Chrissy Kirchhofer
While completing a degree in Social Work, Chrissy Kirchhoefer discovered her life work when she moved into the Catholic Worker community in Columbia, Missouri. Through her relationships with people living on the streets mostly veterans, those suffering from mental illness and undocumented workers, she began an informal education on the dynamics of systematic violence and its ravaging affects on individuals lives which compelled her to grassroots organizing. Over the past six years, Chrissy has worked with various national campaigns to close the School of the Americas, lift the sanctions/ stop the war in Iraq, prevent weapons in space and to halt the death penalty and has been placed in jail quite a few times for her efforts.
In May 2002, she traveled to Iraq on a joint delegation with Voices in the Wilderness US/UK and the Veterans for Peace Iraqi Water Project. While in Iraq, the UN passed the “smart sanctions” resolution in an attempt to counter the growing international outrage to the genocidal impact of the sanctions upon Iraq’s population. After her travels in Iraq, she returned to her hometown of St. Louis, also home to the ‘smart bomb’ at Boeing’s international weapons production headquarters. While working as the Coordinator of the Peace Economy Project, an organization committed to raising awareness and direct action around the military industrial complex, Kirchhoefer organized hundreds of people for numerous direct actions at Boeing, preventing the production or delivery of over 200 “smart bombs”.
From December to January, Chrissy Kirchhoefer traveled to the Occupied Palestinian Territories to work with the International Solidarity Movement and various organizations working to end the illegal occupation and erection of the Wall. She joined hundreds of Palestinians, Israelis and internationals in an intensified time of nonviolent direct actions against the construction of the wall; at one gathering she witnessed Israeli soldiers attempt to disperse the nonviolent demonstration by throwing stones into the crowd and shooting a former Israeli soldier with live ammunition. Kirchhoefer experienced some of the harshness of life under occupation as she lived under curfew for two weeks in the Balata refugee camp during the Israeli Army’s “Operation Stagnant Water” as well as the harshness of witnessing death. While she has been working specifically around disarmament issues for over 3 years, nothing could have fully prepared her for the 32 days of encountering US made and paid for weapons although Miami during the FTAA was a good training ground.
Chrissy enjoys hiking, biking, and traveling to different communities to learn about their struggles but thrives on conspiring with others to bring about change in the world.