Debra Sweet, Director of WorldCantWait.org, has been active against US wars and for social justice since age 15. In 1968 she organized high school students to fund the Freedom Farm Co-op in Mississippi with Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, for which she received a humanitarian award from the White House. In 1970, while receiving that award, she confronted President Richard Nixon over his responsibility for killing millions in southeast Asia.
Through decades of working to stop police killings of people of color, restrictions on women's right to abortion, destruction of the planet, she believes the capitalist-imperialist system is not permanent and must be abolished. She works towards a radically new system to meet the basic needs of people across the globe, which will serve the highest interests of humanity.
Kathy Kelly made over two dozen trips to Afghanistan from 2010 – 2019, living with young Afghan Peace Volunteers in a working-class neighborhood in Kabul.
With Voices in the Wilderness companions, from 1996 - 2003, she traveled 27 times to Iraq, defying the economic sanctions and remaining in Iraq throughout the Shock and Awe bombing and the initial weeks of the invasion.
With Voices delegations, she went to the West Bank's Jenin Camp in 2002 during and after Israeli attacks, to Lebanon during the 2006 summer war between Israel and Hezbollah and to Gaza, in 2009, during Operation Cast Lead and following the 2013 Operation Pillar of Defense.
Kathy has been an educator for most of her life, but she believes children of war and those who are victims of violence have been her most important teachers.
She served time in U.S. federal prisons for three nonviolent civil disobedience actions, including a one year sentence for planting corn on top of an underground nuclear weapon.
She is helping prepare evidence for the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal which begins November 12, 2023 and she is board president of World BEYOND War.
Gloria Caballero-Roca is a Cuban-American living in Holyoke since 1999. She is an academic, an activist, a community organizer and a fighter for peace, justice and the preservation of the Pacha Mama, Mother Earth. A member of the Green Rainbow Party Coalition, Gloria has run for mayor in the city of Holyoke, ran for the Commonwealth State Auditor and this year is running for Holyoke School Committee, Ward 4.
Sadly our dear friend Shirey Archie unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack. He will be missed by many.
Better known as "Archie" in his activist and work world. Archie was a thirty year resident of the capital district and a late comer to social justice and activism. Archie never marched with Martin but he has walked with Jun-San and the Grafton peace pagoda community. Archie's goal was to raise awareness of racism as it permeates every facet of our day to day lives and how it connects the other evils of militarism, economic injustice and environmental devastation. www.StandAgainstRacism.info
David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is the director of World BEYOND War, a global nonviolent movement to end war and establish a just and sustainable peace. He is campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org.
David’s books on war and peace include Leaving World War II Behind (an argument against the use of WWII as reason for more wars), War Is A Lie (a catalog of the types of falsehoods regularly told about wars), War Is Never Just (a refutation of just war theory), and When the World Outlawed War (an account of the 1920s peace movement and the creation of the Kellogg Briand Pact), as well as (co-author) A Global Security System: An Alternative to War(a vision of a world of nonviolent institutions).
David blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts a weekly radio show called Talk World Radio. He speaks frequently on the topic of war and peace, and engages in all kinds of nonviolent activism. He recently drafted a resolution urging Congress to move money from the military to human and environmental needs, rather than the reverse. Versions of the resolution were passed by several cities and by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. David also organized, with a lot of help from the Backbone Campaign, a flotilla of 50 kayaks that held banners on the Potomac River in front of the Pentagon reading “No wars for oil / No oil for wars.”
David is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and was awarded the 2018 Peace Prize by the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation.
Swanson is on the advisory boards of: Nobel Peace Prize Watch, Veterans For Peace, Assange Defense, BPUR, Military Families Speak Out, Fields of Peace, and Peace in Ukraine Coalition. He is an Associate of the Transnational Foundation, and a Patron of Platform for Peace and Humanity. He is on the Consultative Council of the SHAPE Project.
David holds a Master’s degree in philosophy from UVA and has long lived and worked in Charlottesville, Virginia.
In 2022, Swanson’s words were featured and spoken by an actor in a film called Voices for Peace by Creative Action Unlimited and directed by Michael Kennedy and John Stevenson.
In 2020, Swanson co-edited a poetry collection, Second Name of Earth Is Peace.
From November 2019 to September 2020 Swanson was a member of the Retirement Commission of the City of Charlottesville, having led in the spring of 2019 a successful effort to divest the city’s operating budget from fossil fuels and weapons and to persuade the city to commit to doing the same with its retirement fund.
Martha Hennessy, seventh grandchild of Dorothy Day divides her time between the family farm in Vermont and practicing the works of mercy at Maryhouse Catholic Worker in New York City.
She is 68, a retired occupational therapist, and grandmother of ten. She has been imprisoned protesting war and nuclear power/weapons, the use of drones, and the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo and US prisons.
She has traveled to Russia, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Korea, and Palestine to understand the impact of United States foreign military policy and the effects on countries around the world.
Martha travels and speaks on the topics of her Catholic faith, family life, work in community, Catholic Social Teaching, war and peace, nuclear abolition, and peacemaking efforts in the tradition of the Catholic Worker movement.