The Thomas Merton Center is a non-profit grassroots organization in Pittsburgh whose mission to build and support collaborative movements that empower marginalized populations to advance collective liberation from oppressive systems.
The Center was co-founded by Molly Rush and Larry Kessler in 1972. The Thomas Merton Center is named after Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani who wrote prolifically about issues related to peace and justice.
The traditional base of the Center was radical Catholic pacifists, but has since expanded to secular humanists and diverse community perspectives concerned with building a more peaceful and just world. The Center began in 1972 to protest the continuation of the Vietnam War, to work against federal cutbacks and to raise money to provide medical aid to Indochina.
The Center has also protested and peacefully demonstrated against a variety of issues including world and local hunger, exploitation of workers, militarism, and racial discrimination. [1]
During the 1980s, the Center worked extensively on nuclear disarmament, targeting local weapons makers Rockwell and Westinghouse, as well as organizing campaigns of solidarity and support to the people of Central and Latin American countries that were targeted by the Reagan administration. In the 1990s, organizing against the Gulf War and in response to the murder of Johnny Gammage by police, among other projects, were undertaken. With the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Center became central in organizing Pittsburgh's large anti-war protests and most recently served to facilitate and organize many of the educational and protest activities in September 2009 against and in response to the G20 Summit, including the Peoples' March, which was one of the largest protests in Pittsburgh in decades. Several local institutions grew out of the Center, including the Pittsburgh chapter of Amnesty International and the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.
Currently the center has active campaigns focused on building the New Economy Working Group movement, integrating the work of environmental justice groups locally, and creating a more peaceful world by working to end wars globally.
The Thomas Merton Award, a peace prize, has been awarded since 1972 by the Center. Past recipients include Dorothy Day, Noam Chomsky, Vandana Shiva, Martin Sheen and Fr. Roy Bourgeois.
Its current structure includes a Board of Directors, committees, affiliates, friends, projects, and members. Membership dues and donations provide much of the funding and the Board of Directors are elected to make decisions related to governance of policies at the Center. Several of the most active projects include Book 'Em, a books for prisoners program; the Environmental Justice Committee, the Pittsburgh Darfur Coalition, Haiti Solidarity, the Pittsburgh Chapter of Code Pink, Roots of Promise, Marcellus Protest Group, Fed Up! the Pittsburgh chapter of the Human Rights Coalition, and The East End Community Thrift Shop, which provides clothing and household items for low-income individuals in the area.
The Thomas Merton Center has four key focus areas: peace and non-violence; human rights; environmental justice; and economic justice. The Thomas Merton Center also acts as a fiscal umbrella for a number of smaller organizations that align with the peace and justice mission of the center. To name a few, Book'em Books for Prisoner program, Haiti Solidarity, Pittsburgh Progressive Notebook, Fight for Lifers West, Human Rights Coalition Fed' Up, Pittsburgh Darfur Coalition, Roots of Promise, Marcellus Protest Group, and Westmoreland Marcellus Protest Group.
The Thomas Merton Center publishes a monthly newspaper entitled The New People. It is a peace and justice newspaper for Pittsburgh and the Tri-State area. Published 11 times a year, "it fills the voids left by the mainstream media by providing an outlet that reflects progressive and alternative politics: locally, nationally and globally." [2]
The paper reports on the issues of war, poverty, racism and oppression, by focusing on the non-violent struggle to bring about a more peaceful and just world. The New People also acts as an organizing tool for Thomas Merton Center members and the activist community.
The Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) is an American Jewish 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization that deals with community relations. It is a coordinating round table organization of 15 other national Jewish organizations, including the Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox congregational movements, as well as 125 local Jewish federations and community relations councils. The JCPA describes itself as "the representative voice of the organized American Jewish community."
Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER), also known as International A.N.S.W.E.R. and the ANSWER Coalition, is a United States–based protest umbrella group consisting of many antiwar and civil rights organizations. Formed in the wake of the September 11th attacks, ANSWER has since helped to organize many of the largest anti-war demonstrations in the United States, including demonstrations of hundreds of thousands against the Iraq War. The group has also organized activities around a variety of other issues, ranging from the Israel/Palestine debate to immigrant rights to Social Security to the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles.
Peace Action is a peace organization whose focus is on preventing the deployment of nuclear weapons in space, thwarting weapons sales to countries with human rights violations, and promoting a new United States foreign policy based on common security and peaceful resolution to international conflicts.
The Student Environmental Action Coalition(SEAC) was a student-run, student-led US national environmental group that originated in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In the beginning it focused primarily on conserving, protecting, and restoring the natural environment, but later its member student environmental organizations took on a broader definition of the environment that includes racism, sexism, militarism, heterosexism, economic justice, and animal rights.
United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is a coalition of more than 1,300 international and U.S.-based organizations opposed to "our government's policy of permanent warfare and empire-building."
Veterans for Peace is an organization founded in 1985. Initially made up of US military veterans of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War, and as well as peacetime veterans and non-veterans, it has since spread overseas and has an active offshoot in the United Kingdom. The group works to promote alternatives to war.
New Jewish Agenda (NJA) was a multi-issue membership organization active in the United States between 1980 and 1992 and made up of about 50 local chapters. NJA's slogan was "a Jewish voice among progressives and a progressive voice among Jews." New Jewish Agenda demonstrated commitment to participatory (grassroots) democracy and civil rights for all people, especially those marginalized within the mainstream Jewish community. NJA was most controversial for its stances on the rights of Palestinians and Lesbian and Gay Jews.
The Anti-War Committee (AWC) is a grassroots political organization based in Minneapolis, Minnesota that wants to end U.S. intervention.
Student Peace Action Network or SPAN is the student wing of Peace Action. [1] It is also a coordinating committee member of the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition (NYSPC). [2] SPAN works to end U.S. militarism, nuclear weapons, weapons trafficking, and “the complex webs of corporate and military power that perpetuate racism, damage the environment, deprive people of basic needs, and violate human rights.” [3]It currently has over 130 chapters and affiliates.
Pittsburgh Organizing Group, often referred to as POG, was a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based anarchist organization concerned with anti-militarism, social and economic justice, labor solidarity and police brutality issues locally, nationally, and internationally. POG was formed in 2002, and since then it has been responsible for the most persistent local protests against the Iraq War and claims to be one of the largest radical groups in Pittsburgh. The group has organized protests, pickets, vigils, direct actions, street theatre, concerts, teach-ins, conferences, and rallies. Some of its events have been overtly confrontational and disruptive. More than 122 people have been arrested at POG organized direct actions, and some events have involved direct confrontation with the police. POG is an affiliate group of the Northeast Anarchist Network.
American Jewish World Service (AJWS) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit international development and human rights organization that supports community-based organizations in 19 countries in the developing world and works to educate the American Jewish community about global justice. It is the first and only Jewish organization dedicated solely to ending poverty and promoting human rights in the developing world. Its headquarters are in New York City. AJWS has received a Four Star rating from Charity Navigator since 2002.
Catholic social activism in the United States is the practical application of the notions of Catholic social teaching into American public life. Its roots can be traced to the 19th century encyclical Rerum novarum of Pope Leo XIII.
David Rubenstein was the founding Executive Director for the Save Darfur Coalition. He helped develop a 182-member coalition to end violence and reduce the suffering in Darfur.
Molly Rush is a Catholic anti-war, civil and women's rights activist born in 1935. She co-founded the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, along with Larry Kessler in 1972, She was one of the Plowshares eight defendants. They faced trial after an anti-nuclear weapons symbolic action at a nuclear missile plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
Haya Shalom is a lesbian feminist and human rights activist. She graduated from Hebrew University in Jerusalem in History Studies. Shalom was nominated among 1000 women for The Nobel Peace Prize. She is of Sephardic extraction.
This is a list of George Floyd protests in Alaska, United States. Protests occurred in at least thirteen various communities in the state.
This is a list of George Floyd protests in Kentucky, United States. In 2020, there were protests throughout Kentucky in reaction to the murder of George Floyd and the shooting of Breonna Taylor by police, as well as the shooting of David McAtee by the Kentucky Army National Guard. The demonstrations happened regularly in the largest cities in Kentucky, including Louisville and Lexington. Many of the smaller cities had protests on at least one day.
This is a list of protests in Pennsylvania related to the murder of George Floyd.
Black Alliance for Peace is a non-profit organization based in the United States that is focused on human rights from an anti-war, anti-imperialist perspective. The Latin American and Caribbean Community Center Inc. is the fiscal sponsor of the organization.
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