For the record

In the past 17 years, the staff did these things to make PN a great paper and a great media and peace project:

• Transformed a 12-page monthly paper into a 16-page paper. Then responded to rising postage costs by making PN a 24-page bimonthly paper. In 2007, PN put out 12 pages 10 times a year, so we publish more pages a year now (6 x 24 =144, compared to 120 when we inherited PN).
• Commissioned and oversaw a paper redesign by Erica Smith and two new websites.
• Decentralised editorship for many years by bringing in a Wales editor and Scotland editor and Youth editor with their own pages.
• Set up and ran five-day Peace News Summer Camp for nine years, rotating location around the country and linking with local peace groups/campaigns; building a loyal PN community; creating nationwide face-to-face conversations across campaigns and approaches; brought international speakers including an Egyptian active during the Arab Spring, a Colombian peace villager, US organisers.... Explored in-depth themes of violence v nonviolence; race; class; the First World War....
• Organised a two-day Rebellious Media Conference at Friends House and the Institute of Education; with keynote speakers Noam Chomsky, Michael Albert, John Pilger, Johann Hari, Dan Hind, Robert McChesney, Jessica Azulay. 59 workshops and 1,000 attendees.
• Ran the only NVDA trainings in Britain to support people going on the 2009 Gaza Freedom March.
• Organised a Guy Smallman touring photography exhibition, Afghanistan: Ten Years On, in 2011.
• Organised a Weaving Our Own Web dayschool on using the internet to strengthen our groups, and to campaign more effectively.
• Hosted a Rebel Clown Army training weekend in London in 2012.
• Raised £92,000 in grant funding for special projects from Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Lush Charity Pot, Network for Social Change. Staff donated some of their pay from these Special Projects to subsidise the core costs of PN, equivalent to thousands of pounds. Together with generous legacies, these grants helped move PN from being a company that in 2008 had no reserves and precarious monthly cashflow to one with around £20,000 in reserves.
• Produced The World is My Country exhibition, website and book on First World War resistance. Exhibited in 47 venues (including two museums in Germany) with talks and participatory workshops –including with Adam Hochschild whose book inspired the project and with the great-granddaughter of imprisoned war resister Alice Wheeldon.
• Published the following books: Children Don’t Start Wars by David Gribble; The Hammer Blow by Andrea Needham; Toward a Living Revolution by George Lakey; Making Nonviolent Revolution by Howard Clark; The March that Shook Blair by Ian Sinclair; 1917; The Nonviolent Russian Revolution by Milan Rai; Climate Resistance Handbook (produced the only print copies distributed both here and in the US). Organised speaking tours for our authors George Lakey, Andrea Needham (31 venues), Milan Rai and Ian Sinclair.
• Organised Training for Change trainers’ workshops around the country. PN had a big impact helping to give activist trainers in the UK more exposure to highly-empowering ‘direct education’ with several residential trainings, some in partnership with Quaker Peace & Social Witness.
• Organised four-day residential workshop on class with US activist Betsy Leondar Wright.
• Many Zoom talks also released as videos including with Hans von Sponek, Medea Benjamin and Paul Rogers.
• Created many campaigning tools, including how to fill in the census and how to have conversations about immigration – in the paper and online.
• Staff ran strategy trainings for campaigners around the country
• Staff self-managed for many years without a Peace News board, then brought together a very good board representing a diversity of race, class, gender and religion.
• Peace News has had a human presence on many hundreds of demos, peace festivals, protest camps, bookfairs and conferences.
• Mil’s political analyses have been highly praised and not available in other publications.
• We’ve sent £16,200 over the past nine months to Medical Aid for Palestinians from Peace News badge sales.