Peace Education Center Celebrates 50th Anniversary

This Saturday, people will don bell-bottoms, peasant blouses and platform shoes as the Peace Education Center celebrates its 50th anniversary with a fundraiser and concert at University Lutheran Church in East Lansing.

The organization, devoted to dialogue and nonviolent solutions to the world’s problems, became a nonprofit organization in 1975 but existed earlier in other forms.

John Masterson was an early devotee to the cause and still sits on the organization’s board.

“I was a young assistant professor [who] had arrived at Michigan State University,” he said. “I wanted to get involved, and there was so much happening, more than [just] Vietnam.”

But it was the war that brought people together to form the Lansing Area Peace Council, a coalition of organizations and churches that worked at the state and federal levels to end the war.

Masterson was a vocal leader in 1978 when Sami Esmail, an MSU graduate student and American citizen, was arrested by the Israeli government after entering the country to visit his dying Palestinian father. He co-wrote an editorial in The New York Times defending Esmail.

The group’s history is rich, including hosting union organizer and activist Cesar Chavez and its long-time advocacy for the Palestinian people. The organization was at the forefront of the fight to get MSU to divest from South African companies to fight apartheid — action the university took in 1978 before any other American school.

Becky Payne serves as co-chair of the Peace Education Center, first becoming involved in 2002 when her daughter left for college and she found herself with more free time.

“My dad was a World War II veteran, and my kid’s dad was a Vietnam veteran,” she said. “I learned through their anger, frustration, and attitudes about war just how destructive it was.”

Shortly after she got involved, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq started. Payne said much of the work in those days involved youth outreach and talking to high school students about the realities of war — things, Payne said, they wouldn’t hear from military recruiters.

“Just listening to the drumbeats nationally of all the militarization here, there, and everywhere,” she said. “It just seemed like we were headed in the wrong direction.”

She said that war itself changed once stateless terrorism became the national enemy.

“It’s just a war against an idea,” she said. “That leaves you able to kill anyone, bomb anywhere, throw down munitions all over the place, and try to peg down whether the reasons for that [are] good or if it has any rationality to it.”

The PEC has several irons in the fire. Payne said the group is working with the Palestine Interfaith Network, promoting safe returns from prison for those being released, partnering with gun buyback programs, coordinating with the Tenants Resource Center, and opposing federal immigration detention centers in Michigan.

When asked what gives her hope, Payne said she feels people are “waking up and looking around in a more political way than they have before.

“I am hopeful that people are building community [and] making more friends locally.”

The organization and its activists have no plans to slow down or curb their efforts.

The center recently won a bid on a radio station and now have three years to set up their station, Peace Community Media. Payne said they have picked a site for their antenna and are purchasing equipment early next year.

Saturday’s celebration will feature a concert and singalong with Paul Tinkerhess, a Michigan singer-songwriter and peace activist.