to go to Afghanistan and helped reopen the Embassy there in December 2001. Her other overseas assignments include Somalia Kyrgyzstan Grenada Micronesia and Nicaragua. On March 19 2003 the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq Ann Wright cabled a letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin Powell stating that without the authorization of the UN Security Council the invasion and occupation of a Muslim Arab oil-rich country would be a a violation of international law.Since then she has been writing and speaking out for peace. She fasted for a month picketed at the US prison at Guantánamo Cuba served as a juror in Bush impeachment hearings traveled to Iran as a citizen diplomat and has been arrested numerous times for peaceful nonviolent protest of Bushs policies particularly the war on Iraq. She has been on delegations to Iran and was in Gaza three times in 2009 following the Israeli attack on Gaza that killed 1440 and wounded 5000. She was an organizer for the Gaza Freedom March that brought 1350 persons from 44 countries to Cairo Egypt in solidarity with the people of Gaza. She was on the May 2010 Gaza flotilla that was attacked by the Israeli military and was an organizer for the US Boat to Gaza The Audacity of Hope in the 2011 Gaza flotilla. She lives in Honolulu.