Peacemakers

Template:About Template:Short description Template:Infobox organization Peacemakers was an American pacifist organization founded following a conference on "More Disciplined and Revolutionary Pacifist Activity" in Chicago in July 1948.<ref name=":3">Template:Cite book</ref> Ernest and Marion Bromley and Juanita and Wally Nelson largely organized the group.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref> The group’s organizational structure adopted a multidivisional organizational structure with a loose hierarchy, prioritizing local committees including but not limited to the Tax Refusal and Military Draft Refusal Committee.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Organizational structureEdit

The Peacemakers differed from other pacifist and nonviolent resistance organizations in their emphasis on small-scale, local, "cell-based" organizations and intentional communities.<ref name=":0" /> It had no national office, paid staff, or membership list.<ref name=":0" /> Some member groups of the Peacemakers organized funds to aid war resisters and people in the civil rights movement who had suffered reprisals.<ref name=":0" />

HistoryEdit

The development and ideological foundation of the Peacemakers can be credited to the Cold War American religious renewal and a rising discontent with American war efforts.<ref name=":14">Template:Cite journal</ref> In 1944 and 1945, Activist A.J. Muste held conferences on “the philosophy and methodology of revolutionary pacifism” alongside a successive conference in 1947 in coalition with the Consultative Peace Council at Pendle Hill.<ref name=":2">Template:Cite book</ref> These meetings were the catalyst for the creation of the Peacemakers and garnered momentum for religious pacifism within the anti-war efforts of the 1940s.<ref name=":14"/> The Committee for Nonviolent Revolution was absorbed by the Peacemakers in 1948 following the Chicago conference for “more disciplined and revolutionary pacifism,” which convened over 250 individuals.<ref name=":3"/> Membership was restricted to those who were willing to take personal responsibility in separating themselves from the “war-making state”.<ref name=":2" />

Socio-political valuesEdit

Peacemakers were a socialist-anarchist group whose values centered on economic and social community upliftment.<ref name=":4">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=":14"/> According to A.J. Muste, the group marked the beginning of “an International community of Non-Violence and Good-Will.”<ref name=":2" /> The organization believed in resource sharing and cooperation to displace a capitalistic lifestyle.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> They experimented with communal living, shared property, and budgeted income. Many members came from the Committee for Nonviolent Revolution, which had been formed two years before.

The group's members vowed to (1) refuse to serve in the armed forces in either peace or war; (2) refuse to make or transport weapons of war; (3) refuse to be conscripted or to register; (4) consider refusing to pay taxes for war purposes — a position already adopted by some; (5) spread the idea of peacemaking and to develop non-violent methods of opposing war through various forms of non-cooperation and to advocate unilateral disarmament and economic democracy.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Peacemakers were dedicated to “engaging in holy disobedience against the war-making and conscripting state.”<ref name=":14"/> Their primary beliefs were founded upon a modern understanding of enlightenment realism.<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":14" /> The organization‘s political values originated from the belief that society was materialistic and autocratic.<ref name=":3" /> According to scholar Leilah Danielson, the organization acted on the notion that “by taking suffering upon themselves in individual and collective active disobedience, they would cut through the conformist culture of the 1950s and awaken their fellow Americans to their responsibility for the atomic and international crisis”.<ref name=":14"/> In the 1950s, the Peacemakers’ socio-political involvement focused on advocacy for international nuclear disarmament and the civil rights movement.<ref name=":14"/><ref name=":4"/> The group also held close ties to the Catholic Worker Movement, the Student Christian Movement, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Gandhian philosophy of nonviolence.<ref name=":4" />

Achievements and ActivismEdit

Tax Refusal

During the late 1940s, the Peacemakers distributed several anti-taxation pamphlets and contributed to demonstrations towards this cause.<ref name=":2" /> Notably, a 1949 leaflet marked taxation as a “cancer with its roots in your purse and in your mind.”<ref name=":2" /> It further stated, “you pay the bills of war, you accept war jobs, you bombed Nagasaki. If you keep on doing these routine, but really immoral things, you will soon bomb hundreds of other cities.”<ref name=":2" />

Military Draft Resistance

Peacemakers conducted an anti-conscription campaign in alliance with the War Resisters League and African American leader A. Philip Randolph.<ref name=":2" /> Segregation became a catalyst for Randolph’s creation of the Committee against Jim Crow in Military Service and Training in 1947.<ref name=":2" /> Well-known civil rights organizer and activist Bayard Rustin was appointed Executive Secretary for the Committee against Jim Crow.<ref name=":2" /> The Peacemakers continued its advocacy campaigns by working in collaboration with the NAACP and local civil rights organizations to advocate for equality.<ref name=":2" />

Community Mutual Aid

In June 1949, Wally Nelson and Carson Foltz held a meeting to discuss “how may a Peacemaker earn his living, spend his money, and provide economic security for his family in a profit-centered society.”<ref name=":2" /> Starting with the Cincinnati, Ohio metro area, the forum focused on providing local communities with shared resources to avoid “predatory enterprises” (banks, insurance, investments, etc.).<ref name=":2" /> A consensus was met to create a voluntary mutual aid funding pool to which Peacemakers and participating individuals could contribute and benefit from simultaneously.<ref name=":2" /> Wally and Juanita were assigned the role of creating a program in addition to the funding pool that described Peacemaker economics and disciplines.<ref name=":2" />

The local branch alongside the Bromleys purchased a group farmhouse north of Cincinnati to share the responsibility of food, finances, childcare, and maintaining communal belongings.<ref name=":2" /> This was done to model nonviolent and collectivist living based on Marxist philosophy.<ref name=":2" /> At the farmhouse, the Bromleys established Gano Peacemakers, Inc., a non-profit organization that was later seized by the IRS for their refusal to pay taxes, a method used to protest against military and war activities.<ref name=":2" />

Notable MembersEdit

Founders

Important Figures

ReferencesEdit

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