Calendar

IRTFDonate – use this code and Equal Exchange donates 10% of your purchase to IRTF

We’re excited to announce that Equal Exchange will be donating a portion of their sales to IRTF when you shop their online store. 

To shop Equal Exchange click here. Find organic and fairly traded coffees, teas, chocolate, cocoa, nuts, dried fruits, and even olive oil—all from small farmer co-ops, available by the case for stocking up.

Promo code:  IRTFDonate . Enter this code when you check out and Equal Exchange will donate 10% of your purchase back to IRTF!

Equal Exchange was founded as a solidarity organization in 1986 to support small farmers in Nicaragua by importing their coffee despite the US embargo.  Forty years later, this worker-owned co-op continues to prove that a more democratic food system is possible.

To shop Equal Exchange click here

source: States at the Core https://statesatthecore.substack.com/

Join this 90-minute training from States at the Core and Protect RP on effectively protecting your neighborhoods from federal enforcement incursions. ICE Watch and other rapid response tactics are key strategies being used by people across the country to protect their communities against aggressive activity from federal law enforcement agencies like ICE and Border Patrol. Whether or not you are part of an established community response network, this training will share important skills for building neighborhood resilience, documenting ICE activity, and supporting neighbors. In addition to covering the basics of ICE Watch, we will discuss new analysis on ICE operations, rapid response tactics, and safety guidance.

to register click here

If you're looking for ways to prepare yourself for the kind of militarization we're seeing in Minneapolis (and we all should be at this point), make a plan to attend some of these free trainings.

Join this 90-minute training (offered by national groups and experienced community defenders) will help us to learn how to protect our neighborhoods, schools, daycares, houses of worship. At this moment, everyone has a role in keeping our communities safe. If you think you could play a role in organizing for community defense, register for this virtual training being held specifically for Cleveland and NE Ohio.

U.S. cities are building up resilient and flexible networks, allowing communities under attack to be more responsive. We are learning from each other and we are stronger together!

to register click here

source: Living Water Association ONE-United Church of Christ

Joined by Megan Bergert, UCC Minister for Migration and Refugee Services, along with other friends and participants, this conversation is intended to help us learn as much as we can from what has been happening on the ground in Minneapolis, and to reflect together on how congregations—especially in rural and suburban contexts—can thoughtfully engage and respond.

After the major events in Minneapolis, this will givie us space to listen, process, and discern together what faithful response might look like, as well as what resources and support are available for congregational engagement.

to join the zoom click here

Source: Cleveland.com. by Olivia Mitchell

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2026/01/cleveland-religious-leaders-plan-walkout-at-public-square-over-ice-violence.html

Faten Odeh, executive director of CAIR-Ohio’s Cleveland and Northern Ohio chapter speaks at the Faith Christian Church in Cleveland after the Border Patrol killing of Alex Pretti.Olivia Mitchell

CLEVELAND, Ohio - A coalition of Cleveland religious leaders, students and activists announced plans for a general strike Friday and called for the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement following recent deaths involving federal agents in other cities.

The coalition held a press conference Tuesday at Fifth Christian Church in Cleveland to announce a rally scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday at Public Square. Organizers cited three deaths as the catalyst for the planned action: Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Veterans Affairs intensive care nurse shot by a Border Patrol officer in Minneapolis, Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old poet shot Jan. 7 in Minneapolis by ICE agent Johnathan Ross, and Keith Porter Jr, a 43-year-old shot on New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles by an off-duty ICE agent.

“No work, no school, and no shopping until our cities are safe and ICE terror has ended,” said Zoe Wagner, a Case Western Reserve University senior who helped organize a student walkout earlier in January.

ICE’s Detroit office, which covers Ohio, did not immediately provide comment. Democrats have recently called for impeachment or and removal of Kristi Noem, Secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. DHS described all three victims as safety threats.

According to the Trump administration, Porter posed a threat by shooting his gun in the air on New Year’s Eve when he was shot. Unlike the killings of Pretti and Good, there is no footage to shed further light on the matter.

The Trump administration has claimed that Good weaponized her vehicle against officers before Ross shot through her windshield and driver’s side at close range. Yet video shows her pulling her car forward slowly after agents had surrounded it and yanked on the door.

The administration has also claimed that Pretti, a licensed gun owner, brandished a gun, but footage shows him holding a cellphone, not a gun. Agents pepper sprayed Pretti, took him to the ground and shot him several times after he attempted to help a woman during a protest.

Rev. Evan Regis Bunch, senior pastor of Fifth Christian Church, said federal agents are not being held accountable.

“Federal ICE agents are moving through our streets like wolves, snatching members of our community, disrupting our workplaces, de-sanctifying our church, and spreading a virus of fear,” Bunch said.

While ICE has not focused much attention on Cleveland compared to other American cities, this week marked one year since the immigration raid on Cilantro Taqueria in Cleveland Heights.

Faten Odeh, executive director of CAIR-Ohio’s Cleveland and Northern Ohio chapter, proposed alternatives to the current immigration enforcement system.

“ICE should be replaced with a different system that handles immigration more safely,” Odeh said. “Perhaps we can replace it with a civil court-based, non-militarized immigration system that prioritizes due process, dignity and public safety.”

The coalition directed specific demands to the Cleveland Community Police Commission, urging limitations on local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Earlier this month, the Cleveland Division of Police released a rare statement indicating it would not assist with any ICE operations.

Rev. Charles Graves IV, rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Shaker Heights, connected the anti-ICE movement to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“If we believe in anything that King did, then we are called to do what he did in our time, too,” Graves stated. “And what did he do and what did those with him do in that time? They led strikes and walkouts.”

Organizers emphasized that their goal is to eliminate fear in immigrant communities. They say everyone is less safe when people are afraid to contact authorities.

“When immigrants trust the community, when immigrants feel safe, and when immigrants feel at home, everybody is safe,” Bunch concluded.

Hello Ohio College and University Peace & Conflict Studies Programs/Centers and related programs:

Thanks to our host JCU, we will be able to bring together Ohio College and University Departments and Centers that focus on peace, justice, and conflict transformation for the 2026 Annual OPCSN Conference!  This conference asks participants to focus on how we strengthen democracy through civic engagement as a form of peacebuilding by addressing the following questions:

• How can we build bridges through participation in local governance and local nonprofits/non-governmental organizations, engaging our diverse multicultural, economic, faith-based, and social interests with understanding and civility?
• How can we envision more just, inclusive, and diverse communities?
• Civic engagement and peacebuilding may also include how we prepare our students and communities to engage in dialogue across differences, build media literacy, enhance understanding, and support a healthy democracy.  

Agenda

9:30 AM - 10:30 AM

Coffee/tea/welcome and display tables w/student posters related work and/or the various universities programs

Question:

• Do you represent a college or university that has a peace or conflict studies related program or center?  Display tables during this time are offered at no charge for you.  Please contact us at the email noted below to reserve your spot!
• Do you or your students have work you want to share about enhancing democracy through peacebuilding?  Please email us at the contact email below so we can reserve a table for you/your students!

10:30 - 11:40AM

Welcome & Opening Panel: Strengthening Democracy through Civic Engagement & Peacebuilding  

Panelists: John Carroll University (Center for Service Learning & Social Action), Ohio State University (Divided Community Project), + Examples from the field!

11:45 - 1:15PM

Working Lunch - Guests will be invited to sit at tables based on their interest

+
 

OPCSN Members Networking Luncheon

1:15PM - 4:30PM

Workshops - We are inviting all of Ohio's colleges and universities (and their partner organizations) to either be on a panel, present a 1.5 hour session on their work, or a 3 hour skill building session.  

Who:  

• Anyone is welcome.
• Presentations focused on the work of Ohio Colleges/Universities - faculty, staff, admin and students & Community organizations doing this work in Ohio on a related topic

Cost (includes attendance, light breakfast and lunch)

• $35 Attendees not associated with an Ohio College/University that wish to attend 
• $25 per person (Ohio College/Universities w/peace/conflict studies programs - faculty/staff/admin.)
• $10 for each Ohio college student

Conference Registration Link - https://givepul.se/37ri1k  
 

Questions?  Email Jen at OPCSN at Ohiopcsn@gmail.com

OPCSN Website -   https://ohiopeaceandconflict.org/ 

Learn how to spot ICE vehicles, what to take notes on as an observer, and how to report a sighting.

Learn how to protect immigrants from ICE through strategies that include observing, documenting, and providing aid. You'll learn legal options, how to be safe, and how to be part of a community-wide defense network. 

Organizer: Cleveland Heights 4 Immigrant Rights. Contact: ClvHts4ImmigrantRights@gmail.com

to register click here

source: World Beyond War https://worldbeyondwar.org/ 

We call on individuals and organizations around the world to join the Global Days of Action to #CloseBases on February 21-23, 2026, by organizing events at military base sites or other locations near you.

Military bases, especially foreign ones — current and sought — generate wars. The United States has used its bases in Latin America and the Caribbean to attack Venezuela, while threatening to take over Greenland to build more bases there. Iran is bordered by seven nations with U.S. bases. The nations to the south and east of China are packed with U.S. bases, as is Europe, as is Israel. Africa has foreign bases from several empires. Russia is making more use of its bases in Belarus.

On February 23, 1903, the United States took over Guantanamo from Cuba. It has never restored it. People across Latin America have used this date to organize events opposing bases, militarism, and the Monroe Doctrine. We made it a global day of action for the first time in 2025. We’re expanding our second annual collection of events to include the February 21-22 weekend.

What you can do: Use our resources to easily plan a local educational or activist event of any kind: a panel, a protest, an art display, a banner-drop, a sit-in, a press conference, a film screening, a rally, a march.

1. Bases often perpetuate colonialism, removing Indigenous people from their lands. From Panama to Guam to Puerto Rico to Okinawa to dozens of other locations across the world, militaries have taken valuable land from local populations, often pushing out Indigenous people in the process, without their consent and without reparations. For example, the entire population of the Chagos Islands was forcibly removed from the island of Diego Garcia by the UK so that it could be leased to the U.S. for an airbase.
2. Bases cost an exorbitant amount of $$. The cost of U.S. foreign military bases alone is estimated at $80 billion a year, money that could be better spent on healthcare, education, renewable energy, and so much more.
3. Bases exacerbate environmental damage and the climate crisis. Military emissions are exempted from climate agreements, like the Kyoto Protocol. The construction of bases has caused irreparable ecological damage, such as the destruction of coral reefs and the environment for endangered species in Henoko, Okinawa. Furthermore, it is well documented at hundreds of sites around the world that military bases leach toxic so-called “forever chemicals” (PFAS/PFOS) into local water supplies, which has had devastating health consequences for nearby communities.
4. Bases can have violent and harmful impacts on local communities.
   Militaries have a notorious legacy of sexual violence, including kidnapping, rape, and murders of women and girls in nearby communities. Yet troops stationed at foreign bases are often afforded impunity for their crimes due to Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) with the so-called “host” country. Bases can also bring a rise in property taxes and inflation in areas surrounding them which has been known to push locals out.
5. Bases heighten tensions and provoke war-making. The presence of hundreds of thousands of troops, massive arsenals, and thousands of aircraft, tanks, and ships in every corner of the globe facilitates war-making and promotes an arms race. Additionally, bases make locations into targets for attack. And foreign bases implicate countries in the crimes of foreign militaries.

to register click here

Join NEO Workercenter on March 20th

"We’d love for you to be there so that you can get to know a bit about us and learn about our work! Join us at The Elliot, to enjoy a variety show featuring local talent, a silent auction and drinks available for purchase. Please note -- a meal will not be provided at the event."

to register click here