WIN magazine
WIN magazine, formerly the Nonviolent Activist, was the quarterly magazine of the War Resisters League, an organization founded in 1923 with a basic pledge:
The War Resisters League affirms that war is a crime against humanity. We therefore are determined not to support any kind of war, international or civil, and to strive nonviolently for the removal of all causes of war, including racism, sexism and all forms of exploitation.
Through articles, interviews, and reviews, WIN covered resistance to war abroad as well as resistance to violence and militarism within the United States. WIN nurtured its readers as activists, equipping them with relevant and accessible information to support their organizing work. WIN worked to build bridges between various struggles against violence and for justice, to support the growth of a broad-based, nonviolent, anti-racist, and revolutionary movement to end all war and oppression.
The last issue of WIN magazine was published in Spring 2015. WRL will continue to create and distribute news, analysis and resources through our websites and social media outlets. We may, in the future, create another periodical publication, digital, paper, or both.
The Nonviolent Activist
The Nonviolent Activist was published by War Resisters League from 1984 to 2006. The full archive of all issues is available from the Swarthmore College Peace Collection
WRL News
WRL News was one of the first formal publications by the War Resisters League.
It was published 1945-1984, when The Nonviolent Activist was launched. Issues from 1945-1966 are available online from the Swarthmore College Peace Collection.
Digitized copies of issues 1967-1984 are available at the Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/pub_war-resisters-league-wrl-news, and digitized issues from 1965-1975 are avalable from the Wisconsin Historical Society.
WIN
From 1965 or 1966 to 1984, there was another, earlier WIN magazine put out by Workshop in Nonviolence (WIN), a direct action group in New York City and an affiliate of the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) and War Resisters League. While it was not an official publication of WRL, we were closely connected to its publication and distribution.
For nearly two decades, WIN published articles on a wide range of peace and social justice activism by key activists, academics and cultural workers, and influenced a number of activist movements.
Many issues from the old WIN magazine are available in print and/or online from the Swarthmore College Peace Collection.
Other Publications
Throughout its history, WRL has both produced and supported the publication of news, first person narratives, art and opinion through a variety of publications. Some of the additional periodicals include:
- The Conscientious Objector, a monthly publication WRL helped launch in 1939 and was published until 1946, was a key source of information about COs, imprisoned resisters, and radical pacifism.
- Liberation magazine, which WRL helped launch in 1955, became the most significant publication of its time explicating and promoting Gandhian nonviolence. A collection of digitized microfilm is available at the Internet Archive
- S.P.E.W. ‘zine (with a mutable acronym which could stand for “Support Peace, End War,” “Smash Patriarchy EveryWhere,” or a myriad of other slogans), aimed to entice a new generation of war resisters using vivid graphics; exclusive interviews with hip hop pioneers Stetsasonic, Frank Zappa, youth activists, and others; give-away stickers, and short articles which could be made into do-it-yourself flyers
