American Friends Service Committee carries out service, development, social justice and peace programs throughout the world. Founded by Quakers in 1917 to provide conscientious objectors with an opportunity to aid civilian war victims, AFSC's work attracts the support and partnership of people of many races, religions and cultures. AFSC's work is based on the Quaker belief in the worth of every person and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice. The organization's mission and achievements won worldwide recognition in 1947 when it accepted the Nobel Peace Prize with the British Friends Service Council on behalf of all Quakers.
Greenpeace is an international advocacy organization dedicated to combating the most serious threats to the planet's biodiversity and environment. Since 1971, Greenpeace has been at the forefront of environmental activism through non-violent protest, research and public education. In the past several years, Greenpeace has repeatedly engaged the Bush administration through public protest and activism. In 2001, Greenpeace held public demonstrations outside the personal residences of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, criticizing the administration's environmental and energy policies. Greenpeace has also actively publicized the Bush administration's ties to the oil industry, especially Exxon Mobil. More recently, a team of Greenpeace experts exposed the United States' military's failure to secure and contain nuclear waste facilities in Iraq.
United for Peace and Justice is a coalition of more than 1,300 local and national groups throughout the United States that have joined together to oppose the war in Iraq. Since its founding in October 2002, UFPJ has spurred hundreds of anti-war protests and rallies across the country and sponsored the four largest demonstrations against the Iraq war. UFPJ organized a rally outside the United Nations in New York City that drew more than 500,000 participants as part of a global day of protest against the war. Two days after the bombing of Iraq began, UFPJ mobilized more than 300,000 people for another protest march in New York City. UFPJ also organized the anti-war march in New York City on the eve of the Republican National Convention, with 500,000 people. UFPJ coordinated more than 700 local protests across the country. Many of these were at or near military facilities, including recruitment stations.
Veterans For Peace is a national organization founded in 1985. The organization includes men and women veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War and other conflicts in addition to peacetime veterans. Based on the experience of its members, the organization believes that wars are easy to start and hard to stop, and that those hurt are often the innocent. Thus, other means of problem solving are necessary. Veterans for Peace draws on the personal experiences and perspectives of veterans to raise public awareness of the true costs and consequences of militarism and war - and to seek peaceful, effective alternatives.
FLORIDA
Peter D. Ackerman is clerk of the Peace and Social Justice
Committee of the Fort Lauderdale Friends. He has participated in, and helped
to organize, actions to further their concerns.
The Fort Lauderdale Friends Meeting is part of the worldwide Religious Society of Friends ("Quakers"). Their service in the world originates from their meeting for worship and is guided by their testimonies of Simplicity, Integrity, Peace, Equality and Community. In belief that policies of the present administration run contrary to their stated testimonies, they act to oppose those policies.
Bruce Gagnon has been a full-time peace and justice activist since 1978. From 1983-1998 he coordinated the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice and began to specialize in the nuclearization and weaponization of space. Bruce, a co-founder of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, has been working full-time for the organization since 1998. Since that time he has spent nearly two weeks of every month traveling throughout the world speaking and organizing protests around the space issue. During the 1980's Bruce, with the help of the Orlando Sentinel, was able to expose a series of infiltrations of the Florida Coalition by the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation. Bruce served in the United States Air Force from 1971-1974.
The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space was created in 1992 to build an international movement to prevent the arms race from moving into space. Each year the Global Network holds an international space organizing conference in a different part of the world bringing together the growing numbers of concerned citizens who wish to keep space for peace. Through the production of video documentaries, organizing protests, speaking tours, and media work the Global Network has been able to take its message throughout the United States and around the world. For the past several years the Global Network has organized "Keep Space for Peace Week" during the first week of October. This week of local actions around the world is held to show the growing opposition to Star Wars.
The Haiti Solidarity Committee is based in south Florida and has organized numerous protests and lobbying campaigns against the Bush administration's support for the current regime in Haiti. It also organized the Committee to Free Father Jean-Juste, which spearheaded a much broader and successful effort that led to the priest's freedom. Last year the committee played a leadership role in The Alliance For Justice, an ad hoc coalition of peace and justice groups that organized a mass protest that included several thousand Haitians outside of the Organization of American States Conference in Fort Lauderdale.
The Melbourne, Florida Counter Inaugural was created by Brevard County citizens who joined together to symbolically "mourn" the election of President Bush and the threat they felt he represented to their civil rights. The group crafted headstones demarking the civil rights they believed were in jeopardy under the continued Bush administration and conducted a mock funeral procession on January 20, 2005, the day of the president's inauguration.
Jeff Nall is a community activist and freelance writer. In 2003, Nall helped found Patriots for Peace and lead the anti-war movement in Brevard County, producing two demonstrations that were attended by approximately 500 people. Since then he has gone on to help organize numerous peace vigils and demonstrations as well as rallies for marriage equality, reproductive rights and civil liberties. Jeff also helped organize the Space Coast Progressive Alliance. And in 2005 he helped reorganize the Brevard chapter of the National Organization for Women. Nall also regularly contributes to progressive publications like Toward Freedom , the Humanist and Impact Press .
Patriots for Peace is an informal citizen group drawn from Brevard and Indian River residents who oppose the war in Iraq. The group began organizing demonstrations against the war in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. In 2003 Patriots for Peace organized rallies on February 15, March 15 and March 22. The group also organized several anti-war vigils. Since 2003 the group has continued to help organize anti-war demonstrations, vigils and other events.
Maria Telesca-Whipple has worked extensively for many years in Brevard County, Florida, as an organizer for the Global Network Against Nuclear Weapons & Power in Space and has attended just about all of the Melbourne Peace rallies. Along with Jeff Nall and Bruce Gagnon, she was mentioned frequently in files created and maintained by the Brevard County Sheriff's Office.
The Truth Project, Inc. is a Florida non-profit corporation, located in Palm Beach County, consisting of peace and social justice activists whose meetings in 2004 and 2005 took place in a Quaker church in Lake Worth. The Truth Project provides educational resources to high school students, regarding the facts surrounding military enlistment. As reported in December 2005 by NBC Nightly News, the Truth Project's meetings were placed under surveillance by the 902nd Military Intelligence Group, headquartered in Fort Meade, Maryland, which is also the location of the National Security Agency. A secret Department of Defense report characterized the Truth Project as a "credible threat" to national security.
GEORGIA
Georgia Peace and Justice
Coalition developed out of statewide opposition to President
Bush's decision to attack Iraq, announced in the summer of 2002. Atlanta
activism first coalesced around a national campaign to present petitions
opposing war to all 100 U.S. Senators across the country on August 28, 2002.
As a broad volunteer network of faith, student and community groups, the
Coalition has organized dozens of non-violent vigils and marches, petition
campaigns and educational campaigns opposing the Iraq War and calling for
justice on issues ranging from globalization to Katrina relief.
School of Americas Watch is an independent organization that seeks to close the US Army School of the Americas through vigils and fasts, demonstrations and nonviolent protest, as well as media and legislative work. Today the SOA Watch movement is a large, diverse, grassroots movement rooted in solidarity with the people of Latin America. SOA Watch also seeks to change U.S. foreign policy in Latin America by educating the public, lobbying Congress and participating in creative, nonviolent resistance. The Pentagon has responded to the growing movement and Congress' near closure of the SOA with a PR campaign to give the SOA a new image. In an attempt to disassociate the school with its horrific past, the SOA was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in January of 2001.
MAINE
The American Friends Service Committee: Maine Program
on Youth and Militarism is an organization committed to bringing
balanced information about military recruitment to Maine high school students.
AFSC: Maine seeks to ensure that students know that they have a right to
discuss the military without being forced to enlist, and to participate in
open dialogue about militarism and society. AFSC: Maine has helped lead efforts
in Maine to help high school students protect private information from recruiters
from the Department of Defense by encouraging the prominent placement of "No
Child Left Behind" opt-out forms. AFSC: Maine meets monthly at the Meetinghouse
of the Midcoast Friends.
The Maine Coalition for Peace and Justice is a statewide organization of individual citizens and Maine group representatives working collectively and nonviolently for social equality, economic justice, direct democracy and regenerative environmental policies. Members of the Maine Coalition for Peace and Justice have organized rallies and marches across Maine in opposition to the war in Iraq. In 2006, in response to a Maine Civil Liberties Union FOIA request, the FBI revealed that it has conducted surveillance of the Coalition's e-mail.
PENNSYLVANIA
CODEPINK
Pittsburgh joins
its sister branches worldwide in its struggle for peace and equality. CODEPINK
believes women can be instrumental in ending the illegal and immoral invasion
and occupation of Iraq. CODEPINK Pittsburgh rejects peace, freedom, and democracy
at gunpoint. CODEPINK has organized numerous public actions against the war
and says it will continue to express opposition to the U.S. imperialistic foreign
policy until all U.S. troops are home safely, and the quality of life of Iraqi
citizens is restored.
Pittsburgh Bill of Rights Defense Campaign is dedicated to organizing a grassroots response to defend civil liberties in America today. Along with other organizations, the campaign successfully petitioned the Pittsburgh City Council to pass a resolution to resist the implementation of the Patriot Act.
Pittsburgh Organizing Group is a non-hierarchical, consensus-based activist group working toward systemic change in a wide range of interconnected issues in society. Since its founding in the spring of 2002, POG has organized more than 75 campaigns and actions dealing with issues of war, militarism, labor rights, environmental issues and global financial institutions. POG has learned, as a result of NBC's release of Pentagon documents, that it has been the subject of a Pentagon investigation because of a campaign that POG launched in April 2005 to counter military recruitment. That campaign has included over two dozen pickets at a local recruiting hub station, counter recruitment presentations in multiple cities, educational outreach at local high schools, door-to-door visits in local communities that has convinced many local businesses to remove military propaganda, a petition to restrict access of military recruiters at area schools, and actions that confront recruiters on campuses and in the streets. One of these confrontations – POG's April 26 challenge to military recruiters at Carnegie Mellon University – was noted in the Pentagon document released by NBC as a potential “threat.”
Pittsburgh Raging Grannies, acting in the tradition of wise women elders, seeks to promote global peace, justice, and social and economic equality by raising public awareness through the medium of song and humor. The Raging Grannies challenge audiences to work to bring about the social changes that are required in order to end economic oppression, particularly of women and children, and to end racial inequality, environmental destruction, human rights violations and arms proliferation. The Raging Grannies have organized and performed at numerous peace rallies in and around Pittsburgh and appear regularly at peace and freedom events throughout the greater Pittsburgh area.
Save Our Civil Liberties Campaign formed in response to the 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas Ministerial in Miami, and is a national organization. Among other things, the campaign organized highly publicized anti-war protests at both the 2004 Democratic and Republication National Conventions. The organization's members were questioned and subjected to surveillance by U.S. military personnel at those events.
The Thomas Merton Center has been Pittsburgh's center for peace and social justice since 1972. The TMC acts as a resource and organizing center for twenty-five different projects. The TMC comprises people from diverse philosophies and faiths who find common ground in the nonviolent struggle to bring about a more peaceful and just world and work together to raise the moral questions involved in the issues of war, poverty, racism and oppression through protest, public education and advocacy.
The Thomas Merton Center Anti-War Committee emerged in opposition to the imminent invasion of Iraq in January of 2003. The Anti-War Committee has organized a number of marches and events against the Iraq war. In 2005, the Anti-War Committee organized the largest known convoy of Pittsburgh buses to the anti-war march in Washington, DC on September 24. The Committee also organized the March convergence and the Bring Them Home Now Tour with Cindy Sheehan in September. Both events drew thousands of Americans out in protest of the war in Iraq.
RHODE ISLAND
Rhode Island
Community Coalition for Peace (RICCP) comprises individual members
as well as representatives of officially endorsing groups, and has a listserv
of more than 300 people. In addition to calling for the immediate withdrawal
of troops from Iraq, RICCP opposes the Patriot Act. RICCP has organized
many public events, including a March 19, 2004 rally and march through
downtown Providence, which drew about 500 people, and a December 2004 peaceful
protest in front of the RI National Guard Office in downtown Providence,
which drew approximately 50 people. The December event is the one Rhode
Island event that has thus far been publicly disclosed as being contained
in the TALON database. RICCP also sponsored an appearance by anti-war activist
Cindy Sheehan last July, and helped organize transportation for a substantial
Rhode Island presence at the September 24, 2005 anti-war march in Washington,
D.C. RICCP remains very active in ongoing counter-recruitment efforts.
WASHINGTON
The Peace and
Justice Action League of Spokane is a local, membership organization
committed to involving individuals and local communities in building foundations
for a just and nonviolent world through community organizing, nonviolence
training, volunteer involvement, human rights education and advocacy. Since
its inception, the league has sponsored several large public protests,
including anti-war and anti-globalization demonstrations and the largest
anti-racism march in the history of the Inland Northwest.
The Raging Grannies of Seattle use song and humor to raise public awareness and promote global peace, justice, and social and economic equality. The Raging Grannies of Seattle have performed at numerous anti-war and anti-globalization events in the Puget Sound region.
Sound Nonviolent Opponents of War (SNOW) is a Puget Sound coalition of organizations and neighborhood groups who oppose human rights abuses, military aggression, and weapons of mass destruction. SNOW advocates for U.S. foreign policies that promote human rights, economic justice and self-determination. Most recently, SNOW's activities have concentrated on protesting the war in Iraq and other Bush administration policies.