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December 17, 2018

Dear Sisters United in Peace:

It's been an honor and privilege to serve you as WILPF US Section president for five years. The years have been part of a decade of great changes for WILPF US, tumultuous and life-giving, often at the same time. I'll write more about my years shared with all of you in another President's Corner. Right now, I want to send my CONGRATULATIONS to our new board members, Darien De Lu as WILPF US Section President and Nancy Price for filling one of the at-large positions. I'd also want to share my thanks and admiration to Barbara Nielsen for standing up to run for president. As many of you know, it takes a great deal of time and dedication to put yourself out there and run for any office, and we will ask more of you to stand up for our vision and mission in the coming months.

Working together. As president, Darien De Lu brings a wealth of knowledge of WILPF and a resolve to continue the outreach to members, branches, and WILPF International, building a community with collaboration and individual activism. She's served as past co-president of WILPF US, chair of the Bylaws Committee and Nominating Committee, and member of the Personnel Committee and Congress Planning Committee (San Francisco Congress). She was instrumental in reviving the Leadership Institute at the 2017 Congress. Darien also served as International Board member and was a delegate to the 2018 WILPF International Congress in Ghana (see WILPF US website). Nancy Price also shares the qualities of working together and experience. She's served on several nonprofit boards that deal with the root causes of war, such as environmental challenges, military spending, and, of course, mega-corporate takeover of our lives. In many ways, her incisive and thoughtful ability to add to our discussions and written materials have broadened our opportunities to be heard and remind us of our historic lineage of ground-breaking societal change. Successful activism is building a team for success, true enough, but I'd rather call it community-building; building an eco-community, a feminism that is a way-of-being-in-the world and not necessarily gender specific. To do this, the adjective of the day is transformative.

Supporting our communities. Continuing a transformative community is our most basic task. From January 2017 to November 2018 we gained 276 new members and keep adding to that number. What do we have to give them? We have a three-year Development Plan in the works, providing tech trainings for members to improve communication; chances to listen to noted authors and activists and each other through ONE WILPF Calls; an increasing participation in SOLIDARITY DAY activism; a commitment to support and increase branch successes through our WWINGS project (developing models for branch effectiveness); more work on the serious impact of climate change, military expenditures, and the increasing divisiveness in and on our civilization through our Issue Committees; and working to have a transformative impact on United Nations' policies and practices through our Practicum and Local/Global Initiative for young members and more senior members.

More. In addition to joining the visionary call for a nonviolent moral revival with the Poor People's Campaign, led by co-chairs Rev. William Barber and Rev. Liz Theoharis, WILPF US is one of three nonprofits to collaborate under the Peace Development Fund's (our 501 c 3 representative) "Women's Peace Initiative" to focus on peaceful solutions with both North and South Korea. The other two collaborators are Women for Genuine Security and Women Cross DMZ. We welcome participation in WILPF International's Americas Section collaboration with our Sisters from Mexico, Costa Rica, Columbia, Bolivia, and Argentina; as well as continued work with environmental and military issues with our members in Africa and around the world.

These are only some examples of the contributions made by the WILPF US community of branches, at-large members, WILPF US Board, and friends. You have only a few days left to contribute to the continuation of our efforts to keep WILPF US alive and thriving!!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart,