Long-time WRL Staffer Wendy Schwartz reflects on three WRL Peace Calendars in 1972, 1997, and 2001 that focused on the activism and accomplishments of pacifist women.
WRL declared February 29, 1996 "A Night Out of Time" and held a party and benefit featuring poetry, readings, music, theatre, rantings, and a potpourri of performances.
Black lesbian feminist activist Mandy Carter's work was the focus of the "Mandy Carter: Scientist of Activism" exhibit at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, from June 10 to December 3, 2023 and an online exhibit. The exhibit features Carter's work with WRL, including staffing the Southeast office of WRL. WRL Southeast is the focus of an online exhibit created by former WRL staffer Kimber Heinz.
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).
