Ruth Bleier

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Overview

Ruth Bleier born New Kensington, PA November 17, 1923 (d. 1988). Neurologist. Feminist and peace activist. Chair of Maryland Committee for Peace, which called for end of Korean War and the draft, 1950-51; as chair, promoted a peace ballot calling for nuclear disarmament and an end to the Cold War, 1950. Due to her activism, blacklisted by Joseph McCarthy and lost her hospital privileges. After dissolution of marriage, came out as lesbian and started feminist restaurant “Lysistrata.”

Quotations

"New attempts must be made to settle the differences between the United States and the Soviet Union—to establish world peace and to strengthen the United Nations. Either we find a way to live together in peace or we shall not live at all.” (Peace ballot, in Baltimore Afro-American, May 20, 1950; photo wikipedia)

Karola Bloch

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Overview

Karola Bloch (née Piotrkowska) born Lodz, Poland January 22, 1905 (d. 1994). Socialist; architect; opposed Hitler, Stalin and East German regimes; supported Solidarity movement. Visited Nicaragua in opposition of US-supported Contra aggression; co-founded International Society Culture of Peace, 1988.

Quotations

"In politics, God knows, men have not exactly covered themselves with glory, especially when one thinks of all the wars they have been involved in." (Tübingen, "For the Dignity of Women", Feb. 19, 1981; photo http://bit.ly/wjbdAG)

Nadine Bloch

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Overview

Nadine Bloch born Boston, MA July 8, 1961. Nonviolent protest organizer and direct-action trainer. Noted for peace work through puppet theater. Arrested numerous times for civil disobedience. As Greenpeace activist, conducted direct-action interruption of French nuclear tests, Moruroa, 1995. Helped organize anti-trade globalization WTO protests, Seattle, 1999.

Quotations

“If protest is made illegal, make daily life a protest.” (beautifultrouble.org; photo Corporate Action Network)

May Blood

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Overview

May Blood born Belfast, Northern Ireland May 26, 1938. Labor organizer and community leader. First woman from Northern Ireland to join House of Lords. During the Troubles, family house was burnt down. Co-founded women’s party Northern Ireland Woman’s Coalition (NIWC), 1996. NIWC opposed violence by Ireland & Northern Ireland, and helped facilitate Good Friday peace, 1998.

Quotations

“I couldn’t understand how the people next door could become my enemy overnight. How was that possible? The part of Belfast that I lived in that is where the Troubles started and it really was scary.” (Civic Voices interview, March 10, 2012; photo BBC)

Amelia Bloomer

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Overview

Amelia Jenks Bloomer born Homer, NY May 27, 1818 (d. 1894). American leader against domestic violence; temperance leader and dress reformer; first editor of paper wholly edited by women, The Lily, 1849.

Quotations

"[No wife should be subject to a drunken husband's] blows and curses and submit to his brutish passions and lusts." (Rochester, NY, April 21, 1852; photo Wikipedia)

Janet Bloomfield

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Overview

Janet Bloomfield (née Hood) born Newcastle-under-Lyme, England October 10, 1953 (d. 2007). British Quaker peace activist; UK Coordinator of Atomic Mirror, to create a nuclear-free world, 1997. Organized campaign to stop arms trade shows Birmingham 1991; chaired Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), 1993-96; Vice-President of International Peace Bureau, Geneva, 1994-97; led Atomic Mirror Pilgrimage "Sacred Fire" of nuclear and sacred sites of Britain, 1996; convened Abolition Now Campaign Working Group of Abolition, 2000.

Quotations

"The issue of the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from European territory is crying out for action. There is no military reason for these weapons to be on European soil. They are another hangover of the Cold War." (Oxford Research Group, January 2007; photo Abolition 2000)

Ella Reeve Bloor

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Overview

Ella Reeve Bloor born Staten Island, NY July 8, 1862 (d. 1951). "Mother Bloor"; American Socialist, and Communist party founder who opposed both World Wars, but changed views 1941; led counseling of conscientious objection in first war; nearly arrested for antiwar stand; led US delegation to Women’s International Congress Against War and Fascism Paris 1934.

Quotations

"We women must take our place consciously by the side of men, dropping any sense of inferiority. . . We must use every ounce of strength that is in us to build the new world in which there will be no wars." (We Are Many, p. 370, 1940; 1910 photo Wikipedia)

Undine von Blottnitz

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Overview

Undine-Uta Bloch von Blottnitz born Berlin, Germany August 20, 1936 (d. 2001). Politician; dedicated to nonviolence, sustainable ecology, and anti-nuclear action. Core member of Green Party. Member of European Parliament, 1984-89, 1994-99. Fined 50,000 deutschmarks for organizing tractor blockade of Gorleben interim nuclear waste storage site, 1979.

Quotations

“At this moment we can do something both useful and beautiful.” (her comment at time of action, Der Spiegel, Feb. 1, 2009; photo wendland.net)

Aline Boccardo

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Overview

Aline Boccardo-Zolondek born Danzig Free State February 17, 1920 (d. 2015). Swiss peace activist. Founded Women for Peace, Lucerne, 1977. Undertook week’s peace fast, Geneva, 1978. Sent UN petition of 18,000 signatures for nuclear disarmament.

Quotations

“All the mockery, defamation and insults, Aline Boccardo as a peace activist forgives. . . and wishes all those who harm me nothing bad. But in the next life I will never see them again." (“Wie kluge Frauen alt warden”, Witzig; photo abeboks)

Florence Brewer Boeckel

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Overview

Florence Brewer Boeckel born Trenton, NJ October 20, 1886 (d. 1965). Suffragist; Director of National Center for Prevention of War; prolific writer on peace and international organizations; handbook on peacemaking, 1928; delegate to the World Peace Congress in Brussels, 1936.

Quotations

"The peace movement today is strong enough to have a chance of success not in the remote future, but now." (Between War and Peace, p. 415; photo c. 1913 Nat. Women's Party records)

Betty Boeke

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Overview

Betty Boeke (née Cadbury) born Moseley, Birmingham, England April 28, 1884 (d. 1976). Quaker co-founder of International Fellowship of Reconciliation Bilthoven 1919, and nonviolent Workplace, and first international peace corps CSI; imprisoned for tax resistance, one child born in prison; honored by Yad Vashem for saving Jews.

Quotations

"[T]he Great War and its appalling consequences have led us to believe that just the private holding of capital, such as we have done up to the present time, lies at the root of nearly all the social and economic trouble in the world to-day." (Archive Kees Boeke; photo onderwijsvernieuwers3.wikispaces.com)

Csilla von Boeselager

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Overview

Csilla von Boeselager (née Fényes) born Budapest, Hungary May 17, 1941 (d. 1994). "Angel of Budapest" who rescued thousands of East German refugees before fall of Iron Curtain; founded Hungarian Maltese Caritas 1988; won European Human Rights Prize 1992, Liborius Peace Medal 1992.

Quotations

"There are now almost 7,000 East Germans waiting for word that Hungary will become the first East Bloc government to help the citizens of another communist nation go west." (Associated Press, Sept. 9, 1989; photo netzwerk-ebd.de)

Sissela Bok

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Overview

Sissela Ann Myrdal Bok born Stockholm, Sweden December 2, 1934. Nonviolent philosopher; daughter of Nobel prize winner Alva Myrdal.

Quotations

"Four positive moral principles of nonviolence, veracity, fidelity and publicity. . . satisfy the prerequisites for an international morality that can give a strategy of peace the strongest, most focused impact." (Bok, A Strategy for Peace: Human Values and the Threat of War, 1989, p. 81; photo 2003 http://bit.ly/wL3Ij4)

References

Hebe de Bonafini

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Overview

Hebe de Bonafini born La Plata, Argentina December 4, 1928. Co-founder of Mothers of Plaza del Mayo protesting disappearances; opposed US imperialism, saying Sept. 11 was result of US bombing Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.

Quotations

“Rebels, crazy, arrogant; We stood before power and said 'here we are.' We put our body that is the only thing we have to put. . . We do this because we have overcome death, dear children. We beat the executioner. This is pure life, full of love and embraces . . . with those children who were born to us later, we are sowing a new path, which is not revolutionary, building, marching along with those who need us.” (May 1, 2006, Wikipedia; photo alchetrn)

Margaret Bondfield

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Overview

Margaret Bondfield born Somerset, England March 17, 1873 (d. 1953). British suffragist and labor leader. One of the first women in Parliament, 1923; first woman in British Cabinet as Minister of Labor, 1929. Opposed World War I and conscription.

Quotations

“One of the great scandals of the First World War was the attitude of mind (an old one coming down from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) which regarded human life as the cheapest thing to expend. The whole war was fought on the principle of using up man-power. Tanks and similar mechanical help were received with hesitation and repugnance by commanders, and were inadequately used. But man-power, the lives of men, were used with freedom.” (A Life's Work, 1948; photo Wikipedia)

Joan Bondurant

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Overview

Joan Bondurant born Great Bend, KS December 16, 1918 (d. 2006). Professor; pianist; linguist; leading scholar of nonviolence, authority on Gandhi; researcher for OSS during World War II.

Quotations

"The Gandhian experiment suggests that if we are to free ourselves from fear and threat alike, we pause from our flight from violence to set ourselves to the task of its conquest." (Conquest, last sentence; photo bondurant-family.org)

Violet Bonham Carter

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Overview

Violet Bonham Carter born Hampstead, London, England April 15, 1887 (d. 1969). First woman president of Internationalist Liberal Party. Orator; promoted League of Nations, UN and European Unity; co-founder of UN Association of Great Britain; early opponent of Hitler.

Quotations

"If we fail, one realises suddenly that one is looking on at the suicide of a civilisation." (Daring to Hope: Diaries; photo Wikipedia)

Emma Bonino

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Overview

Emma Bonino born Bra, Italy March 9, 1948. Gandhian activist; president of nonviolent non-governmental organization Transnational Radicals. First European Commissioner for Health, 1995-99; Italian Minister of European Politics, 2006-08; Foreign Minister, 2013-14. Awarded Council of Europe's North-South Prize, 1998.

Quotations

“In the words of Gandhi—nonviolence is also ‘love of others, love of life.’ In the world in which we live, which is a world of change, it can also be the path to open up new democratic, interstate, transnational and international relations.” (Cairo, Feb. 24, 2004; photo liberal-international.org)