This is our centennial blog.
Last fall, when the WRL 100th Anniversary committee asked me to write a letter about WRL’s 100th Anniversary projects, I had no idea how many friends of mine have been active with WRL over the years. Then email messages started coming to me from friends across the U.S. who were excited to see my picture…
I write this overview of the WRL peace calendars focused on young people as tens of thousands of them are now facing the horrors of war. Thus, some of the children’s personal statements in the calendars have a heartbreaking immediacy. Still, through descriptions of support, service, resistance projects, and individual actions undertaken by an impressive…
WRL never had enough staff to accomplish all its work, so volunteers regularly contributed time and skills. When it was founded in 1923, the volunteers were mainly well-educated and financially-comfortable women who had known each other previously from peace activities to end World War I. In the World War II era, when men involved with…
Today, March 14, is Pi Day (3.14), which brings to mind WRL’s annual pie chart. With millions of copies distributed, it is the most disseminated piece of literature in WRL’s history, reaching far beyond its membership to emphasize — obvious to many* beyond peace circles — that it’s military spending and war that bloats federal…
With the second wave of feminism gaining wide acceptance by social change organizations, WRL leaders decided that it, at last, needed to codify the accomplishments of pacifist women. Thus the organization’s 1972 peace calendar, In Woman’s Soul, whose title was taken from Emma Goldman’s pronouncement that women’s emancipation begins in their soul, was devoted to the writings and artwork of…
What a line-up at WRL’s A Night Out of Time party and benefit on February 29, 1996. The night featured poets and Fugs founders Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg; authors Quentin Crisp, Barbara Garson, Norman Rush; playwrights and theatre luminaries Karen Malpede, George Bartenieff, Judith Malina, and Hanan Resnikov with members of the Living Theatre;…
In the spring of 2022, I set out to learn about the work of the War Resisters League Southeast regional office, based in the Triangle region of North Carolina. One person at the heart of that work, and at the heart of many liberation struggles out of the US South during the 1980s and beyond,…
It was the summer of 1973, and I itched to attend an IMPEACH NIXON event in the New York City area. On the edge of my Impeach The President button I saw the phone number for The Committee To Impeach The President. I called that number and asked, “Are there any Impeach Nixon events happening soon?” …
Standing in a peace vigil holding a sign is a common form of nonviolent activism. The May-June 1967 edition of WRL News features a front page photo of the Times Square Weekly vigil to end the Vietnam War. Standing on April 29, 1967 are WRI Secretary Devi Prasad and Otto Nathan, a WRL Executive Committee member and a regular at…
The late 1950s and early ‘60s ban-the-bomb marches between Aldermaston and London during Easter weekends were an inspiration to me. I read about them in the onion-skin copies of Peace News airmailed from London to the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) office in New York. In 1962 CNVA organized Trident Walks for Nuclear Disarmament, named for three marches from Chicago, Hanover,…
This is a summary….
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…
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. In December of that year, 25 Catholic activists violated the Bush administration’s bans on travel to Cuba (technically, they just didn’t want travelers to spend any in Cuba) and walked more than…
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…
On April 27, 1965, Bayard Rustin was presented with the seventh annual War Resisters League Peace Award at WRL’s 42nd annual dinner. In making the presentation A.J. Muste noting that Bayard “suffered for his convictions and held firmly and courageously to them… [A] tireless seeker for more effective ways to advance the cause of freedom, peace, and humanity throughout the world.”
Hear the recording and read an annotated transcript of Rustin’s remarks in this blog entry…
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…
The first photograph I came across in the War Resisters League Records was unexpected. Well, I say photograph, but really it was a black-and-white negative strip with four images. The images were of a group of four people (friends? I’ve been encouraged to avoid assumptions, judgments, and storytelling in my descriptions, but this won’t be…
In her diary on October 19, 1923, the 48-year-old New York City educator Jessie Wallace Hughan (1875-1955) wrote, “Tracy [Mygatt] to dinner—had hair done—organized real War Resisters League …” WRL was founded as a militant secular pacifist organization with the slogan that “Wars will cease when men refuse to fight.” It evolved into one that embraces a…
By Craig Simpson Dorelen (Dorie) Feise Bunting passed away August 24, 2023, at 101 years old. From her teenage years until well into her 90s, Dorie was present and active in the peace and justice movement. She touched the lives of many people in New Mexico and around the world. She was my mentor and friend…
On September 11, 2001, War Resisters League staff person David McReynolds, wrote this from the WRL National Office which was only a mile and half north of the World Trade Towers:
“As we write, Manhattan feels under siege, with all bridges, tunnels, and subways closed, and tens of thousands of people walking slowly north from Lower Manhattan. As we sit in our offices here at War Resisters League, our most immediate thoughts are of the hundreds if not thousands of New Yorkers who have lost their lives in the collapse of the World Trade Center. The day is clear, the sky is blue, but vast clouds billow over the ruins where so many have died, including a great many rescue workers.”
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