Mary Anne Grady Flores

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Overview

Mary Anne Grady Flores born December 29, 1966. Arrested for repeated drone protests at Hancock AFB, sentenced to one year in prison.

Quotations

"I am going to be fine in jail. I'm going to find wonderful community in there, people of faith. I'm going to be with the poor, and that's where Christ asks us to be, and so with 2 million people that are in prison in the United States, and with that number growing, I will be in solidarity with them." (National Catholic Reporter, July 16, 2014; photo Ithaca Week)

Eliza Lee Cabot Follen

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Overview

Eliza Lee Cabot Follen born Boston, MA August 15, 1787 (d. 1860). Nonviolent abolitionist leader, poet and children's author; opposed Mexican War.

Quotations

On the Mexican War: "[V]ile and vindictive. . . robbery, falsehood and cruelty." ("The Cranberry Pasture." 1846)

"Are not women the greatest sufferers from slavery?" (Liberty Bell, 1842; photo Mass. Hist. Society)

Jane Fonda

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Overview

Jane Fonda born Manhattan, NY December 21, 1937. American actress; Vietnam War protester, 1969; made visit to Hanoi, July 1972; organized G.I. Office, Free the Army troupe, Indo China Peace Campaign; twice arrested, accused of treason.

Quotations

"[American] weapons are illegal and that's not just rhetoric. . . The men who are ordering you to use these weapons are war criminals according to international law, and in the past, in Germany and Japan, men who committed these kinds of crimes were tried and executed." (Hanoi, July 14, 1972; 2007 photo wikicom pd)

Ita Ford

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Overview

Ita Ford born Brooklyn, NY April 23, 1940 (d. 1980). Maryknoll nun active in Bolivia, Chile and El Salvador. Tortured, raped, and murdered by National Guard soldiers, El Salvador, 1980.

Quotations

"The Committee fears that decisive action will be taken by our [American] government under the guise of 'stopping communism'—and that all of Central America will be involved if it happens. It's a heavy scene—but if we have a preferential option for the poor as well as a commitment for justice as a basis for the coming of the Kingdom, we're going to have to take sides in El Salvador—correction—we have." (1980 letter to Maryknoll President; photo Wikipedia)

Shelagh Foreman

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Overview

Shelagh Foreman born September 10, 1934. Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience award for co-founding Mass. Peace Action for Nuclear Freeze; opposed Iraq War.

Quotations

"[T]he cost in US, Afghan, and Pakistani lives and in billions of dollars is unacceptable—even more so when measured against the utter lack of results achieved." (Oct. 21, 2010 letter to Sen. Kerry; photo masspeaceaaction.org)

Randall Caroline Forsberg

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Overview

Randall Caroline Forsberg born Hunter, AL July 23, 1943 (d. 2003). Founded Nuclear Freeze movement 1980; MacArthur genius 1983.

Quotations

"If all countries upheld the ethic that the only just war—the only legally, morally acceptable use of force—was for defence, then there would be no war. We wouldn't need military defence. People would use non-violent means of correcting injustices—with protest, with civilian resistance." (Peace Magazine, p. 10, Aug. 1989; photo lewis.armscontrolwonk.com)

Hazel E. Foster

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Overview

Hazel E. Foster born Cleveland, OH February 14, 1885 (d. 1975). Professor; minister; educator. Social activist with organizations including Quaker Fellowship, the League of Women Voters, WCTU, SANE, ACLU, Jane Addams Peace Association, WILPF. Visited Gandhi, 1940-41; supported nonviolence of civil rights movement as teacher at Morehouse College.

Quotations

"I have wondered whether, now Gandhi has died, his ideas and ideals had died with him. You prove to me they have not." (letter to Martin Luther King, Jr., April 26, 1956; photo http://bit.ly/Kuo3ye)

Ursula Franklin

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Overview

Ursula Franklin born Munich, Germany September 16, 1921. Canadian scientist; physics professor and philosopher of science; Quaker pacifist; eighteen months in a Nazi work camp World War II; leader of antiwar CanadianVOW; opposed NATO and Vietnam War; promoted conscientious objection; Pearson Peace Medal.

Quotations

"Peace is not the absence of war—peace is the absence of fear." (The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map, p. 32, 2006)

"The struggle for women's rights and the opposition to militarism in all its forms are two sides of the same coin." (The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map, p. 102, 2006; photo Wikipedia)

Louise Franklin-Ramirez

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Overview

Louise Franklin-Ramirez born Washington DC September 28, 1905 (d. 2003). Peace activist; teacher; began protests at age 12 against Armenian holocaust; founded Toys for Peace campaign; opened stores without war toys; opposed nuclear weapons; mapped 22,000 US nuclear sites; co-founded D.C. Gray Panthers' "Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Committee 1981 which brought Hibakusha annually; arrested for Vietnam protests; last arrested age 94 at Supreme Court protesting death penalty 2000, arrested Fort Benning, GA, protesting School of Americas; protested Iraq war age 96; Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience award 1999.

Quotations

“The future of humanity may well rest on our ability to turn the slogan of 'A Nuclear-Free Future' into reality.” (“Deadly Legacy,” with husband John Steinbach; photo prop1.org)

Marian Franz

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Overview

Marian Franz born Newton, KS October 12, 1930 (d. 2006). Mennonite; tax resister; founder of Peace Tax Fund, 1982; Conscience and Peace Tax International, 1994.

Quotations

"(War taxes) kill twice. First, they directly enable war. . . Second, taxes allocated for war represent a distortion of priorities. Money is taken away from the important work of healing and is spent to destroy and kill." (photo Peace Tax Fund)

Clara Fraser

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Overview

Clara Fraser (née Goodman) born East Los Angeles, CA March 12, 1923 (d. 1998). Radical feminist, socialist, internationalist and opponent of all wars. Founded Radical Women (RW), 1967; opposed Israeli settlements and occupation of West Bank.

Quotations

"What better fate can a person carve out than participation in the emancipation of humanity?" (Freedom Socialist Party, May 1, 2003)

"I am a socialist feminist. I believe we live in a corrupt, ugly, vicious and doomed society, a society that cannot last in its present form because it will go up in nuclear holocaust, if not in annihilation of people in some other horrendous form." (Freedom Socialist Party, April 1998; photo Red Letter Press)

Marcia Freedman

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Overview

Marcia Freedman (née Prince) born Newark, NJ May 17, 1938. American-Israeli Peace activist; co-founded Israel Women in Black 1988; founding president Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace 2002; member of Knesset 1974-77; socialist.

Quotations

“So as a feminist I am saying that the effect of settling international conflicts by war is a male thing. Therefore, as a feminist I become a One-Worldist, I become a Pacifist.” (“On Women and War” interview with Barbara Rubin; photo Knesset.gov.il)

Elisabeth Freeman

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Overview

Elisabeth Freeman born Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England September 12, 1876 (d. 1942). Anglo-American militant suffragist and pacifist who opposed World War I; organized spectacular suffrage protests including leading a yellow gypsy wagon in DC; NAACP Anti-Lynching Campaign in Texas 1916; first women’s train on presidential campaign 1916.

Quotations

On her beginning as a militant activist: "I saw a big burly policeman beating up on a woman, and I ran to help her, and we were both arrested. I found out in jail what cause we were fighting for." (elizabethfreeman.org; c.1913 photo Wikipedia)

Betty Friedan

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Overview

Betty Friedan (née Goldstein) born Peoria, IL February 4, 1921 (d. 2006). Feminist, author of landmark text The Feminine Mystique, 1963. Founded National Organization for Women (NOW), 1966; president of NOW, 1966-1970. Organized Women's Strike for Equality on 50th anniversary of women's suffrage, August 26, 1970. Organized campaign of civil disobedience at White House, 1992.

Quotations

"Men, also, have in them enormous capacities that they have to repress and fear in themselves, living up to this obsolete and brutal man-eating, bear-killing, Ernest Hemingway, crewcut Prussian sadistic, napalm all the children in Vietnam, bang-bang you're dead, image of masculinity, the image of all powerful masculine superiority that is absolute." (Jan. 29, 1970, US Senate hearings on Judge Carswell; 1960 photo Wikipedia)

Laurie S. Fulton

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Overview

Laurie Susan Fulton born Sioux Falls, SD July 2, 1949. Founding Executive Director Peace Links of women to prevent nuclear war, peace building, and finding alternative methods of resolving conflict 1982-85; began exchange of Russian women at peak of Cold War Russian pen pal campaign; Pioneering Peacebuilder Award of National Peace foundation 2002; lawyer; Ambassador to Denmark 2009-13; organized and co-chaired Role of Women in Global Security, Copenhagen Oct. 2010.

Quotations

“Building lasting peace and security requires women’s participation. Half of the world’s population cannot make a whole peace.” (Role of Women in Global Security summary; photo zimbio.com)

Coco Fusco

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Overview

Coco Fusco (née Juliana Fusco Miyares) born New York, NY June 20, 1960. Cuban-American performance artist and professor. Anti-Apartheid “Rights of Passage”, 1997; women and war “A Room of One’s Own”, 2006; antiwar lecture “Observations of Predations in Humans: A Lecture by Dr. Zira, Animal Psychologist”, 2013.

Quotations

“At the onset of the new millennium, American women finally have what they need to demonstrate their prowess. The War on Terror offers an unprecedented opportunity to the women of this great country." (“A Room of One’s Own”)

“[T]he balance in human society has shifted away from empathy toward aggressively individualistic behavior.” (Elia Alba interview, Dec. 12, 2013, BOMB; photo as Zira, Monmouth.edu)