Last Sunday, we celebrated Peace Action’s 60th Anniversary with 200 of our closest friends, allies and accomplices at Christ Church in Cambridge – in the same room where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Dr. Benjamin Spock, a leader of our predecessor organization SANE, spoke in 1967 to denounce the Vietnam war, after being denied permission to speak at Harvard.
Thank you to everyone who was able to join us! Comedian Jimmy Tingle used historical peace movement photos to help us remember our shared history, lampooned our orange president, and played auctioneer. Folk musicians Kate Seeger, Kim Wallach, and Dean Spencer, and rappers Eroc Arroyo and Optimus Browne (The Foundation Movement), entertained and inspired us.
We heard calls to action, unity, and love from Rep. Jim McGovern; peace and progressive organizers Jordan Berg-Powers, Angela Kelly, and Brian Corr; and young MAPA activists Brenton Stoddart, Mike VanElzakker, and Kimia Tabatabaei.
We celebrated the lifetime achievements of Elizabeth Ainsley Campell, a state and national co-chair of SANE/Freeze; Frances Crowe, draft counselor and legendary Quaker peace activist in Northampton; Randy Kehler, early national director of the Nuclear Freeze Campaign in the 1980s; Mel King, community activist and Rainbow Coalition founder; Dr. Bernard Lown, whose International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) won the Nobel Prize; and Sayre Sheldon, first president of Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND).
If you missed the celebration, some photos from the night are available at https://www.facebook.com/pg/masspeaceaction/photos/?tab=album&album_id=10154809764465723. You can also view the slideshow reviewing 60 years of Peace Action history.
Watch video of Brenton Stoddart on the Middle East, Angela Kelly on campus organizing, Jordan Berg-Powers on impacting elections, The Foundation Movement‘s hip-hop, MC Jimmy Tingle and more Jimmy Tingle, and folksingers Kate Seeger, Kim Wallach and Dean Spencer.
With the successful celebration, we have now raised over $35,000 towards our $60,000 goal. We’re pleased with our progress, but still need more support to reach our goal and enable Massachusetts Peace Action to strengthen our work for peace in 2018.
If you were unable to support Massachusetts Peace Action’s programs at Sunday’s fundraiser, will you support our organizing work with a contribution today?
Your tax-deductible donation will support programs like this weekend’s Presidential First Use conference, bringing together constitutional law scholars, statesmen and experts to examine the U.S. policy by which one man can destroy millions of lives in a single afternoon, and our series of talks on the North Korea nuclear crisis next week by journalist Tim Shorrock.