NORTHAMPTON — In 1968, Frances Crowe started the western Massachusetts branch of the American Friends Service Committee in her Northampton basement. She would lead the pacifist, Quaker organization in the fight for peace, protesting defense contractor Raytheon, U.S.-backed wars in Central America and university investments in apartheid South Africa.
Now, at age 98, she says goodbye to the Western Massachusetts American Friends Service Committee, but not to the activism for which she has been arrested numerous times.
On Sunday, more than 200 people gathered at the First Churches of Northampton to celebrate and remember the accomplishments of the local chapter of the AFSC, which has closed after 49 years due to “major budgetary shortfalls at the AFSC’s national level,” according to an online letter.
Several past directors of the organization, including Crowe, spoke at the event, with Trinity College professor and author Vijay Prashad serving as master of ceremonies.
“One of the important things now is to be able to pick up on some of those things we were doing there. I feel that it’s very hard these days to get any action out of Washington, but I think there’s a lot we can do in our communities,” Crowe said.
The event also marked the beginning of a new organization, The Resistance Center, which has taken the place of the AFSC at 2 Conz St. The Resistance Center, led by the AFSC’s most recent director, Jeff Napolitano, is already open and planning to carry on the committee’s legacy of anti-war and social justice activism.
Napolitano said these organizations are important because they provide structure to activism, increasing activists’ efficacy.
“We need institutions. We need practice and networks to make sure we move forward,” Napolitano said. “It’s true we’ve been seeing the worst in humanity lately, but we’ve also been seeing the best.”
Napolitano cited organized activist reactions to August’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one woman dead as proof that activism is much more powerful when organized; after Charlottesville, thousands of activists flooded the streets of Boston in an organized protest of a Boston rally that was also thought to have white supremacist undertones.
Napolitano also said that it’s important to continue the AFSC’s work through The Resistance Center to hold the government accountable for its actions.
“Frances isn’t a genius — I’m sorry Frances — she doesn’t have any great secrets, but she reminds us of who we are as a country, good and bad,” Napolitano said.
Raul Matta, a longtime participant at the AFSC, was another speaker. After growing up impoverished in Holyoke, Matta helped facilitate military counter-recruitments for the organization, going to high schools and handing out pro-peace literature while sitting across from military recruiters looking for potential soldiers.
As a Latino, Matta says the AFSC helped him learn that he was “a person who had value,” and hopes that The Resistance Center will continue to do good for minorities, and spread the message of peace through minorities.
“Every day that a person of color wakes up and doesn’t react with violence they are practicing nonviolence,” Matta said.
The Rev. Adele Smith-Penniman, a retired Unitarian Universalist minister and longtime participant with the AFSC, echoed Matta’s feelings that diversity must be important for The Resistance Center too.
“We need to learn from one another,” Smith-Penniman said, “If some minority members feel excluded, some may think they are not good enough and pull away, and The Resistance Center will become a hollow echo chamber.”
At the end of the celebration, Prashad encouraged the crowd to support The Resistance Center before introducing two local musicians, Peter Blood and Ben Grossup. The two of them started singing, and the entire crowd stood up from their seats and joined in:
“We will rise as one,” they sang.