Coordinating Committee and National Organizer

United for Peace and Justice reorganized in 2008 as a network of national and local peace and justice organizations that operates with an all-volunteer Coordinating Committee and a part-time National Organizer who supports our campaigns and member groups. They meet weekly to manage the ongoing communication and administrative requirements of the network.

The Coordinating Committee is comprised of two National Co-conveners and representatives of our most active local and national members groups. The Coordinating Committee makes decisions by consensus concerning how to respond to evolving challenges to peace and justice at home and abroad, the critical issues we work to address, and the on-going national campaigns we encourage member groups to support.

Jasmine Butler
CODEPINK

Jasmine Butler is CODEPINK’s Member & Youth Coordinator. Jasmine (they/them) was born and raised in Memphis by way of deep Mississippi roots. They’re a writer, cultural worker, and afrofuturist-abolitionist deeply committed to collective liberation through mutual care and education. They are growing as a deeply principled and experienced movement educator, historian, and archivist. Jasmine received a B.A. in Geography from Dartmouth College in 2021.

Jackie Cabasso (Co-convener)
Western States Legal FoundationOakland, California

Jackie Cabasso has been an advocate and organizer for nuclear disarmament, non-violence, and environmental protection for 40 years. Her work encompasses local grassroots activism, including nonviolent direct action; advocacy, organizing and networking at the national and international levels; and research and analysis published in numerous articles and books. Since 1984 she has served as Executive Director of Western States Legal Foundation (WSLF).

In 1995, Jackie was a “founding mother” of the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, still going strong, which is working for the elimination of nuclear weapons and the promotion of renewables in order to phase out nuclear energy. Since 2007, she has been North American coordinator for Mayors for Peace. In that role she has catalyzed the adoption of resolutions by the U.S. Conference of Mayors calling for an end to U.S. spending on modernization of nuclear arms and redirection of military spending to fund human needs.

Immediately following the 9/11 attacks, Jackie co-founded the Peoples Nonviolent Response Coalition, which brought together local groups working on different issues around the core value of nonviolence. In 2003, Jackie established UFPJ’s Nuclear Disarmament/Redefining Security working group to address nuclear disarmament in the context of demilitarization, war prevention, and justice. She has served as UFPJ National Co-convener since 2013.

Jackie received the International Peace Bureau’s 2008 Sean MacBride Peace Award, and the Agape Foundation’s 2009 Enduring Visionary Prize. In 2014, she and WSLF were awarded the United Nations Association – East Bay Global Citizen Award for Effective Contributions to Peace and Human Security.

Gerry Condon
Veterans For Peace
Seattle, Washington

Gerry Condon is a Vietnam era veteran and war resister who spent six years in Sweden and Canada after refusing orders to Vietnam. Gerry has a long history in the veterans’ peace movement. In 1983-84, he organized the first two veterans delegations to revolutionary Nicaragua, and in 1987, he was a co-coordinator of the Veterans Peace Convoy to Nicaragua. From 1993-96, Gerry worked for IFCO/Pastors For Peace, organizing humanitarian aid and political solidarity caravans to Cuba.

Since 2004, Gerry has been on the front lines of supporting Iraq and Afghanistan war resisters in Canada, Germany and elsewhere. Since 2017, he has served as National Board Vice President of Veterans For Peace.

Lisa Fithian
Alliance of Community Trainers
Austin, Texas

Lisa Fithian has been working for nonviolent social change since the mid-1970s, as a labor and community organizer on a range of issues from environmental justice to student and worker rights, from peace and global justice to immigration and housing.  Lisa first became active in ending war opposing US wars in Central America in the 1980’s. In 1987 she became a Coordinator at the Washington Peace Center in DC and opposed George H. Bush’s Iraq War in the early 1990’s.  When George W. Bush launched the Global War on Terror a decade later Lisa joined efforts to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, serving on UFPJ’s national steering committee from 2003 to 2008. In 2005, she provided direct support to Cindy Sheehan at Camp Casey in Crawford, TX. Lisa then coordinated the Bring Them Home Now Tour: three caravans that carried out more than 200 events, in 52 cities, in 28 states, over 25 days. From 2010 to 2012, Lisa served as National Co-Chair of UFPJ and then joined the Coordinating Committee.

Lisa has supported countless movements including the Battle of Seattle in 1999, rebuilding and defending communities following Hurricane Katrina, and the uprisings at Standing Rock and in Ferguson. She has offered trainings to and participated in the 2nd International Freedom Flotilla to Break the Naval blockade of Gaza; United We Dream Network; Think Outside the Bomb during Disarmament Summer; the Mobilization for Climate Justice, including shutting down the Chicago Climate Exchange on the 10th Anniversary of the Seattle WTO shutdown; and Occupy Wall Street, mostly in New York.

Lisa has spent her life working with people to understand the dynamics of power and has helped thousands gain the experience and skills they need to fight for justice. She is available for trainings and consultations. Lisa is the author of Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance, in which she shares behind-the-scenes stories from some of the most important people-powered movements of the past several decades. She argues that movements that embrace direct action have always been, and continue to be, the most radical and rapid means for transforming the ills of our society.

George Friday
UFPJ National Organizer
Gastonia, North Carolina

George Friday grew up in a rural low-income community in North Carolina in the 60s.  George works with grassroots community organizations to provide leadership and skills training ranging from strategic planning and organizing to fundraising, marketing and community building with a particular focus on oppression dynamics and the role of “privilege” in transforming power dynamics leading to broad, deep economic and social justice change. She holds degrees in Political Science, Economics, and African American Studies from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, from which she graduated in 1982.

George was the fundraiser for SANE (then SANE/FREEZE, now National Peace Action) in the latter half of the 1980s and Development Director, then Assistant Director of the Piedmont Peace Project in North Carolina in the first half of the 1990s. She directed a National Office of Juvenile Justice project from 2000-2004.  George served as co-chair of UFPJ from 2005 to 2008. She began working as National Field Organizer for the Bill of Rights Defense Committee/Defending Dissent Foundation in 2008. George was one of the founding members of Move to Amend in 2009. Since 2017, George has been staff to NC Peace Action and UFPJ.

Mary Hladky
Military Families Speak Out
Kansas City, Missouri

Mary Hladky’s son, Ryan, was an Army Infantry Officer. Ryan served in Zahri District, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan for 13 months at the height of President Obama’s surge. His battalion was sent right into the heart of the fight suffering many deaths and injuries. Ryan left the Army in 2013.

In 2008 Mary joined Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), which is a UFPJ member group. She began her work with United for Peace and Justice in 2010 as a member of the Afghanistan Working Group.  She has been a member of the UFPJ Coordinating Committee since 2012.

In her semi-retirement years, Mary now chooses to focus the bulk of her time on the serious and complex issues facing our country and world. She works at the national level through Military Families Speak Out and UFPJ.  Locally, Mary works with PeaceWorks, to promote a world of peace without war and its weapons.  And the local Poor People’s Campaign focused on Racism, Militarism, Poverty and the Climate Crisis.

Lee Siu Hin
National Immigrant Solidarity Network
Los Angeles, California

Lee Siu Hin is a long-time Chinese-American immigrant worker, anti-war, and social justice activist. He is National Coordinator of the National Immigrant Solidarity Network (NISN), a coalition of immigrant rights, labor, human rights, religious, and student activist organizations from across the country. The NISN works with these organizations, in solidarity with their campaigns and to organize community immigrant rights education campaigns. Siu Hin was also a long time reporter/producer for Pacifica Radio – KPFK Los Angeles, CA (1998 to 2002), as a war correspondent. He has traveled to former Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, Rwanda, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, and China.

Andrew Lichterman
Western States Legal Foundation
Oakland, California

Andrew Lichterman is a policy analyst and lawyer with the Western States Legal Foundation.  As a lawyer, he has represented peace and environmental activists in a variety of settings, and also taught at alternative law schools for many years.  In recent years his work has focused on the purposes and impacts of U.S. nuclear and other strategic weapons programs, including their effect on global disarmament efforts, and on the relationship between nuclear technologies, militarism, and the global economy.  He also serves on the boards of the International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms and the Coordinating Committee of the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons .

Terry Rockefeller (Co-convener)
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
Boston, Massachusetts

Terry Rockefeller‘s sister, Laura Rockefeller, was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Since 2002, she has worked with September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows to oppose war in response to 9/11, to protest the lack of due process in the military tribunals responsible for trying those accused of the terrorist attacks, and to close unlawful prison at Guantanamo. She also works with the Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative, a collaboration between Iraqi and international NGOs to support human rights, women’s rights, democracy, environmental and anti-corruption activism in Iraq. Terry worked for more than 30 years as a documentary film producer; among her credits are episodes of Eyes on the Prize, a history of the civil rights and black power movements, and NOVA the PBS science series.

Sally Weiss
Committee to Stop the Wars
Northampton, Massachusetts

Sally Weiss joined the End Wars and Occupations planning team of the Progressive Democrats of America, in 2010, and subsequently became active in UFPJ’s Afghanistan Working Group. In 2012 she was active in the Jobs Not Wars Campaign, which delivered a petition to key members of Congress and President Obama demanding an end to the war in Afghanistan, and the creation of good jobs at living wages in the wake of the global financial crisis. Locally, Sally is an active member of the Northampton, Massachusetts Committee to Stop the Wars where her special interests are to see local and national activists broaden their outreach to faith groups and to Black Lives Matter.

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