Local peace and justice groups will present the community with an opportunity to re-examine the meaning of peace on Friday, April 11, when George Mische, peace movement organizer and U.S. Army veteran, will speak at 7:30 p.m. in McEwen Hall Room 202 on the SUNY Fredonia campus. The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.
The event is sponsored by SUNY Fredonia Students for Peace, the Dunkirk/Fredonia Center for Peace and Justice and SUNY Fredonia’s Latinos Unidos.
In 1968, Mr. Mische was arrested as one of the "Catonsville Nine," a group of men and women, including Daniel and Philip Berrigan, who
 Members of the Catonsville Nine, from left to right standing, are George Mische, Philip Berrigan, Daniel Berrigan, and Tom Lewis. From left to right (seated) are David Darst, Mary Moylan, John Hogan, Marjorie Melville, and Tom Melville. |
removed several hundred draft records from the Selective Services Offices in Catonsville, Maryland, and burned them with homemade napalm to protest the war in Vietnam.
Prior to that, Mische had attended the U.S. State Department's Foreign Service School and participated in the Alliance for Progress. He worked with youth offenders for several years and with Maryknoll Missionaries in Mexico during 1961. He returned to the United States in 1964 because he disagreed with U.S. foreign policy in Latin America.
Like several of the other Catonsville Nine members, Mische was motivated by what he had experienced abroad. He knew the Berrigans and in 1968 was living in a communal house in Washington, D.C., where four other members of the group became involved: the Melvilles, John Hogan, and Mary Moylan.
After the Catonsville action, Mische remained active in labor and peace organizing and in Democratic party politics. He served for several years on the St. Cloud, Minnesota, City Council.
