War Resisters League Peace Award

Last updated

Since 1958, the War Resisters League, the pacifist group founded in 1923, has awarded almost annually its War Resisters League Peace Award [1] to a person or organization whose work represents the League's commitment to radical nonviolent action.

Contents

Laureates

YearAwardeeSpeaker at ceremonyNotes
1958 Jeannette Rankin
1959 AJ Muste Martin Luther King Jr.
1960 Fenner Brockway and Bayard Rustin
1961 Tracy Mygatt and Frances M. Witherspoon Murray Kempton and Bayard Rustin
1962 Jim Peck Douglas Campbell and Bayard Rustin
1963 Dorothy Day Evan Thomas and AJ Muste
1964 James Bevel and Diane Nash A. Philip Randolph
1965 Bayard Rustin Milton Mayer
1966 Norman Thomas Mulford Sibley
1967 Barbara Deming Ralph DiGia
1968The Resistance
1969 Ammon Hennacy Dinner was canceled
1970People Resisting within the Military
1971Majorie Swann Lanza del Vasto
1972 Ann Upshure Recognition only; not an official award
1973No dinner
1974 Daniel Berrigan Allen Ginsberg
1975 Dave Dellinger
1976 Julius Eichel
1977 Marion Bromley and Ernest Bromley
1978 David Berkingoff and Prafulla Mukerj
1979 Igal Roodenko
1980 Grace Paley
1981 Ralph DiGia Recognition only; not an award
1982Bent Andreson
1983 Virginia Eggleston, Thomas Grabell, and Ashley King
1984 Larry Gara
1985 Barbara Reynolds
1986 Plowshares Disarmament Community
1987 Dorie Bunting
1988 Don Luce, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), John McAuliff, David Truong, Bob Eaton, and Lady Borton
1989Children of War
1990 Esther Pank and Riley Bostrom
1991Gulf War Resisters
1992 War Tax Resisters, especially activists in Colrain, Massachusetts, An Act of Conscience
1993WRL’s 70th Anniversary
1994No dinner/award
1995No dinner/award
1996 The Living Theatre
1997 Bob Moses
1998 Odetta, Charlie King, People's Voice Cafe, and Pete Seeger
1999 David McReynolds
2000Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, Puerto Rico
2001Kate Donnelly and Clay Colt
2002 Christian Peacemaker Teams
2003 September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
2004 Fernando Suarez del Solar of Military Families Speak Out
2005 Karl Bissinger and Ralph DiGia
2006Women Resisting War from within the Military: Diedra Cobb, Anita Cole, Kelly Dougherty and Katherine Jashinski Presented by Ann Wright
2007 Center for Constitutional Rights and Torture Abolition Survivors and Support Coalition International

Posthumous lifetime achievement award: Grace Paley

2008Kali Akuno and Shana Griffin representing grassroots groups working to rebuild New OrleansA concert with Steve Earle, Allison Moorer, Stephanie McKay, Red Baraat Festival, and Jan Bell and the Cheap Dates
2009 Dennis Brutus, Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), and Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ)

Grace Paley Lifetime Achievement Award: Bill Sutherland, Pan-Africanist and WWII Conscientious Objector

2010 Kathy Kelly
2011Afghan Youth Peace VolunteersAward was declined. The group didn’t want to distract from the people in Afghanistan needing support and a voice.
2012Asma Mohammed, Suez Port Worker and Labor Leader
2013 Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, Daniel Ellsberg

Ralph DiGia Award: Joanne Sheehan, New England WRL

2014No Peace Award

Ralph DiGia Award: Ruth Benn

2015 Mumia Abu-Jamal
2016 Jannat Al Ghezi
2017 Mariame Kaba

Grace Paley Lifetime Achievement Award: Rasmea Odeh

2018 Corrina Gould and The Peace Poets

Grace Paley Lifetime Achievement Award: Mandy Carter (activist)

2019 Highlander Research and Education Center

Related Research Articles

The War Resisters League (WRL) is the oldest secular pacifist organization in the United States. The organization is celebrating its centennial from the founding date of October 19 into 2024.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A. J. Muste</span> Dutch-American Christian pacifist and civil rights activist (1885-1967)

Abraham Johannes Muste was a Dutch-born American clergyman and political activist. He is best remembered for his work in the labor movement, pacifist movement, antiwar movement, and civil rights movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David McReynolds</span> American politician and social activist

David Ernest McReynolds was an American politician and social activist who was a prominent democratic socialist and pacifist activist. He described himself as "a peace movement bureaucrat" during his 40-year career with the War Resisters League. He was a resident of New York City. McReynolds was twice a candidate for President of the United States, running atop the ticket of the Socialist Party USA in 1980 and 2000. He was America's first openly gay presidential candidate.

Charlie King is an American folk singer and activist.

The Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (CCCO) was a United States nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people avoid or resist military conscription or seek discharge after voluntary enlistment. It was active in supporting conscientious objectors ("CO's"), war resisters and draft evaders during the Vietnam War. Founded in Philadelphia in 1948 and dissolved in 2011, CCCO emphasized the needs of secular and activist COs, while other organizations supporting COs principally focused on religious objectors and/or legislative reform and government relations.

WRL can stand for different things:

The Itsy Pocket Computer is a small, low-power, handheld device with a highly flexible interface. It was designed at Digital Equipment Corporation's Western Research Laboratory to encourage novel user interface development—for example, it had accelerometers to detect movement and orientation as early as 1999.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathy Kelly</span>

Kathy Kelly is an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of Voices in the Wilderness, and, until the campaign closed in 2020, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. As part of peace team work in several countries, she has traveled to Iraq twenty-six times, notably remaining in combat zones during the early days of both US–Iraq wars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Igal Roodenko</span> American activist (1917–1991)

Igal Roodenko was an American civil rights activist, and pacifist.

Paolo Maurensig was an Italian novelist, best known for his book Canone inverso (1996), a complex tale of a violin and its owners.

Ralph DiGia was a World War II conscientious objector, lifelong pacifist and social justice activist, and staffer for 52 years at the War Resisters League.

Wellington Rugby League is the local sporting body responsible for the administration of Rugby league in the Greater Wellington region. It is responsible for the local competition of the same name, as well as its representative team, the Wellington rugby league team.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jessie Wallace Hughan</span> American activist

Jessie Wallace Hughan was an American educator, a socialist activist, and a radical pacifist. During her college days she was one of four co-founders of Alpha Omicron Pi, a national fraternity for university women. She also was a founder and the first Secretary of the War Resisters League, established in 1923. For over two decades, she was a perennial candidate for political office on the ticket of the Socialist Party of America in her home state of New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antimilitarism</span> Ideology that opposes militarism

Antimilitarism is a doctrine that opposes war, relying heavily on a critical theory of imperialism and was an explicit goal of the First and Second International. Whereas pacifism is the doctrine that disputes should be settled without recourse to violence, Paul B. Miller defines anti-militarism as "ideology and activities...aimed at reducing the civil power of the military and ultimately, preventing international war". Cynthia Cockburn defines an anti-militarist movement as one opposed to "military rule, high military expenditure or the imposition of foreign bases in their country". Martin Ceadel points out that anti-militarism is sometimes equated with pacificism—general opposition to war or violence, except in cases where force is deemed necessary to advance the cause of peace.

RESIST is a philanthropic non-profit organization based out of Boston, Massachusetts. It has provided grants to grassroots activist organizations around the country since its inception in 1967 as a result of the anti-war proclamation "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority".

Frances May Witherspoon was an American writer and activist, co-founder with Tracy Dickinson Mygatt of the War Resisters League, and executive secretary of the New York Bureau of Legal Advice, a forerunner of the American Civil Liberties Union.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tracy Dickinson Mygatt</span> American dramatist

Tracy Dickinson Mygatt was an American writer and pacifist, co-founder with Frances M. Witherspoon of the War Resisters League, and longtime officer of the Campaign for World Government.

Mariame Kaba is an American activist, grassroots organizer, and educator who advocates for the abolition of the prison industrial complex, including all police. She is the author of We Do This 'Til We Free Us (2021). The Mariame Kaba Papers are held by the Chicago Public Library Special Collections.

References