Massachusetts Students Organize for Peace
This article by Alina Michelewicz appeared in our summer 2015 MAPA newsletter.
This May marks one year that Massachusetts Peace Action has had a campus organizer. Although there have been ups and downs as MAPA embarks into the world of student organizing, overall the year has been a success. As the Campus Organizer, I have enjoyed working at MAPA to try to increase student and youth involvement in the peace and justice movement.
This past year I have done outreach to over 45 campuses in Massachusetts and held over a dozen one-to-ones with students and faculty in the greater Boston area to better get to know what makes peace activists on college campuses tick these days. Outreach and education to students are ongoing processes, and are very important to cultivate the leaders of tomorrow’s peace movement. We have begun to grow a student email list and have a daily presence on social media in order to educate and engage young people about current issues.
In the fall we held an event on the Gaza war at Suffolk University, and three campus talks about Iraq and Syria. With AFSC, we reached over 500 high school students with talks about nuclear weapons by Japanese hibakusha (A-bomb survivors), and we brought over a dozen students from Assumption College and Harvard to the Peace & Planet rally in NYC.
The summer will be a time to plan and double down on outreach in anticipation of the new school year. I look forward to continuing efforts to engage young activists in the peace movement through our work with high school and college students.