This year CIVIC attended the YearlyKos conference in Chicago, and Sarah Holewinski — our Executive Director — spoke as a panelist! But don’t worry, If you weren’t able to attend in person you can still read her abridged talking points on the vital relationship between activists and bloggers below:

“I run an organization trying to make war less harmful to regular folks – like you and me – going about their daily lives in the midst of bullets and bombs and all sort of horrific thing.

We believe something very simple. We believe that when you harm someone, you should help. It’s something we learned in kindergarten, but it’s so seldom done in war. We’re trying to make that a recognized policy all over the world. Unfortunately there are too many places of conflict, too many testing grounds.

This work is challenging… and that’s why I’m here. It seems to me we need each other – you and me. The human rights advocate and the blogger, the foreign policy wonk and the grassroots champion.

Let me tell you first about what I do. I work with – on the one hand - the US military, the Pentagon, State Department, veterans who’ve made split second decisions that have killed mothers and children. I also work with – on the other hand - Afghans who’ve had their houses decimated by US bombs, and Iraqis who’ve fled their country because they worked with US forces in the past and aren’t getting any help now.

Are those groups on opposing ends? Not if you’re a progressive. Because if you’re a progressive, you believe that the strategic – the smart thing to do – dovetails with the moral – the right thing to do. Peace Corps and Marine Corps can work toward the same goal. Education and diplomacy and economic aid are just as important as military might.

I go to Afghanistan and Iraq and I meet with the families who’ve been torn apart by conflict. I come back to Washington… and the first thing I do? Get on the computer, write to supporters about what I’ve seen, make sure Americans in Chicago and Texas and California understand both the suffering and the solution.

In sum, I need to make sure the millions of people logging on and looking for a cause understand that their help is an imperative for us.

Organizations like mine – with a moral message for the heart of our country and a strategic message for the wellbeing of it – won’t succeed without you writing the stories, without the candidates talking about it on the road, and without forums and blogs and debates.

We’re never going to be able to speak for war victims without your voice.

If we can join together to get that done, that’s not only progressive, it’s progress.”

(Abridged version of remarks by Sarah Holewinski on August 3, 2007, at YearlyKos conference, Chicago. Logo courtesy of YearlyKos. Photo courtesy of Chris Hondros.)