ASSORTED GLOBAL NETWORK PIECES

• The Catholic Diocese of Jeju Island has decided to hold a mass on the rocky coastline of Gangjeong village each Thursday in support of the opposition to the Navy base.


• Global Network board member MacGregor Eddy (Salinas, California) flies to South Korea tomorrow. She will arrive in time to attend the June 10 trial of another GN board member Sung-Hee Choi. Sung-Hee gathered signatures of support from Korean activists after peace protesters were arrested at Vandenberg AFB in California a couple of years ago protesting space launches at events that MacGregor organized. MacGregor will stay in Gangjeong village with a local family and be there during our 19th annual space organizing conference. She will share videos and information from the village and we hope to be able to post some videos from the conference on the Internet that can be seen in Gangjeong.


• I am speeding up my work on the June 17-19 conference and ticking off items on my long list that needs to get done before the event. Today I was getting our banners ready for the Friday, June 17 vigil that we will hold at Raytheon Company from 3-5 pm.


• Looks like we'll have our members present at the confab from at least eight countries.


• GN board member Regina Hagen (Germany) will come here to Maine sometime this weekend or early next week for a visit before we head to Andover, Massachusetts for the conference. While here I will do an interview with her for my public access TV show This Issue. Rarely do I get to have an international perspective on the show so I don't want to miss that opportunity. GN member Eric Herter (Brunswick), who produces the show, will film the interview which we will have to do at our kitchen table because we couldn't get studio time during her visit.


• GN board member Lynda Williams (California) has suggested we consider holding our annual space organizing conference in Hawaii next year. Hawaii is a major "missile defense" testing area so peace groups there are very interested in discussing the possibility of hosting the event. Lynda has family in Hawaii and will pursue this idea when she visits them in the near future. If we have our meeting in Hawaii I imagine it will be the most attended conference ever! Bring your surfboards, mask, and snorkel.


• We are very lucky in that we have a great core of leaders in the GN from around the world. We've become like a family in all these years of working together. But it's not a clique as everyone goes out of their way to always be welcoming to new people who come into the group. We know that the issue of space weaponization is so vast that we've got to keep building and keep extending a welcoming hand to new friends.