Staff, Volunteers and Interns

Isham Christie
Freeman Intern, Fall 2011
isham@warresisters.org
Isham is an activist, student, and musician. Born and raised in Choctaw Nation, Oklahoma he moved to North Dakota when he was 12 years-old. He co-founded the University of North Dakota chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, participated in anti-racist, environmental, anti-war, student, and labor organizing and graduated with a degree in philosophy 2009. He also co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World Red River Valley chapter and sat on the steering committee of the North Dakota Peace Coalition. In 2010, Isham moved to New York to study at the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and work as a union organizer with the Writers Guild of America, East. He then enrolled at the CUNY Graduate Center to study social theory, philosophy, and film. Inspired by the Egyptian uprising, Isham became more involved in New York politics, organizing with groups such as New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts, New York Students Rising, Organization for a Free Society, and most recently Occupy Wall Street. When not studying or organizing, music takes up the rest of his time. As the Freeman Fundraising Intern, Isham will be speaking to supporters, working with National Committee members, sending packets to prospective members, soliciting calendar sales from independent bookstores, updating the supporter database, coordinating the annual report, and helping bring WRL organizers into the Occupy Wall Street action planning process.

Kimber Heinz
Organizing Coordinator
kimber@warresisters.org
Kimber Heinz is originally from Florida, where she attended the New College of Florida, working as an ally with intersex activists and in support of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. She is a graduate of the Women and Gender Studies Master’s program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Former coordinator of the LGBTQQI youth organizing project of Gay Straight Advocates for Education in Greensboro, North Carolina, Kimber is also a founder of 336 Fam, a multi-racial, cross-class LGBTQQI community building project in Greensboro, and the Survivor Support! Event Series, organized by and for survivors of child sexual abuse and their allies. She also works with the Lefferts Farm Food Cooperative of the Prospect Lefferts Garden neighborhood in Brooklyn. Kimber is interested in community health issues, anti-violence work, radical education, feminism and anti-racist queer organizing. Kimber hopes one day to have an extremely wrinkly sharpei dog.

Ali Issa
Field Organizer
ali@warresisters.org
 Ali Issa is originally from Iowa and holds a Master's degree in Arabic Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. More recently Ali worked for two years as an organizer of street vendors in New York City with the Street Vendor Project, a vendor's workers center. Ali is also a part of the Palestine Education Project, a collective of educators and artists that creates popular education materials which connect local struggles in Brooklyn to what's happening in Palestine. Ali has worked with Iraqi labor unions and his father is from Baghdad, Iraq.

Tom Leonard
Bookkeeper
tom@warresisters.org
Tom is the former Fund-raising Director for CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador.  In addition to keeping the books together and the bills paid at WRL and other peace and social justice groups, Tom continues to work for economic and social change in El Salvador.

C. Moen
WIN Magazine Editor/Publisher
cmoen@warresisters.org
C. Moen comes to WRL from a freelance writing and editing background in educational and LGBT publishing. Moen holds a bachelors degree in English and a master of fine arts degree in poetry. Moen taught English as a second language with Heartland Alliance and volunteered with harm-reduction youth-led organization the Young Women's Empowerment Project in Chicago. Moen was also active in spoken word and was featured at the poetry collective Mental Graffiti, as well as performing in the Sissy Butch Brothers’ early burlesque shows. In addition to editing WIN and various freelance assignments, Moen currently works with the NYC chapter of the Icarus Project, a radical mental wellness collective, as an organizer and workshop facilitator.

Liz Profriedt
Administrative Volunteer
Liz Proefriedt is a "retired" Sister of St. Joseph who is involved full time in peace and justice work. Here at WRL, her many jobs include membership data processing, managing the phones, taking literature orders, preparing mailings, participating in demonstrations, etc. She is an Area Coordinator for WRL's Stop the Merchants of Death Speaking Tour. Liz also volunteers at Pax Christi Metro New York, is a member of the Srs. of Joseph Nonviolence Group and a member of the Kairos-Plowshares resistance community.

Nikki Rankine
Bilezikian Intern, Fall 2011
nikki@warresisters.org
Nikki Rankine has a B.A. in Political Science and Women Gender Studies from Bates College. During her time at Bates College, Nikki was able to study abroad in Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Turkey, and the Netherlands. Outside of academics she has worked heavily with youth and activist-based organizations that deal with reforming institutions such as urban landscape, education, and New York state politics. These experiences helped build a more comprehensive background in skills that includes multimedia communications, web based development, video and print marketing. Nikki brings a passion for education, activism, and empowering to War Resisters League.

Liz Roberts
Development & Membership Coordinator
liz@warresisters.org
Liz Roberts came on staff at the WRL in December 2006 as the Development and Membership Coordinator.She has been a member of the collective, Resistance in Brooklyn, an anti-racist, anti-imperialist collective, since 1998. From 2000-2006 she worked as the Outreach Coordinator at the the Brecht Forum. She has a bachelors degree in Politics and Women's Studies from Mount Holyoke College and a masters degree in Anti-Racist Education from Vermont College. She is a published poet and has just completed a manuscript of her first collection of poetry (Vintage Morning.) She is currently working on a documentary film project on the pro-feminist and nonviolence activism of her late partner, Jon Cohen, who was a member of the WRL National Committee for close to two decades.


Rustie
Beloved Office Cat
Rustie reminds us that as we work to end war and violence, we need to remember to eat, sleep, and play.






Joanne Sheehan
New England Regional Office Staff
wrlne@peoplepc.com
Joanne Sheehan is a long-time peace activist and the former Chair of War Resisters International.  She lectures throughout the world on nonviolence and social empowerment, and has been a nonviolence trainer/workshop facilitator since the 1970s. The work in the Regional office includes counter-recruitment work in high schools, campaigning against war profiteers, and work against war profiteering.

Linda M. Thurston
Office Coordinator
linda@warresisters.org
Linda comes to the WRL staff with nearly 30 years experience in peace, social justice and human rights movements. Linda has worked as Fundraising Coordinator at the Brecht Forum, Program Officer at the Funding Exchange and Education and Communications Coordinator at the Center for Constitutional Rights. She served as the Director of Amnesty International's Program to Abolish the Death Penalty and National Director of the American Friends Service Committee Criminal Justice Program. Linda continues to work with Critical Resistance and with the campaign to free death-row political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal. A key part of her work against war, the death penalty and the prison industrial complex is finding ways to make new technologies serve social justice organizing.

Ralph DiGia
Dec. 13, 1914 - Feb. 1, 2008
When Ralph DiGia got his notice to report to the Army for induction after Pearl Harbor, he went to the U.S. Attorney's office to say he wasn't reporting because he was a conscientious objector. The U.S. Attorney sent him to a WRL lawyer for advice, but in those benighted days, the armed services did not recognize conscientious objection that was not religiously based. Ralph therefore spent the war years in Federal prison, going on work strikes to integrate the prison dining hall (an effort that succeeded). When he got out of prison, he headed straight for WRL. In prison, Ralph and other WWII resisters had become determined practitioners of nonviolent civil disobedience. However in those days, many older pacifists believed that civil disobedience was going too far in the quest for peace. Over the years, civil disobedience has become a taken-for-granted element of the pacifist repertoire. Ralph has been in the WRL office since the end of WWII. He was Office Manager for years, finally "retired," and has worked here ever since as a volunteer-allegedly half-time. If Ralph were paid staff, he'd be costing us a lot of overtime! Ralph handles a wide range of office tasks: the finances for our work with War Resisters’ International and the financial records for our endowment fund, WRL, Inc.; the portion of WRL contributions that come through monthly pledges; and a lot of our retail orders, particularly those for the yearly Peace Calendar. Finally, like most (not quite all, despite the stereotype) longtime pacifists, he's a Mets fan.