Sessions Overview
Saturday, Aug 8, 2026
Session 1 – 11:00 am – 12:15 pm
1A: Save our VA (SOVA)
Coming Soon
1B: Resisting Illegal Orders – ICE and In-country Deployments
Discussion of current climate in the military and forms of individual and collective resistance, with group brainstorming about how VfP can expand outreach to servicemembers, share our message more broadly in the military, and offer political, legal and moral support to GIs involved in and interested in opposing current wars and oppressive military policies.This workshop will explore ways to strengthen and expand VFP’s efforts to reach out to military personnel questioning US wars or challenging abusive personnel policies; that it will develop organizing strategies to support GI dissent and resistance.
Session 2 – 1:00 – 2:15 pm
2A: Resisting the US/Israeli War on Iran, Palestine and Lebanon
Coming Soon
2B: The Impact of Machine War on Civilian and Military Personnel
Presenters: Toby Blome, Elke Schwarz, Noam Perry, and Chris Cole
The purpose of this session is to identify consequences of machine war and to explore ways to encourage military personnel to reverse this movement. We will discuss weapons in the vanguard of machine war and U.S.-Israeli AI target and weapon selection.
Session 3 – 2:45 – 4:00 pm
3A: Latin America
Coming Soon
3B: Engaging the Climate Crisis Amidst Endless War and Rising Fascism
Presenters: James (Jim) Rine (moderator), Ann Wright, Crystal Kim, and Vince Dijanich.
Given the conflicts in Gaza, Palestine, Ukraine, Iran, etc., it is difficult for peace and justice activists, the public, and even climate-action-proponents to prioritize the growing climate crisis. Today’s carbon emissions will continue to damage our planet for the lifetimes of our children, grandchildren, and beyond. This panel will outline the environmental effects of ongoing conflicts and compare them with the routine damage inflicted by DoD operations on the environment and impacted communities. We will discuss the status of global climate crisis, U.S. population’s recent decreased climate awareness, and actions to address the current lack of awareness by the public of the extent of the climate crisis. We will continue outreach to environmental departments at colleges and universities, stressing the need to point out to their students the links between militarism and the climate crisis.
Sunday, Aug 9, 2026
Session 4 – 8:30 – 9:30 am
4A: The US vs Asia
Presenters: Col. Ann Wright, Rachel Clark and Sara Flounders
This workshop will examine how all the nations around China are being pushed by the US into preparing for a joint war on China, how that impacts each nation, the internal dynamics within each nation, and their relationships to the other Asian nations. We represent the VFP China Working Group, the VFP Korea Peace Campaign, and Rachel Clark's work on Japan. The US is playing all the nations of Asia against each other to destroy all and leave the US standing as the lone power in Asia.
4B: Veterans exposing media lies about war/research on the media and war and media literacy
Presenters: Robin Anderson and Spencer Graves
This session will help participants be more effective in talking with others about the gap between the portrayal of major issues in the leading for-profit media, and. their experiences and the media they find credible, build a team that can collaborate in improving their individual communications skills and also create additional resources to make those efforts easier and more effective, able to identify media war frames, themes, language, and sources, identify alternatives to war and ways to talk about them.