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By Darien De Lu
WILPF US President

July 2020

WILPF has a long and honorable history, and WILPF US has been part of that history since the beginning. Now WILPF US is looking for ways to revive among our members the knowledge of that history. If you’re interested in WILPF history, you can help!

Online access to some WILPF archives (see below) opens up the possibility of restoring lost WILPF memories. But the archives are huge, and life is short! WILPF US wants to make a selection of information available through our own WILPF US website. As we prepare for a new website (by the end of the year!), we would like to develop webpages that put people and events in context, with items about recent WILPF history, branch activists, and more.

Can you help us from your home, researching, reviewing, filling the gaps? With the many big changes in WILPF US during the last few decades, the story of modern WILPF has some gaps. Those gaps can be filled with some review of documents, emails to branches, and other kinds of research – work readily doable in small pieces, on your own schedule.

Of course, archives are one important way we preserve WILPF memory. But few members have ever been to even one of the numerous archives across the US containing WILPF records. As related in an article in last month’s eNews, national WILPF leaders recently had the opportunity to learn more about one such treasury of WILPF memory, the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. That collection has posters, articles, campaign pins, audio and video recordings, WIPF US meeting minutes, and much more. As the article explained – many of those items can be reviewed online!

Can you help us with any of our history projects? Please contact me if you might want to:

• Help prepare items to go into archives
• Search (online) archives for needed information
• Compile information into brief and coherent history pieces
• Make, record, and write up phone interviews with branch activists
• Take on other time-limited and discrete history projects

I hope to hear from you!  (And if this project doesn’t move you, but you would like to hear about other ways to help national WILPF, let’s talk…)  Please email or call me, Darien De Lu: President@wilpfus.org916/739-0860 (no texts!).