Most Massachusetts Peace Action directors serve for a 2-year term. The following candidates have been nominated by the Executive Committee for election in March 2018. Members, please cast your ballot by downloading the MAPA-Board-Election-Ballot-2018 and returning it to the office by March 15, 2018. You may also email your vote to info@masspeaceaction.org. Elections will take place on March 17th, 2018 at the annual MAPA meeting.
New members running for election
Michael VanElzakker, Somerville
Michael is a research fellow in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he studies post-traumatic stress syndrome. He became fascinated by peace and justice through his study of neurology and science and is now a leading member of our Nuclear Disarmament working group, as well as an activist on MAPA’s work in relation to the Korea crisis. He is also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Jeff Napolitano, Springfield
Jeff has long been a key peace organizer in the Pioneer Valley where he directed the Western Massachusetts office of the American Friends Service Committee until it closed in 2017. He has now led the launch of the Resistance Center for Peace and Justice, which continues the work of AFSC-WM. Jeff is passionate about peace, justice and ending war without end. He is also fascinated by racial justice. Recently, Jeff gave a presentation on the 34th annual Martin Luther King Day celebration called “Getting Military Recruiters out of our High Schools,” and how, since 2001, military recruiters have had increased access to children in high schools and are regularly given their personal information in order to solicit them. He talked about how to stop them from gaining access to students and their information
Jared Hicks, Dorchester
Jared was born in Dorchester and is a 26-year-old millennial. He volunteered for Bernie Sanders’ Presidential campaign and was a Bernie delegate at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. He is a new member of the Boston Democratic Ward 17 committee and is honored to serve the political revolution. He will forever feel the BERN and believes that the struggle continues. He is a founding member of Our Revolution Massachusetts (ORMA) and of Our Revolution Boston, and serves on ORMA’s Representative Council. He is also active in Dorchester People for Peace and works for the Massachusetts Nurses Association.
Board Members Running for Re-election
Jaime Babson, South Hadley
J
aime Babson serves on the boards of the Veterans Education Project and of two family foundations, and is a friend of the New England Peace Pagoda community. He values the communities of peace activists in Western Massachusetts.
Shelagh Foreman, Cambridge, Board Chair and Middle East Working Group co-chair
Shelagh Foreman is the chair of Massachusetts Peace Action’s board of directors. She was a founding member of Mass Freeze, the statewide nuclear freeze organization, which merged with SANE to form Massachusetts Peace Action. She has worked consistently on nuclear disarmament and focused on bringing Peace Action’s message to our elected officials. She studied art at The Cooper Union and Columbia University, taught art and art history, and is a painter and printmaker. She represents MAPA on the Political Committee of Mass Alliance and is a core group member of 20/20 Action. She and her husband Ed have 5 children and 7 grandchildren, live in Cambridge and also spend time in Falmouth.
Eva Moseley, Cambridge, Music Committee Chair
Eva Steiner Moseley was born in Vienna; she and her family arrived in New York as refugees in 1939. Educated at Bronx H.S. of Science, Mount Holyoke College (B.A. in philosophy) and Radcliffe College (A.M. in Sanskrit and Indian Studies), after a peripatetic marriage she was curator of manuscripts at Radcliffe’s Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America for 28 years, during which she was president of New England Archivists and on the Council of the Society of American Archivists. She cut her political teeth in Henry Wallace’s presidential campaign (1948), worked for a nuclear test ban with Women Strike for Peace in the early 1960s, joined the nuclear freeze movement in 1982, and has worked for peace ever since. In 2007 she visited Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron with the Cambridge-Bethlehem People-to-People Committee. She has two children and three granddaughters. Eva chairs MAPA’s Music Committe and participates in our Palestine/Israel Working Group.
Prasannan Parthasarathi, Newton, Middle East Working Group co-chair
Prasannan Parthasarathi is Associate Professor of History at Boston College and has a Ph.D. from Harvard University. A specialist in the history of South Asia, the British Empire, and labor and economic history, he recently published Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600-1850. Parthasarathi was a member of the Sustainable Defense Task Force and of the Eastern Massachusetts campaign to Fund Our Communities / Cut Military Spending 25%.
John Ratliff, Cambridge, Economic Justice Coordinator
John Ratliff was political director of an SEIU local union in Miami, Florida, and relocated to Cambridge after his retirement in 2012. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School. A Vietnam veteran and member of Veterans for Peace, he is a member of the coordinating committee of Massachusetts Senior Action’s Cambridge branch, chair of Massachusetts Jobs with Justice’s Global Justice Task Force, and president of the Massachusetts Alliance of Retired Americans. As our economic justice coordinator he leads our coalition work with Raise Up Massachusetts for an increased minimum wage and sick time benefits.
Jonathan King, chair, Nuclear Disarmament Working Group
Jonathan King is professor of molecular biology at MIT, the author of over 250 scientific papers, and a specialist in protein folding. He founded the Jobs with Peace campaign in the 1980s and now chairs Massachusetts Peace Action’s Nuclear Disarmament Working Group. He is also an officer of the Cambridge Residents Alliance and of Citizens for Public Schools.
Nominating Additional Candidates
Any member may nominate him or herself or another member before March 9, 2018. See the procedures to follow or call the office at 617-354-2169 for information.
Continuing Board Members
Because of staggered terms, existing members Rosalie Anders, Carol Coakley, Bonnie Gorman, Rosemary Kean, Jeff Klein, Maryellen Kurkulos, Valentine Moghadam, Guntram Muller, and Denise Simmons will continue to serve for another year before being eligible for re-election in early 2019.
