The War Resisters’ International is holding its conference and assembly – Antimilitarist Roots: nonviolent resistance for a world in crisis – from Friday June 16 to Monday June 19, 2023 in London. The event will bring activists together to discuss the future of our grassroots movements, build allyship internationally, and respond to the challenge we…
As the Fall 2022 Freeman Intern, I spent the past several months working with The Nonviolent Activist and WRL News. I found the experience challenging and inspiring. It gave me the chance to reflect on 61 years of resistance and consider my own relationship with pacifism. The Nonviolent Activist was launched in 1984. I was…
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…
In accord with Jessie Wallace Hughan’s belief that WRL would likely be more effective if led by men, the role of women, and certainly their authority, decreased substantially post WW II. Indeed, for the next several decades WRL women primarily served as adjuncts to men: doing office work so men could organize demonstrations or resist…
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….
In founding and then leading WRL for nearly 20 years, Jessie Wallace Hughan was supported by an impressive group of women, many having previously headed other women’s pacifist, suffragist, anti-conscription, and socialist organizations. Unusually independent for their time, most had graduated from prestigious universities, supported themselves with careers, and were engaged in romantic relationships with like-minded women. Among these colleagues…
When, in late 1979, Durham, NC-based lesbian feminist organizer Joanne Abel heard about the Klan and Nazi murders of five local leftists at a Greensboro march organized by the Communist Workers Party, she called a friend at the War Resisters League. WRL Southeast office staff organizers Steve Sumerford and Dannia Southerland helped organize a contingent…
The broken rifle, long associated with WRL and War Resisters’ International predates both organizations. It first appeared in January 1909 on the cover of the Dutch publication De Wapens Neder (Down with Weapons), the periodical of the International Antimilitarist Union in the Netherlands. In 1915 it was on the cover of a pamphlet, Under det…
One of WRL’s earliest known street actions was a demonstration marking the 10th anniversary of the World War I armistice. On November 10, 1928, 27 pacifists and socialists — including the Youth Division of the War Resisters League, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Union Theological Seminary, Young People’s Socialist League, Bronx Free Fellowship – marched from Bowling…
Steve Sumerford, personal collection A Durham, North Carolina newspaper article on War Resisters League Southeast staff organizer Steve Sumerford’s arrest in Moscow’s Red Square during a War Resisters League-organized banner-drop in support of ending the nuclear arms race in both the US and USSR. A sister action took place simultaneously in Washington, D.C., September 4,…
Please join us during this 100th year of actions and educational events, which we are initiating with a weekly blog focusing on highlights from WRL’s 100 years, as we head towards the actual October 19 anniversary. Founded 100 years ago this year as a secular militant pacifist organization, the War Resisters League is made up of people…
Up until the first world war, peace and antiwar groups tended to be either religious (such as, AFSC and FOR) or women-only (Women’s Peace Society, Women’s Peace Union, Woman’s Peace Party, WILPF). Hughan sought to change that with the 1915 founding of the Anti-Enlistment League and its pledge to be “against enlistment” for war and…
“History is not a collection of dramatic dates of great leaps from oppression to liberation. It is more often seemingly endless night broken by dawn. History is made by people as ordinary as ourselves, but extraordinary in that they have been seized by a dream for which they are willing to struggle and to…
“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…
Founded 100 years ago this year as a secular militant pacifist organization, the War Resisters League is made up of people united in nonviolent opposition to all wars while seeking to remove the causes of war, including racism, sexism and all forms of exploitation. Throughout its 100 years, WRL has held conferences, given out annual…
The War Resisters League was founded in the aftermath of a horrendous European war by those who resisted conscription and their supporters. They united around a powerful affirmation: war is a crime against humanity. Over the course of almost 100 years since that time, our commitment to this principle has been tested by many political struggles…
The Journey of Reconciliation in 1947 was the first major national project organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), co-sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). An interracial group of 16 rode on buses through the upper South to test the implementation of the 1946 Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation on interstate travel. They…
In 1981, shortly after Ronald Reagan became President, the right to choose to have an abortion and sexual freedom was increasingly under attack. The Feminist and Lesbian and Gay Task Forces of the Mobilization for Survival (MfS), a national network that included WRL, with goals to: abolish nuclear weapons and power, stop military intervention, meet…
Dear WRL Community, We hope this message finds you at peace despite seemingly endless moments of challenge, hardship and the ongoing horrors of war and militarism. We wanted to take this opportunity to reconnect with you all – our members, allies, comrades, and friends to provide an important update on behalf of the organization. In…
For almost 40 years, War Resisters League has researched and produced an annual pie chart flyer to call attention to the vast amount of our income tax dollars spent on the military and war. This year the pie percentages look different than previous years: the red slices add up to 37% — but the military budget…
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