Matt Meyer

Matt Meyer, New York City activist-educator, is founding Co-Chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Organization and co-author (with Bill Sutherland) of Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan-African Insights on Nonviolence, Armed Struggle and Liberation. A longtime member of WRL’s National Committee, he was a public draft-registration resister in the 1980s and served as WRL’s Chair. He is author, editor, or contributor to nine other books, including the 2012 WRL co-publication We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism in 21st Century America.

Occupation: Liberation

Resistance in Brooklyn at OWS

 

Resistance in Brooklyn (RnB), a 20-year-old anti-racist, anti-imperialist collective rooted in the 1970s/80s movements in solidarity with struggles of communities and nations of color, is awed by the creativity, tenacity, and commitment of the burgeoning Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. RnB has been working with Occupy since early October, focusing most of our energies in support of the People of Color caucus and in an OWS Anti-Racist Allies group.

The End of Public Education

And the New American Revolution

Though we may not like to admit it, the U.S. commitment to publicly supported teachers and students is coming to an abrupt end. The global corporate penchant for privatization, commoditization, and enclosure is having chilling effects on policies that scholar Henry Giroux suggests “seek nothing less than the total destruction of the democratic potential of American education.”

Prison Abolition, Political Prisoners, and the Building of Critical Resistance

Linda Thurston
Linda Thurston Talks Community

Linda Thurston is a founding member of International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, coordinated the New England and National Criminal Justice Programs of the American Friends Service Committee, and has worked with Boston and New York Jericho and with Critical Resistance. Linda is the office coordinator at the War Resisters League national office.

Peace and Prisons

The Not-So-Hidden Connection

"We must work together to set free those who are bound, to turn our swords and spears into plowshares.” When Argentine Nobel Peace prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel lent his words to the foreword of my recently published Let Freedom Ring: Documents from the Movements to Free U.S. Political Prisoners, he did so to help underscore the links between peace and prisons.

Make Levees, Not War!

Steve Earle. Photo by John M. Miller

Make Levees, Not War!

"I like the War Resisters League,” proclaimed Grammy Award-winning folk-country icon Steve Earle at the WRL’s 2008 annual peace award event, “because you’re about constant vigilance against any war, for any reason … anywhere in the world!” Earle headlined an all-star concert at Brooklyn’s Lyceum on December 12, 2008, in an evening that had people on their feet numerous times in response to the raucous music and to the revved-up politics of the inspiring New Orleans resisters who were this year’s award recipients.