August 1973: “I was staying at Joan Baez’s Institute for the Study of Nonviolence in Palo Alto, Calif., having taken a Greyhound from Cleveland after graduating high school. There were some wooden racks in the garage for drop-ins like me. Robert Cooney was working on The Power of the People, a history of direct action…
Lucasfilm released a series of educational, historical documentaries in 2007. They were companions to “The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones,” a television series created and produced by George Lucas/Lucasfilm in the 1990s. Lucas wanted to inspire interest in history, taking advantage of the popularity of the Indiana Jones feature films starring Harrison Ford. Twenty-two television…
The title of this blog serves as a tribute to John Lennon and Yoko Ono who posted that message on a billboard in Times Square, December 1969. April 30, 2025, marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. The Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee is marking the occasion with a webinar co-sponsored by…
It was a few minutes before midnight on August 27, 1963, when I arrived by train from my home in Scarsdale, NY, at the 125th Street train station in New York City and walked half a dozen blocks to the Harlem office of the Congress of Racial Equality, known as “CORE,” with a ticket to board…
As students demonstrate in support of Palestine and a ceasefire in Gaza on university campuses across the U.S. and beyond, this week’s WRL 100th History blog looks back at the student actions of May 1970. On May 1, student strikes broke out around the country following Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and grew after the May…
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…
Historian Scott Bennett writes in his 2003 book, Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America, 1915-1963: In 1945 those COs who believed strongly that pacifism offered the potential for revolutionary social change, and who were dissatisfied with the WRL, the FOR, and the SP, began communicating with one another about how to…
“I had mixed reactions when I was informed that WIN was coming out with a special issue on the homosexual and his oppressed state in society. I wondered if the time was right for such a step with the Movement. I feared that such an issue might prove divisive and hurt more than it helped….
Harry Belafonte stands with musicians at concert to raise funds for the Montomery Bus Boycott, May 24, 1956. (Photo courtesy WRL/David McReynolds Photo Project) WRL Executive Committee minutes from 1956 have an item on “Non-Violent Work in Race Relations”. Bayard Rustin and Ralph DiGia, WRL staff, were tasked with “Assisting in a fund-raising concert to support…
Virginia Baron edited the 1997 WRL Peace Calendar, “Womanspirit Moving,” a collection of profiles, quotations, and stories about women organizing for peace and justice around the world. In a lifetime of activism herself, Virginia worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, traveled the world on peace delegations, and was active with War Resisters League for at…
Twenty years ago, on March 19, 2003, the U.S. launched the disastrous and deadly invasion of Iraq. With great hope and determination, millions around the world joined antiwar protests on February 15, a month before the attack. 100 years ago in December Grace Paley was born. That’s something brighter to celebrate during this Women’s History Month….
“As you know, the establishment of social justice in our nation is of profound concern to me. This great struggle is in the interest of all Americans and I shall not be turned from it. Yet no sane person can afford to work for social justice within the nation unless he simultaneously resists war and…
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