Traprock Peace Center (TPC)

Traprock Peace Center (TPC)

Overview

* Sponsors a variety of anti-recruitment programs
* Charges that U.S. invasion of Iraq was motivated by lust for empire and oil


Supported entirely by voluntary contributions, Traprock Peace Center (TPC) is a socialist organization based in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Founded by Beverly Woodward and Harvey Cox in 1979, TPC helped jump-start the nuclear freeze movement and funded a campaign to place a nuclear weapons moratorium referendum on the national ballot.  The Center’s current leadership includes Sunny Miller (a teacher), Charlie Jenks (a children’s rights lawyer), and Sarah Thayer (an animal communications expert). 

A member organization of Abolition 2000 and the United for Peace and Justice antiwar coalitions, TPC sponsors and participates in a number of educational programs and projects, on both the regional and national levels. Its largest national education initiatives are the “Ban Depleted Uranium Campaign” led by Doug Rokke, and the “Campaign to Shed Light on Iraq’s Disarmament” led by one-time inspector Scott Ritter. 

In conjunction with the Campus Anti-War Network, TPC sponsors numerous programs whose aim is to prevent military recruiters from visiting high schools and colleges. One TPC slogan is: “No to racism in the military; No to the poverty draft; No to the militarization of our schools; “We and our families refuse to kill and die for oil!”

TPC maintains a website that provides the organization’s analysis of national and world news, as well as links to information about the activities of likeminded groups. This website features the work of Brooklyn-based author and activist Anthony Arnove, editor of Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War, and editor of Terrorism and War (a collection of interviews with Howard Zinn). Along with Zinn, Arnove also co-edited Voices of a People’s History of the United States. In an April 6, 2005 article titled “We Can’t Be Anti-War and Pro-Occupation,” Arnove  wrote: “… People [in Iraq] continue to be humiliated and abused in violent house-to-house searches being conducted by the U.S. military. Iraqis are killed routinely, with complete impunity, at checkpoints, in their homes, in detention facilities. We have to do everything we can to force the United States out of Iraq and to support the Iraqi people in their struggle to determine their own future. The U.S. government has no business lecturing other countries about democracy, when we lack it so sorely here at home and when this country has such a long and brutal history of suppressing democracy around the world.”

TPC co-sponsored a September 13, 2005 Boston speaking engagement of British Member of Parliament George Galloway. This was one of twelve stops Galloway made on a lecture tour during which he condemned America’s War in Iraq. Galloway is known for his support of a leftist-Muslim alliance against what he terms America’s “savage capitalist globalization which is intent upon homogenizing the entire world.” 

TPC received an $18,000 grant from the Pond Foundation in 2003.

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