Marjane Satrapi

Overview

Marjane Satrapi born Rasht, Imperial State of Iran November 22, 1969. Satrapi is a French-Iranian graphic novelist, cartoonist, illustrator, film director and children's book author whose graphic novels explore the gaps and the junctures between East and West. Her best-known works include the graphic novels Persepolis and Chicken with Plums. Satrapi has become an ambassador for her native country and a spokeswoman for greater freedom there and a voice against war and for cross-cultural understanding. Her use of graphic novels to tell autobiographical stories with political facets to them makes her messages especially accessible and affecting while bringing serious attention to the graphic-novel form.

Quotations

“It's fear that makes us lose our conscience. It's also what transforms us into cowards.”

Miriam Soljak

Overview

Miriam Soljak (née Cummings) born Thames, New Zealand June 15, 1879 (d. 1971). Pioneering feminist; communist; educator of Maoris. Pacifist; active in WILPF. Lost citizenship for marrying Austrian enemy alien during World War I; opposed repression of Samoan independence. Opposed conscription. (photo teara.govt.nz)

Anna Sewell

Overview

Anna Sewell born Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England March 30, 1820 (d. 1878). British Quaker novelist. Authored children’s classic Black Beauty, 1877.

Quotations

“. . . there is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham . . . ” (Black Beauty, 1877; photo i.pinimg.com)

Anna Szelagowska

Overview

Anna Szelagowska (née Paradowska) born Warsaw, Poland July 26, 1879 (d. 1962). Polish peace leader; banker; feminist. National Senator from Camp of National Unity, 1938. Chair of Polish WILPF; led Society of Friends of the League of Nations, 1920; on two committees of League of Nations, 1931. Presented thousands of Polish women’s petitions to World Disarmament Conference Geneva, 1932. (photo pl.wiki)

Helen Stevenson

Overview

Helen Stevenson (née Crosbie) born Pasadena, CA June 9, 1917 (d. 2009). Lifelong Quaker pacifist. Founded Argenta intentional community, a Canadian refuge for conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War; founded nonviolent Argenta Friends School, 1959.

Quotations

“Perhaps all that I can do—perhaps all that I have a right to do—is to be sure of my values and to be sure that my reason for action is not based on habit or on the preservation of my own self-image. I must be sure that my reasons for action are in the light of my innermost values, checked against the insights of history and of those whose insights I esteem.” (Friends Journal, Sep. 15, 1968; photo partingwishes.com)

Dannia Southerland

Overview

Dannia Gail “Sunshine” Southerland born Jacksonville, FL October 21, 1950 (d. 2013). Antiwar and anti-racist organizer with War Resisters League, 1978-84; Women’s Pentagon Action; Women’s Walk from North Carolina to Seneca Women’s Peace Camp, 1983; leader Children of Vietnam to aid those harmed by Agent Orange.

Quotations

On the draft: “What we advocate is resistance. . . It’s a different base than conscientious objection. It’s never too late to resist. It’s the resistance that has gone on against draft registration that has kept the draft registration from coming back so far. The resistance has been very profound.” (Duke Chronicle, Nov. 4, 1982; photo legacy.com)

Elif Shafak

Overview

Elif Shafak (née Bilgin) born Strasbourg, France October 25, 1971. Turkish novelist and columnist.

Quotations

I am a writer.
I am a nomad.
I am a cosmopolite.
I am a lover of Sufism.
I am a pacifist.
I am a vegetarian and I am a woman, more or less in that order.

(a gallimaufry, Dec. 13, 2013; photo Wikipedia)

Martha Skretteberg

Overview

Martha Rubiano Skretteberg born Colombia April 11, 1962. Norwegian criminal lawyer. Head of Caritas Norway, 2011. Promoted Norwegian mediation of peace in Colombia, Philippines, and Syria; advocated European welcome of refugees.

Quotations

“I find humanitarian work very meaningful and important. Through development cooperation, human rights, peace and reconciliation work and emergency relief we can make a difference, and the world needs change.” (Aug. 5, 2011 Caritas Norway; photo dagsavisen.no)

Meryl Streep

Overview

Mary Louise “Meryl” Streep born Summit, NJ June 22, 1946. American actress. Lauded for pacifist and feminist ideals; climate change advocate. Portrayed women peacemakers on stage and screen: Silkwood, 1983; “Mother Courage”, 2006; Rendition, 2007; Lions for Lambs, 2007; Suffragette, 2015.

Quotations

“I have a belief, I guess, in the power of the aggregate human attempt—the best of ourselves. In love and hope and optimism—you know, the magic things that seem inexplicable. Why we are the way we are. I do have a sense of trying to make things better.” (Mick Brown, ”Meryl Streep, Mother Superior”, The Week, Dec. 4, 2008; photo Time Out London, Sept. 29, 2015)

Frida Stéenhoff

Overview

Frida Stéenhoff (née Helga Frideborg Wadström) born Stockholm, Sweden December 11, 1865 (d. 1945). Swedish radical feminist and pacifist internationalist; artist and playwright; wrote first Swedish pacifist play, “Fighting Youth”, 1907, “The Men of War, the Gentlemen of the World”, 1915. Postwar contributor to pacifist magazine Epoch.

Quotations

“War is the masculine state, driven to the end. It demanded for its sake designing, persuading the hearts of men, and despising the wisdom of the women . . . With the destruction of these states men began to love their fellow human beings like brothers, and the women began to think of the meaningless in massacre of children in a school of mass extinction.” (pseud. Harold Gote, “Sex Slavery, An Appeal”, 1913, in Claes Ahlund, “War and Culture”, Samlaren, 2005, p. 97; photo dramawebben)

Velma Šarić

Overview

Velma Šarić born Vlasenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Yugoslavia April 8, 1979. Bosnian peacebuilder. Founding President, Post-Conflict Research Center, Sarajevo; founding editor, Balkan Diskurs, 2014.

Quotations

“At the start of the genocide in Bosnia in 1992, I was 12 years old. I spent the next 3 years under siege and constant shelling until the end of the war in 1995. The experience of the war and its aftermath affected me so deeply that I decided to make it my mission to help my country recover from the legacies of war in any way that I could.” (Gareth Davies interview, May 27, 2015; photo Wikipedia)

Khairatul Saidu

Overview

Khairatul Saidu born Abuja, Nigeria February 9, 1999. Advocate for rights of prisoners. World Peace Caravan ambassador, 2015. Received Global Public Peace Prize, 2017; Princess Diana Human Rights award, 2017.

Quotations

“I would do anything that promotes love, peace, happiness, oneness and development.” (Feb. 21, 2017 Nicholas Alifa blog; photo gnvfundraising.org)

Natalia Silvina Sarapura

Overview

Natalia Silvina Sarapura born Kolla Region, Argentina February 27, 1975. Argentinean indigenous rights leader. Received “Unknown Peacemaker” Award of Bremen Peace Award, 2015.

Quotations

“With the support of the World Peace Service from Germany, which provides administrative and technical assistance, we help the indigenous communities to demand their rights to land and to sue them. The means are non-violent demonstrations, court cases, lobbying and petitions for the state and local authorities to fulfill their obligations. As a result, we now have Kolla's land ownership of nearly 60 communities recognized and 170 communities on the way to becoming a collective land title.” (Martin Ring interview, “It’s a Tough Fight”, Latein America Nachrichten, March 2015; photo Jujuy Al Mondo)

Josette Sheeran

Overview

Josette Sheeran born Orange, NJ June 12, 1954. United Nations diplomat. US Assistant Secretary of State for Business, 2005-07; Executive Director, World Food Program, 2006-12; Vice Chair, World Economic Forum, 2012-13; President, Asia Society, 2013; Special UN Envoy to Haiti, 2017.

Quotations

“A silent tsunami which knows no borders is sweeping the world.” (Graeme Taylor, Evolution's Edge: The Coming Collapse and Transformation of Our World, 2008, p. 46)

“I believe we're living at a time in human history where it's just simply unacceptable that children wake up and don't know where to find a cup of food. . . I would like you to join with all of humanity to draw a line in the sand and say, ‘No more. No more are we going to accept this.’” ("Ending Hunger Now", TED Talk, July 2011; photo ted.com)

Maya Soetoro-Ng

Overview

Maya Soetoro-Ng born Jakarta, Indonesia August 15, 1970. Professor of Education; half-sister of President Obama. Director, Matsunaga Institute for Peace & Conflict Resolution; co-founded Ceeds of Peace.

Quotations

“[T]he best things that grownups do, we do for the children, and that they inspire great good in us. I also want them to remember that the world is intertwined and that we therefore have to be gentle in the way that we treat one another and the Earth, so that our impact on others is benevolent and good.” (Kam Williams interview, May 3, 2011; photo wikipedia)

Francesca Solleville

Overview

Francesca Solleville born Périgueux, Dordogne, France March 2, 1932. French singer; pacifist opponent of wars in Algeria, Vietnam, Iraq. Sang songs against Chilean coup and nuclear power. Signed Open Letter of Women opposed to missiles, 1985.

Quotations

“Refuse to populate the earth! 
Stop fertility! 
Declare the mothers' strike! 
The executioners shout your will! 
Defend your flesh, defend your blood! 
Down with the war and the tyrants!”

(“The Mothers Strike”; photo YouTube)

Elaine Scarry

Overview

Elaine Scarry born April 30, 1946. Harvard professor; author of Thermonuclear Monarchy, 2014.

Quotations

“Nuclear weapons are antithetical to the values of civil society because they wrestle power away from the people and place it in the hands of a few. If we have lost all say over what our military does, we have lost our civil stature.” (Amherst Student, Nov. 3, 2015)

“With nuclear weapons, there is a clear solution. We need to get rid of nuclear weapons. We need to get rid of our own, which then gives us a moral basis for asking other countries to give them up, and to work hand-in-hand with all the countries that have been begging to have a world free of nuclear weapons.” (Sarah Gerard interview, The American Reader; photo Englishfasharvard)

Betsy Sawyer

Overview

Betsy Sawyer (née Rosemary Elizabeth Guercio) born Fitchburg, MA June 14, 1956 (d. 2016). Middle school teacher. Led fifth-grade students at Groton-Dunstable school to create thousand-page The Big Book: Pages for Peace, world’s largest peace book. Received Peace Abbey Award, 2002.

Quotations

“World peace is about making sure people are comfortable and happy, and not living in a state of fear or poverty or violence.” (Boston Globe, May 9, 2016; photo Lowell Sun)

Anasuya Sarabhai

Overview

Anasuya Sarabhai AKA Motaben born November 11, 1885 (d. 1972). Fabian Socialist; feminist; Gandhian labor organizer; daughter of textile manufacturer.  Used nonviolent resistance in textile strike, 1918; organized India's first labor union, 1920. Worked with Gandhi in Kheda Satyagraha, 1918. One of first signatories of Gandhi’s Satyagraha pledge opposing the Rowlatt Act, 1919.

Quotations

"Ask yourself what is right and what is wrong—and once you have decided, act fearlessly in the cause that you believe in." (paraphrase of advice to Ela Bhatt, Ela Bhatt, J. Sreenivasan, 2000, p. 41; photo wikimedia)

Florence Melian Stawell

Overview

Florence Melian Stawell born Kew, Melbourne, Australia May 2, 1869 (d. 1936). Classical scholar. Barred from attending International Women's Peace Conference, The Hague, 1915. Opposed World War I; promoted League of Nations. Authored books on world order: The Price of Freedom, 1918; The Growth of International Thought, 1929.

Quotations

“Let us remember that true Patriotism means love, and that true love is never narrow-minded.” (Patriotism and the Fellowship of Nations, p. 91, 1916; photo Wikipedia)