Jonathan King, Cambridge (CD7), Board Co-Chair; chair, Fund People Over Pentagon campaign and Fund Healthcare Not Warfare working group; vice chair, Nuclear Disarmament Working Group
Jonathan King is Professor of Molecular Biology at MIT where he has long taught biochemistry and directed biomedical research on protein misfolding and human disease. He is past president of the national Biophysical Society, and former Councilor of the American Society of Virology and of the American Society for Microbiology. He is a recipient of the United States Antarctic Service Medal, a former Guggenheim Fellow, and a recipient of the National Institutes of Health MERIT Award. Prof. King chairs the Editorial Board of the MIT Faculty Newsletter and serves on the Technology and Culture Forum Steering Committee. He is a recipient of MIT’s M.L. King Jr. Faculty Leadership Award.
As a long time teacher of experimental method, Prof. King has been engaged with issues of science education and was an officer of the statewide Coalition for Authentic Reform in Education (MassCARE). Prof. King serves on the Board of Citizens for Public Schools and is Vice-President of the Cambridge Residents Alliance, dealing with housing and public transit issues. In 2008 Prof. King chaired the Scientists for Obama Committee in Massachusetts.
Long involved in issues of science and society, Prof. King was a co-author of the Science for Peace Resolution of the World Council of Churches, calling for continuing nuclear disarmament, and a leader of the national campaign of biomedical scientists to press the Senate to ratify the Biological Weapons Convention, which culminated in the treaty’s ratification by the Senate in 1989.
Prof. King currently serves as Co-Chair of Massachusetts Peace Action and chairs its Nuclear Disarmament Working Group. This work also connects to the Poor People’s Campaign building on MLK Jr’s vision and the national People’s Budget Coalition that works with the Congressional Progressive Caucus on federal budget priorities. King is married to journalist Jackie Dee King and has two sons, Aaron and Andrew, who live and work in the Boston area.
Rosemary Kean, Dorchester (CD7), Board Co-Chair; co-chair, Racial Justice Working Group
Rosemary Kean is an active member of Dorchester People for Peace (DPP) and co-chair of the Social Justice Committee of First Church Boston UU. For the past 8 years and especially since retirement 2 years ago following a 45 year nursing career, Rosemary has been focusing on activism and community organizing for peace and economic justice under the tutelage of long time activists and organizers at DPP. She worked on the Budget For All campaign with the Coalition to Fund Our Communities/Cut Military Spending 25% which includes DPP, New England United for Justice, Boston Workers Alliance, City Life/Vida Urbana, AFAB, and Survivors, Inc., among other Dorchester-Roxbury-Boston community groups. Rosemary is her church liaison to the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization which organizes around health care, housing, and education. She is currently working on the Jobs Not Jails campaign and on a UU Mass Action effort for passage of 2 bills in the Massachusetts legislature to end mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenses and to reform pre-trial bail procedures. Rosemary has an MS degree in psychiatric nursing and has written about providing psychiatric care to older adults in the home, a model which continues to be practiced by beloved colleagues at the Cambridge Health Alliance. She chairs MAPA’s Racial Justice and Decolonization Working Group.
Rosalie Anders, Cambridge (CD7), co-chair, Climate & Peace Working Group
Rosalie Anders retired in 2012 from her job as an environmental planner with the City of Cambridge. A longtime peace and environmental activist, she is co-chair of the Environmental Justice Task Force at First Parish Church in Cambridge, a board member of GreenCambridge, and a coordinating committee member for Greenport. A former Williamstown resident, she cofounded the Nuclear Weapons Education Center there in 1980 and was active in peace and environmental justice issues in Berkshire County. She was associate director of the Council for a Livable World from 1984 to 1991 and is a past vice president of WAND. Before becoming a planner, she was a family therapist for many years. She serves as president of the Massachusetts Peace Action Education Fund (MAPA EF) and co-chairs our Peace and Climate Working Group.
Merri Ansara, Easthampton (CD1), CD1 District Coordinator; Cuba Subgroup Chair
Merriam Ansara has been a community activist and organizer since 1969. Her political involvement began with a trip to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade in 1969. On her return she became active in the anti-Vietnam war movement and with the Black Panther Defense Committee. From there she went on to community organizing in Jamaica Plain and from then on forward continued to combine community organizing work with international work, working with the Committee Against Apartheid in South Africa and with work to end the embargo against Cuba and normalize relations with Cuba. In recent years she has worked with the Easthampton Community Coalition, the Raging Grannies in Northampton, Western Mass Code Pink, was a founder of The Resistance Center, and worked with Enlaces de Familia, a Puerto Rican group in Holyoke. Merri started working with MAPA in 2020 and in addition to leading the Cuba subteam and representing MAPA in the National Network on Cuba (NNOC) and leading MAPA’s work in Congressional District 1, participates in the MAPA’s Fund Healthcare Not Warfare working group, Ukraine Emergency Committee, and Latin America/ Caribbean working group.
Shelagh Foreman, Cambridge (CD5)
Shelagh Foreman was a founding member of Mass Freeze, the statewide nuclear freeze organization, which merged with SANE to form Massachusetts Peace Action. She has worked consistently on nuclear disarmament and focused on bringing Peace Action’s message to our elected officials. She studied art at The Cooper Union and Columbia University, taught art and art history, and is a painter and printmaker. She serves on our executive committee, was program director of MAPA, chaired our Middle East working group, and was a member of our Foreign Policy for All working group. She represented MAPA on the Political Committee of Mass Alliance, is a core group member of 20/20 Action, chairs MAPA’s Iran Task Force and is a member of our Executive Committee. She has 5 children and 7 grandchildren, lives in Cambridge and also spends time in Falmouth.
Joseph Gerson, Watertown (CD5)
Joseph Gerson is President of the Campaign for Peace Disarmament and Common Security, Director of the American Friends Service Committee’s Peace and Economic Security Program, and Vice-President of the International Peace Bureau. He plays a leading role in building collaborations among U.S., Asian, and European peace and nuclear weapons abolition movements and was the lead organizer for the intersectional World Conference for nuclear disarmament, climate, peace and justice held in New York in 2015. He works closely with Asian and European peace and nuclear disarmament movements and a frequent keynote speaker at the World Conference against A- & H- Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and other international and U.S. forums. He helped to launch the nuclear weapons freeze movement of the 1980s, led the successful opposition to construction of naval nuclear weapons bases in Boston, Rhode Island and New York, and was the lead organizer of international conferences and mass mobilizations on the eves of the 2010 and 2015 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference. His books include Empire and the Bomb: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World; With Hiroshima Eyes: Atomic War, Nuclear Extortion and Moral Imagination and The Sun Never Sets…Confronting the Network of Foreign U.S. Military Bases. He is a member of MAPA’s Ukraine Emergency Committee.
Harris Gruman – Somerville (CD7)
Harris Gruman is Executive Director of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) State Council. He is co-founder and co-chair of Raise Up Massachusetts, a coalition of 150 organizations which successfully campaigned to raise the minimum wage to $15, enact paid family and medical leave, and pass the Fair Share Amendment, aka millionaire’s tax. A veteran of decades of successful issue and electoral work in community and labor organizing, he is an astute political strategist. A former executive director of the Neighbor to Neighbor Education Fund, he studied at Johns Hopkins University. He has been a featured speaker at two Massachusetts progressive conferences organized by Mass. Progressive Action Organizing Committee (MPAOC), is an organizer of the annual HONK! community festival in Somerville, and is a member of MAPA’s Ukraine: A Time for Peace campaign committee.
Keith Harvey, Wareham (CD9)
Keith B. Harvey is the Regional Director for the Northeast Region of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a position he has held since 1992. The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker Peace and Social Justice multi issue organization, working on Peace, Economic justice, Immigrant rights and Healing/Criminal Justice issues in the US and overseas. Keith has used popular education methodologies to facilitate many different workshops, such as non-violence trainings (Help Increase the Peace program), Criminal Justice history, and International Debt and the IMF/World Bank. Before coming to AFSC, Keith spent nine years in low and moderate-income property development and management. Keith recently sat on the Cambridge Friends School Board of Trustees, chaired the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute Board of Directors, sat on the Philadelphia Planning committee for the US Social Forum, and worked with the MA Poor Peoples Campaign coordinating committee.
Jared Hicks, Dorchester (CD7)
Jared was born in Dorchester and is a 26-year-old millennial. He volunteered for Bernie Sanders’ Presidential campaign and was a Bernie delegate at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. He is a new member of the Boston Democratic Ward 17 committee and is honored to serve the political revolution. He will forever feel the BERN and believes that the struggle continues. He is a founding member of Our Revolution Massachusetts (ORMA) and of Our Revolution Boston, and serves on ORMA’s Representative Council. He is also active in Dorchester People for Peace and worked for the Massachusetts Nurses Association’s Question 1 in 2018.
Hayat Imam, Dorchester (CD7), Fundraising Chair
Hayat Imam is an American-Muslim of Bangladeshi origin. She is a feminist-activist who has committed her life work to building global social justice movements in Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines and the USA. Her efforts have been directed towards environmental protections, nuclear disarmament, renewable energy, and the economic empowerment of Women. Presently, Hayat is an active member of Mass Peace Action and Dorchester People for Peace. As an immigrant to the USA from a Muslim country, Hayat Imam hopes to increase understanding and build bridges, by sharing the perspectives of people from distant shores. Hayat was one of the keynote speakers at the Boston Women’s March in January 2017. She has developed and offered a Course on Islam four times in the past few years, called UNDERSTANDING ISLAM: A Muslim Woman’s Perspective on the Essence of Islam, the Diversity of the Muslim World, and its Relationship with the West.
Jackie King, Cambridge (CD7), Newsletter Editor
Jackie King was editor of the Mass. Peace Action print and electronic newsletters and is a member of MAPA’s Communications Committee. She holds a master’s degree in journalism and has worked as a reporter for local weekly and daily newspapers, including the Bay State Banner, Quincy Patriot Ledger, and Middlesex News. She was Press Secretary for Mel King’s 1983 mayoral campaign and Mass. Press Secretary for the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign. Jackie worked for the Department of Environmental Protection as a Deputy Director of the Bureau of Solid Waste Disposal developing and publicizing recycling programs. For years, she served as a Board member of the welfare rights organization Survivors Inc. and was periodically editor of its paper, Survival News. She worked with the Greater Boston Union of the Homeless and served on the Board of the Women’s Institute for New Growth and Support (WINGS), a temporary home for formerly homeless women in recovery. More recently, she worked for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest) as Statewide Coordinator of the campaign to oppose the imposition of the high-stakes MCAS test, then served on the Board of Citizens for Public Schools and was co-editor of its newsletter, The Backpack. She is a Board member of the Cambridge Residents Alliance.
Jeff Klein, Dorchester (CD7), Palestine Israel co-chair
Jeff Klein is a retired machinist and union activist. He worked at GE in Lynn and for the Mass Water Resources Authority on Deer Island, where he was president of his local union for ten years. Since 2003 he has been active with Dorchester People for Peace in opposing US wars abroad and promoting social justice at home, in cooperation with many other grassroots organizations, and he edits the weekly newsletter DPP Update. During the past decade he has traveled almost every year to Palestine/Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East, participating in solidarity efforts and promoting freedom for the Palestinians from occupation and racism. He has spoken many times about the Israel-Palestine conflict in schools, churches, mosques, community and peace organizations, and has appeared on local TV and radio. He also published articles and op-ed pieces on US policy, politics and Middle East issues. In the 1980’s Jeff lived and worked in Nicaragua, then joined the South African freedom struggle, working for the exiled African National Congress in Lusaka, Zambia. He helped to teach English at the Association of Haitian Women in Boston (AFAB) for the past two years. He lives in Dorchester and has two grown children. Jeff chaired MAPA’s Palestine/Israel Working Group from 2021 to 2021.
Maryellen Kurkulos, Fall River (CD4), Treasurer
Maryellen Kurkulos grew up in Fall River and has lived in New York, Baltimore and Athens, Greece. A graduate of Wellesley College, she received her doctorate in Biological Sciences from Columbia University and has been a researcher and professor of molecular biology and genetics. She has been involved in a range of anti-war and social justice activism including organizing for the Budget For All-MA campaign, Occupy Fall River, and Our Revolution Greater Fall River. She attended Z Media Institute, the annual summer school in Woods Hole run by cofounders of Z Magazine. She speaks Demotic Greek and has freelanced as an interpreter. She has chaired our Communications Committee and 2022 Planning Group, and is a member of our Executive Committee.
Susan Mirsky, Newton (CD4), Nuclear Disarmament Working Group chair
Susan Mirsky is chair of the Nuclear Disarmament Working Group and is MAPA’s legislative coordinator for CD4. She is a founding member of Newton Dialogues on Peace and War since its beginning in 2001. In high school in 1959, she helped organize the Youth Committee on Sane Nuclear Policy in Essex County, NJ, and in college helped organize a student group against the Vietnam War. She was instrumental in advocating for city of Newton to have a city-wide municipal election on nuclear issues. She also organized the City Council to pass a resolution on the dangers of the Boston University Homeland Security BK-4 Bio-lab. She had worked steadily in Newton and In Massachusetts to publicly discuss the dangers of nuclear weapons and the money being drained for their production for resources needed to support our people and our planet – finding common threads of concerns. She has a special interest in helping young people to become engaged in these issues.
Val Moghadam, Somerville (CD7)
Valentine M. Moghadam is Professor of International Affairs and Sociology and director of the International Affairs Program at Northeastern University, Boston. She is the author of Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East (2013, third edition), Globalization and Social Movements: Islamism, Feminism, and the Global Justice Movement (2012, second edition), and other books and journal articles. Her research areas include globalization and development; transnational movements; the political economy of gender in MENA; revolutions and social movements; and citizenship. A native of Tehran, Iran, she is also a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She is a member of MAPA’s Middle East Working Group.
Prasannan Parthasarathi, Newton (CD4)
Prasannan Parthasarathi is Professor of History at Boston College and has a Ph.D. from Harvard University. A specialist in the history of South Asia, the British Empire, and labor and economic history, he recently published Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600-1850. Parthasarathi was a member of the Sustainable Defense Task Force, was a member of the steering committee of our Peace Economy Working Group from 2013 to 2015, and presently serves on our Middle East Working Group.
Kevin C. Peterson, Dorchester (CD7)
Kevin Peterson is the founder and executive director of The New Democracy Coalition, a racial justice group in Boston, known for its work on redistricting and reparations, including the campaign to rename Faneuil Hall. He is originally from North Philadelphia, earned a master’s degree at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and now lives in Dorchester.
Steve Powell, Somerville (CD7)
Steve Powell is a graduate of MIT’s political science program, and has had a longstanding interest in people-to-people diplomacy. He is a member of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) and went to El Salvador as part of an accredited election accompaniment delegation in 2019. During January-February 2020, he also has worked as an organizer for MAPA Education Fund’s Elephant in the Room Project, which calls on Presidential candidates to speak about the Pentagon budget during the Massachusetts Presidential primary.
Nick Rabb, Somerville (CD7)
Nick Rabb has worked to bridge the climate crisis and militarism by viewing both as contributing to each other, fueled by desires to dominate and control. Through that work, he developed a 4-part series of workshops, co-sponsored with MAPA and the Peace and Climate Working Group, describing the connections and how to address the crisis through a framework describing a Domination Crisis. He has also spent time organizing with the climate justice movement through Sunrise Movement’s Boston hub, specifically focusing on base-building, outreach, and political education. Since then, he has also volunteered with Dissenters as part of their national training team and with local chapters, including anti-militarist organizers at Tufts University, where he has worked with students to protest recruitment events from organizations like General Dynamics, Raytheon, and the CIA, building critical consciousness on campus. Rabb is a Ph.D. candidate at Tufts University for a joint Ph.D. in Computer Science and Cognitive Science, where his primary research topic is disinformation and, more broadly, political discourse, formation, and change of political beliefs. His work uses computational modeling of belief spread and formation as a method to learn more about the complex ways that political opinions form and change, and has thus far concluded that the current disinformation crisis is not one of social media or Russia’s making, but rather the result of a decades-long clash of worldviews formed by elites vying for power in an era of dealignment and intense social inequality.
John Ratliff, Cambridge (CD7), Latin America/Caribbean Working Group
John Ratliff was political director of an SEIU local union in Miami, Florida, and relocated to Cambridge after his retirement in 2012. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School. A Vietnam veteran and member of Veterans for Peace/ Smedley Butler Brigade, he is also a member of the coordinating committee of Massachusetts Senior Action’s Cambridge branch and a steering committee member of Massachusetts Jobs with Justice. As Mass. Peace Action’s economic justice coordinator he leads our coalition work with Raise Up Massachusetts and against the Trans Pacific Partnership. He is co-chair of the Latin America/ Caribbean Working Group and a member of our executive committee.
Claire Schaeffer-Duffy, Worcester (CD2)
Claire is a founding member of the SS. Francis and Therese Catholic Worker House in Worcester, program director of the Center for Nonviolent Solutions, and a contributor to the National Catholic Reporter.
Paul Shannon, Somerville, Ukraine: A Time for Peace chair (CD7)
Born in Boston in 1947, Paul has lived all his life in the greater Boston area. For almost all of his adult life he has been an activist, writer, and speaker in various peace, union, prison reform, human rights, and social justice movements, particularly the United Farm workers’ union drives, the Vietnam anti-war and solidarity movements, the movement to end apartheid in South Africa, the 1980’s Central American and Cambodian solidarity movements, the Haitian solidarity movement, and the Afghanistan and Iraqi anti-war movements. He is past editor of the Indochina Newsletter and was director of the national film library of the New England American Friends’ Service Committee and part of its Peace and Economic Security Program until 2017, now retired. He has been teaching social science and history courses at a number of colleges and community education programs for 43 years. In the late 90’s, Paul helped organize a broad coalition for all day hearings to oppose the original sex offender registry and lifetime civil commitment legislation in Massachusetts, and in 2007 was a founder of the National Association for Reform of Sexual Offense Laws and now is board chairman of the organization. He is initiator and coordinator of the Raytheon anti-war campaign, chairs Mass. Peace Action’s Middle East Working Group, and belongs to its Peace and Climate Working Group. He recently co-edited a new volume of Noam Chomsky’s writings, Internationalism or Extinction (Universalizing Resistance), and is working on a second book on Noam.
Tony Van Der Meer – Dorchester (CD7)
Michael VanElzakker, Somerville (CD7)
Michael is a research fellow in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he studies post-traumatic stress syndrome. He became fascinated by peace and justice through his study of neurology and science and is now a leading member of our Nuclear Disarmament working group, as well as an activist on MAPA’s work in relation to the Korea crisis. He is also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Vernon K. Walker, Cambridge (CD5)
Rev. Walker is Program Manager of the Communities Responding to Extreme Weather (CREW) where he helps lead the program in preparing communities for extreme weather that comes as a result of climate change.
Throughout his time in Boston, Rev. Walker has appeared in several different newspapers such as: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Bay State Banner, Commonwealth Magazine, and other newspapers for his work related to social justice. Rev. Walker has also made TV appearances on Fox 25, New England Cable News, Boston Neighborhood Network, CBS Boston, and NBC 10 Boston. Rev. Walker has also lectured about his social justice work at various universities and colleges across the United States.
Governance
At-large members serve for a 2-year term. The next election will be held in April 2025. Read about the Board election process.
MAPA’s Bylaws are posted here.
The Board has established an Executive Committee which acts for the Board between its meetings. Its current members are Brian Garvey, Cole Harrison, Hayat Imam, Jonathan King, Keith Harvey, Maryellen Kurkulos, Merri Ansara, Paul Shannon, Rosemary Kean, Shelagh Foreman, and Susan Mirsky; Cole Harrison is its chair. (April 2024)
Following are the board of directors of the Massachusetts Peace Action Education Fund:
Rosalie Anders, Cambridge, Board Chair
Rosalie Anders was an Associate Planner with the City of Cambridge’s Community Development Department, and is author of the city’s Pedestrian Plan, a set of guidelines intended to promote walking in the city. She has a Master’s degree in social work and worked as a family therapist for many years. She organizes around peace and environmental issues and is active with 350 Massachusetts. She chairs the Massachusetts Peace Action Education Fund board and is a steering committee member of MAPA’s Peace Economy working group.
Shelagh Foreman, Cambridge
Shelagh Foreman was a founding member of Mass Freeze, the statewide nuclear freeze organization, which merged with SANE to form Massachusetts Peace Action. She has worked consistently on nuclear disarmament and focused on bringing Peace Action’s message to our elected officials. She studied art at The Cooper Union and Columbia University, taught art and art history, and is a painter and printmaker. She was MAPA’s Program Director, represented MAPA on the Political Committee of Mass Alliance and is a core group member of 20/20 Action. She is a member of our Middle East working group. She has 5 children and 7 grandchildren, lives in Cambridge and also spends time in Falmouth.
Gary Goldstein, Cambridge
Gary Goldstein is Professor of Physics at Tufts University. He is a theoretical physicist, specializing in high energy particle physics and nuclear physics. As a researcher and teacher, he has taught almost every kind of course including Physics for Humanists, The Nuclear Age (with Prof. M. Sherwin – History), and Physics of Music and Color. He is a progressive and a political activist on nuclear issues, social equity, anti-war, and environmentalism. He spent several years working in the MIT Program for Science, Technology and International Security. He is an advisor on Science Education research for K-12 students in public schools . He has given many talks over the years about the dangers of nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors.
Fran Jeffries, Bridgewater
Fran Jeffries is a pro bono consultant to non-profit organizations for peace initiatives in the U.S. and in other countries. She chairs MAPA’s fundraising committee. An active member of our Nuclear Disarmament working group, she also works in Rotary International’s nuclear disarmament committee. She attended the United Nations’ First Meeting of the States Parties of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in June 2022 in Vienna, Austria, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in August 2022 in New York, and wrote a report back. Fran joined the MAPA Ed Fund Board in 2022.
Eva Moseley, Cambridge
Eva Steiner Moseley was born in Vienna; she and her family arrived in New York as refugees in 1939. Educated at Bronx H.S. of Science, Mount Holyoke College (B.A. in philosophy) and Radcliffe College (A.M. in Sanskrit and Indian Studies), after a peripatetic marriage she was curator of manuscripts at Radcliffe’s Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America for 28 years, during which she was president of New England Archivists and on the Council of the Society of American Archivists. She cut her political teeth in Henry Wallace’s presidential campaign (1948), worked for a nuclear test ban with Women Strike for Peace in the early 1960s, joined the nuclear freeze movement in 1982, and has worked for peace ever since. In 2007 she visited Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron with the Cambridge-Bethlehem People-to-People Committee. She has two children and three granddaughters. Eva chairs MAPA’s Music Committee and is a steering committee member of its Palestine/Israel Working Group. Her memoir, Skirting History, was published by Interlink Books in 2022.