National Committee Makes Program Plans
The winter meeting of the National Committee (NC), the governing body of WRL, was held over President’s Day weekend, February 12–15. Amazingly, the meeting managed to dodge the many snowstorms the East has seen this winter, and fortunately illness waylaid fewer than some past winter NC meetings.
The weekend kicked off Friday with potluck supper generously hosted by Susan Cakars at her lovely Brooklyn home and a viewing of the excellent new film Death and Taxes, produced by the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, featuring 28 war-tax resisters discussing the various ways they refuse to pay for war. (Copies are available from WRL.) Saturday evening socializing included a well-attended public report-back from the end-of-the-year Gaza Freedom March, with a slide show and commentary from WRL march participants Ellen Davidson, Mike Levinson, and Judith Mahoney Pasternak.
Another presentation Saturday afternoon reported on the War Resisters’ International (WRI) conference, which was held in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, in January (see below). There, long-time WRL and WRI workers Clare Bayard, Matt Meyer, Joanne Sheehan, and Patrick Sheehan-Gaumer had introduced Susan Kingsland, the new WRL Representative to the WRI Council, to international colleagues.
Winter NC is budget time, and it was exciting to pass a balanced budget for fiscal year 2011. The plans for the year are even more exciting, with the upcoming hire of a full-time organizer to join new organizing coordinator Kimber Heinz. More program staff will allow resumed WRL trainings, as well as stepped-up support for WRL locals through the Organizing Network.
Other plans include WRL participation in events around the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at the United Nations in May and at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit in June, and producing new WRL literature. Work on challenging military spending and countering military recruitment will continue and expand. It was satisfying for the NC to coordinate increased WRL activity and feel we had the capacity to do so.
—Ellen Barfield
WRI Holds Nonviolence Conference in India
Every three to four years, War Resisters’ International (WRI)—the global secular nonviolence network of which WRL is the primary U.S. section—holds a gathering of all its affiliate groups and individuals. The 2010 conference, titled “Nonviolent Livelihood Struggle and Militarism: Links and Strategies,” was held in Ahmedebad, India, January 22-25, 2010, at the Gujarat Vidyapith, the college founded in 1920 by Mohandas Gandhi.
Our opening plenary welcomed participants from 32 countries and six continents, as WRI Chair Howard Clark greeted the gathering. Arundhati Roy, well-known author and activist, served as the opening speaker, challenging us to reflect upon the “biodiversity of resistance” necessary for “combating the many wars waged to install democracies.”
The main auditorium of the Vidyapith was transformed before the opening ceremony to reflect the re-naming of the hall after George and Lillian Willoughby and Bill Sutherland. A mini-exhibition on Sutherland’s contributions was set up, as was a wall of honor of those who passed away since the last WRI conference: Ralph DiGia, Grace Paley, and so many others.
The morning plenary of our second day together brought us Samarendra Das, activist in the hotbed Orissa region of India, where the struggle against aluminum mining is a fight against massive indigenous displacement, due to the environmental damage caused by such resource extraction. Elavie Ndura of Burundi and the United States (whose participation at the conference was supported by WRL) served as the respondent, reminding everyone that basic human needs issues must be at the center of any successful nonviolent initiative.
Workshops were held on the arms trade, nonviolent resistance in Palestine, the climate crisis, violence against regional identities focusing on Kashmir, transnational campaigning against war profiteering, nationalism and anti-fascist movements, the global state of conscription and conscientious objection, militarism and energy development projects in Latin America, the situation in the Congo and in Zimbabwe, and women and development-induced displacement, just to name a few.
Participants also wrote to the many prisoners for peace throughout the conference. And Indian culture and dancing filled the halls. Gandhian elder and former WRI Chair Narayan Desai closed the conference with a talk on the importance of “love-force” as a part of truth-force and soul-force, and wrote lyrics to a new Indian folk dance for all of us to join in on!
The day following the conference, excursions were organized to meet with grassroots activists engaged in community struggles. A number of us visited the Dalit Shakti Kendra, a human rights organization organizing Dalits, also known as “untouchables,” providing them with employment skills and training, and information about their rights in fighting the caste system.
On the anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination on January 30, WRI participants started the day early with a visit to the Subamarti Ashram for a special prayer and ceremony. Later that same day, we joined with Vidyapith University students in a march of commemoration and protest through the streets of Ahmedabad to another Gandhian ashram. Students carried signs protesting GMO foods, highlighting Monsanto.
—Susan Kingsland and Matt Meyer
Charlotte Levine, 1919–2010
Charlotte Levine volunteered in the WRL national office for the better part of 20 years. She was an excellent organizer, and when she walked into the WRL office in 1986 she plunged into the task of organizing the administrative files. Charlotte had retired from professional work with a union and birth control agency, but she was not about to rest on her laurels. She wanted to continue to do useful work for peace and social justice, and WRL was lucky to be one of the organizations she chose to give her time to.
Over those 20 years Charlotte continued to try to keep the office files under control, and she did research and proofing for magazine articles and many WRL peace calendars, joined in stuffing envelopes, and marched in antiwar demonstrations. She also wrote a column, “Outrageous Slings and Arrows,” for WRL’s magazine The Nonviolent Activist, including such tidbits as “A Truer Word Was Never Spoken Department: ‘The military overrated our intelligence,’” spoken by Admiral Crowe, Jr. to the Senate Armed Services Committee (1988). The column’s title reflected Charlotte’s cultural and intellectual interests. She and former staffmember Karl Bissinger could talk for hours about plays, movies, and books.
Charlotte was frustrated with the state of the world, the complacency of the general public, and the lack of real social change, but she didn’t give up. Sometimes when there didn’t seem to be much going on she’d just take a pile of leaflets and head to a busy corner to hand them out by herself. Often that one-on-one engagement with people would raise her hopes again for another round of doing battle with the powers that be.
Charlotte Levine died March 7 at the age of 90. While she was not very hopeful that the world we are working for would become reality, she never stopped trying to get there—and neither will we.
—Ruth Benn
