At Peace With Its Purpose
88-Year-Old Quaker Group Takes Aim at War
By Robert Strauss
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, November 12, 2005; A03

PHILADELPHIA -- When Mary Ellen McNish walks out of the office in her low-slung, understated brick building, she looks up at the peaceful statue atop the tall building down the street.
"What other city has William Penn, the great man of peace, atop City Hall? Where else would be a better place to promote peace?" asked McNish, the general secretary of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), which for nearly a century has been the point organization for promoting peace in conflicts or potential conflicts around the world.
Now, as the Iraq war grows more and more unpopular, the AFSC is again tromping at the front, unfurling the banner of peace.
"Always, there has been the Quaker philosophy that there is a part of God in every person," said McNish, in her cozy, plant-filled office in a warren of other peace-poster-filled offices at the AFSC headquarters. "It is about the dignity and worth of every individual, the oppressor and the oppressed."... http://tinyurl.com/a9oc2
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