Dana Brown is a peace and justice activist currently employed by the Committee on US/Latin American Relations in Ithaca, NY, the oldest continuously operating Latin American solidarity organization in the country. She is also a founding member of the Central New York-Cajibío Sister City Partnership, a project pairing her community with the Small Farmers’ Movement of Cajibío, Colombia and aiding in their struggle to promote peace and sustainability in a violent and unjust environment.

Brown feels compelled to use her priviledge as a US citizen to attempt to draw attention to the heinous crimes of her government. Horrified by the illegal, imoral, and politically counterproductive acts being committed at Guantánamo Bay, and several other even more secret US bases and detention centers around the world, she believes this march is just one of many acts needed to bring an end to such outrageous, inhumane and illegal practices.

Brown has been involved in protesting the treatment of the prisoners at Guantánamo for years, writing letters and making calls to her representatives, speaking out against torture, aranging talks in her community by lawyers working with the detainees, and helping to organize a week of education and action at Cornell University in 2003. She feels that all this work is important, but that the continued mistreatment of the prisoners and its acceptance by the general public demands a greater response. It is for that reason that she feels it necessary to approach the base itself, as a tax-paying citizen of the US, to take responsibility for the crimes being committed there, try to let the prisoners held there know that people of conscience do not accept their abuse, and ask that the citizens of the world demand the closing of such torture camps and illegal detention centers.

Brown has a history of peace work and solidarity with other communities. She has worked, studyed and travelled in Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador and Chile and was recently named a Rotary International World Peace Scholar, which will allow her to pursue a fully-funded Masters Degree in Peace Studies at the Universidad del Salvador in Buenos Aires, Argentina.