2024-09-21 US Militarism and Climate

Born the day the United States bombed Hiroshima, Cindy made a childhood vow that has culminated in a lifetime dedicated to peace, human rights, and climate concerns.  She is the daughter and surviving spouse of US war veterans, learning about the costs of war in her personal life.  She worked 33 years in mental health, raised two children and all the while served as an activist on multiple fronts.

Disgusted with the lack of adequate Iraq war coverage, she became a member of the alternative media for six years producing weekly public television content.  As part of a three woman team, she also produced and released an online no budget video that released pictorial evidence of repressed US-committed war crimes. It began receiving 400 hits an hour from 150 countries within the first week.  This was a contributing factor in the Center of Constitutional Rights(CCR) decision to request a thematic hearing with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) on the steps of the White House on the tenth anniversary of the War in Iraq.  In the meantime, Cindy’s husband, Vietnam veteran John Piester, had died and Cindy stepped away from activism for five years.

In 2017, she returned to work on the military impacts on climate change and met Ahti at a meeting with the US State Department at COP 27 in Egypt where she discussed the dire need to include military emissions in reporting to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  She now serves on the Board of the US Unitarian Universalists for a Just Economic Community (UUJEC) and is heading up the newly created Peace Equity and Climate Task Force.  She is also a founding member of Veterans For Peace Climate Crisis and Militarism Project where she has served on the steering committee since its inception.  She is also active with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedoms Environmental Working Group.