Brad Johnson
Brad Johnson enlisted in the United States Navy in 1975 and retired as Chief Petty Officer in 1996. During his career at sea he served on seven ships, including the USS Texas and the USS San Jose during Operation Desert Storm from 1991 — 1992. He has also served as instructor at the NROTC at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
It was during his time in the Persian Gulf that he began to experience a crisis of conscience, which he only resolved after he left the military and began to actively speak out and work in the peace movement.
Brad has spoken at conferences, teach-ins, rallies, and marches throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin about his transformation from warrior to peace activist, about the plague of militarism and its many costs, about the need for activism to hold the government accountable, and of the importance of imagination for overcoming the tyranny of fear.
Brad's motto is,"War is the criminal misappropriation of imagination."
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
— Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower