Mark Stahl died of heart failure May 26 at Rhode Island Hospital.
Mark was a life long antiwar/peace activist. In the Spring of 1965, he, along with Jerry Rubin, Stephen Smale, and others founded the Vietnam Day Committee in Berkeley, CA. The Vietnam Day Committee organized the landmark ‘teach in’ on the Vietnam war in April, 1965. They called it Vietnam Day. Featured speakers included Dr. Benjamin Spock, Isaac Deutscher, Mario Savio, Dorothy Healy, and many others. The teach-in lasted 30 hours and attracted 35,000 in attendance. The VDC, along with SDS became anti war organizing centers on the West Coast, organizing the International Days of Protest against the war which set in motion the mass movement against the Vietnam war.
In Rhode Island Mark continued his peace activism as a founding member of several antiwar groups, including RI Mobilization Committee and RI Antiwar Committee. On a personal note, I’m deeply saddened by his death. Mark was a good friend. I valued his intelligence, dedication, and wisdom over many years of organizing against war with him. Mark will be missed.
Mark Stahl – ¡Presente!
“There’s a time when the operation of the [war] machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it — that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all!!” – Mario Savio
[ Mark worked with Massachusetts Peace Action on a 2009 mobilization against the Afghanistan war, and joined United for Justice with Peace for several years. He joined a MAPA working group on Authoritarianism and Right-Wing Nationalism in fall 2020 and was its coordinator from January 2021 until its termination in summer 2021. We last heard from him on May 6 when he was advocating vigilance against fascism in the US. – Thanks to Paul Hubbard for the current photo. – Ed.]
A graveside service will be held on Wednesday, June 1, 2022, at 11 a.m., in Warren South Burial Ground, 39 Sowamsett Avenue, Warren, R.I. Visiting hours are omitted.