Activities / How We Work

Lobbying: PeaceWorks promotes citizen lobbying by phone, letter and personal visits to our legislators and their staffers, as well as letters and calls to the White House.

Letterwriting: Letters and emails to legislators and the media are critical to keeping our legislators and the public aware of our opinions on current issues.

Newsletter: Our newsetter, published 6-8 times per year, keeps members aware of legislative action which invites response.

Networking: We seek to cooperate with other peace groups in Kansas City and around the nation to build critical mass on our issues.

Legislative efforts are accompanied by educational work promoting our goals and objectives.

Community Organization Directory: A comprehensive directory of local peace, justice, human rights, and environmental organizations is published online by PeaceWorks and updated regularly. You may download the COD here.

Tabling: PeaceWorks often tables at local events with information on current issues and petitions on pending legislation.

Rallies and Town Hall Sessions: PeaceWorks members and others attend rallies to seek green jobs, not nuke jobs at the new KC Plant. Members also help sponsor town hall sessions about contaminants at the current KC Plant and ways injured workers can obtain compensation.

We support the Urban Ranger Corps. Please check them out at www.urckc.org. A brief description follows.

The Urban Ranger Corps was founded in July 2003 by the Rev. John Wandless while he was pastor of St. Louis Catholic Church, an inner Kansas City parish (2001 – 2006).

The corporation began operations in June 2005 launching the “Urban Ranger” program, a nine-weeks summer work experience and community service program for at-risk youths (14-18).

In summer 2009, the program was expanded by adding a career planning component which (a) helps each ranger develop an Individual Career Plan (ICP) for post-high school employment, technical training or admission to college and (b) provides an ICP Manager/Coach to help rangers implement their ICP’s.

The Urban Ranger Corps (URC) is an exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) and classified as a “public charity” under section 509(a)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

PeaceWorks’ Annual Meeting
March 20, 2011, at Simpson House in KC

(Most photos by Jim Hannah)

Scarlett Swall, left, gives a certificate to Sahj Kaya, one of 12 local residents who received special thanks for their 2010 civil resistance to nuke-parts production in KC. PeaceWorks “recognizes and appreciates the valiant efforts through civil resistance... to raise awareness about the Kansas City Plant, guilty of producing nuclear weapons and contaminating its workers and the environment,” the certificates say.

Rachel MacNair, who wrote the petition to convert from nuke-parts jobs in KC to environmentally sustainable jobs, asks PeaceWorks members to get signatures on the petitions, including signatures of voters at polling places.

Dave Pack describes the campaign “Move the Money!”—move it from wars and weapons back to our communities. The campaign has been launched by Peace Action, the national group to which PeaceWorks belongs; Pack co-chairs Peace Action.

Henry Stoever presents the Kris and Lynn Cheatum Community Peace Award, a new award in the name of two former PeaceWorks leaders, to All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church; Diann Spencer, president of the All Souls Board of Directors, accepts the award for All Souls. The award was given “in recognition of exemplary efforts toward peace as an organization,” and Stoever highlighted All Souls’ efforts to fulfill “Creating Peace,” the national Unitarian Universalist statement of conscience, adopted in 2010.

Patti Nelson seeks help on outreach through social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit.

Andrea Butts and Jeremy Brimer, both of Park University in Parkville, Mo., attended the annual meeting as PeaceWorks scholarship award winners. Brimer received his $1,000 award in 2010, and Butts is the current scholarship winner.

Priest, of The Recipe, gives his pitch: “Stop nukes where they start—dismantle all their parts. ... Close the store for bombs and war, and spend the money on the poor!”

Beth Seberger, left, talks with Tamara Severns during the snack-and-chat part of the meeting.

Participants listened, learned, met old friends, and made new friends.
– Photo by Patti Nelson

Panel reflects on peace education issues

Educators pondered peace-teaching issues aplenty during the PeaceWorks Annual Meeting. Moderator Don McClain opened the educators’ panel with a pitch for Gene Sharp’s book The Politics of Nonviolent Action, which gives 198 methods of peacemaking and illustrates the use of each method. “The inspiration for the freedom movement in Tunisia and Egypt was the theory and practice of nonviolence, and I’ve heard an interview in which Sharp said Tunisians and Egyptians used about two dozen of the methods he describes,” McClain said.

Don McClain

Then he posed this question to the panel: “In your educating, do you feel you have to give both sides, the military and the peace side?”

Eric Garbison of Cherith Brook Catholic Worker House in KC and of Park University in Parkville, Mo., said if you’re going to teach peace studies, you better be prepared to advocate peace, or you’re giving more time to the military side.

Steve Iliff of Avila University in KC, Mo., said he takes a balanced approach, explaining both positions as he teaches various events in history, but weighing in for peace.

Diane Kyser of the Community Mediation Center in Independence, Mo., and of Park University, said she teaches conflict resolution as well as an introduction to peace studies. In the first, she teaches the skills for resolving conflicts nonviolently. “At Park University, a school with many students from the military, I raise questions and ask them to explore concepts and come to their own conclusions. I share my perspective but don’t push it on the students; they realize our text promotes a peace perspective.”

Diane Kyser and Steve Iliff listen up
as Eric Garbison speaks.

Larry Lillis articulated the connection between peace education and what he does as executive director of the Urban Ranger Corps, an organization that gives job-and-life training to young men each summer in KC. Lillis does peace education by helping the young men see how they can make a difference through nonviolent action, a concept many have not often seen implemented, he said.

During the meeting, Lillis showed slides of the Urban Ranger Corps, which PeaceWorks supports by funding seminars for the Rangers through the Community Mediation Center--seminars Kyser helps provide.

Suellentrop lauds Huet-Vaughn, Bebb Award recipient

Ann Suellentrop, M.S.R.N., announced during the PeaceWorks Annual Meeting that Yolanda Huet-Vaughn, M.D., unable to attend the meeting, was the recipient of PeaceWorks’ highest annual award, the Charles E. Bebb Peace Merit Award for Outstanding Service in the Cause of Peace.

Ann Suellentrop, M.S.R.N.
— Photo by Jim Hannah

Huet-Vaughn, a family physician in the Argentine District in KC, Kan., "delivers babies, does physicals for refugees, is devoted to caring for the poor and the elderly, and even makes home visits!" said Suellentrop. "She founded the KC Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. She is famous as a conscientious objector who refused to serve with her Kansas National Guard medical unit in the first Iraq war … and served many months in 1991 in the military brig in Fort Leavenworth."

Suellentrop added, "She and I travelled together to New Orleans to work in a free clinic several months after the hurricanes. I remember hearing her sing in the shower in the trailer we were staying in, and I thought to myself what a happy person she always is, in spite of everything she does!"

Board members, Nominating Committee

PeaceWorks' election, held during the PeaceWorks Annual Meeting on March 20, determined that all the candidates were winners--congratulations! Here are the new Board, beginning with officers, and the new Nominating Committee.

Board of Directors