Metta Spencer

Overview

Metta Spencer born Calera, Oklahoma August 29, 1931. Canadian sociology professor, peace researcher, and activist. President, Science for Peace; founding president of Canadian Disarmament Information Service (CANDIS), 1983. Editor, Peace Magazine, 1985. Received UN Global Citizen Award, 1995.

Quotations

“To obtain sufficient funding to repair the world, we must reallocate much of the world’s military funding, which consumes about $1.7 trillion per year. Since nuclear weapons are both useless and dangerous, we can disarm those first.” (Dec. 27, 2013, Metta Spencer’s Weblog; photo mettaspencer.com)

Rivera Sun

Overview

Rivera Sun born Maine August 2, 1981. Nonviolent novelist, poet, and playwright. Director, Pace e Bene Campaign for Nonviolence; co-host of Love and Revolution Radio. Founded Love-in-Action Network.

Quotations

“Nonviolent action succeeds twice as often as violent means, in a third of the amount of time, and with a fraction of the casualties.” (The Roots of Resistance; photo Bainbridge Island Review)

Yekaterina Samutsevich

Overview

Yekaterina “Katya” Samutsevich born Moscow, Russia August 9, 1982. Computer engineer; member of Pussy Riot collective. One of three Pussy Riot protesters arrested for “hooliganism” in anti-Putin demonstration at Moscow cathedral, 2011; detained seven months.

Quotations

"It's a fight, it's an ongoing fight. . . Just because there was a court case doesn't mean that we're going to stop and shut our mouths. We have a lot of things to say. We're going to continue to work, continue to do what we do." (Leslie Stahl interview, Mar. 24, 2013; photo 99getsmart)

Edith Södergren

Overview

Edith Södergren born St. Petersburg, Russia April 4, 1892 (d. 1923). Finnish-Swedish poet.

Quotations

On the end of World War I: “A magic spell came over us and left us with the feeling that anything was possible at any time. The future glowed within us and made us impatient; its seductive and terrifying crown would one day be ours. We were unknown and poor and lived in a remote corner of the world, and yet we felt like princes. Our treasure was wrapped in the hope that hovered over a devastated world like the hands of angels and pointed to a new humanity.” (to Hagar Olsson, in Birgitta Svanberg, With Responsibility For All of Humanity)

Opposed punitive treaty of Versailles: “Germany’s misfortune causes me such pain. Why does nobody in Finland protest against the peace terms? If I could write an appeal to help collect protest signatures I’d do it. . . That business with the Germans gives me no peace. I’ve written an article: Shall we look on in silence while a whole nation is hammered into chains?” (to Hagar Olsson, in Marlene Broemer, War and Revolution, p. 55; photo Wikipedia)

Camelia Sadat

Overview

Camelia Sadat born Cairo, Egypt July 12, 1949. Daughter of Nobel Peace Prize laureate; founded Sadat Peace Institute Boston 1984. Undertook people-to-people peace mission to Palestine, 1988. Received Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award.

Quotations

“I learned about hate, and I learned how to live in peace. . . I believe in the principle of turning the other cheek.” (Boston Globe, Aug. 21, 2002; photo global action on aging)

Barbara Sonneborn

Overview

Barbara Sonneborn born Chicago, IL March 2, 1944. Film writer, director, producer of Regret to Inform about the death of her husband in Vietnam War, and her visit to Vietnam to witness the effects of war.

Quotations

"War is a monster. You let it out of its cage and you can't tell it how to behave." (WGBH True Lives, “The Making of Regret to Inform”)

"It has expanded my understanding of sorrow and suffering, of love and joy. I want people to see war differently than they've seen it before. I want them to look war in the face, to ask themselves, 'Am I going to allow this to happen ever again?' I want people to so deeply realize the humanity of other human beings that they won't be able to kill them." (quote and photo AMDOC Regret to Inform, 2006)

Jane Stembridge

Overview

Jane Shelton Stembridge born Cedartown, GA April 7, 1936. Civil rights activist; poet and flutist. First paid worker of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Atlanta, 1960; helped publish its first newsletter Student Voice and first conference, Oct. 1960. Jailed in Mississippi voter registration drive.

Quotations

“We talked about the beloved community;  we can create it. . . black & white people can get together. . . I think I felt that we could change America, and that was a huge idea.” (Iconoclast)

and after he had listened
carefully
he said: if peoples
     got together
     it wouldn't be
     so hard.
He said
that maybe they could
change the world
so children wouldn't starve.

(“About Jesus”; 1958 photo Meredith Oak Leaves)

Constance Sporborg

Overview

Constance Amberg Sporborg born Cincinnati, OH July 11, 1879 (d. 1961). Jewish civic leader; internationalist; settlement worker. Secretary, Committee on Cause and Cure of War, 1929. Undertook Europe study mission, 1937; headed women’s delegation to Pan-American Conference, Lima, Peru, 1938. Consultant at UN founding San Francisco, 1945. Postwar lobbyist at UN; member of US Committee for UNESCO.

Quotations

“Only realists today are internationalists.” (Baltimore Sun, Apr. 12, 1949; photo jewish women’s archive)

Mab Segrest

Overview

Mab Segrest (née Mabelle Massey) born Tuskegee, AL February 20, 1949. Literature professor; anti-racism activist; lesbian feminist; author of Memoir of a Race Traitor. Active in War Resisters women’s antiwar movement, Women’s Pentagon Action, 1982; Savannah River Women’s Peace Camp, 1983.

Quotations

“Thirty-five years of collective terror over nuclear war and a very new alarm at the huge new military budget fueled the women’s peace movement.” (1981, in Memoir of a Race Traitor, p. 44; photo Windy City Times)

Warsan Shire

Overview

Warsan Shire born Kenya August 1, 1988. Somali-British poet and author; poem “Home” on refugees.

Quotations

No one leaves home, unless. . .

I held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?
it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.

(“What they did yesterday afternoon”; photo Poetry Society)

Katharina Schultze

Overview

Katharina Schultze born Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany June 20, 1985. German Green Party leader; co-founded PEACE (Peace in Europe and Asia through Global Citizenship Education); promoted peace, cosmopolitan, pro-Europe, humane refugee policy.

Quotations

“People no longer want fear, aggression, confrontation.” (Tages Anzeiger, Oct. 9, 2018; photo wikipedia)

Nawal El Saadawi

Overview

Nawal El Saadawi born Kafr Tahla, Egypt October 27, 1931. Psychiatrist; physician; novelist; leading feminist. UN adviser on women, 1979; imprisoned 1981, exiled 1988; led women's peace delegation to stop Gulf War, 1991; awarded North-South Prize, 2004.

Quotations

"The US army went to Iraq for the oil, it didn't go for human rights. It killed thousands of people for the oil. It's a colonial war, it's an imperialist war. They did it for humanitarian reasons!—this makes me laugh." (BBC, Sept. 8, 2003; photo Becky's Kaleidoscope)

Anna Sabatova

Overview

Anna Šabatová born Brno, Czechoslovakia June 26, 1951. Peace activist. Arrested and sentenced to 25 months in prison for organizing leafleting of Parliamentary elections, 1971-73; founded VONS (Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Persecuted), 1978. Awarded UN Human Rights Prize for signing Charter 77 based on nonviolent protest, 1998.

Quotations

"Today people know again that there are things worth suffering for, and that the things that are worth suffering for are what make life worth living." (Aug. 19, 2008, Radio Free Europe; photo rferl.org)

Nelly Sachs

Overview

Nelly Sachs born Berlin, Germany December 10, 1891 (d. 1970). German Jewish poet, playwright; awarded Nobel Literature Prize, 1966; awarded German Book Peace Prize, 1965; exiled 1940.

Quotations

O the night of the weeping children!
O the night of the children branded for death!
Sleep may not enter here.
Terrible nursemaids
Have usurped the place of mothers. . . 
(1947; photo Nobel 1966, wikicommons pd)

Margaret Sackville

Overview

Lady Margaret Sackville born Mayfair, London December 24, 1881 (d. 1962). Anti-war poet and writer; socialist; pacifist.

Quotations

harlots! We betrayed
Our sons; because men laughed we were afraid.
That silent wisdom which was ours to kept
Deep buried
(Nostra Culpa; photo LC wikicommons pd)

Jehan Sadat

Overview

Jehan Sadat born Cairo, Egypt August 29, 1933. First lady of Egypt who encouraged peace with Israel, which won her husband a Nobel Prize; professor of comparative literature; PhD; poet; delegate to UN Women's conferences Copenhagen and Beijing’ first winner of Community of Christ Peace Award 1993.

Quotations

"I am dying to see peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the Syrians and the Lebanese so we can live as one family." (CNN, March 26, 2009; photo Wikipedia)

Leila Nadya Sadat

Overview

Leila Nadya Sadat born Newark, NJ January 24, 1960. American professor of international law; authority on International Criminal Court and human rights. Special Adviser on Crimes against Humanity to ICC Prosecutor, 2012; Director of Crimes Against Humanity Initiative.

Quotations

“The actions of the Syrian government in attacking peaceful protestors are crimes against humanity, and need to be addressed as such.” (Washington Univerity, St. Louis, Aug. 26, 2011; photo intlawgirls.com)

Nafis Sadik

Overview

Nafis Sadik born Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, India July 18, 1929. Pakistani physician, Director of UN Population Fund 1987-2000; Secretary-General UN Population Conference, Cairo, 1994.

Quotations

"[D]evelopment that lays a sound basis for global justice, peace and security, depends on women’s empowerment and equality." (International Women’s Day, March 8, 2005; photo iisd.ca)

Ginetta Sagan

Overview

Ginetta Sagan (née Teresa Moroni) born San Colombano al Lambro, Milan, Italy June 1, 1925 (d. 2000). Human rights advocate and peace activist. Following the death of her anti-fascist activist parents, joined Giustizia e Liberta (“Justice and Liberty”), underground Italian resistance movement, 1943. Imprisoned and tortured by Mussolini's Black Brigade, 1945. Aided survivors of Nagasaki bombing, 1961. Led campaign against Greek military junta, 1967. Played instrumental role in growth of Amnesty International USA; founded first West Coast chapter, Palo Alto, 1969, and 75 more local chapters, 1971-74. Co-founded Amnesty Urgent Action Network, 1971; co-founded Amnesty's Campaign for Abolition of Torture, 1973. Investigated Vietnamese reeducation camp prisoners, 1979. Established Aurora Foundation on human rights violations in Poland and Vietnam, 1981. Aided Polish Solidarity Movement, 1981-88.

Quotations

"Silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor." (photo intlawgrrls.com)

Naima Sahlbom

Overview

Naima Sahlbom born Stockholm, Sweden May 15, 1871 (d. 1957). Swedish geologist and international scientific expert on warfare; co-founder of WILPF and chaired its science committee.

Quotations

"War Is Renounced—Let Us Renounce Armaments" (motto of WILPF Science Committee; photo nad.riksarkivet.se)