Peacemakers was an American pacifist organization founded following a conference on "More Disciplined and Revolutionary Pacifist Activity" in Chicago in July 1948. Ernest and Marion Bromley and Juanita and Wally Nelson largely organized the group. The group's organizational structure adopted a multidivisional organizational structure with a loose hierarchy, prioritizing local committees including but not limited to the Tax Refusal and Military Draft Refusal Committee.
Organizational structure
The Peacemakers differed from other pacifist and nonviolent resistance organizations in their emphasis on small-scale, local, "cell-based" organizations and intentional communities. In 1944 and 1945, Activist A.J. Muste held conferences on "the philosophy and methodology of revolutionary pacifism" alongside a successive conference in 1947 in coalition with the Consultative Peace Council at Pendle Hill. These meetings were the catalyst for the creation of the Peacemakers and garnered momentum for religious pacifism within the anti-war efforts of the 1940s.
The group's members vowed to (1) refuse to serve in the armed forces in either peace or war; (2) refuse to make or transport weapons of war; (3) refuse to be conscripted or to register; (4) consider refusing to pay taxes for war purposes — a position already adopted by some; (5) spread the idea of peacemaking and to develop non-violent methods of opposing war through various forms of non-cooperation and to advocate unilateral disarmament and economic democracy.
Peacemakers were dedicated to "engaging in holy disobedience against the war-making and conscripting state."