Kathleen Kern has worked with Christian Peacemaker Teams since 1993. CPT provides organizational support to persons committed to faith-based nonviolent alternatives in situations where lethal conflict is an immediate reality or is supported by public policy (see www.cpt.org). However, teams in Haiti, Chiapas and other locations have found that once the risk of lethal physical violence ends, the economic violence cemented in place by the corporatocracy can cause as much, if not more, suffering. Kern has served on assignments in Haiti, Palestine, Chiapas, South Dakota, Colombia, and  the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was a member of a fact-finding delegation to the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo in autumn 2005, where she gathered information that appears in this book. Kern says that she may be unique among the contributors in that she has never taken an economics or business course, so she recently married someone with a degree in economics who could vet her articles.