By Janet Slagter
September 2021
1. Planning, Planning, Planning!
WILPF's Triennial Congress has been delayed a year, until 2022. It will be virtual, held in July, and hosted by Australia. Given time differences between US and Australian time zones, you can expect some sessions to be held during hours when you would ordinarily not be awake or online. Sessions will be recorded and accessible later, too.
Meanwhile, as Beatriz Schulthess and I discussed in our panel at the recent WILPF US Congress (Saturday, August 21st), plans are being developed for all of the following:
1. The Congress itself
2. WILPF's International Program for 2022-2025
3. Organizational Development and restructuring for international WILPF.
To that end, the International Secretariat has hired, through a grant from PeaceNexus, a South African consultancy group, The Strategy Circle, to work with us on analyzing what we, as International WILPF, need and how to go about getting there. Mignon Keyser and Jerushah Rangasamy are the two strategists who have been assigned to work with WILPF. They have met with the International Board to discuss their plans and have solicited ideas from board members on what is important and how to proceed.
Below are links to two documents they have prepared for us to use to guide our discussions, "Future WILPF Discussion Guide," and “Peace, Feminism, and the Environment.”
We need to schedule meetings within the next weeks, both with US WILPFers and with other sections in the Americas, to discuss the contents of these documents and to prepare our responses! All responses, as well as all resolutions for congress, and all suggestions for changes to the International WILPF Constitution and Bylaws must be submitted by December.
Here are the links to the most recent documents International Board members have received from our consultants to share with our sections.
This global call's focuses, concentrating on the topic of social justice and the environment, are: What are the main problems and challenges WILPFers want to address? What major trends and developments are affecting our work? What kinds of outcomes can WILPF achieve together in these Work Areas? Links to the registration site and necessary documents for participating in this call.
Peace, Feminism, and the Environment Discussion Paper
2. Future WILPF Global Calls
Like the call on "Socioecomonic Justice and the Environment "that took place September 7th, 7:00 EDT, 6:00 CDT, 5:00 MDT, 4:00 PDT, WILPF International will be scheduling global calls on other important topics in the upcoming weeks.
If you were unable to join that call but want to participate in WILPF's environmental policy development, you can send your thoughts to membership@wilpf.org with "Future WILPF" in your subject line.
This global call's focuses, concentrating on the topic of social justice and the environment, are:
What are the main problems and challenges WILPFers want to address? What major trends and developments are affecting our work? What kinds of outcomes can WILPF achieve together in these Work Areas?
Links to the registration site and necessary documents for participating in this call.
Peace, Feminism, and the Environment Discussion Paper
Cllck here to read discussion paper
For more information on plans for the 2022 congress, see the WILPF website. You can also email me at janetsl@csufresno.edu
The first cohort social on Sunday, May 16, 2021, “The He(Art) of Healing through Storytelling,” members (1) learned about storytelling as a theoretical framework, (2) created an interactive space to utilize storytelling as a tool of empowerment, (3) connect storytelling to community organizing, and (4) start the journey of telling their story. Members engaged in interactive activities that allowed them to practice their storytelling skills. 
It was inspiring to listen to Vandana Shiva and Patti Naylor, an Iowa farmer, discuss that we have the power to resist and transform the current highly toxic industrial-chemical GMO agricultural system of crop and food production. 
Darien De Lu, WILPF US President and Congress Tech Team Core Member is a peace, justice, and Latin America solidarity activist in the Sacramento branch. She writes her California ballot guide (for over 20 years) plus political and labor songs – and sings frequently! Prior to retiring, she bicycle-commuted for twelve years to her California state jobs, addressing substance use and co-occurring disorders. She and her husband bike, especially to the local food co-op. Darien speaks several languages and has traveled extensively. An activist for over fifty years, Darien has been a consensus process and nonviolence trainer. Her civil disobedience direct actions and subsequent jail time inform her activism. 
Matt Hoh is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. Until his resignation five years ago, he was a board member of Council for a Livable World, one of the larger national security/arms control organizations in the Peace and Security Funders Group (PSFG).
Nada Farhat is a human rights activist in Lebanon and in the United States. With an educational background in Human Services and Psychology, Nada works effortlessly to improve the quality of life of those less fortunate. Women, children, and persons with special needs are her main focus. An ambassador of the National Rehabilitation Center in Lebanon, her recent work includes the establishment of a technical school for kids with learning difficulties, as well as COVID-19 relief to women and children of the mountains of Lebanon. Nada’s focus within WILPF US is in the Middle East Peace and Justice Action Committee, recently focusing on the corruption and deteriorating economic conditions in Lebanon. 
Shirine Jurdi started her career working on consultancy projects with Ministry of the Return of the Displaced, UNODC and as a researcher Lebanese Heritage at Lebanese American University. Ms. Jurdi is a WILPF Lebanon member as well as the WILPF International Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Regional Representative. In March 2019 Shirine joined the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict as the MENA regional Liaison officer. She has extensive work with the Women Peace and Security as a regional consultant, as well her work on disarmament. She has been active with the Permanent Peace Movement on disarmament issues and is currently team leader of WILPF Lebanon on Banning KILLER Robots Campaign. 
Hala Kilani joined the climate movement in 2016 and has been serving as Senior Communications Officer with the international Secretariat of the Climate Action Network, grouping more than 1,300 organizations advocating climate action and ambition. She has been working with the network since then while pursuing various activities with a number of other organizations to support advancement on human and women´s rights including WILPF Lebanon. She has an MA in Anthropology from University College London.
Jan Corderman works with local and WILPF US committees to bring the Palestinian narrative into the public discourse. She served as a union organizer for over 30 years prior to her retirement. Jan has served as the WILPF US Treasurer since 2017.
Daoud Nassar is a Palestinian Christian, a farmer, and the Director of the Tent of Nations Project. Focusing on living a life from faith, hope, and love, Daoud lives from an ethic of non-violent resistance: “refusing to be enemies” in the face of continuous obstacles he faces on a daily basis.
Virginia Wadsley is an Iowa farm girl who did community organizing with a low-income community that was being displaced in Atlanta, Georgia. She has also authored several books and is active with social justice issues. She “captains” the TON of Hope Book project’s team.
Sikowis (Christine Nobiss) is Plains Cree/Saulteaux of the George Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada, and grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. At 19, she began her life's work of uplifting Indigenous voices when she got her first job at the New Brunswick Aboriginal Peoples Council in Fredericton, Canada and now she is the Founder and Executive Director of Great Plains Action Society—a 100% Indigenous organization working towards climate and social justice. She is also a speaker, writer, and artist and believes that environmental and social justice work are inextricably linked and change will only happen when we dismantle corrupt colonial-capitalist systems and rebuild them with a decolonized worldview. Sikowis graduated from the University of Iowa with an MA in Religious Studies (with a focus on Native American Religion and Culture) and a Graduate Minor in American Indian Native Studies. 
Janna Pratt is a member of the George Gordon First Nation and an Indigenous Matriarch from Treaty 4 territory, Canada. She has spearheaded a labour law campaign that led to changes in Saskatchewan to empower First Nation leadership in 2020. With the recent discoveries of children who perished while attending Indian residential schools, her sights are now set on finding the children. Janna is a 4th generation residential school survivor and has lived through the decimation of culture these schools forced upon children, built under a policy enforced by the Canadian government to inflict cultural genocide. Janna is currently working on an archive that will gather information on residential schools, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples, and veteran information to build resources for Indigenous communities. She hopes to inspire other projects with this knowledge and create Indigenous virtual reality experiences that are accessible no matter the distance.
Janet Slagter is a retired philosophy Ph.D. who has been a professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She taught for more than 20 years at CSU-Fresno, and also at Southern Illinois University, Earlham College, in Malaysia, in Kenya, and at men's prisons. Jan has been a social justice activist since the mid-60s, working on ending wars and establishing peace since the US war on Viet Nam, on advancing women's rights, abortion access, justice for survivors of sexual assault, on rights for students and faculty members, on the ERA, and on uncovering US government and corporate exploitation in many countries. She has been an active WILPF member for more than 20 years in the Fresno branch and currently serves as the alternate Regional Director for the Americas on the WILPF International Board of Directors. She serves on the committee that developed this Congress.
Patricia Wells, a musician/actor/director, first studied theater with Agustin Lira in 1974 and later studied guitar and voice, upon returning in 1979 from Mexico City D.F., where she was a student at UNAM. Aside from playing and singing, she became the business manager and tour coordinator for the musical group Alma, recording CDs and touring the Southwest and US for many years. Invitations to festivals in Mexico and Cuba followed; in recent years she performed for the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Program - Homegrown Series & the Millenium Stage of the Kennedy Performing Arts Center 2011 and the American Folklife Festival Ralph Rinzler Memorial Concert Series in 2015. She and Agustín Lira started Teatro Inmigrante in 1999. She has acted, written, directed, and produced a number of shows with Lira: 
Nancy Price, the moderator, joined WILPF in 2002, first with “Challenge Corporate Power/Assert the People’s Rights,” then “Save the Water” campaigns. Currently she is an At-Large Board Member and Earth Democracy Issue Committee Co-chair. In 2011 when “Save the Water” expanded to Earth Democracy, Nancy and the leadership team created campaign materials on the human right to water, bottled water, environmental impacts of free trade agreements, Climate Justice+Women+Peace, Human Right to Safe Food, and Rights of Nature. Most recently, Earth Democracy has focused on the impact of war on the environment and helped create the 
Barbara R. Arnwine, esq, president and founder of the Transformative Justice Coalition, is internationally renowned for contributions to critical justice issues, including the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1991 and the 2006 reauthorization of provisions of the Voting Rights Act. She is a part of many notable organizations concerning civil rights advocacy. As a graduate of Scripps College and Duke University School of Law, she continues to champion civil rights and racial justice issues nationally and internationally in the areas of housing and lending, women’s rights, especially issues affecting intersectionality and African American women and girls, community development, employment, voting, education, policing restructuring, and environmental justice. Her groundbreaking civil rights and human rights advocacy has been honored with many prestigious awards.
Jan BenDor is a founding member of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Michigan Election Reform Alliance.org, which advocates for voter protection, election verification, and comprehensive election security. A state-accredited elections administrator and election worker trainer, with lengthy experience as a deputy township clerk, she volunteers as the Michigan Election ReformAlliance Statewide Coordinator. MERA co-led the successful 2018 effort to stop gerrymandering in Michigan, passing a state constitutional amendment to establish an Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. Jan joined the Board of Directors of the National Election Defense Coalition in 2014.
Anne Barron has been a long-time peace and justice advocate in her communities, involved in study circles, human rights campaigns, direct action, and restorative practices. She is currently a board member of the Peace Resource Center of San Diego, working on criminal justice and educational justice projects. Her activism began in Davis in 1982, for women’s rights and against apartheid. She participated in the successful student-led movement to divest the University of California from companies that supported apartheid in South Africa at the time. She now is busy providing conflict resolution and de-escalation training at the Peace Resource Center of San Diego, and provides direct assistance to groups planning marches, rallies, and protests in San Diego. She also is working and evolving a Peace Economy, which examines and promotes ways to transition from a war economy to economic peace. 
Carroll Boone has studied & practiced nonviolence based on the teachings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King and their followers. She designed a class based on her studies and experience (and the experiences of her students) that she named Respect Based Communication; named because she finds that respecting differences is the most difficult practice in a world that promotes “being right”; separates us into categories; and teaches us to shame and blame. Carroll has worked with multiple community groups: Nonviolent Peace Force, Creating a Culture of Peace, United African American Ministerial Action Council (UAAMAC), Peace with Justice Ministry, and Hate-Free San Diego. As a Peace Activist, Carroll is also a certified facilitator for Alternatives to Violence (AVP) and International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP). Carroll moved to La Mesa, CA in 2003 to be an in-town Grandmother. 
Mary Hanna, M.Ed., has been the Operations Manager for Meta Peace Team since 2005. She coordinates MPT’s Nonviolence Skills Training program and the MPT Internship program. As a member of MPT, she has served on both international and domestic (within the United States) peace teams. Mary’s broad experience allows her to connect with people from all walks of life. Her emphasis is on encouraging others to consider nonviolence as a way of life by appealing to both the heart and the head: She is well-versed in both the strategic and statistical contributions of nonviolent social action, as well as recounting individual, personal stories of successful nonviolent peacemaking.
Anne Hoiberg served for 25 years as a Research Psychologist for the federal government; her curriculum vita includes two books and more than 130 scientific articles, book chapters, reports, and presentations. She volunteered as an election supervisor for the U.S. Department of State (eight missions) and hosted a television series on peace and women’s rights. She is a past president of three organizations and currently serves as Board President of the Women's Museum of California and four other organizations. She was inducted into the San Diego County Women's Hall of Fame in 2012. She is a freelance writer and speaker. 
Sr. LaVern Olberding grew up in rural America where neighbors took care of each other. She has been a Franciscan instrument of peace for 60 years. As a teacher, campus minister, and pastoral care coordinator for halfway housed felons, she has been a strong advocate for collaborative justice and active nonviolence. She currently serves as the President on the Board of Directors of the Peace Resource Center of San Diego.
Theresa El-Amin is the founder of the Southern Anti-Racism Network, 1998 to present. Theresa says her "aha moment" was meeting Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) in Jean Wiley's classroom at Tuskegee in 1966. She joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) where she volunteered at the Atlanta SNCC office with the support of John Lewis, SNCC Chairman before Stokely Carmichael. She worked at the phone company for nearly 20 years. She was active in CWA Local 3204. Became a union organizer for SEIU in 1986. She's been on the Freedom Trail for 55 years. 
George Friday fundraised for SANE (now Peace Action) in the 1980s, was Development/Assistant Director of the Piedmont Peace Project in the 1990s. She directed a National Office of Juvenile Justice project: 2000-2004. George co-chaired United for Peace and Justice: 2005-8, National Field Organizer for the Bill of Rights Defense Committee: 2008-16. George was one of the founding members of Move to Amend: 2009. Since 2017 George has been staff to NC Peace Action and United for Peace and Justice. She became Vice Chair of the Southern Anti-Racism Network in 2020 and organized the Triad branch in NC in 2021
Chantaye McLaughlin grew up in Savannah, GA, is a mother, on-air personality, activist, financial consultant, business owner, and member of several organizations. She is 41 and at age 14 began organizing book drives and planting trees where she grew up. She is a graduate of Georgia State University with a BA in Journalism and has a background in the music industry. Chantaye is also a 2021 Candidate for East Point, GA Ward B At-Large City Council. She is committed to ending the stigma of mental health, and supporting the eradication of homelessness and restorative rights to those who have faced mass incarceration.
Rosa Saavedra, panel moderator, has 25+ years of community and farmworker organizing experience utilizing participatory methodology. She developed a regional Latino leadership program in the Southeast as an Education Team member with Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee. Rosa is cofounder of Compañeras Campesinas a peer support network of rural Latina women in North Carolina and Puerto Rico. She currently serves as Southeast Regional Organizer with Bread for the World, a member of Triangle WILPF branch in NC, and Southern Anti-Racism Network board member. She is the grateful momma of two amazing people.
Nikki Abeleda(she/they), is a First-Generation Queer Filipinx on Nisenan and Miwok land, also known as Sacramento, CA. She is a community organizer, clinical social worker, and therapist at a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC). She is an advocate for mental health, social justice, and Black Indigenous and People of Color issues, particularly among the LGBTQIA community and all marginalized communities. Nikki serves as WILPF US’s Field Facilitator for the Inside and Out Initiative to help six WILPF branches with capacity building, reformalization, and restructuring and works on the Congress organizing team on marketing and communications.
Bianca Humady Rey was born and raised in the Philippines. She moved to the United States in the fall of 1998, and began working in the healthcare field in 1999. She is currently an Equity, Inclusion and Diversity Specialist at Kaiser Permanente Mid-Atlantic States (KPMAS) Region. Bianca is also one of the National and Regional Co-Chair of Kaiser Permanente’s KP Pride Business Resource Group (BRG). Bianca’s passions include a devotion to the normalizing and visibility of the Transgender Communities Nationally and Internationally. She has worked with: Equality Virginia’s Transgender Advocacy Speakers Bureau (TASB) Program as a Speaker/Facilitator, Equality Virginia as a Board Member, and the first Transgender woman to be elected as Co-Chair of Asian and Pacific Islander Queers United for Action (AQUA-DC).
Nghĩa Nguyên (she/they), walks the tightrope of intersectional identities such as woman, transgender, Vietnamese, and refugee, and she fights as a survivor, artist, and activist. She was born in Vietnam, raised in Southern California, and sharpened her political teeth in Portland, Oregon. Nghia writes and acts to break the silence and chains that have been enforced on her community through colonization, sexism, racism, and transphobia. Her work challenges our notion of identities, relationships, and journeys. She comes from a long line of shamanism spirit medium-ship of the Đạo Mẫu. She is working to disrupt, dismantle, and disarm oppressive structures for an equitable future.
Marie Angel Venarsian. I am the Pink Moon Midnight Blue of magical folkloric Yoro. I’m an Afro-Indigenous two spirit woman of trans experience, a human rights defender working on gender and race equity for marginalized communities of multiracial and gender expansive identities. The foundation of my advocacy/activism is ending abuse and harm across all platforms of human existence focusing on wellness in education, healthcare, and employment via policy, reform, aboloshition and educational media/art. I was born and raised in Honduras and escaped femicide in my teens and came to the US for a better life. I’m an accomplice and ally to those in need.
Asha Asokan is the Director of Nuclear Ban US, an organization committed to the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Asha is an International Peace and Security specialist with over 14 years of experience. Asha previously served the United Nations in South Sudan and New York. Before the UN, she worked with Nonviolent Peaceforce, implementing civilian protection and peace-building projects in South Sudan and in the US. Asha co-chairs a Working Group on Conflict Prevention, Peacekeeping, and Peacemaking with Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security (WCAPS). She is on the Board of Directors of Rotary E-Club of World Peace and is actively involved in nuclear weapons education within Rotary.
Ingeborg Breines is a Norwegian peace educator. She is senior advisor to the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates. She served as Director of the Women and a Culture of Peace Programme of UNESCO and from 2009 to 2016 was President of the International Peace Bureau. Ms. Breines has served and continues to serve on a broad range of boards and committees. She has authored, co-authored, and edited publications, notably on gender issues, education, conflict resolution, and a culture of peace.
Christian Ciabonu is the Policy and Advocacy Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He is also a coordinator of Reverse The Trend: Save Our People, Save Our Planet. He has been an activist in the field of nuclear disarmament since 2010, as such he has organized events for youth and diplomats in Geneva, Vienna, and New York. In December 2018, Ciobanu served as the Co-Chair of the Global Youth Forum on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. During various UN disarmament conferences he served as an advisor for the Mission of the Marshall Islands to the UN.
Vicki Elson (she/her) is mother and grandmother and a cofounder of Treaty Alignment US and Nuclear Ban US. She holds a master's degree in anthropology and has had a long career in childbirth education. She's currently at Quaker House in Brussels, where 
Cherrill Spencer (she/her) is a retired experimental physicist who was born and educated in England and has lived in Palo Alto, California, since 1974. She joined WILPF in 2012 to work against war and for disarmament. She is a member of the Peninsula/Palo Alto branch of WILPF, through which she works on CEDAW, nuclear disarmament, and the Poor People’s Campaign. Spencer’s major projects for WILPF have been: an exhibit celebrating WILPF’s centenary, a detailed report on treaties, coordinating the 2020 Solidarity Season, the online 1945 timeline, coordinating the 2021 Call for Peace campaign, and co-chairing the DISARM/End Wars Issue Committee since mid-2020.
Ellen Thomas has been co-chair of the WILPF US Disarm/End Wars Committee for the past 15 years, and is cofounder and Director of Proposition One Campaign for a Nuclear-Free Future. She spent 18 years in front of the White House vigiling for a world without nuclear weapons and helped launch voter initiative #37 in Washington, DC, which won the election in 1993, leading to the introduction into Congress every two years of the "Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Economic and Energy Conversion Act" - HR-2850 in 2021-22. Learn more about the legislation at 
Charlotte Dennett will speak on the role of oil and pipelines. Charlotte is a former Middle East reporter and an investigative journalist and attorney. She is the author of 
Odile Hugonot-Haber, co-chair of MEPJAC, will speak on US weapons sales to the Middle East. She came to the US from France and was a Registered Nurse for about 30 years. As an activist she was at first part of Women In Black, a feminist international movement against war. She joined WILPF US in 1993 and has been part of the Middle East Committee, and on and off the chair of the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti branch in Michigan. She has travelled many times to Israel and Palestine. She serves on the board of World Beyond War, writes articles about war and peace, and is a member of the Disarm issue committee. She focuses on the Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in the M.E. In San Francisco with WILPF, in a reunion she was introduced to the feminist foreign policy initiated by Sweden. 
Desmera Gatewood will speak on the importance of Black and Palestinian solidarity and her recent trip to the region. Desmera is a genderqueer mother, organizer, writer, and Organization Development Practitioner from North Carolina. She is a proud HBCU alumna of NCCU, where she received a BA in writing. Desmera has an extensive background in North Carolina political organizing. She developed a connection to the international fight for human rights while attending delegations throughout Latin America. While on a 2018 delegation to Palestine, Desmera discovered deep connections between Palestinian and Black-American peoples’ struggles. Desmera collaborates with community members to create avenues for telling of the Palestinian plight.
Marlena Santoyo will read a poem written by a female Palestinian prisoner. Marlena is a decades-long member of WILPF, the Greater Philadelphia branch, and two-term national Board member. She identifies as a Jewish Quaker and was strongly impacted upon speaking with and learning from Palestinians in the West Bank and Israelis. Marlena believes that it is by working in coalition that we will be most effective, be it within WILPF or in the larger worldwide community.
Barbara Taft will speak on the necessity of re-starting peace talks and including Hamas. Barb is co-chair of the Middle East Peace and Justice Action Committee (MEPJAC) and chairs the Greater Phoenix branch. She has been working for Middle East peace and justice since she first met students from the region at her university in the early 1960s. She has made 10 trips to the region, mostly with peace delegation and study tour groups, most recently in 2009 when she led a "Friendship Tour" for Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, and Israel. She speaks and writes frequently on Middle East topics.
Beatriz Schulthess, WILPF International Board member and Americas Regional Representative, met WILPF for the first time in September 1977 when Indigenous peoples entered the United Nations for the first time. WILPF played an important role to make this happen. She joined WILPF a few years later in 1982, inspired by the work of Edith Ballantyne, Secretary General of WILPF. Beatriz serves as a board member of the Costa Rican section. She studied business administration, accounting, and languages and has working experience in organizational and project development and management. Since she was a teenager she was an active advocate for the rights of women, Indigenous peoples, and the environment. During the 1980s she continued her advocacy path engaging in related multilateral negotiations on behalf of various organizations. She participated in the negotiation of the ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the drafting process of the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action.
Julie Beutel is a singer, song-leader, guitarist, teacher, activist, and mother, and is a native of the city of Detroit. She spent time studying, traveling, working, and living in several countries in Europe and Central America. She lived and worked with Witness for Peace in Nicaragua during the war for almost two years. With a rich, beautiful voice, Julie has performed at a wide variety of venues, including Washington, DC, to a crowd of over 20,000 during an anti-nuclear march. Julie sings from the depths and is not afraid to address painful, awkward, controversial, or funny issues. She can make people cry, laugh out loud, or squirm, but she loves to make people laugh.
Paul Kivel is a social justice educator, activist and writer whose work spans five decades in community education, engaged parenthood, political writing, and practical activism. Kivel works for collective healing, transformation and justice. He asks us “How can we live and work together to nurture each individual and create a multicultural society based on love, caring, justice, and interdependence with all living things?” Kivel is part of the group that started SURJ—Showing Up for Racial Justice and a leader in the anti-racism movement developing resources for white people working for racial, economic and gender justice. Kivel’s revised, updated 4th edition of his book, Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, is being used by WILPF both nationally and by branches.
Sylvia Metzler is a retired Nurse Practitioner, Co-chair of Medicines for Nicaragua (which supports a medical clinic in Nicaragua), agent of change and person who shaves head to engage in courageous conversations.
Louise Lisi was born and raised in Philadelphia, where she lived all of her life except for the years 1970 to 1986. She grew up with WILPF because her mother was an active member. In high school she joined actions involving civil rights and peace. Her professional career was as a public health pediatrician working in underserved areas of Baltimore, NYC, and Philadelphia. Now retired for six years, she enjoys her three young grandchildren, hiking, and peace and justice work. She is active in WILPF and Christian Jewish Allies, a Philadelphia group seeking a just peace in Israel/Palestine.
Pamela Albright, retired psychiatric nurse, currently an animal-assisted therapist with her therapy dog, and a therapeutic horseback riding instructor. Worked on the United Farm Workers lettuce boycott in the early 1970s and did rank-and-file organizing as an AT&T telephone operator in the 1970s and early 1980s. Strongly motivated to work on social justice issues and specifically against systemic racism after the murder of George Floyd. 
Gayle Simons taught school in Nigeria in the early 1960s as a Peace Corps volunteer, is also a Cuba supporter, potluck organizer extraordinaire, long-time WILPFer, and is learning to flip white body supremacy on its head. She enjoys taking her three grandchildren to demonstrations for peace and equality.
Tina Shelton has been a member of WILPF since after 9/11 and an advocate for those with disabilities for longer. She is willing to develop a thick skin to make the world a better place, is a parent of three, one who strives for rational thinking in personal and professional work, and is constantly inspired by elder women activists. Resides outside Philadelphia.
Christine Morin is an active member of the Cape Cod Branch. She has served on the board as Membership Chair and Co-President. She was also on staff from 1997 to 1999 as Membership Chair.
Elenita Muniz, co-presenter, has always loved crafting costumes, whether for a ball, a student play, or a political rally. Her time now is mostly given over to tapestry weaving and grandchildren. WILPF has been at the center of her activism for over 30 years, along with her UU church. Everything she does has a political element—even her wedding to her dear Judy was a political event. She believes our work must always include some fun, laughter with the tears, and good food. Her Cape Cod WILPF community is what keeps her going.
Candace Perry (She/Her) is an activist, writer, and social worker. She grew up in the military and is a passionate advocate for peace. She’s a life member of WILPF, an active member of the Cape Cod Branch, and former Local2Global participant, member of the national board, and editor of Peace and Freedom. Her writing includes short and full-length plays, which have won prizes and been produced in the US and Ireland. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in several publications, including Ms. Magazine. As a social worker, Candace has worked as both a clinician and a community organizer.
Judy Adams, Ph.D., joined WILPF after arriving in California in the mid-1970s with her then-husband, an Air Force conscientious objector. She founded the WILPF/Women’s Oral History Project with 96 interviews (1979-89) and donated the collection to the Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound. The slide show opening her presentation premiered in the 1980s at a community outreach event. She wrote her book, Peacework: Oral Histories of Women Peace Activists (1991), while an Affiliated Scholar at Stanford’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She, her students in her peace studies/oral history classes, and volunteers from other branchesconducted the Interviews.
