Morris Peace activist heading to Japan

Madelyn Hoffman has been an activist for peace since she was in college and now she’s been given the chance to join like minded people from around the world in Japan for the 70th Anniversary commemoration of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“I was really overcome with emotion when I get the invitation because it very hard for me to imagine that this is 70th year after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and as director of an organization whose primary mission since 1957 is the abolition of nuclear weapons it floored me that I was invited and that I would have an opportunity to be present at this historic moment in time,” Hoffman said.

For the past 15 years, the 58-year-old Hoffman has been the executive director of New Jersey Peace Action (NJPA), an affiliate of the national Peace Action organization.

While in Japan this August, Hoffman will be visiting A bomb hospitals, the Peace Memorial Museum, a lantern floating ceremony and more.

“I found her to be a good choice to represent Peace Action in Japan for the 70th Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings,” said Kevin Martin, Chief Executive Director of Peace Action and Peace Action Education Fund. “I’ve known her for the past 15 years and she’s been very good as the director of our New Jersey affiliate as she’s a very good writer, fundraiser, organizer and trainer.”

There will be peace activists from around the world present in Japan and so there is opportunity for a lot of good networking and strategizing among activists working for nuclear abolition not solely in Japan but around the world as well, Martin said.

For about the last 15 years New Jersey Peace Action has hosted survivors of the atomic bombings as they travel around the world talking about why nuclear weapons are so bad for the human race, Hoffman said.

“It doesn’t matter if you for or against the nuclear weapons in the abstract but when you hear the stories of what these men and women saw and experienced you’re never the same, I know I was never the same,” Hoffman said.

Peggy Monges has been a member of New Jersey Peace Action since 1982 and is now a board member and co-chair on the Fundraising Committee.

“Madelyn is an incredibly energetic person who has a wonderful grasp on the problems and solutions that could be used to end the war that seems to never ending and how to abolish nuclear weapons,” Monges said.

Hoffman is a great person and everyone at NJPA is happy that she is going to Japan, Monges said.

Hoffman was interested in the work of NJPA because it is their mission to end and prevent war, change the country’s spending habits, disarm nuclear weapons and find nonviolent ways of resolving conflict.

“What got me involved with this organization is a long-standing commitment to peace and justice and a desire to do work that was meaningful and that it allowed me to feel like I was making a difference and change not only in this country but internationally as well,” Hoffman said.

The mission of the national Peace Action organization is to get rid of nuclear arms all over the world, Martin said.

“We are against war for diplomacy, for ending conflict peacefully,” he said. “We want to drastically cut military spending in this country and to invest in human and community needs.”

NJPA was founded in 1957, the same year that the national Peace Action organization was founded, but at the time NJPA was founded under the name SANE, Sensible Alternatives for Nuclear Policy.

After the Berlin Wall fell, it became NJPA because it was thought that the end of the Cold War meant there would no longer be a need to create nuclear weapons.

“The name Peace Action came about to broaden our work to include things, issues that were not only nuclear war and nuclear disarmament based,” she said.

Judith Arnold is in her third year as being the board president of NJPA but has been a member for a long time. She noted that Hoffman’s work has always centered on peace, around the nuclear issue as well as justice and equality missuses.

“Oh, boy is she driven,” Arnold said. “We have to beg her to stop, to take time off.

“Hopefully she will bring back some contacts and a working relationship with people Japan who are like-minded people and we will be able to work with them on anti nuclear issues,” Arnold said.

Hoffman hopes to share her experiences from this trip and that her stories will help spark action against nuclear policies in the United States.

“It would be one thing if I was tourist in Japan and I wanted to go to these places I would be moved, very moved but the fact I will be there as a part of this international conference it is so humbling and so overwhelming to me, its hard to put in words what it’s all going to mean,” Hoffman said.

Hoffman, who lives in Mount Olive, is an adjunct professor at the County College of Morris, teaching political science.