Massachusetts Peace Action board of directors members serve for a 2-year term. The following candidates have been nominated by the Executive Committee for election in April, 2017. Members, please cast your ballot by downloading the attached ballot and returning it to the office by March 30, 2017. You may also email your ballot to info@masspeaceaction.org or return it at the 2017 Annual Meeting on April 1.
New Candidates
These members have been nominated as new members of the Board:
Rev. Paul Robeson Ford – Cambridge
Paul Robeson Ford is senior pastor at Union Baptist Church in Cambridge. He is completing a PhD in Theology at the University of Chicago focusing on the intersection between prison ministry, mass incarceration, and theology that is centered on transformation and liberation. He holds a B.A. from Grinnell College and a M.Div from the University of Chicago. Born and raised in New York City, he grew up at the Riverside Church under the leadership of Dr. James A. Forbes, Jr. He answered the call to ministry in 1997 and was licensed to preach the Gospel at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Des Moines, Iowa in 2002. He holds standing as an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and has twice been named a Fellow of the Fund for Theological Education.
Val Moghadam – Somerville
Valentine M. Moghadam is Professor of International Affairs and Sociology and director of the International Affairs Program at Northeastern University, Boston. She is the author of Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East (2013, third edition), Globalization and Social Movements: Islamism, Feminism, and the Global Justice Movement (2012, second edition), and other books and journal articles. Her research areas include globalization and development; transnational movements; the political economy of gender in MENA; revolutions and social movements; and citizenship. A native of Tehran, Iran, she is also a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
Candidates for re-election
These current Board members have been nominated for re-election:
Rosalie Anders – Cambridge
Rosalie Anders retired in 2012 from her job as an environmental planner with the City of Cambridge. A longtime peace and environmental activist, she is co-chair of the Environmental Justice Task Force at First Parish Church in Cambridge, a board member of GreenCambridge, and a coordinating committee member for Greenport. A former Williamstown resident, she cofounded the Nuclear Weapons Education Center there in 1980 and was active in peace and environmental justice issues in Berkshire County. She was associate director of the Council for a Livable World from 1984 to 1991 and is a past vice president of WAND. Before becoming a planner, she was a family therapist for many years. She also serves as president of the Massachusetts Peace Action Education Fund (MAPA EF).
Carol Coakley – Millis
Carol Coakley is chair of Metrowest Peace Action and represents the Norfolk, Bristol and Middlesex state senate district on the Democratic State Committee. She has a B.A. in Politics from Framingham State College, where she also worked as an administrative assistant and was steward for AFSCME Local 1067. She was Field Coordinator of the Instant Runoff Voting initiative petition drive with Citizens for Voter Choice in 2009. Carol represents MAPA on the national Peace Action board, is co-chair of our Legislative/Political Working Group, and works part time in the Mass. Peace Action office.
Bonnie Gorman – Quincy
Bonnie Gorman worked for two years in the Vietnam Air Evacuation Hospital network as a military nurse, which paid for her undergraduate degree (an early economic draft). In 1968, her brother Paul, a young Marine, was killed in action along the DMZ in Vietnam. Her mother then had a massive heart attack and eventually died. As a result of her personal losses and involvement with many wounded and dying soldiers and their families, Bonnie joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and other peace groups working to end the Vietnam war and prevent future wars.
Bonnie is an active member of Military & Gold Star Families Speak Out (MFSO), Veterans for Peace (VFP) and Gold Star Families for Peace (GSFP), continuing to support families of injured and fallen soldiers to help them get the medical and mental health care and services they need and to ensure that we do not continue to repeat our failed policy of sending our young men and women off to unnecessary and costly wars with no end.
After her military service, she returned to U.S. and worked for 50 years in nursing and social work. She continues her interest in public health and social policy issues, and works actively on medical, children and families, disability, veterans, peace and justice issues. She frequently contacts legislators to encourage them to support progressive policies and has been active in many political campaigns, most recently supporting Elizabeth Warren’s run for Senate. Bonnie is co-chair of MAPA’s Legislative/Political Working Group.
Rosemary Kean – Dorchester
Rosemary Kean is an active member of Dorchester People for Peace (DPP) and co-chair of the Social Justice Committee of First Church Boston UU. For the past 8 years and especially since retirement 2 years ago following a 45 year nursing career, Rosemary has been focusing on activism and community organizing for peace and economic justice under the tutelage of long time activists and organizers at DPP. She worked on the Budget For All campaign with the Coalition to Fund Our Communities/Cut Military Spending 25% which includes DPP, New England United for Justice, Boston Workers Alliance, City Life/Vida Urbana, AFAB, and Survivors, Inc., among other Dorchester-Roxbury-Boston community groups. Rosemary is her church liaison to the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization which organizes around health care, housing, and education. She is currently working on the Jobs Not Jails campaign and on a UU Mass Action effort for passage of 2 bills in the Massachusetts legislature to end mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenses and to reform pre-trial bail procedures. Rosemary has an MS degree in psychiatric nursing and has written about providing psychiatric care to older adults in the home, a model which continues to be practiced by beloved colleagues at the Cambridge Health Alliance.
Jeff Klein – Dorchester
Jeff Klein is a retired machinist and union activist. He worked at GE in Lynn and for the Mass Water Resources Authority on Deer Island, where he was president of his local union for ten years. Since 2003 he has been active with Dorchester People for Peace in opposing US wars abroad and promoting social justice at home, in cooperation with many other grassroots organizations, and he edits the weekly newsletter DPP Update. During the past decade he has traveled almost every year to Palestine/Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East, participating in solidarity efforts and promoting freedom for the Palestinians from occupation and racism. He has spoken many times about the Israel-Palestine conflict in schools, churches, mosques, community and peace organizations, and has appeared on local TV and radio. He also published articles and op-ed pieces on US policy, politics and Middle East issues. In the 1980’s Jeff lived and worked in Nicaragua, then joined the South African freedom struggle, working for the exiled African National Congress in Lusaka, Zambia. He helped to teach English at the Association of Haitian Women in Boston (AFAB) for the past two years. He lives in Dorchester and has two grown children. Jeff serves on the steering committee of MAPA’s Palestine/Israel Working Group. His recent articles include “Voters have spoken — will Washington listen?”, “The Way the Wind Blows in Syria (and Beyond)”, and “Romney’s Iran Campaign”.
Maryellen Kurkulos – Fall River
Maryellen Kurkulos grew up in Fall River and has lived in New York, Baltimore and Athens, Greece. A graduate of Wellesley College, she received her doctorate in Biological Sciences from Columbia University and has been a researcher and professor of molecular biology and genetics. Over the last 11 years she has been involved in a range of anti-war and social justice activism including organizing for the Budget For All-MA campaign and Occupy Fall River. In 2005 she attended Z Media Institute, the annual summer school in Woods Hole run by cofounders of Z Magazine. She speaks fluent Demotic Greek, freelances as an interpreter and can make a pretty mean spanakopita.
Guntram Mueller – Newton
Guntram Mueller has been a member of the Board of Massachusetts Peace Action since 2008. He is a retired professor of mathematics at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. While there, he also designed and taught a philosophy course called The Cognitive Roots of Conflict, which received higher student acclaim than any of his mathematics courses. When his daughter was born in the 1970’s, and he saw his time of responsibility stretched out, Mueller designed a vertical axis windmill, with helical blades, and formed a company, Urban Turbine, to address the energy issue. Since 1989, he has been a member of 2020 Vision, a citizen action group concerned with nuclear weapons and environmental issues, and is now a member of the national core group of its successor, 2020 Action. Born in Germany, Mueller grew up in Montreal. He chairs MAPA’s Board of Directors and co-convenes its Nuclear Abolition Task Force.
Denise Simmons – Cambridge
Denise Simmons, a lifelong resident of Cambridge, is currently serving her sixth term on the Cambridge City Council. She was executive director of Cambridge Civic Unity Committee in the 1980s, served on the Cambridge School Committee in the 1990s, and was Mayor of Cambridge in 2008-2009, the nation’s first black, openly lesbian mayor. She supported legislation on environmental protection, affordable housing development, “green economy”, responsiveness to senior citizens, and closing of the educational gap in Cambridge public schools. She led discussions on issues of race and class. Simmons owns a small insurance business just outside of Central Square. She and her wife, Mattie Hayes, live with her grandchildren in the Central Square area.
Continuing Members
Because of staggered terms, existing at-large members Jaime Babson, Shelagh Foreman, Jonathan King, Eva Moseley, Prasannan Parthasarathi, John Ratliff, and Pat Salomon will continue to serve for another year before being eligible for re-election in spring 2018. Student chapter coordinators Haleigh Copley (Tufts), Micaela Fraccalossi (Emmanuel), Salman Habib (Harvard), Jenny Horsburgh (Newton North HS), Remy Pontes (Brandeis), and Kimia Tabatabaei (Newton South HS) continue to serve representing their clubs.
Nominating Additional Candidates
Any member may nominate him or herself or another member before March 27, 2017. See the 2017 Board Election Process or call the office at 617-354-2169 for information.
March 12, 2017