Mike Levinson shares his story of being a young man finding his way to a protest in New York City in 1973 and the beginning of his involvement with WRL.
Peace vigils are a common form of nonviolent activism in small towns and large cities across the U.S. and across the decades. WRL 100th Anniversary Project Coordinator Mary McClintock looks back at vigils from the 1950s and 1960s and at the last 20 years of her local peace vigil.
Vicki Rovere reflects on participating in the 1962 Trident Walks for Nuclear Disarmament and a sit-down at the Atomic Energy Commission, both organized by the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA).
Vera Baker Williams was a longtime War Resisters League activist and designed the covers for seventy-six issues of Liberation – a publication intimately tied with the War Resisters League. Her covers for Liberation varied from direct social commentary and satire to more formal experimentations with color, pattern, and design. The editors’ commitment to Vera B. Williams' visionary cover art posited that creativity, play, and curiosity were essential elements in healthy and liberatory social movements.
For 58 years WRL members and friends could count on having a pacifist touchstone at their fingertips: The War Resisters League Peace Calendar. It was a spiral-bound 5½ by 8½ inch datebook, with a page for each week of the year that allowed owners to record appointments and such. And a cover that consisted of beautiful artwork. After the first few years of publication, a page facing each week’s calendar page offered poetry, quotes, songs, and even recipes, plus additional artwork, all reflecting a specific theme.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of the War Resisters League's office at 339 Lafayette Street in the formation of Witness Against Torture in 2005.
My parents started the War Resisters League New England when I was a baby. Instead of summer camp, I went to the WRL Organizer Training Program at Woolman Hill for 10 days and ran around in the woods with other kids.. We didn’t go on vacation- we went to meetings. But they felt like vacations to me. Esther Pank and Riley Bostrom taking me and my sister swimming (they were smart, they knew that kid duty was more fun than another meeting).
On April 27, 1965, Bayard Rustin was presented with the seventh annual War Resisters League Peace Award at WRL’s 42nd annual dinner. In making the presentation A.J. Muste noting that Bayard “suffered for his convictions and held firmly and courageously to them… [A] tireless seeker for more effective ways to advance the cause of freedom, peace, and humanity throughout the world.”
Hear the recording and read an annotated transcript of Rustin's remarks in this blog entry...
Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) received the WRL Peace Award in May 1988. Accepting the award were New Jersey veterans and activists David Cline and Clarence Fitch (pictured). During this Veterans Day/Armistice week it is fitting to remember them and tip our hats to the important contribution of VVAW to the antiwar movement during and after the U.S. war in Indochina.
The first photograph I came across in the War Resisters League Records was unexpected. Well, I say photograph, but really it was a black-and-white negative strip with four images. The images were of a group of four people (friends?
