“Ascension”, by Daniel ben Avrám. If you desire an mp3, you may email him at Daniel@PeaceHost.net







       Diane Thomas died December 1st at her Berkeley home after a long struggle with cancer. The celebration of Diane’s life was held on Saturday, January 17th at 10 a.m. at Pacific School of Religion, where she was on staff for nine years.

       “Diane was a shining person. She was loving and loveable, fully committed and conscientious in her activism, and dedicated to helping make a better life for all people. Those who knew her thought of her as one of the best human beings any of us had ever encountered. She was one of my heroes.”
        –Daniel Ellsberg, anti-war activist and long-time friend of Diane Thomas.




June 1982 — Diane Thomas spoke in New York City to a rally of one million people demonstrating for peace, and against nuclear weapons. She had been fasting for disarmament for thirty days.

The biggest demonstration in history (until the global anti-Iraq war march of Feb 15, 2003) took place in New York on June 12, when one million people gathered in support of the second UN Special Session on Disarmament and to protest nuclear weapons.
 

Labor unions joined peace groups, other organizations and concerned individuals from across the country in the largest demonstration ever held in the nation’s largest city, in protest against the Reagan administration’s nuclear weapons buildup.
 





DIANE THOMAS’S WORK FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE

“I join you in the most beautiful of struggles”

“You Led the Way” a poem by Carolyn Scarr

STATEMENT BY DAVID RAYMOND AT DIANE THOMAS’S MEMORIAL

CALL TO ACTION AND OFFERING – read by David Raymond and Odette Lockwood- Stuart, Good Friday Service and Action at Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, Friday, April 10, 2009

“To Know in Our Deepest Heart” - Diane Thomas’s Work for Peace and Justice in Her Own Words

A Tribute to Diane Thomas

In the Belly of the Beast: Five Years of the U.C. Nuclear Weapons Labs Conversion Project, 1976-1980” by Diane Thomas

Diane Thomas, activist for peace and justice March 20,1950- December 1, 2008



DIANE THOMAS’S WORK FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE

In 1976, Diane Thomas co-founded the UC Nuclear Weapons Lab Conversion Project to oppose the nuclear weapons design work of the Livermore and Los Alamos labs, both managed by the University of California. These weapons labs have designed every single nuclear warhead in the U.S. arsenal.  In the late 1970s Diane toured the state giving speeches with anti-war activist Daniel Ellsberg. She organized and took part in many acts of nonviolent resistance to militarism and racial injustice, including fasting and serving time in jail for civil disobedience. Because of her prominence in the anti-nuclear weapons movement, Diane Thomas, along with Coretta Scott King and others, was one of the speakers at a massive rally held to bring pressure on the Second United Nations Special Session on Disarmament in New York City in June 1982. She addressed the crowd of more than one million people after having fasted for disarmament for 30 days.  From 1975 to 1993, Thomas served as executive director of the Ecumenical Peace Institute (EPI), the northern California chapter of Clergy and Laity Concerned (founded in 1968 by Martin Luther King, Jr. and other ministers.) EPI (www.epicalc.org) is an interfaith justice and peace action group focusing on militarism, racism, and empire and working with Native Americans, political prisoners, and youth. She then served as a director of development at several organizations in Berkeley before she joined the staff of Pacific School of Religion in 2000, where she directed the annual fund and alumni relations, organized the annual Earl Lectures church conference, and co-chaired the seminary’s Dismantling Racism Committee.



“I join you in the most beautiful of struggles,” reads the headline of an article in which Diane tied together the ongoing threat of nuclear weapons, 40,000 people around the world dying of starvation each day, poverty in Alameda County (home of the University of California-managed Livermore nuclear weapons lab) and the function of nuclear weapons to defend privilege and domination. She wrote, “The foundation of this country’s power rests on the will of the people to cooperate. We must not cooperate. We need to become lean in spirit. Each of us must break up our own ground and the ground of our nation.”



You Led the Way
            for Diane

Always you led the way,
from the struggle against nuclear weapons
to the face of human need
both of them right here in Alameda County
bringing us to confront
“racism, militarism and materialism” where we live.

Always you led the way,
brought the witnessing church
to stand with Native Americans
defending their sacred land
where precious water carries slurries of coal
over miles of stark beauty.

Big Mountain, Big Mountain,
you led us there
to stand in a prayer circle
joining our voices from the four directions
in the cold and gathering sleet.

In the face of civil religion
and American exceptionalism,
you showed us the way
to a new Barmen Confession.
Still we strive to find Bonhoeffer’s path of resistance.

Always you led the way
to stand beside those most hated and despised–
to a week of fasting for political prisoners
      in the United States
to teach us to “grieve our own complicity
      in the suffering and death of millions in our time”*
to bring to our educational institutions
      Native American, African American, Palestinian,
      and Muslim thinkers and leaders.
In your living, you showed us how to keep the love for our children
      central in our lives.
As you leave us, we will remember
that we joined you “in the most beautiful of struggles.”

Carolyn S. Scarr
October 22, 2008

    * Diane Thomas in Planted by the Waters March 1984
                other quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.



STATEMENT BY DAVID RAYMOND AT DIANE THOMAS’S MEMORIAL, JANUARY 17, 2009

I’m David Raymond. I am Diane Thomas’s life-partner. Diane and I knew each other for 30 years, and we were together as partners for the last six years. I was with her daily as she struggled with stomach cancer. Over the last year, we went through moments of terrible news, and long periods of hope followed by renewed disappointment. On the evening of Monday, December 1, Diane died in my arms at our home in Berkeley. When it was clear that she was dying, I told her over and over again, “I love you Diane. Your children love you. I will always love you.” And her sister Linna, who also cared for her in the last month of her life, kept repeating one of Diane’s favorite prayers, which ends, “Wherever you are, God is.” Wherever you are now, wherever you are going, God is there.

For the first few minutes Diane cried, so we know that she heard us. Ten minutes later she was dead. Diane did not fear death, but she felt enormous grief at leaving this world behind, especially her children Hannah, Daniel, and Gabe, and her grandchildren Sonia and Jacob, and her family and friends.

I am holding in my hands a photo taken October 18, of Diane holding her grandson Jacob a few days after he was born, and one day after Diane had been told by her oncologist that she had only weeks left to live. On that day she told her children the terrible news. I know how hard that was for each of you. And Diane lived to see her granddaughter Sonia as well. Her grandchildren and her children were wonderful blessings in the last days of her life.

The last thing Diane told me directly, about an hour before she died, after I put a blanket on her when she was cold, was, “Thank you Dave. I love you. You’re my hero.”

But you know, she was my hero. If you strip that word of its comic book and masculine connotations, Diane was a hero to many people. She was probably the kindest and most courageous person I have ever met.

Each one of the cards you have sent to me since Diane’s death has made me cry, and I just want to quote one of the simpler ones, from her friend Daniel Berrigan.

Rest in peace Diane Thomas. Spirit undaunted. Heartfelt friend.

Diane was a hero to people like Daniel Berrigan and Daniel Ellsberg, who many people in this country admire for their courageous actions for peace and justice. (By the way, she seemed to have a lot of Daniel’s in her life; Dan Buford and her son Daniel as well.)

Diane is with her mother and father now, and with others who died before her. She firmly believed that on the other side, as she called it, there was healing work to do, as she did in this world, and she is now busy doing that work. Some how her healing love will continue to reach us on this side.

When she spoke to me about this, she was very moved when I quoted to her from the 2005 Hiroshima Peace Declaration,

“This August 6, the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing, is a moment of shared lamentation in which more than 300 thousand souls of atomic bomb victims and those who remain behind transcend the boundary between life and death to remember that day. It is a time of awakening, in which we inherit the commitment of the survivors to the abolition of nuclear weapons and the realization of genuine world peace. We must act on the warning of the atomic bomb survivors, “No one else should ever suffer as we did.”

Diane went to Hiroshima and Nagasaki; she listened to the anguish of the survivors. And she acted.

In 1976, she co-founded the UC Nuclear Weapons Lab Conversion Project to oppose the nuclear weapons design work of the Livermore and Los Alamos labs, both managed by the University of California. These weapons labs have designed every single nuclear warhead in the U.S. arsenal; they designed the bombs dropped on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It is through the Labs Project that she first met Daniel Ellsberg, and this is also how I first met Diane 30 years ago. I later worked for the Labs Project. On June 12, 1982, Diane spoke in New York City to a rally of one million people demonstrating for peace, and against nuclear weapons. At the time this was the largest demonstration in the history of the world. When she spoke, she was in the thirtieth day of a fast for disarmament.

The idea that the souls of those who have died can reach across to those of us who remain behind and transcend the boundary between life and death is something I am writing about; it is the subject of my dissertation. I am writing about the Ghost Dance, an American Indian religious movement of the late nineteenth century. 150 years ago, in this state, in Northern California, white settlers carried out the most terrible massacres that have ever been committed in this country; they carried out genocide. A number of indigenous peoples were exterminated, leaving only a handful of survivors. The Ghost Dance prophecies promised these survivors that their loved ones would return to them from the dead, and they would live together in the old ways forever.

In 1864, the Yana people of Northern California were massacred. Of 2000 people alive at the beginning of that year, only 50 were left alive after the massacres. (By the way, the Pacific School of Religion was founded here in Berkeley in 1866.) In 1870 the Yana survivors took part in a Ghost Dance. In their vision, the people saw their dead loved ones returning to them with the sunrise from the east, but the dead were walking slowly because the children were leading them.

Are there mothers and fathers in Gaza and Israel today who want their dead children to return to them? How many millions are mourning today in Iraq the million Iraqis who have been killed in that war? And what of the mothers and fathers grieving in this country?

Diane had two central commitments in her life: her family and friends, and her work for peace and justice. That is why we ask you today to make a donation to the two groups Diane co-founded and through which she wished her work to continue, the Dismantling Racism Committee of PSR and the Iraq Initiatives Project.

Diane felt enormous love and gratitude for all of you; all of you who wrote to her, and kept her in your thoughts and prayers over the last year; all who she loved as friends over the years, and worked with as she sought peace and justice in this world.

The last thing Diane wrote was a message to all of you (it is in the program). She wrote,

    “All of you are so amazing! Thank you for this warm and healing flow of your love. I send you great love and deep thanks for all the joy and hard work we have shared. God is very near and very good. Stay tuned!”

I want to close with a poem I wrote.

    My dearest Diane.
    I will love you always.
    Six years ago we took the first step
    Without foreseeing the last
    But now we know
    That the longest road,
    And the hardest road,
    Are the only routes
    Into the heart of God.

Thank you.



CALL TO ACTION AND OFFERING – read by David Raymond and Odette Lockwood- Stuart, Good Friday Service and Action at Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, Friday, April 10, 2009

May the words of Reverend Nobu Hanaoka [survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bombing who spoke just before us] remind us that real people have been, and continue to be, killed by the nuclear weapons developed at the UC weapons labs. Their loved ones grieve for them to this very day. In the offering today we invoke the name and memory of Diane Thomas. I am her life-partner.
            33 years ago, Diane Thomas co-founded the UC Nuclear Weapons Labs Conversion Project to oppose the nuclear weapons design work of the Livermore and Los Alamos labs. It is the Labs Project that began the continuous stream of protest that continues to the action we take today. Diane organized and took part in many acts of nonviolent resistance to militarism and racial injustice, including fasting and serving time in jail for civil disobedience.
            From 1976 to 1993 Diane served as a director of the Ecumenical Peace Institute (EPI), the northern California chapter of Clergy and Laity Concerned. In June 1982 she spoke in New York City to a rally of one million people demonstrating for peace. She was then in the thirtieth day of a fast for disarmament. Diane died in December of last year.

Almost thirty years ago, Diane wrote of traveling to Japan to meet with atomic bombsurvivors and to participate in an international conference for peace. She wrote,

“My time in Japan impressed many new realities on me spiritually, politically, and culturally. I certainly came home with many new questions. I share them with you –

    *How do we as Christians most deeply and most effectively respond to the challenge of the Buddhists in this time, to adopt without qualification...“the precept of non-killing?”
    *What is our most useful role in speaking to and challenging our government and the governments of the world to find security without escalating weapons of destruction?
    *How can we work to build a world which affirms the sacred nature and sovereignty of each individual, each community, each culture?
    *
    “Who shall play God in the launching of world ending missiles, the continuing contamination of the creation God first looked on and called good, very good?”

“When someone like Diane Thomas dies, it is like a wake-up call from heaven saying, “What are you doing with your life?” Diane has gone on. Let her absence and her presence, like the absence and the presence of so many sisters and brothers who have gone on before be for us a CALL TO ACTION.

We believe the consistent witness of her 30 years of struggle for justice has an infinite effect and value. In joining the struggle we join with her spirit and continue to give hope and sustenance to all who act for justice.”

BELOVED FRIENDS, AS WE OFFER OUR MATERIAL RESOURCES, OUR MONEY, LET’S DIG DEEPER, FOR A WILLINGNESS TO OFFER OUR LIVES AS WELL. THIS MORNING’S OFFERING WILL SUPPORT THE MINISTRIES OF ECUMENICAL PEACE INSTITUTE.



“To Know in Our Deepest Heart”—
Diane Thomas’s Work for Peace and Justice
in Her Own Words

    “Diane Thomas was a shining person. She was loving and loveable, fully committed and conscientious in her activism, and dedicated to helping make a better life for all people. Those who knew her thought of her as one of the best human beings any of us had ever encountered. She was one of my heroes.” – Daniel Ellsberg

Diane Thomas was an extraordinarily dedicated, and strategically gifted, activist for peace and justice. She was a leader in the Bay Area for racial justice and against nuclear weapons for over thirty years. For the last six years, Diane was my life-partner. She was one of the kindest and most courageous people I have ever met, a woman with a gentle spirit and a beautiful smile. On December 1, 2008 Diane died at our home in Berkeley after a year-long struggle with cancer. She was 58 years old.
            Diane lived long enough to see Barack Obama elected, and to marvel at his acceptance speech in Grant Park in Chicago. Forty years earlier, when she was eighteen years old, Diane - along with thousands of others protesting the Vietnam War - was beaten and tear-gassed by the Chicago police in Grant Park during the Democratic National Convention. Diane became a full-time activist against the war, and continued her activism for the rest of her life. In 1976, Diane Thomas co-founded the UC Nuclear Weapons Lab Conversion Project to oppose the nuclear weapons design work of the Livermore and Los Alamos labs. She organized and took part in many acts of nonviolent resistance to militarism and racial injustice, including fasting and serving time in jail for civil disobedience.
            Because of her prominence in the anti-nuclear weapons movement, Diane (along with Coretta Scott King and others) was one of the speakers at a massive rally held to support the Second United Nations Special Session on Disarmament in New York City in June 1982. She addressed the crowd of more than one million people after having fasted for disarmament for 30 days. At that time this was the largest demonstration in the history of the world.
            From 1976 to 1993 Diane served as a director of the Ecumenical Peace Institute (EPI), the northern California chapter of Clergy and Laity Concerned (founded in 1968 by Martin Luther King, Jr. and other ministers.) After working for several Berkeley nonprofits, she joined the staff of Pacific School of Religion in 2000, where she organized the annual Earl Lectures church conference, and co-chaired the seminary’s Dismantling Racism Committee.
            While Diane’s activism brought her both joy and heartache (at the state of the world), her three children – Hannah, Daniel, and Gabe – were the real joy of her life. Diane’s grandchildren Sonia and Jacob were born in the weeks before she died, and being able to see and hold them brought her great comfort.
            Diane was a gifted writer. There is too little space here to give more than a small window onto her life. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from articles that Diane wrote for Planted by the Waters. If you would like to read additional excerpts from her writing, please email me:
draymond@sfsu.edu. For photos of Diane and more information about her work for peace and justice, go to: www.peacehost.net/EPI-Calc/Diane/.
            Diane felt enormous love and gratitude for all of you: all who she loved as friends over the years, and worked with as she sought peace and justice in this world; and each of you who wrote to her, and kept her in your thoughts and prayers over the last year. Thank you!

– David Raymond
 

 “Watch Your Anguish”
            “ I remember wondering as a young girl why Good Friday was called Good Friday. It all seemed so gloomy and awful for the powers that be to have so thoroughly put out the light of hope, for God to have seemingly forsaken Jesus. I wanted to go immediately to the sunshine, warmth, and joy of Easter morning. Certainly as I got older and saw the global crucifixion in places like Livermore Lab, it all seemed even gloomier and more overwhelming. Yet now I am coming to understand Good Friday anew. What is good about Good Friday is that Jesus was choosing to love and to give up power and to take responsibility for the suffering and pain in his world. What Good Friday says to me is I must take full responsibility to be and do my utmost for the love of creation. I must work for justice and peace with my whole being, in every corner of my life.
            During the births of each of my three children there has reached a point where I couldn’t imagine going on and have said, “I can’t do this.” I cannot bear this. Jesus said, “My God, my God, why indeed have you forsaken me?” Each of us must bear our appropriate burden if the reign of love is to prevail, if justice is to be born. Older, wiser women said to me of birth, “your body knows what to do, so just let it.” I would say to each of us that our deepest selves know what to do if we will just listen, if we will take the risk of letting go of distractions and drugs of all kinds and allow ourselves the grace of being disturbed by the state of our world.
            My three year old (Gabe) has in typical toddler fashion confused different things he has heard so that he regularly tells a family member to “watch your anguish” (his contraction of “language” and “English.”) It strikes me as a wonderful Good Friday exhortation to “watch your anguish.” To know in our deepest heart that the hungry sobbing of most of the world’s children is our very own child, and that the responsibility to radically transform the world is our own.” – (“Watch Your Anguish” – 1993)

“When I think back to 1976 and the letter I wrote applying for a job at EPI, I’m struck by how everything changes and nothing changes. In 1976 disarmament was a laughable idea. Few people knew where Livermore was or what the Lab’s role was in U.S. military policy. What I did know was that EPI was an organization founded in an action blocking the army induction center in Oakland – an action where many religious people got arrested. I was full of gratitude for being given a job working with all of you. The years of working for EPI have created a strong sense of family for me. My own children have been deeply affected by the values of the EPI family. When I was in jail in 1983, Hannah (then 5) told her friends her mommy was in jail because “jail is where you go if you’re for peace.” More recently Daniel (now 8) spent a delightful time as “the white boy” among a several Indian boys at the International Indian Treaty Council Conference.
            “I wish you all could have been at our Hiroshima commemoration at Ohana Center August 6
th. In the face of the memory of the atomic blast, a fully multiracial and interfaith gathering affirmed creation and beauty and love. I stood there full of gratitude for Rev. Daniel Buford’s outstanding leadership and inspiration, for the board’s diversity and commitment, for the serious and profound way we join together for change. Like a mighty river, EPI goes on and on. I am thankful to each one of you who has given us your prayers, your work, and your financial support over all these years.” – (“Program Director’s Report” – 1980)

“A New Spirit Rising”
            Diane was deeply committed to the struggle for racial justice in this country, and she considered racism to be “the original sin” of the United States. Along with Diane, Reverend Daniel Buford, former executive director of EPI and Diane’s friend and colleague for many years, was enormously important in EPI/CALC’s work for racial justice, both locally and nationally. In 1992, Diane initiated EPI’s support for American Indians protesting the 500-year anniversary of the European invasion of the Americas, and celebrating five centuries of indigenous resistance. For many years, Diane organized and led delegations to support the Diné (Navajo) people at Big Mountain in Arizona, who were resisting being thrown off their sacred lands by the U.S. government.

“EPI/CALC staff and board continue to be humbled by our need to see more clearly the face of God in the lives of the poor and oppressed in our own communities. At the same time we are encouraged by the vision of a new multiracial, multicultural community and movement being born in pain and struggle.” (“National CALC Assembly: New Steps in Countering Racism” – 1983)

 “This morning as I listened to the many messages on the phone machine it occurred to me that the urgent needs that come to us through the telephone are a measure of how many connections are being made for justice and peace in our communities. Memorial services come up a lot these days. Requests for a sermon at a memorial service for the two homeless people who burned to death in Oakland last week, “Could you come and say something so we know they didn’t die in vain?” Our memorial service for Timothy Lee, whose death authorities still refuse to see as the racist message read so clearly in the black community in Contra Costa County. [Timothy Lee was a young African American man who was found hanging from a tree, with no suicide note and clear indications of a racist murder.] I remember Bill Wahpepah saying just weeks before he died, as he spoke at a conference in San Francisco where he was asked to share his experience of being an Indian, “The funerals, I think of all the funerals our people have had to endure.” (1988)

“Because April 4th is the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., because Governor Meacham has refused to honor him with the rest of the nation, and because the sovereign Hopi and Diné peoples are defending their religious freedom within the borders called Arizona – we invite all people of prayer to join us at Black Mesa [Arizona] to pray. Black Mesa, just north of Big Mountain, is sacred to Hopi, Diné and others, and Peabody Coal, a prime example of the greed that is killing us, is attacking Black Mesa through strip mining. Our presence there on April 4th will invoke the spirit of Dr. King and all the cloud of witnesses to justice and love. – (“A New Spirit Rising” – 1987)

“In a season long understood to birth hope and light, it made sense to travel to the homelands of some of the world’s most inspired traditional people. The people we met in our week’s time around the Hopi and Navajo reservations carry in their lives and hearts the crushing weight of our society’s imbalance. Yet, just to be in their presence brings clarity. Our delegation, the first of several planned for this spring, consisted of nine people. On Christmas Eve, we gathered in the Roundhouse for music, conversation, and prayer. The prayers around the beating of the drum broke through religious and cultural barriers. As delegation member Reverend Marti Reed said later, “I was able to see Christ as an indigenous person, facing the powers that be, unafraid of death.” I will never get over the wonder that the Diné people are willing to pray with us in spite of our country’s violations of their religious life and our military robbery of their Holy land. We were moved more than we expected to be and felt clear about a calling to support these people in their struggle. We had glimpsed briefly how truly all of our prayers together do hold this land in balance.” – (“Christmas at Big Mountain” - Clergy and Laity Concerned Report, March-April 1986)

“We also worked to create a circle on October 12th [1992] at the Columbus statue [in San Francisco.] About 150 people gathered on top of Telegraph Hill. Although some of us came prepared to pour our blood on the bronze Columbus in witness to 500 years of genocide, we were asked not to by Native American pipe carrier Fred Short. He told us there were no healing ceremonies in their tradition which involved blood and asked us to begin the next 500 years in a healing way. After some discussion with him, we agreed. We see this also as beginning the next 500 years of taking some direction from native peoples. We know each of us comes from an ancestry tied to some part of land on the planet. Each of us knows that the massive destruction of indigenous peoples in our history can no longer be denied. And each of us knows the profound difference between balance and imbalance in our own lives. [Let us act] with a spirit of justice and balance creating space for the diversity we celebrate.” – (“May the Circle Be Unbroken”- 1992)

“God is very near and very good. Stay tuned!”
            Diane looked to the future with hope, with certainty that no matter how many years, or lifetimes, it takes, we will eventually bring into being a world of peace and justice. Thus she helped start the UC Nuclear Weapons Labs Conversion Project, and at the Pacific School of Religion she co-founded the Dismantling Racism Committee. Despite the fact that the weapons labs have not yet been converted to peaceful purpose, and racism continues today with deadly force, she knew that someday these goals would be achieved. And during her final illness, Diane was sustained by the love of her family and friends.

“For thousands of years humanity has sought liberation. Like ourselves, [all people] desire peace and an experience of community which satisfies. Across centuries, we and they weave the thread of a vision of clarity and love shaping all that is truest in us into a land where life is lived overflowingly. The smallest, strongest voice whispers down eternity: it has been put in our hands to change our lives.” (“Seeking”-Non-Nuclear Interreligious Coalition, 1977)

“Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr., I too have a dream. I see those of us who were active in the civil rights and anti-war movements returning in our middle age to the depth and clarity we briefly glimpsed as we grew up. The power we felt then as we opposed and ended the Vietnam War will be something we foster. Maybe we can still change the world. Maybe we can dig deep enough into ourselves to tap a need for justice, a need to live it fully ourselves and a need to insist on it from our government. Maybe our legacy can be an America that seeks a stable and just world rather than dominance. Maybe.” – (“Reclaiming the Dream” – 2000

Diane found inspiration in the lives of activists like Cesar Chavez. When he died in 1993, she wrote a heartfelt memorial to him. We can rewrite her tribute to also speak of Diane’s life.

“When someone like Diane Thomas dies, it is like a wake-up call from heaven saying, “What are you doing with your life?” Diane has gone on. If we were to judge her life by success as the world measures success, it would force us to admit that she failed. But we believe the consistent witness of her 30 years of struggle for justice has an infinite effect and value. Her life is a victory of enormous proportion. In joining the struggle we join with her spirit and continue to give hope and sustenance to all who act for justice.” (“Don’t Mourn – Organize” 1993)

Just a few weeks before she died, Diane wrote a last message to everyone who supported her through her illness. “All of you are so amazing! Thank you for this warm and healing flow of your love. I send you great love and deep thanks for all the joy and hard work we have shared. God is very near and very good. Stay tuned!”



    A Tribute to Diane Thomas

    By Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan, Associate Professor of Old Testament, December 12, 2008, Pacific School of Religion
                “White liberal racism, to me, is the trap between awareness and action. Liberals know there’s a problem — they may even know a lot, intellectually, about racism, but they don’t necessarily risk anything or take effective action. White people are used to being liked and being comfortable, and it’s hard for us to acknowledge acts of racism in other white people, or sometimes in ourselves. The question is: How much discomfort and unhappiness can we take on?” (
    http://www.psr.edu/dismantling-racism)
                These are profound words from my dear friend and colleague, Diane Thomas. Diane came to PSR in 2000 with a long history of taking risks in addressing injustices. She was never afraid of the “discomfort” and “unhappiness” and took on the work of addressing racism head-on almost immediately. She was the one who invited me to serve as co-chair with her on what was to become the Dismantling Racism Committee. She knew that the work of addressing and dismantling racism is not the sole responsibility of racial-ethnic minorities, but perhaps even more so, the responsibility of Euro-Americans. She helped put in place significant programs for the community to confront the evils of racism. No one at PSR deserves more credit in moving us to where we are in the work of dismantling racism and building cross-cultural competency.
                Diane got it! She understood that, “In the end, this is a theological issue, and it’s going to take theological leadership, which is what makes the issue so important to this school. Remember, Jesus’ injunction was to speak the truth and to love. “Dismantling racism” is speaking truth by naming the [racist social] structures, calling people out on their attitudes, and creating the structures where this can happen. “Love” comes in building cross-cultural competence — learning to listen, to understand, and to take seriously the differences all around us.”
                Diane, you are a rare gem from God and we are grateful to your family for sharing you with us. PSR is a better community because of you. The world is a better place because of you. We will continue to miss you dearly.



“In the Belly of the Beast:
Five Years of the U.C. Nuclear Weapons Labs
Conversion Project, 1976-1980”
by Diane Thomas
October 1984

These are excerpts from Diane’s analysis of five years of work (1976-1980) by the UC Nuclear Weapons Labs Conversion Project (which Diane, as a staff member of the Ecumenical Peace Institute, co-founded). The Labs Project sought, unsuccessfully, to end the nuclear weapons design work of the University of California-managed Livermore and Los Alamos Laboratories, and to convert them to peaceful purposes. This is apparently an unpublished manuscript.

Livermore Lab developed the hydrogen bomb. The thousands of hydrogen bombs still in the U.S. arsenal are capable of killing every human being on earth (as are the similar number of nuclear weapons still in the arsenal of Russia.) In every case, the UC-managed weapons labs first researched and developed these devastating weapons (the atomic bomb, hydrogen bomb, neutron bomb) and then they were copied by other nations.

“In the heat of the summer of 1977 we released information at a well-covered press conference on the role of U.C. and the nuclear weapons labs in developing and lobbying for the use of the neutron bomb. The community was outraged, and we focused our outrage during the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where hundreds of people marched from the U.C. Berkeley campus to the Energy Research and Development Administration [the U.S. government agency which oversees nuclear weapons production] headquarters in Oakland to protest any further development of these weapons. Throughout the spring and summer of 1977 we repeatedly asked U.C. to simply debate its position on development of nuclear weapons and had been ignored and refused. Finally, in November, two Labs Project members [Diane Thomas and UCB Physics professor Charlie Schwartz] went up to U.C. President Saxon’s office to “wait-in” until he agreed to appoint someone to debate. After thirty six-hours of waiting, six people were arrested. That month we held teach-ins throughout the state [Diane and Daniel Ellsberg were the most prominent speakers], with thousands of students, faculty and community people hearing about nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and the University’s involvement in the labs. Local projects were inspired in several communities and hundreds more people made a commitment to work on the issues. Early in 1978 the trial of six Labs Project members was held [for sitting in at the U.C. President’s office] and after a week of testimony and two hours of deliberation, the jury found all six of us not guilty. Had we been found guilty, we could have gotten six months in jail, plus fines. Several of the jurors congratulated the defendants and thanked us for what we did.”

 “What, then, are the lessons of this five-year struggle? They are no doubt different for each person, so I will tell you mine. I learned that our vision must keep pace with our analysis. We must celebrate as clearly as we resist. I learned that the way in which we define the problem affects the shape of our work, and blinds us, more than we could ever guess. I learned that white, comfortable Americans cannot save the world and that we must learn from others what the struggle encompasses. We must do our work in multiracial settings. I learned that even the most powerful-appearing edifices, if they are founded on oppression and violence, cannot stand the light of public scrutiny and truth. Even the highly elite, well-funded and entrenched nuclear weapons complex can be taken apart, bit by bit. I learned not to trust the experts to care about honesty and people more than they care about the status quo. And I learned the status quo involves secrecy which permeates, abuses of power which abound, and the distortion of priorities which affects all aspects of what it means to have security.

Trying to describe the years of intense work around Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is like trying to describe the labor and birth of my children. There is far more there than could ever be said or even consciously remembered. It is highly personal and yet somehow universal. And the fruit of the work, the reason for it, is never lost. Although as the arms race grinds on and the poverty and oppression it requires destroys more and more precious and unrepeatable human lives, it is hard indeed to feel that we have made a difference. It is hard not to be bitter and cynical as the mean-spirited more and more seem to have their day. But our original statement of purpose claimed, “We are part of a growing worldwide network of people who oppose nuclear weapons and nuclear power…” That network grows not only in numbers, but in definition of what we oppose. We know that nuclear technology is the apex of the system of injustice and violence that appears to rule the world. We know that we participate and benefit from that system and that we must daily commit ourselves to nonparticipation in it. And daily, we pledge ourselves to work with the growing network of alive and committed people throughout the world who see beyond the violent limits of our current nation states and into a future we are shaping as clearly as a laboring mother sees beyond the pain of the moment and into the eyes of her child, struggling to be born.

Not one nuclear weapons has been stopped or dismantled as a result of our work. But 507 women [arrested at Livermore for blockading the gates of the Lab] understood why it mattered to say no to Livermore – and they are part of more and more saying no. The feminine spirit brooding on the earth – in men and in women – is bringing us all to peace. It is ours to cooperate with that spirit in us and around us and see to it that we never stop being born anew.

One of my painful new births came when I spent a week in Santa Rita [Alameda County Jail] general population by myself after the major action [the blockade of Livermore Lab in June 1982 in which over 1000 people were arrested.] I was sobered to realize as time dragged on that my hope was deficient – the hope which sustained me day by day didn’t go deep enough to prevail in the face of the despair, loneliness and hopelessness that is run of the mill at Santa Rita. These women are the necessary products of the distorted priorities I have learned to speak of so glibly. These women live out the underbelly of the secret elite choices made by the professionals at Lawrence Livermore Lab. The web which holds us all together binds us to one another’s lack of love. So, I could feel and touch and understand my privilege – my ability to choose to think about oppression, and not be ground to the floor by it. This was the final stage of the blockade for me – seeing again where I live and how my days go in the harsh light of Santa Rita. Our births into these new awarenesses require that we deepen our hope and our faith in the spirit of life. Otherwise we are stillborn.”



Diane Thomas, activist for peace and justice
March 20,1950- December 1, 2008

Diane Thomas, director of advancement at Pacific School of Religion, died in her Berkeley home on December 1, following a battle with cancer. A lifelong advocate for peace and justice, Thomas was born in Seattle, Washington in 1950 and educated at Whitworth College (BA, 1972) and Fort Wright College of the Holy Names (MA, 1974).

In 1976, Thomas co-founded the UC Nuclear Weapons Lab Conversion Project and toured the state giving speeches with anti-war activist Daniel Ellsberg. Because of her prominence in the anti-nuclear weapons movement, Thomas, along with Coretta Scott King and others, was one of the speakers at a massive rally held to bring pressure on the Second United Nations Special Session on Disarmament in New York City in June 1982. She addressed the crowd of more than one million people after having fasted for disarmament for 30 days

“Diane was a shining person,” recalled Ellsberg. “She was loving and loveable, fully committed and conscientious in her activism, and dedicated to helping make a better life for all people. Those who knew her thought of her as one of the best human beings any of us had ever encountered. She was one of my heroes.”

From 1975 to 1993, Thomas served as executive director of the Ecumenical Peace Institute (EPI), the northern California chapter of Clergy and Laity Concerned (founded in 1968 by Martin Luther King, Jr. and other ministers.) EPI is an interfaith justice and peace action group focusing on militarism, racism, and empire and working with Native Americans, political prisoners, and youth. She then served as a director of development at several organizations in Berkeley before she joined the staff of Pacific School of Religion in 2000, where she directed the annual fund and alumni relations.

 “With her personal faith, her passion for peace and justice, and her capacity for deep relationships, Diane helped us realize how important these things are for all of us at Pacific School of Religion,” said the seminary’s president, William McKinney. “Diane Thomas was very much a true reflection of this institution.”

Diane Thomas is survived by her partner, David Raymond; her children, Hannah, Daniel, and Gabriel; two grandchildren; and her sister, Linna Thomas.


Diane Thomas, ¡Presente! You live on in our hearts, and in the struggle for peace and justice.

This Webpage courtesy of Daniel ben Avram @ PeaceHost.net

[Ascension, from Metanoia — a Universalist Mass
Singers: Angie Doctor, Eric Freeman, Jim Hale, John Paddock, Stephen Saxon;
Piano: Dr. Salvatore Ferrantelli (also, vocal preparation & direction);
Synthesizer: David K. Mathews;
Producer & engineer: Curtis Ohlson;
Composer & arranger, co- & executive producer: Daniel Zwickel ben Avrám.]