Selena Coppa | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 25, 1983 |
| Service/ | United States Army |
| Years of service | 2001–2009 |
| Rank | (Sergeant) |
| Other work | Political Activism |
Selena Coppa (born February 25, 1983) is an ex-military intelligence [1] Sergeant in the United States Army. She is primarily notable for her organizing and activism against the US Occupation of Iraq while serving as an active duty military member, including serving on the Executive Board of Iraq Veterans Against the War. In 2009 it was announced that she was heading a committee responsible for gaining and training more active duty anti-war soldiers. [2] [3] She has the somewhat unusual status of being a war resister strictly holding to legalities, and has been identified as a primary "force multiplier" for other servicemembers attempting to resist the war through legal means. [4]
 | This section of a biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification .(September 2020) |
Coppa enlisted in the Army in 2000 under the Delayed Entry Program and began her service as a Military Intelligence soldier in February 2001. Much of her work during the war was classified, and she has generally refused to speak about those matters, citing legal restrictions.
In February 2007, Coppa became active with Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), though she did not come to prominence until January 2008, when she took over the GI Outreach Team for IVAW. She began coordinating the active duty wing of IVAW, flying and driving around the country, and visiting military bases to speak, distribute information, and organize other soldiers. [5] She rose to international media attention [6] [7] [8] in March 2008, when she testified at the Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan hearings in Silver Spring, Maryland. [9] One of only two active duty participants, she chaired the Breakdown of the Military panel. [10] Shortly after testifying, she was reassigned to Germany but still made regular appearances inside the US, including at the Winter Soldier on the Hill hearings before Congress in May 2008 [11] and on the State of the Union Base Tour. [12] She was a main organizer of the DNC and RNC protests. In early 2009, she was named to the IVAW Board of Directors, and was subsequently elected to the Executive Board. She later resigned from this position, whistleblowing and citing ethical concerns about another executive board member. She was removed from the board after refusing to recant the charges. [13]
Coppa reported suffering informal harassment by her unit and was also investigated by CID with no charges filed shortly after Winter Soldier. [14] Shortly after being named to the Board of Directors, she was also placed under investigation and threatened with court-martial and potential discharge for her blogging and other activities. [13] [15] [16] Coppa was represented by military law expert Michael Lebowitz, who successfully defended her against charges of disloyal statements and dereliction of duty. Coppa later received company-grade nonjudicial punishment for appearing in uniform at a protest march during participation at an IVAW-led march two years prior.
| This section of a biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification .(September 2020) |
Coppa was a main character in the documentary filmseries "This Is Where We Take Our Stand", appearing in several episodes and the introductory and closing sequences. Coppa has also been an active blogger on both her own blog called "Active Duty Patriot" and the nonpartisan blog "Military Pundits".
Camilo Ernesto Mejía is a Nicaraguan who left the United States Army during the Iraq War on conscientious objector grounds, was convicted of desertion and went on to become an anti-war activist. He is also the son of Carlos Mejia Godoy, Nicaragua songwriter.
Jeremy Dean Hinzman is an Iraq War resister who was the first American deserter to seek refugee status in Canada.
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) is an advocacy group of formerly active-duty United States military personnel, Iraq War veterans, Afghanistan War veterans, and other veterans who have served since the September 11, 2001 attacks; who were opposed to the U.S. military invasion and occupation in Iraq from 2003 to 2011. The organization advocated the immediate withdrawal of all coalition forces in Iraq, and reparations paid to the Iraqi people. It also provides support services for returning veterans including health care and mental health.
Mary Ann Wright is a retired United States Army colonel and retired U.S. State Department official, known for her outspoken opposition to the Iraq War. She received the State Department Award for Heroism in 1997, after helping to evacuate several thousand people during the civil war in Sierra Leone.
The Mahmudiyah rape and killings were a series of war crimes committed by five United States Army soldiers during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, involving the gang-rape and murder of 14-year-old Iraqi girl Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and the murder of her family on March 12, 2006. It occurred in the family's house to the southwest of Yusufiyah, a village to the west of the town of Al-Mahmudiyah, Iraq. Other members of al-Janabi's family murdered by American soldiers included her 34-year-old mother Fakhriyah Taha Muhasen, 45-year-old father Qassim Hamza Raheem, and 6-year-old sister Hadeel Qassim Hamza al-Janabi. The two remaining survivors of the family, 9-year-old brother Ahmed and 11-year-old brother Mohammed, were at school during the massacre and orphaned by the event.
Aaron Glantz is a Peabody Award-winning radio, print and television journalist who produces public interest stories. His reporting has sparked more than a dozen Congressional hearings, a raft of federal legislation and led to criminal probes by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission. Because of his reporting, 500,000 fewer U.S. military veterans face long waits for disability compensation, while 100,000 fewer veterans are prescribed highly addictive narcotics by the government.
David Cline was an American anti-war and veterans rights activist. He was best known as National President of Veterans For Peace (VFP) from 2000 to 2006, Chapter Vice President of Alan Reilly – Gene Glazer VFP Chapter 21, and co-founder of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign. Cline was featured in the 2006 film Sir! No Sir!, which documented the GI antiwar movement during the Vietnam war as well as in the book "Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War" by Richard Stacewicz.
Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan was an event at which more than 200 U.S. military veterans and active duty soldiers, as well as Iraqi and Afghan civilians, provided accounts of their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. The event was inspired by the Winter Soldier Investigation of 1971. It was organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, and held from March 13 to March 16, 2008, timed for the fifth anniversary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Robin Long is one of several U.S. Army deserters who sought asylum in Canada because of his opposition to the Iraq War and became the first of those to be deported to the United States after being rejected for refugee status. He was deported from Canada on July 15, 2008.
André Shepherd is a U.S. Army Specialist and deserter who applied for asylum in Germany on November 26, 2008. He is the first Iraq War veteran to pursue refugee status in Europe and only the second U.S. soldier to ever apply for refugee status in Germany.
Anne L. Mactavish is a Canadian jurist who is a judge of the Federal Court of Appeal.
Brandon Neely is a former United States Army guard at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, in Cuba. Neely is notable for agreeing to be interviewed by the Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas at the University of California, at Davis.
Under the Hood Café was a coffee house located at 17 South College Street in Killeen, Texas. It provided services for soldiers located at Fort Hood, one of the largest American military installation in the world. Under the Hood Café was first managed by Cynthia Thomas, but later managers were Kyle Wesolowski, Lori Hurlebaus and Malachi Muncy. Under the Hood is a project of the Fort Hood Support Network. It bills itself as being a safe place for local soldiers to spend off-duty time at, where the normal issues of rank are irrelevant. It is also the host of the monthly Killeen Poetry Slam.
Michael D. Prysner is an American socialist political activist. He is a U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq as a specialist. His duties in Iraq included ground surveillance, home raids and the interrogation of prisoners. According to Prysner, these experiences led him to take an anti-war stance.
Kimberly Rivera is an Iraq War resister and former U.S. Army Private First Class who went AWOL in February 2007 after a year of service. She was the first female U.S. military deserter to flee to Canada. She was deported from Canada on September 20, 2012, and pleaded guilty to desertion, receiving a sentence of ten months' imprisonment and a bad-conduct discharge. Amnesty International objected to her detention and designated her a prisoner of conscience.
Nan Levinson is an American writer, journalist and teacher. Her writing focuses on civil and human rights, military culture, the arts, and communication technology. Her books include War Is Not a Game: The New Antiwar Soldiers and the Movement They Built and Outspoken: Free Speech Stories. Levinson was the first U.S. correspondent for the Index on Censorship.
Courage to Resist (CTR) is an organization in the San Francisco, CA area and beyond formed during the early part of the Iraq War which began in 2003. CTR's mission is to support U.S military war resisters, including helping them with legal fees such as well-known resisters Chelsea Manning and Reality Winner. In 2018, CTR began encouraging soldiers to resist at detention camps and other immigrant operations of the U.S. military. CTR's principle slogans are “Supporting the troops who refuse to fight!” and "Towards a World Without War!" They support those “who face consequences for acting on conscience, in opposition to illegal wars, occupations, [and] the policies of empire”.
Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War is a non-fiction book edited by Ron Carver, David Cortright, and Barbara Doherty. It was published in September 2019 by New Village Press and is distributed by New York University Press. In March 2023 a Vietnamese language edition of the book was launched at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
The court-martial of Susan Schnall, a lieutenant U.S. Navy nurse stationed at the Oakland Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, took place in early 1969 during the Vietnam War. Her political activities, which led to the military trial, may have garnered some of the most provocative news coverage during the early days of the U.S. antiwar movement against that war. In October 1968, the San Francisco Chronicle called her the “Peace Leaflet Bomber” for raining tens of thousands of antiwar leaflets from a small airplane over several San Francisco Bay Area military installations and the deck of an aircraft carrier. The day after this “bombing” run, she marched in her officer’s uniform at the front of a large antiwar demonstration, knowing it was against military regulations. While the Navy was court-martialing her for "conduct unbecoming an officer", she was publicly telling the press, "As far as I'm concerned, it's conduct unbecoming to officers to send men to die in Vietnam."