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Madison Area Peace Coalition Speakers Bureau

MAPC speakers are making themselves available to the community to speak about important issues in these dire times. Check back soon; this list is far from complete.

Ben Manski is a Co-Chair of the Green Party of the United States and a lifelong Madisonian. Manski has worked on the staff of Greenpeace, Wisconsin's Environmental Decade, Democracy Unlimited of Wisconsin, Nader 2000, Campus Greens, and Progressive Dane, and has served in various leadership roles in the Madison Peace Cooperative, Green Party, 180/Movement for Democracy and Education, Center for Campus Organizing, Independent Progressive Politics Network, Earth First!, and several other organizations. His experience in the peace, student, labor-solidarity, and environmental movements have led him to advocate for a common struggle for democracy in the United States. This past spring Manski served as a spokesperson for the 100,000-strong April 20th March on Washington for Peace and Justice.

Speaking Topics include: Corporations, War, and Democracy; Corporatization of Military; Campus Organizing & Youth; War & Ecology; Globalization.

Contact: via the MAPC Speakers Bureau email address: mapc-speakers@charter.net

John E. Peck is a UW-Madison graduate student in the Land Resources program of the Institute of Environmental Studies (IES) with extensive overseas experience in Africa, Latin America and the Pacific. He participated in the Rio Earth Summit and has been involved in global justice protests from Seattle to DC to Quebec. He is also active in the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, the Wisconsin Green Party, and Family Farm Defenders, among other groups.

Speaking Topics include: current military research and influence at UW-Madison; how global free trade regimes promote militarization; the violence of corporate-driven U.S. foreign policy (special focus on Africa); the global struggle to ban landmines; the dangers of privatizing national security; nonviolent direct action strategies for social change.

Contact: via email at jepeck@students.wisc.edu , or by telephone at (608) 257-5949.

Frank Paynter is a founding member of the Madison Area Peace Coalition. He is Clerk of the Madison Friends Meeting and will represent Quakers from Wisconsin, Upper Michigan, Minnesota, and the Dakotas at the Friends Worldwide Consultative Committee's conference on the Quaker peace testimony at Guilford College in January, 2003.

Speaking Topics include: Pacifism; Non-violence; Just War theory; conscientious objection; Iraq; De-militarization and a Department of Peace; the Peace Tax.

Contact: via email at fpaynter@sandhilltech.com, or by telephone at 608 221-8309.
Virginia Ravenscroft-Scott has been involved in political action on various issues for fifteen years (i.e. since high school). Since moving to Madison in the summer of 2000, she has focused on Palestinian liberation, anti-war and anti-imperialism work, but remains interested in radical perspectives on education, poverty, racism, labor and queer issues. Organizational membership: Rainbow Bookstore Collective; Solidarity -- A Socialist, Anti-Racist, Feminist Organization; Paletsine/Israel Peace & Justice Alliance; and the Madison Area Peace Coalition.

Speaking Topics with Q&A: anti-war/imperialism; Palestine.
Speaking Topics at a Rally: as above, plus queer or feminist issues (radical/leftist perspective); "globalization"/economic imperialism.

Contact: via email at birdfarm@chorus.net.
Bob Reuschlein has been working for seventeen years on how military spending blocks economic growth, controls politics, and causes empires to self-destruct. He is a CPA, has an MBA, having been an accountant, engineer, lobbyist, 24 year political activist, and 13 year Democratic Party leader in the state of Oregon. He has been active with MAPC and US Out Now since 1999. He just became president of the Madison World Federalist Association, a UN reform group, and active with Midge Miller's Madison Institute since moving back to his native Madison in 1993.

Speaking Topics include: dysfunctional American military empire; international law reform; CIA stories.

Contact: via email at earlwal@chorus.net, or by telephone at (608) 848-5248. His website is www.realeconomy.com .

Allen Ruff, historian and long-time Madison political activist, has done work around Middle East issues for 25 years. An author and freelance journalist, he also is a staff member at Rainbow Bookstore, has done WORT's "Third World View" Sunday program for over 15 years, and is a founding member of US Out Now, the Madison Area Peace Coalition, Jews For Equal Justice, and Solidarity.

Speaking Topics include: History of US involvement in the Middle East; US global strategies; Israel/Palestine; Iraq, Iran and Central Asia.

Contact: via email at alruff@execpc.com, or by telephone at 608 241-5469.
Rae Vogeler has worked as an activist for over 25 years on a variety of issues, including peace and social justice. An accomplished writer, speaker and organizer, she has been involved in U.S. Out Now, Solidarity, and the National Network to End the War Against Iraq (NNEWAI), and has attended all three national organizing conferences on Iraq, which took place in Ann Arbor, MI, Denver, CO and Palo Alto, CA. In September 2001 she organized and founded the Madison Area Peace Coalition, where she works on the Coordinating Committee and has performed work integral to the organization, such as speaking, writing, fundraising, emceeing, facilitating meetings, strategizing, organizing events, working on phone trees, op-eds, press releases and more.

Speaking Topics include: Iraq; U.S. economic and foreign policy issues; local and national organizing strategies; the need for peace and social justice.

Contact: via email at rae-v@charter.net, or by telephone at (608) 835-7501.

Will Williams is a veteran of the Vietnam War who, not understanding the peace protesters upon his return from Vietnam, signed up for a second tour of duty to escape them. On that second tour he began to question the motives of the powerful, and has since devoted himself to antiwar work. Together with Dot Williams, Will formed the Madison Gospelaires, an a capella gospel singing group. If the setting is right, his speaking might include leading the audience in song.

Listen to Will Williams' powerful speech and song at an antiwar rally, 10/26/02.

Speaking Topics include: war resistance; civil liberties.

Contact: via telephone at 608 846-1030.