History Blog
WRL Goes to the Movies
Popular films aren’t usually known for promoting peace. There’s a lot of focus on big action sequences in the wide release movies that studios hope will become summer blockbusters, especially when superheroes are involved. In 1987 and 2007, two WRL Peace Calendars sought to highlight movies that promote peace and justice. WRL’s interest in movies…Home Is Where WRL Is: A History of WRL’s Offices: The Peace Pentagon and Beyond (Part II)
After leaving 5 Beekman Street with a very light load—courtesy of the FBI theft—WRL and its peace group mates moved to 339 Lafayette Street at the western edge of the East Village. (For the story of WRL’s pre-Lafayette Street homes, see Home Is Where WRL Is: A History of WRL’s Offices, Part I: From a…
Home Is Where WRL Is: A History of WRL’s Office Spaces: From a Living Room to a Loft (Part I)
In our 100 year history, the WRL national office, surprisingly, has had only a few locations in New York City. Each was unique in its own way.WRL was first located in Jessie Wallace Hughan’s apartment. The founder of WRL, she brought into the fold activists from a variety of progressive organizations. Soon there were too…
War Is a Crime Against Humanity: Stop the Violence Immediately in Israel-Palestine
WRI exec statement: on the Israel-Hamas ceasefireJanuary 20, 2025 – As a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel comes into force, we can only begin to imagine the relief of all those who were being bombed yesterday, but are not being bombed today.All wars are crimes against humanity. The last fifteen months of relentless, genocidal war have illustrated…Learn About Our Radical Past Through Larry Gara’s Radical Quizzes
Between 1989 and 2002, Larry Gara produced four “radical quizzes” for WRL’s Nonviolent Activist to encourage everyone to learn about our radical past. The first, “A Radical Quiz,” was published in the September 1989 issue. Gara, a professor at Wilmington College in Ohio, a WWII resister, and a long-time WRL member, wrote an introduction for…WRL’s Debate to Hire Bayard Rustin
Not much time goes by in political discourse without some mention of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which took place 61 years ago this week. It was the largest gathering for civil rights of its time, with an estimated 250,000 people attending. Martin Luther King, Jr. made his “I Have a Dream”…WRL’s Anarchist-Socialist Softball Games
When I was growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, the War Resisters League would have their National Committee meetings hosted by a different local group every summer. Always a WRL local affiliate, it meant that we got to go somewhere else around the country. As a kid, these meetings ended up feeling like vacations….WRL Exhibit on Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Nuclear Terror
In 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum unveiled a radically scaled back exhibition that glorified the bombings, prominently presenting Enola Gay (the Hiroshima bomber) as if it were a holy relic. The original draft text of the exhibit had been an even-handed history and evaluation of the August 6 and 9, 1945 bombings. But caving to howls of the American Legion and conservative members of Congress, the Smithsonian deleted all criticisms of the bombings and presented a sanitized version without graphic images of the destruction. Instead, they highlighted how the plane was restored, showed photos of machinery, interviews of the Enola Gay crew, and stressed how “the bombings were necessary” to save American lives. Consequently, WRL with other peace groups formed the Enola Gay Action Coalition to prepare for protests at the opening, as well as to create our own exhibit “Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and 50 Years of Nuclear Terror”—as an answer to the Smithsonian’s crude attempt at censorship and historical revisionism….“USA-USSR Disarm!”: Telling It to the Nuclear Powers on Both Sides of the World
On September 4, 1978 WRL members launched simultaneous disarmament demonstrations on the White House Lawn in Washington, DC and in Red Square in Moscow, USSR. This creative—and maybe rash—action was the brainchild of WRL staffers, notably Jerry Coffin and Lynne Shatzkin Coffin.I was honored to be tasked to lead the Washington contingent. (See Steve Sumerford’s blog…A Chance Acquaintance Changes a Life
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…
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