Program: Weekdays August 9-12

Monday, August 9, 5:00 PM PDT
How To – Legislative Advocacy: Uniting for Effectiveness

In addition to our individual branch efforts at influencing legislation, we can collectively decide on an issue each month and contact our government officials in a coordinated way that will be more influential. This is women working together to build power and influence on the government for justice and peace. We will share our experiences and learn about best advocacy practices.

Dolores Huerta is an iconic figure of effective feminist and social and economic justice advocacy and organizing… Co-Founder with Cesar Chavez of the National Farmworkers Association, now the United Farm Workers.  Dolores Huerta’s experience in farm worker and other organizing and legislative advocacy extends over more than half a century, and she will offer her views.   
 

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.                                                 

 

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. 

Jean Hays, Chair of the Legislative Committee of Fresno Branch WILPF, as well as the Earth Democracy Committee chair; she is also on the WILPF-US Earth Democracy Leadership Team. She has been a member of WILPF for about 16 years, and was president of the Fresno branch. She is also the keyboard player for the Raging Grannies, and every month she produces the radio show WILPF – Stir It Up.
 

Leni Villagomez Reeves, M.D. is a former UFW volunteer who attended UC Berkeley and UCSF, then did pediatric emergency medicine for many years. She is active in WILPF, both in the Fresno Branch and nationally, co-chairing the Cuba and the Bolivarian Alliance Committee, and with the Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba and the Saving Lives Campaign. In non-pandemic years, she spends about 2 1/2 months each year in Cuba, where she has close ties.

Judith Sheldon is a Peace Camp director, arts educator, and adjunct faculty at Wayne State University, teaching “Integrating the Arts into Elementary Classrooms” in the School of Education. Secretary in the Detroit Branch of WILPF. Always a dancer, becoming a musician.

 

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Tuesday, August 10, 5:00 PM PDT
How To – Building Branches from the Inside & Out Initiative

Learn about WILPF U.S.’s new initiative and the process of how it’s been implemented using the Asset-Based Community Development approach. Hear from fellow participating branch members on their journey with Inside and Out.

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 U.S.’s Field Facilitator for the Inside & Out Initiative to help six WILPF branches with capacity building, reformalization, and restructuring and works on the Congress organizing team on marketing and communications.

Janice Hawkins is a member of the Leadership Team of the Des Moines Branch, the DISARM Committee, the “Anti-Racism Team” that facilitated a seven-week study of the book Uprooting Racism by Paul Kivel, and is the primary composer of WILPF’s “Resource List for Dismantling White Supremacy.” Locally she serves on the Racial Justice Team of a community action group and is a cofounder of “Pachamama Alliance – Iowa,” a community of those interested in learning, personally and collectively, ways to bring forth changes that result in an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just human presence on this planet.

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.

Virginia Pratt is a Bostonian who has advocated for peace and justice in her professional work and social activism for over 30 years. An active WILPF member for 20 plus years, she was attracted to WILPF as an international organization opposing war while promoting human rights and environmental and economic justice. Virginia participated in four of WILPF’s international congresses and two national congresses along with branch activities. She currently works as a licensed social worker in Boston where she applies her 40 years of human service experience. When not working, she can be found using food from her organic farm share to make simple meals, walking in her neighborhood, swimming at a local beach, or riding her bike.

Ellen Schwartz joined WILPF in 1969 and was the youngest member of the San Jose branch. Now she is nearly the oldest member of the Sacramento branch and can’t figure out how that happened. In between, she has served as branch chair, branch newsletter editor, chair of the WILPF US Policy Committee, WILPF Western Region newsletter editor, occasional Triennial Congress newsletter editor, Congress Registrar, chair of Congress Committee, US Section WILPF Treasurer for half a term (finishing an unfinished term), and US Section WILPF Program Chair (finishing another half term).

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.

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Wednesday, August 11, 5:00 PM PDT
How To – Growing a Peace Camp

Hear from Growing a Peace Camp Founder Millee Livingston and current Coordinator Natalie Zapata on how to build a youth peace camp in your own community! Growing a Peace Camp promotes teaching children about nature and peace, conflict resolution, self-confidence, empathy, acceptance, team work, and respect for individuality and diversity.

Sabreena Britt has been a member of the Sacramento Branch in California since 2011, when she was seeking out a network of activists and volunteer opportunities after her move to Sacramento from Southern California. She grew up in San Diego, learning activist work as a youth through Girl Scouts and clubs in college. She has a 6-year-old daughter, for whom she wants to create a better world. In her professional life, she is a Volunteer Coordinator for an environmental non-profit and has been teaching and coordinating environmental science programs for the past 17 years.

Millie Livingston (pictured with Natalie Zapata) joined WILPF in 1967 as a member of the San Francisco Branch. She began as Branch Chair and Region 1 Treasurer. She focused on peace and community involvement there and in the Sierra Foothills. In 1988 she moved to Auburn, CA. Discussions at a conference initiated Peace Camp. Her goal shifted to making Auburn environmentally aware and build peace. From 1989 to1999 she was active in Sacramento as well. Millee has received many awards: Certificate of Appreciation for the Auburn Children’s Peace Camp from the Placer Ecumenical Committee for Social Justice, WILPF Lifetime Membership Award, Placer County Seniors of the Year Award, Recognition of Outstanding Achievements in Placer County, Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Peace, Dove Award for Women’s National Film and Television Showcase, and Growing Peace Camp Award. A highlight for her was attending the Hague Appeal for Peace in the Netherlands, May 1999, where Archbishop Desmond TuTu said, “Every village in the world should have one of your Peace Camps.”

Natalie Zapata, of Auburn, CA, has been passionate about community building and empowering youth since childhood. For 20 plus years, she has created and coordinated successful youth programs. She is the cofounder and organizer of the Auburn Hip Hop Congress, which has proudly changed the face of hip-hop culture in her town! She is the developer and director behind innovative programs such as Urban Arts for Change, Academy of Business, Leadership, Arts, and Humanities (BLAH), Writing and Reciting—Healing Through Written and Spoken Word. She hopes these accessible programs empower current and future generations, creating a brighter future for all!

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Thursday, August 12, 5:00 PM PDT
How To – Housing & Homelessness: Hands-On Caring and Sharing

Hear about problems and solutions in building an effective infrastructure for caring and protecting people on the edge of society. Roberta will give a panel presentation by the WILPF housing sub-committee, providing a historical context for Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, Stanford University.

Roberta Ahlquist is a retired antiracist professor, social justice activist, low-income housing advocate, mother, grandmother, and Raging Granny. She has two co-edited books on public schooling: Assault on Kids and Assault on Kids and Teachers, published by Peter Lang.

 

Beverley Fitzpatrick is a widow, mother, grandmother, retired teacher turned homeless advocate, and social activist. She is a founding member of Wings Advocacy Fresno and a Board member, also on the Board of Directors of the Fresno Eco-Village Project and on the Oversight Committee for the Dakota Eco Garden, President of Peace Fresno, and a contributing member of WILPF.
 

Chuck Jagoda is only the second male member of the Peninsula Branch of WILPF. Linus Pauling was the other. He accompanied his wife Ava Helen Pauling on her long career of  peace activism as a WILPF member. Linus Pauling was the second recipient of two Nobel prizes.  Marie Curie was the first. I started my activism as a missionary teacher in Kingston, Jamaica. I’ve been a special ed  teacher in NYC and taught students from all over the world. I now focus on homeless and housing  issues. I am very grateful to and in deep admiration of the activists of WILPF for their powerful work  over the last century. If humans get to live out this century, it will be because of the unceasing work of  WILPF and other peace activists. 

Program: Friday, August 13

4:00 PM PDT
Welcome & Introduction of Madeleine Rees
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.

 

4:20 PM PDT
Opening
Madeleine Rees
Madeleine has been the Secretary-General of WILPF International since 2010. She began her career as a lawyer in 1990 and in 1998, she started working as Head of Office in Bosnia and Herzegovina and as gender expert for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. From September 2006 to April 2010, she served as the Head of the Women’s Rights and Gender Unit for the OHCHR. One of the major elements of her work was to demonstrate the importance of gender and how law should accurately describe and do justice to those different experiences.

 

4:50 PM PDT
Revive Us Again: Vision & Action in Moral Organizing

We will be exploring the moral imperative for organizing to save our earthly Mother. We also lift up the voices of WILPF US members and branches who are working through the Poor People’s Campaign.

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign:  A National Call for Moral Revival and Director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary, is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and teaches at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Liz is the author of Always with Us?: What Jesus Really Said about the Poor (2017) and has been published in the NY Times, Time Magazine, CNN, the Guardian, Sojourners, and the Nation. In 2018, she gave the “Building a Moral Movement” TEDtalk at TEDWomen, was named one of the Politico 50 “thinkers, doers and visionaries whose ideas are driving politics,” and was also named a Women of Faith recipient by the Presbyterian Church (USA). In 2019, she was a Selma “Bridge” Award recipient and named one of 11 Women Shaping the Church by Sojourners. In 2020, she was named one of 15 Faith Leaders to Watch by the Center for American Progress.
 

5:50 PM PDT
Lifting from the Bottom Up: WILPF & the Poor People’s Campaign

A presentation on the role of women in the Poor People’s Campaign from 1967 to the present will lift up the voices of women directly impacted by poverty, deepen the meaning of WILPFs partnership with the movement, and stimulate dialogue about what is required of WILPF to play a leadership role in a bottom-up, grassroots movement.

Mary Bricker-Jenkins is the former WILPF liaison to the Poor People’s Campaign, is on the Cuba and Bolivarian Alliance Issue Committee, the CEDAW Issue Committee, and a former member of the Board. She is Professor Emerita of Social Work at Temple University and has worked for years with the National Welfare Rights Union (currently on the Board) and the national Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign.
 

Rev. Rowan Fairgrove, EPs, is a member of the WILPF San Jose Branch and sings with the Raging Grannies. She is a volunteer with the Bay Area and California Poor People’s Campaign as a member of the Faith Leaders Working Group (BA/CA), the Bay Area Steering Committee, the Speaker Training Working Group (CA), and the Accessibility WG (CA). She is also a member of the national Prophetic Council. She attended the 2019 PPC Moral Congress representing WILPF San Jose. 

Dorothy Van Soest is the current WILPF liaison to the Poor People’s Campaign, a member of the Women, Money and Democracy Committee, and a member of the Washington State Poor People’s Campaign coordinating committee. She is Professor Emerita and former dean at the University of Washington, and an educator, activist, and author of several award winning novels with a heart for justice.  www.dorothyvansoest.com

Program: Saturday, August 14

8:10 AM PDT
A Conversation on Women’s Power to Change the Environment

Mary Hanson Harrison is the current WILPF US Congress Coordinator and WILPF US past president (2014-2019).  She brings not only an academic career but also a policy researcher and hands-on activist with and for nonprofit peace/feminist orientated organizations.  She convened and participated in several presentations on ecofeminism and the necessity of a revolution in US agriculture and food systems: in The Hague, at the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and the WILPF International Congress – Ghana, and past WILPF US congresses. 

Patti Naylor farms with her husband George in West Central Iowa, growing organic corn, soybeans, oats, hay, cider apples, and chickens.  Patti speaks and writes about agriculture, farm justice, and the principles of food sovereignty. Her focus is on organic production and agroecological principles in addressing the multiple environmental and social crises we face. She participated in a WILPF side event at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in 2018 (CSW62) in NYC on industrial agriculture’s negative impact on rural women. She is a board member of Wisconsin-based Family Farm Defenders, a member organization of National Family Farm Coalition and US Food Sovereignty Alliance. She also serves on the boards of the Iowa Organic Association and Pesticide Action Network North America. Patti is currently the focal point for the North American region of the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism for relations with the UN Committee on World Food Security.

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 as 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 militarypoisons.org project on contamination of water with PFAS and impact on public health. Find new campaigns, projects and actions on the website. 

Vandana Shiva. After completing her Ph. D. in the foundations of quantum theory, in 1984 Dr. Vandana Shiva was compelled to look at agriculture when farmers in India rose to protest the Green Revolution and the catastrophic gas leak at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal that killed thousands of people. Since then, Dr. Shiva has practiced and promoted an agriculture of peace, non-violence, and independent “free” farming. Dr. Shiva started Navdanya to save seeds from patenting and genetic engineering. In her recent book, Oneness vs 1%, she outlines how “Big Tech” is now hijacking agriculture to continue the violent path. She will share what we can do to protect the earth, farmers’ livelihoods, people’s health and people’s freedoms for present and future generations.  
 

 

9:15 AM PDT
ACE: Paris, the UN & US Action for Climate Equity & Empowerment

This discussion—leading up to COP 26—will focus on the Actions for Climate Empowerment (ACE) Program of the UN: 1) a global process to educate and mobilize the nations’ citizenries to do all they can to stop, reverse, and recover from the climate crisis, a commitment made by each of the 198 nations under the Paris Agreement on Climate; 2) the citizen-led effort, now adopted as federal policy by the Biden Administration, that fulfilled for this nation its commitment to Paris, doing the work voluntarily that the last administration would not do at all; and 3) proposed in the upcoming federal budget is $200 million a year for ten years for the tens of thousands of US climate initiatives already underway, aimed to support, coordinate, and scale efforts to educate and mobilize the public and optimize citizen leadership, particularly among communities so long left out and whose talents are now at the center of achieving planetary recovery, climate justice, and a livable future. A team of young women scientists and climate activists, now developing a pilot of ACE on the central coast of California, will be on the panel: Emily Coren, Jennie Dusheck, Krista Myers, and Aviva Wolf-Jacobs. 

Dr. Nancy Glock-Grueneich is a member of Santa Cruz WILPF and host of the community TV/YouTube Series, The Future We Need and How to Get It.

10:45 AM PDT
Who’s Coming to Dinner & What’s on the Menu: Upcoming Food Systems Summit

Women are key actors in food systems—producing, securing, processing, preparing, and serving food.  So the current discourse on food systems transformation, initiated by the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) in concert with the World Economic Forum, must be critically examined from a feminist perspective.   How will the proposed “game-changing solutions” and the UNFSS processes impact multilateralism, human rights, including the right to food, people’s food sovereignty, and women’s lives?

Jessie MacInnis is a small-scale, first generation farmer based in unceded Mi’kmaw territory (Nova Scotia), Canada. She and her sister grow vegetables and cut flowers for a farmers market and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. She is currently the Youth Vice-President and Chair of the International Programs Committee of the National Farmers Union. Jessie is very active in La Via Campesina, particularly working to promote the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) and participating in the youth articulation, and is also a member of the Committee for World Food Security’s Civil Society Mechanism youth working group. She is currently completing a Master of Human Rights program, where her research has focused on the applicability of UNDROP to the Canadian context. 

Maywa Montenegro is Assistant Professor in Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She draws on political ecology, science and technology studies, and rural political economy to look broadly at knowledge politics in struggles over food systems. Specifically, she’s interested in connections between agrobiodiversity, Indigenous knowledges, and food security and nutrition; debates over gene editing and digitalization in food systems; and the role of scholar-activism in advancing agroecology and food sovereignty. She is a founding member of the Agroecology-Research Action Collective, an Associate Editor for the journal Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, and on the editorial board of the journal Agriculture & Human Values. 

Patti Naylor farms with her husband George in West Central Iowa, growing organic corn, soybeans, oats, hay, cider apples, and chickens.  Patti speaks and writes about agriculture, farm justice, and the principles of food sovereignty. Her focus is on organic production and agroecological principles in addressing the multiple environmental and social crises we face. She participated in a WILPF side event at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in 2018 (CSW62) in NYC on industrial agriculture’s negative impact on rural women. She is a board member of Wisconsin-based Family Farm Defenders, a member organization of National Family Farm Coalition and US Food Sovereignty Alliance. She also serves on the boards of the Iowa Organic Association and Pesticide Action Network North America. Patti is currently the focal point for the North American region of the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism for relations with the UN Committee on World Food Security.

Jennifer Taylor is the granddaughter of a sharecropper, and an organic small farmer in Georgia. She is an advocate for underserved small farmers, Black Indigenous farmers and farmers of color and their agroecology farming practices and organic farming systems strategies that enable wellbeing and change. Jennifer is a member of the USFSA, CoPresident of IFOAM North America, Convener of INOFO North America, Vice President of the Organic Farmers Association,  and serves on several Boards. At Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, Jennifer is associate professor where she developed and implemented the StateWide Small Farm Program, a participatory capacity building program to empower and equip underserved small farm populations and their communities.

Nettie Wiebe farms in Saskatchewan, Canada, growing organic grains and pulse crops as well as raising cattle. She served in elected leadership positions of the National Farmers Union for ten years and was the first woman to lead a national farm organization in Canada. The NFU was a founding member of the global Via Campesina movement where Nettie played a leadership role as a member of the International Coordinating Committee from 1996 to 2004. She continues to work internationally, representing social movements at the UN Committee on World Food Security in Rome.

12:00 PM PDT
Lessons from Cuba: Women on the Front Lines Establishing Democracy

Cuba is facing its worst crisis economically since the 1980s because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the 61-year-old US blockade.  Yet this small country of 11 million people has done more for developing and some developed countries than any other country in the world to fight the pandemic.  How can Cuba do this amidst their own crisis?  Through this workshop we will learn about Cuba’s contributions in the battle against Covid-19, the role that women play in this battle, and Cuba’s healthcare system and robust biopharma industry.  Learn what you can do to end the blockade and why it is so important now, especially for people of color in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

Cindy Domingo, a long-time social activist has used her skills as a writer, speaker, organizer, and community bridge builder to create fundamental change and to build international solidarity between her communities and working people around the world. Currently, Cindy is Co-chair of WILPF’s Cuba and the Bolivarian Alliance Issues Committee and Chair of US Women and Cuba Collaboration.  Over the past 17 months, she has been in the leadership of the International US-Cuba Normalization Conference Coalition and the Saving Lives Campaign.  She has been a member of WILPF since the 1980s and served on the National Board and various WILPF committees.

Kathryn Hall-Trujillo, MPH, is an Ashoka Fellow and Founder of the Birthing Project USA. In addition, she is an adjunct faculty at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science Urban Public Health and Scholar of the Cuba Health Care System.                      

Ambassador Lianys Torres Rivera, Chargé d’Affaires a.i., Embassy of Cuba in Washington D.C., United States. From 2015 to 2017 she was part of the Cuban delegation that met with the US Government authorities to discuss the re-establishment of diplomatic relations and the re-opening of embassies in both countries. She was also part of the Cuba-US Bilateral Commission, the Cuba-US Bilateral Economic Dialogue as well as other Cuba-US bilateral dialogues on regulatory issues, human rights, traffic in persons, the establishment of direct postal services, renewable energy and banking issues. 

1:00 PM PDT
Feminist Foreign Policy: Path to Peace, Freedom and Justice

Odile Hugonot-Haber opens the discussion. Using a range of data, Patricia Hynes shows that security of women and girls who are free from violence, discrimination, and inequality contributes to genuine national security. She describes the spirit and reality that must infuse a feminist foreign policy to propose principles for an authentic US feminist foreign policy for peace and security,including opposing US militarism, women at all policy and peace negotiations, and creating a Department of Peace. 

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. 

Pat Hynes (She/Her) is a retired environmental engineer and professor of environmental health from Boston University School of Public Health, where she co-directed community-based environmental justice projects in Boston Public Housing and diverse, low-income neighborhoods in Boston. For her work, she has received many regional and national awards. She works, writes and speaks on peace, social justice, women’s equality, and environmental justice issues. She directed the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice in western Massachusetts from 2010 to 2021. The impact of US militarism on countries and people, especially women, across the world, is a major focus of her writing, speaking, and activism. She is an at-large member of WILPF and has partnered with WILPF Sierra Leone and WILPF Cameroon since the WILPF 2018 Congress in Ghana.

2:15 PM PDT
A Revolution of Compassion for Peace

The Parents Circle Families Forum (PCFF) is a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization made up of more than 600 bereaved families. Their common bond is that they have lost a close family member to the conflict. But instead of choosing revenge, they have chosen to work together to prevent further bereavement, to create dialogue, reconciliation, and hopefully peace. Israeli and Palestinian mothers who lost children in the conflict, all members of the PCFF, will be interviewed. Join Orly Benaroch Light in a moving interview about loss, grief, love, humanity, and healing.

Orly Benaroch Light is an entrepreneur and business development consultant. She is an activist for women’s achievement and empowerment, and a human rights defender. She is also a speaker, children’s book author, food enthusiast, and a mom.

3:00 PM PDT
Working Our Way Out of a (She)cession: Creating an Economy of Our Own

This past year WILPF partnered with a new and promising feminist economic alliance, An Economy of Our Own (AEOO). The organizations of this alliance are already working on woman-centered solutions; we’ll share with you the highlights of five intersectional economic conversations we sponsored and explain why women’s ways of knowing are foundationally important for confronting a ruthless economy growing more ruthless. We insist on making this scary topic—often accompanied by shame, regret, or a sense of falling short—far more personal and relevant to women. Don’t expect man-splaining obfuscation, insider lingo, or business as usual!

Rickey Gard Diamond, the panel moderator, is the founding organizer of the new educational alliance, AEOO, working in partnership with WILPF US. A journalist and fiction writer, Rickey has long focused on money, politics, and cultural change. She taught writing and literature, feminist, and media studies at Vermont College for over 20 years. In 2011 she was awarded a National Newspaper Association award for her article series, “An Economy of Our Own”; in 2014 she won a Hedgebrook fellowship for work on Screwnomics: How the Economy Works against Women and Real Ways to Make Lasting Change. Rickey’s column at Ms. Magazine, “Women Unscrewing Screwnomics,” can be found online; her novel, Second Sight, from Calyx Books, and her collection of short stories, Whole Worlds Could Pass Away from Rootstock Publishing can be ordered at your local bookstore and online. (photo courtesy of AEOO)

Marybeth Gardam, panel co-moderator, set up a Farmworker Coalition in Georgia and served as the director of Central Georgia Peace Center. She later became active with WILPF US in Iowa and now sits on the advisory board of An Economy of Our Own, while also heading WILPF US’s issue committee, Women, Money and Democracy. This committee has produced a widely taught course on corporate personhood, still available online, and recently created a sourcebook on public banking and activism. Its text will be used in a new Public Banking Learning Circle that begins Aug. 27, organized by WILPF US, An Economy of Our Own, and the Public Banking Institute.

Program: Sunday, August 15

9:00 AM PDT
Hearing from Canada’s Blue Communities

Maude Barlow, Board Chair of Food & Water Watch, and Mary Grant, Public Water For All Campaign Director, introduce Blue Communities. Put your town or city on the map; pass local resolution to recognize the human right to safe, affordable, clean water for all and to sanitation; reject all forms of water privatization; promote water as a public trust and public service; phase out bottled water used in government buildings and municipal events. With 80 Blue Communities around the world, but only Northampton, MA and Los Angeles, CA, let’s put US communities on the map. Join Earth Democracy in this campaign.

Maude Barlow is a Canadian activist, author, and recipient of many honorary degrees and awards. She chairs the board of Washington-based Food & Water Watch and Ottawa-based Blue Planet Project, a global initiative by the Council of Canadians working with partners around the world to achieve water justice based on the principles that water is a human right, a public trust, and part of the global commons. Maude co-founded the Council of Canadians and chaired its board for over three decades.

Mary Grant is the Public Water for All Campaign Director at Food & Water Watch. She oversees campaigns to support universal access to safe water in the United States by promoting responsible and affordable public provision of water and sewer service. She is a policy analyst on US water utility privatization. Food & Water Watch is a national nonprofit environmental organization that mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time.

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 as 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 militarypoisons.org project on contamination of water with PFAS and impact on public health. Find new campaigns, projects and actions on the website. 

 

10:00 AM PDT
It All Runs Down Hill: The Price of Cheap Meat

This panel will discuss the nationwide movement against confined animal feeding operations, also known as factory farms. Activists in the Des Moines, Iowa, and Triangle North Carolina WILPF Branches and allied organizations will discuss the problems associated with factory farms and the campaigns to oppose them. Factory Farming creates a wide variety of problems, from economic impacts on rural communities, water and air pollution, increased greenhouse gas emissions, health problems, and poor treatment of animals. We will provide ways for WILPF members to oppose this system of agriculture, including advocating for legislation on the state and federal level, and getting involved in local governance. 

John Aspray is an Iowa organizer with the Factory Farm Team at Food & Water Watch and also chairs the Iowa Alliance for Responsible Agriculture, a statewide coalition working to promote ethical agriculture in Iowa and hold politicians accountable.  Prior to joining Food & Water Watch, John was an organizer with the American Federation of Teachers and served as National Field Director of the United States Student Association when he was a student at Rutgers University.  

Donna Chavis currently serves as Senior Climate Campaigner with Friends of the Earth, US, and Founder/Convener of the Red Tailed Hawk Collective.  She is part of the collective leadership team for the North Carolina Climate Justice Collective.  Donna was a member of the Planning Committee of the First National People of Color Leadership Summit in 1991, which developed the Principles of Environmental Justice. She remains committed to those principles. She is also a member of the CAFO Roundtable. 

Sharon Donovan is a retired teacher who favors dark chocolate, has lived all over the world, and now fights powerful corporations destroying our planet. She is active in the Des Moines, Iowa, WILPF Branch.

 

Jan Corderman speaks from experience when she says that there’s nothing better than growing up on a farm. But today’s farms are more “factory” than farm. That’s why she represents her WILPF Des Moines Branch on the Iowa Alliance for Responsible Ag’s Steering Committee. 

Emily Keel is a retired primary care physician assistant with a love for local food and all animals.  She serves on the Triangle WILPF steering committee.  

Naeema Muhammad has been the organizing co-director of NC Environmental Justice Network since 2013. In addition to organizing and advocacy, she is an educator to those not aware of the technology or toxicities. She co-authored many publications in community-based public health research. She is on the NC Department of Environmental Quality’s Environmental Justice Advisory Board, which is one of only a few such boards in the country.

12:00 pm PDT
Uniting Communities for Environmental Justice: Radioactive Pollution Deadly In Any Space

Robin Lloyd, panel moderator, is a member of CONPRO, the Burlington, VT, WILPF US branch, and co-chair of the Disarm/End War Committee. She is looking forward to the Congress and seeing her sisters again. For Robin, the last year has been such a desert—no opportunity to get together at the CSW or the conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. She is excited about the scheduled exchanges with members and staff of International WILPF and is organizing a tête-à-tête with Director of Global Programs Maria Butler.

Mary Olson is founder and Director of the Gender and Radiation Impact Project since 2017. She served from 1991 to 2019 as Staff Biologist and Senior Radioactive Waste Policy Analyst at US-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a non-governmental organization. Olson’s work on radiation education led her to the question of whether biological sex is a factor in radiation harm. Her paper, “Atomic Radiation Is More Harmful to Women” (2011), was featured at the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons (2014). She has presented at the European Union Gender Summit in London and the Low-Dose Radiation Conference.

Leona Morgan (Diné/Navajo) is an indigenous community organizer and activist who has been fighting nuclear colonialism since 2007. Morgan works with the Nuclear Issues Study Group in New Mexico and is cofounder of the Nuclear Issues Studies Group and Diné No Nukes, which contributes to the Haul No! initiative. 

Tina Cordova is a sixth-generation New Mexican, born and raised in the small town of Tularosa. In 2005 Tina cofounded the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium (TBDC). TBDC’s mission is to bring attention to the negative health effects suffered by innocent victims of the first nuclear blast on earth that took place at the Trinity site in South Central New Mexico. The goal is the passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendments to bring much needed health care coverage and compensation to those people of New Mexico suffering from the health effects of the Trinity test. Tina is a cancer survivor, having been diagnosed with thyroid cancer when she was 39 years old.  See WILPF US 75^th Anniversary of Trinity Test 2020 webinar.  

Helen Jaccard (She/Her) is a researcher, author, and speaker with a desire to bridge the gap between long-time activists and the public.  Her primary focus is to bring about an end to all aspects of the nuclear era.  She is the Project Manager of the Veterans For Peace anti-nuclear sailboat, Golden Rule, and a member of the WILPF Disarm Issue Committee. Veterans For Peace, Golden Rule Project Manager, 206-992-6364, www.vfpgoldenrule.org, Facebook.com/goldenrulepeaceboat

1:00 PM PDT
Changing the Intent and Purpose of Money –

In conversation, we will examine how our unseen beliefs work against health and prosperity, specifically, how our subconscious trust in rich white guys allows a parasitic monetary system to sap our strength minute by minute, enslave us, and destroy our habitat. We will then discuss exciting ways the W$D Committee is working to replace that system. We will compare proposals to replace that system with a healing, nurturing money system, specifically considering the history-based “just money” solution proposed in the National Emergency Employment Defense (NEED) Act. 

Marybeth Gardam attended Seton Hall University (NJ) and New School for Social Research (NYC). Her career began in advertising, fundraising (for nonprofits), and marketing (for Bell Labs). In 1984, in Macon Georgia, she helped set up a Migrant Farmworker Coalition, serving as Director of the Central Georgia Center for Peace & Justice. In 2001, relocated in Iowa, she founded Women for Peace Iowa, later joining WILPF US in Des Moines. She served on the WILPF US Board of Directors for three years and is Chair of WILPF’s national Women, Money, and Democracy Committee, partnering with An Economy of Our Own.

Mary Sanderson re-joined the Women, Money, and Democracy Committee in 2018. She grew up on a Wisconsin farm at a time when the monetary system and government policy converged to push small holders off the land. Mary always wondered why peace and justice could never get traction if great majorities always want it. Her puzzle came together in 2017 when she learned that banks create and allocate all the “money” we use. Since 2019 she serves as a director for Alliance For Just Money.

Dorothy Van Soest is the current WILPF liaison to the Poor People’s Campaign, a member of the Women, Money and Democracy Committee, and a member of the Washington State Poor People’s Campaign coordinating committee. She is Professor Emerita and former dean at the University of Washington, and an educator, activist, and author of several award winning novels with a heart for justice.  www.dorothyvansoest.com

2:00 PM PDT
Climate Change of Costa Rica

Aimará Espinoza Ulate is a forestry engineer and has a Master’s in Environmental Law. Worked 21 years at the Ministry of Environment, Department of National System of Conservation Areas. Experience doing community work, with international funding for the use and management of biodiversity. Survivor of domestic violence and sexual and labor harassment. 

Adilia Caravaca is Costa Rican by birth, internationalist  by heart.  Active mostly in the areas of women’s rights, human rights, food security,  environment protection, Indigenous peoples, and community development. Lawyer, mother of two girls.  Involved in WILPF since 1983, being its International President (2011-15). Earned a Master’s Degree in Gender and Peace Building at the University for Peace (2004). Co-founder and  member of the  National Committee for Decent Housing, which put the topic on the public agenda, a movement that contributed to enact legislation and programs to make housing accessible to low-income families.  Litigation, consulting,  activism, and some gardening are part of her current life, which provide excitement and challenges to discuss and share with friends

Program: Weekdays August 16-19

Monday, August 16, 5:00 PM PDT
How To – Fashioning Change

Fundraising and Relationship Building: “Fashioning Change” takes a traditional “women’s program” of a fashion show and turns it into a powerful analysis of social justice issues.

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.

Tuesday, August 17, 5:00 PM PDT
How To – What Youth Need to Know before Enlisting 

A project of the East Bay and San Francisco branches of WILPF, our mission at Before Enlisting is to shed light on these issues, and encourage teens to consider other career options, or at least wait a year or two before signing a long contract with the military. We seek to share different narratives about the military other than the ones teenagers usually see, and to spark conversation. We aim to educate, empower, unify and enlighten our communities on issues of war and peace.

East Bay WILPF member Sandy Thacker on far right with BEFORE YOU ENLIST veterans Eddie Falcon and Rosa Del Duca and therapist Roberta Stern who volunteer with the project.

Rosa del Duca is a writer, musician and conscientious objector. She grew up a tomboy in rural Montana, where she joined the Army National Guard when she was seventeen. During her long contract, she became not only a conscientious objector, but a feminist and unlikely rebel. That tumultuous time is the focus of her memoir, Breaking Cadence: One Woman’s War Against the War, and her companion podcast, Breaking Cadence: Insights From a Modern-Day Conscientious Objector. She is interested in speaking to young people about recruiters, military culture, alternatives for paying for college, and standing up against Unjust Wars.

Eddie Falcón served for four years in the USAF as an active duty enlisted aircrew member. He was stationed in Little Rock Air Force Base. He completed four short overseas tours, two in Iraq and two in Afghanistan, as well as performed medical evacuations in Hurricane Katrina. Eddie is a California native and moved back to his home state after separation from the military in 2005. He resides in Bay Area where he received a Masters degree in Spanish and has worked in high school education since 2012. He is currently a board member of Warrior Writers, facilitates writing workshops for veterans and civilians, and organizes events for these writers to share their work in public. He also gives presentations to high school classrooms about the realities of military service.

Siri Margerin came into this world the child of a military parent, and grew up through the civil rights movement and the war in Vietnam. She went to art school, worked as a farm laborer, factory worker, waitress and bartender before settling into her professional career in Animation Production. By 2001, thanks to a triple wammy of a wake up call: the death of a beloved childhood friend of her sons’ at the hands of the police, the dot-com bust, and 9/11, she was kicked back into the world of activism and organizing. She organizes against the idea that violence and war are the best tools to be used to build a just and secure world, particularly for our youth. She is the Bay Area coordinator of the GI Rights Hotline, providing telephone counseling to servicemembers in difficult times. She is on the board of About Face Veterans Against the War. She has also worked extensively with BAY-Peace (Better Alternatives for Youth) and Before Enlisting to provide youth with honest information, alternatives to violence and war, and critical resources. Another world is possible.

Roberta Stern has been committed to social justice issues for most of her life. As a psychotherapist for 40 years, she has seen firsthand the affect of social injustices on peoples’ lives. She was an early member of Therapists for Peace and Justice which formed after 9/11 and continues today. She has been working with the Before Enlisting program for 4 years and is committed to helping high school students be fully informed about this life or death decision before deciding to enlist.

Sandy Thacker, a member of WILPF East Bay in California, has been a high school and middle school teacher, a documentary photographer, and a house builder. She now teaches carpentry to elementary school kids. There are so many wonderful opportunities for young people after graduation. She joined Before Enlisting to encourage high school students to get the facts about joining the military and to look at all of the alternatives before making a decision that will affect the rest of their lives.

Wednesday, August 18, 5:00 PM PDT
How To – Membership Development: One by One: Building Relationships

Now’s the time to ask more people to stand with us to address the existential threats of the climate crisis, nuclear proliferation, and the degradation of our democracy. Help shape the future of our organization and amplify our work by growing WILPF.  Join Shilpa Pandey, Jan Corderman and members from across our section and a core group of experienced organizers led by Francis Engler to think through what we’ve already accomplished during our One by One We Grow initiative and offer insights and expertise as we move forward.     

Jan Corderman, WILPF US Membership Development Committee Member
Francis Engler, Organizer & Political Director, UNITE HERE
Shilpa Pandey, WILPF US Membership Development Committee Chair

Thursday, August 19, 5:00 PM PDT
How To – Preserving Your WILPF Legacy – Record and Archive Branch Interviews

Interview your members about their peace work and add the recordings to branch documents for your archives.

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.

Program: Friday, August 20

4:15 PM PDT
Transformations – Showing Up for Racial Justice –

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.

5:15 PM PDT
Breaking Out of White Supremacy

The Greater Philadelphia Branch will review and model ideas based on the work of Resmaa Menakem, particularly his book My Grandmother’s Hands. Changing white body supremacy culture is dependent on using a somatic approach to racial justice, and we will discuss how trauma impacts this work. We will present settling techniques and what it means to use Mr. Menakem’s 5 anchors when we are caught in an uncomfortable situation, and touch on body-centered activism.

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.

6:15 PM PDT
Performance – Raging Grannies, WILPF Fresno

Program: Saturday, August 21

9:05 AM PDT
Prepare for 2022/2024: Securing the Right to Vote & Have Your Vote Counted

Alarmed by the historic voter turnout and unprecedented vote-by-mail in 2020, mostly Republican state legislatures continue to pass bills that continue to increase discrimination, disenfranchisement, and voter confusion. Regrettably, the US Constitution does not clearly state the right to vote. Please join civil and voting rights experts Jan BenDor of the Michigan Election Reform Alliance and Barbara Arnwine, president and founder of the Transformative Justice Coalition, to learn the extent to which bills currently in Congress will secure the right to vote and having your vote counted but, most importantly, what we must mobilize to do now in our states before time runs out to secure the right to vote and have our vote counted in 2022 and 2024.

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 militarypoisons.org project on contamination of water with PFAS and their impact on public health. Find new campaigns, projects, and actions on the website. 

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.

 

10:00 AM PDT
Turning Down Post-Trump Escalation

WILPF San Diego, the Peace Resource Center (PRC), and the Meta Peace Team (MPT) will create an interactive space where participants will learn non-violent tactics and de-escalation skills. The PRC is a membership organization and community clearinghouse of information on peace and social justice issues and activities. Through their active programs and by promoting networking among peace-related organizations, PRC offers nonviolent alternatives to conflict resolution and carries on a program of peace education throughout San Diego County. The MPT started in 1993 and works to empower people to engage in active nonviolent peacemaking. Anne Barron from WILPF San Diego and PRC and members of the Meta Peace Team will facilitate this training. 

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.
 

 

11:00 AM PDT
Building the Black Liberation Caucus

On May 22nd, during the launch of the Metro Atlanta and Triad NC  branches in the South, the Black Liberation Caucus (BLC) was formed. One of the areas of work we agreed to engage in is the anti-racist transformation of WILPF US. Presenters will provide information on the work plans of the Black Liberation Caucus Steering Committee agreed to at its June and July meetings. Participants will be provided the agreement(s) adopted by the 11 members of the Black Liberation Caucus at its inaugural meeting on May 22. Approximately 20 minutes will be allotted for discussion during the 45-minute session. 

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.

 

11:45 AM PDT
Breaking the Silence Around Violence Against Women

A poem in defense of women’s rights for women facing gender-based violence. True Evils derives from experience of survivors of violence and their experiences as women and survivors.
 

Ayo Ayoola-Amale is a Lawyer, Conflict Resolution Consultant, Lead / Senior Practitioner, First Conflict Resolution Services and President WILPF Ghana. She promotes the importance of creating peace through art and uses visual poetry, abstract painting, cartoons, drama and storytelling to teach conflict resolution, a culture of peace, non-violent and effective communication. Ayo has over two decades experience in law as senior law lecturer and the head of the Law faculty. She was the International Representative and Fellow of the World Mediation Organization and has experience working as workplace, commercial and community mediator. Ayo was awarded the winner of the Honourable Global Mediator Contest in Madrid, 2014. She is a poet, artist and author who has artworks, published books and articles in law, conflict resolution, poetry, prose and plays.

 

12:45 PM PDT 
Uplifting Transgender Women of Color

Nikki Abeleda (She/They), WILPF US Congress Communications & Marketing Organizer will be moderating this session. The panelists will discuss their advocacy efforts on transgender rights and issues, particularly focused on Transgender Women of Color (TWOC). This is an opportunity for WILPF US to learn more about TWOC led organizations.

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.
 

 

1:45 PM PDT
Move the Money from War to Peace, Global to Local

Organized by the Disarm/End Wars Issue Committee

Speakers in this session will describe the extent of global spending on war, with particular focus on nuclear weapons and the military/industrial/financial complex that, along with the US Congress, continue to fuel and fund “endless” wars. Speakers will range from Ingeborg Brienes, distinguished Norwegian peace campaigner, to Vicki Elson, cofounder of Nuclear Ban US. Strategies to reduce military budgets will be described, and a toolkit will be provided for YOU to join these ongoing campaigns.

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 QCEA.org is dedicated to peace and human rights. 

 

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 http://prop1.org

 

3:20 PM PDT
How WILPF Can Change U.S Policy in the Middle East

Presented by the Middle East Peace and Justice Action Committee. Discussion of how US policy in the Middle East is detrimental to our goals and how our solidarity work can lead to change in those policies. 

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 The Crash of Flight 3804: A Lost Spy, A Daughter’s Quest, and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil which reveals the role of oil in the death of her father and subsequent endless wars.  Time magazine has referred to her as “an expert in resource-based politics” for her coverage of politics and resource wars in the Middle East.  Charlotte is the co-author with Gerard Colby of Thy Will Be Done. The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, 

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.

 

4:50 PM PDT
How the Residues of Colonialism Are Still with Us

Beatriz Schulthess will speak about the colonial mentality that was gradually imposed on us and that we are still using in our daily lives.  The colonial mentality is being perpetuated, for example, in the use of certain expressions, when we embrace certain processes, in the education system, in legal and judicial systems, in institutions and organizations, in government relations and international relations in general. Within this context, Beatriz will touch on Indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples’ struggles, explaining some real-life experiences that happened in the international arena.

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.

5:30 pm PDT
What’s Happening with WILPF International  

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-60’s, 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, 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 who developed this Congress.

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.

 

6:30 pm PDT
Songs by Julie Beutel  

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.

Program: Sunday, August 22

9:00 AM PDT
We Didn’t Come This Far Without You

Here we are, at our virtual WILPF Congress. We’ve been offered so much to take in, assess, and act upon. In this 55-minute session, Darien will be honoring you, our Congress participants, by providing you with a space to meet each other and briefly confer. We know that you are all thoughtful and (after two weeks of Congress sessions!) well informed: Now what? What has touched you deeply? What has moved you to action? What will you do now? We’ll be facilitating an opportunity to step “outside” the main room, into guided dyads and triads, to introduce yourselves to each other and confer.

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.

 

10:00 AM PDT
Update on Afghanistan

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).

 

10:20 AM PDT
Lebanon the Forgotten Country, A CRY for Help

Lebanon’s current crisis is a blunder of internal and external conflicts. In a short documentary, we will report from the streets reflecting the deteriorating economic situation of Lebanon.  We will explore the condition of the growing number of refugees in Lebanon in a country that cannot even provide for its own citizens. A cry for help, after a devastating explosion of the port of Beirut with yet no accountability, no international aid, and no end in sight.

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.

 

11:10 PM PDT
Keeping Hope Alive in Palestine-Israel: Contributing to the Creation of a Just World

The Tent of Nations (TON) Project, directed by Daoud Nassar, is an educational and environmentally conscious farm near Bethlehem in the Occupied West Bank surrounded on three sides by Israeli settlements. Learn the story of Daoud’s family’s non-violent struggle to keep the farm, which has been in their family since 1916. The family has faced devastating destruction of their property, including recent attacks. WILPF’s Iowa members met Daoud in 2019.  They will share how deeply his message impacted them and led them to suggest a project with the youngsters who attend TON’s annual summer camp to write a children’s book to share TON’s story.  

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.

 

 

12:30 PM PDT
Native American Boarding School — Violence & Whitewashed History

Janna Pratt and Sikowis Nobiss are cousins and both citizens of the George Gordon First Nation and will discuss the rape, torture, and murder of Indigenous children in Canada and the US due to boarding school / residential school policy in the US and Canada and the silence behind the Indigenous genocide on Turtle Island. Janna lives in Saskatchewan, Canada and Sikowis lives in Iowa, USA. They will also delve into the work they are doing to overcome historical trauma and combat the erasure of this crisis by white supremacist governments.

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.

 

1:30 PM PDT
Presenting Items from Theater: Teatro de la Tierra

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: http://teatrotierraonline.org/plays/. Wells is among 72 women featured in Victoria Alvarado’s book, Mujeres de Consciencia/Women of Conscience (Floricanto Press, 2009), which is “a tribute to Latinas who have made a definite and longstanding contribution to the Hispanic community and country at large.”