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The Chico Peace and Justice Center is a community-based non-profit 501(c)3 organization committed to working for peace, social and economic justice through the power of nonviolence. Our mission is: "Building justice through peace and peace through justice." The center works for social change through education, community building, and direct action and is dedicated to bringing an end to violent conflict among nations and individuals. CPJC is an offshoot of the Chico Peace Endeavor, which has been working for nonviolent change since 1960. Our federal tax ID: 94-2902756 |
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Board of Directors Advisory Board Staff
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History of the Center The CPJC can trace its history back to the tense Cold War years of the early 1960s. The U.S. military built Titan missiles and nuclear warheads that were to be stored in already built underground bunkers in northeast Chico. Chico resident Wilhelmina Taggart, alarmed by this development, made weekly visits to the base to pray. Eventually, the missiles were removed, but by then Willa was joined by Florence McLane and Helen Kinnee. Together they started the Chico Peace Endeavor, and began holding a weekly peace vigil in downtown Chico. Forty years later, the vigil still takes place In the early 1980s, the three founders and others agreed that there was a need for a center where people could meet and find information about peace and justice issues. The Chico Peace & Justice Center opened its doors in 1982 on Walnut Street and became a 501(c)3 non-profit organization on September 13th, 1983. Among the issues the Center has addressed: nuclear weapons and militarism, war tax resistance, poverty & hunger, violence & youth, racism, sexism, homophobia, gun control, the death penalty, minority and immigrant rights, Central American and Mexican violence related to U.S. policies, and U.S. military intervention in other countries. The principle linking the Center's work on all of these issues is a belief in the importance and power of non-violence, both as a moral value and as a tool to effect positive change. Since its inception, the Center has initiated numerous conflict resolutions and violence prevention programs in the community, working on a shoestring budget and almost exclusively with volunteers. Some of these programs have been ongoing, and others have been initiated in response to specific community needs. |
Board of Directors
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Laurel Blankinship has been on the board of the CPJC for three years and has supported the center since 1995 as a volunteer. Laurel was selected as a "Local Hero" in 2004 by the Chico News and Review for her many years of volunteer service to community non-profit agencies. Laurel is also the 1996 recipient of The Maggie Award as Community Woman of the Year, given by the Women's Center at CSU-Chico. Laurel is a public benefits specialist, a paralegal, with the Chico office of Legal Services of Northern California, where she has been employed since 1986. She is a trainer for Benchmark Institute in San Francisco and every year she helps train new legal services advocates, paralegals and attorneys statewide one eligibility issues in CalWORKS cash aid, food stamps and Medi-Cal. Laurel has produced and hosted the public affairs program, "The Peace and Social Justice Program" on KZFR radio since 1995. She and her granddaughter, Lily, also produce and host a monthly children's program on KZFR, "Lily and her Grandma." Laurel is happy to announce that she is part of four generations of women in her family living in Chico -- her mother, her daughter and her granddaughter. |
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Ken Logan - bio coming soon |
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Samir (Sam) Nissan teaches accounting at Chico State and brings his talents in accounting and financial planning to the Chico Peace and Justice Center. He has been contributing to CPJC behind the scenes for many months by being an indispensable source of advice and assistance to our Treasurer, Cathy Webster. Sam was born in Iraq, and has lived in the Chico area for decades. |
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Diane Suzuki-Brobeck is a family woman, having raised her children with her husband, Jimmy, and is now enthusiastically helping raise granddaughters. She set down her roots in Butte County after migrating from Southern California over 30 years ago. Diane is Nisei, third generation Japanese-American. Both of her parents' families were interned during World War II, and out of their experiences she has chosen to devote her time to social justice issues. As the coordinator of Beyond Violence Alliance, she and other facilitators present workshops in the local schools and community educating on the roots of violence and peace in our culture, a program of CCY- Community Collaborative for Youth. As an offering of peace to the Muslim world Diane co-organized a fundraising Dinner for the Women's Center of Kwaaza Khela, Pakistan. Currently, she works as a massage therapist at Back to Basics Chiropractics and Massage Therapy in Chico. B2B's mission is "healing one body at a time." One of her other volunteer positions is as a programmer of One World Music on community radio station 90.1 FM KZFR. |
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Susan Tchudi and her family moved to the north state a little over a year ago, where they are creating a sustainable organic farm in Yankee Hill. Susan also writes an occasional column for the Enterprise Record. She was an active participant in CPJC's giant puppet parade in March and in the Endangered Species Faire in June. Susan's activism began at Southern Methodist University, where she went to Selma in 1966. She also served in Vista in 1966-67, working New York, Baltimore, and Atlanta. As an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church, Susan has recently officiated at same-sex and opposite-sex marriages in the Peace Garden. She brings a passion and commitment for promoting peace in our community and is a quiet and thoughtful champion of social justice. |
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Cathy Webster has served on the Board since 2004 serving two terms as the Treasurer. Since 9/11, Cathy has intensified her activism, first in being a founding member of PeaceWorks, a proactive CPJC associate group, consisting of all age students and community members. She has been an organizer for the last few years of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Atomic Bombing Remembrance. With others Cathy founded the campaign to bring 1000 Grandmothers to the School of the Americas Watch vigil and protest in 2006, during which she was arrested for nonviolent trespass, consequently spending two months as the guest of the Federal Bureau of Prisons at the Sacramento County Jail. Cathy retired as the owner operator of the Anchor Inn Storage in 2003. She likes to garden, read, play with her four grandchildren, and cause as much affliction as possible for recalcitrant politicians, corporations, and military interests. |
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David Wilson is a retired UC Davis professor of American Studies, teaching about race in America, religion in American lives, and the literature and art and music of peace and protest. He became an advocate of racial and religious equality in 1947, when he joined the NAACP with his parents and also tried to enlighten his Boy Scout Troop about the injustice of anti-Semitism and racial discrimination. He became tagged as a radical in high school, and after graduation, spent a summer in New York City at The Encampment For Citizenship, during which time he met several members of the Congress of Racial Equality and the Fellowship of Reconciliation who had ridden through the near South on interstate busses to protest Jim Crow segregation in transportation. In Chico David has volunteered at the Chico Area Interfaith Council, the Human Relations Network, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. He has been on the CPJC board since June 2006. |
Advisory Board
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Jim Anderson - Jim lived many places as a child, in most regions of the U.S. and a few years in Germany, settling eventually in California where he attended Stanford and then, newly married, spent three years in Asia-Malaysia in the Peace Corps and then some time in Japan. After some graduate work in Berkeley he moved to Chico to begin teaching at CSUC. He built the house in which he now lives during a year off, traveled to Hong Kong in 1977 to teach for three years, and returned to teach again in the Religious Studies department at Chico. He became involved in the establishment of the peace center in Chico at that time and has continued to participate in it since then. Further graduate work at Harvard in the '80s took him and his family to Massachusetts for three years, and he spent a semester teaching in a ship-board college program circling the world in the mid-90's. His children now grown, he and his wife live and work on 2.5 acres north of Chico. Jim is active in the local Quaker meeting, the local interfaith council, the Fellowship of Reconciliation chapter, as well as the CPJC, where he is currently a member of the advisory board. |
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Cathy Augros - Cathy Augros is a resident of Forest Ranch and has lived in the Chico area since the year 2000. She has a special passion for animals of all kinds and also serves on the Board of the North Valley Animal Disaster Group. She has a deep interest in a variety of social justice issues. Cathy's volunteerism began in the 1970's at 17 years old when she worked to unseat a congressional candidate who was listed as one of Washington DC's environmental "dirty dozen." Although, the campaign was unsuccessful, it gave her taste of what it was like to try to change the world. Throughout the years, Cathy has volunteered for political candidates and a wide variety of public benefit non-profits including peer counseling agencies, battered women's agencies, suicide prevention and animal welfare groups. In between volunteer positions, Cathy enjoys taking classes and spending time with family and friends. |
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Leslie Johnson is research attorney for Butte Superior Court. She is very active with civil liberties issues in particular, but involved with a wide variety of other peace, social justice, and environmental activities as well. She has been a legal services attorney in the past, and has worked on political asylum cases on the border during the '80's. With others, she started up a foundation for helping children with schooling in Belize, and she is always fundraising for that. She is also a founding member of the Chico-area chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Leslie says, "I really, really, really want us to transform the world into a big, caring family, and I think we can do it." |
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David Leeper Moss has been Pastor at Trinity United Methodist Church in Chico since 2003. He was a Delegate Member of Christian Peacemaker Teams, Israel and Palestine, in 2006, and is currently on the Board of Directors of Loaves and Fishes in Sacramento. David has also been a volunteer firefighter in several communities and has "committed numerous acts of civil disobedience" on behalf of social justice causes While earning his Masters of Divinity at Boston University in the late 1960s, he turned over his draft card in protest of the Vietnam war. His other pastorates over the past four decades have included churches in Auburn , Chester , Sacramento, Lockford, Kelseyville, Greenville, and Taylorville, California, plus several churches in Massachusetts. He served the homeless in Sacramento from 1984 to 1994, as a social worker with Transitional Living and Community Support and as a pastor with Loaves and Fishes. |
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Dilia Loe is an activist and seasoned non-profit professional with extensive experience in progressive environments. Skilled in resource development, she has a proven track record in organizational development, program evaluation, strategic planning, fund development and public relations. She is most recognized by her peers for her expertise in working with diverse staff and volunteer groups in long and short-term goal setting and execution. Currently working as an Organizational Development Consultant, she has served in such capacities as Chief Administrative Officer of Tobacco Education and Prevention Programs for the Arizona Department of Health Services, Adjunct Faculty for the Department of Social Work at Arizona State University and CSU Chico, Executive Director of the Arizona Human Rights Fund and Deputy Director for Programs and Operations of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Additionally, much of Ms. Loe's time has been serving in senior volunteer positions that have included Board President of the Arizona Advocacy Network, Chair of the Prevention Committee for the Arizona Comprehensive Cancer Coalition, and Health Committee Member of the City of Dallas Health & Human Service Commission. With a Masters of Theological Study from Emory University and a Bachelor of Arts History from the University of Texas, Ms. Loe is also a graduate of the Leadership Broward Civic Leadership Program, the Arizona State University WP Carey School of Business Accelerated Leadership Program, the Colorado Center for Creative Leadership Executive Leadership Program, and the Group Facilitation and Strategic Planning Institute of Cultural Affairs. |
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Ann Polivka is a retired public health nurse who has been associated with the work of the Peace and Justice Center for many years. She has recently been involved in the 1000 Grandmothers organization, as Ann has strong connections and desires to bring social justice and peace to Central America. |
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Chelsea Willet is a senior at Chico State majoring in international relations. She brings enthusiasm, a willingness to help out, and an informed youthful perspective to the Advisory Board. She is a former Miss Butte County, a regular contributor to our Peaceful Action newsletter, and we were so grateful for her stellar "in a pinch" performance at the recent Pancakes for Peace benefit. |
