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

When President Trump took office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement held approximately 40,000 people in immigration detention. By the middle of December, that number had risen by almost 75 percent to over 68,000—the highest level in history. Yet this is just the start for the Trump administration, which according to leaked plans, hoped to have nearly 108,000 immigration detention beds online by January 2026 as part of its “mass deportation” agenda. With ICE newly flush with $45 billion from Congress to expand detention, America’s system of immigration detention is growing more opaque and more inhumane by the day. A new American Immigration Council report on Trump’s first year of mass detention breaks down not only the changes in who is being sent to detention, but also the ways in which the rapid expansion of detention, elimination of oversight, and changes in detention policy have led to worsening conditions and people giving up their immigration cases. Join Council Policy Director Nayna Gupta and Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick to learn more about the report, and hear from Congressman Seth Moulton (MA-06) about his work to conduct oversight over ICE detention, and from Marcelo Gomes, a Boston teen who was detained by ICE for months and came out of his experience with a passion to educate the world about what he went through.

to register click here

IRTF is one of many co-sponsors of this nonviolent noncooperation training on Saturday, January 24, 2026

Registration:  http://bit.ly/Jan24Info

Suzanne Zilber from SURJ NEO (Showing Up for Racial Justice) and Josiah Quarles from NEOCH (Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless) will co-faciitate this event sponsored by Racial Equity Buddies.   

This training is informed by successful international movements to resist dictators and authoritarian rule.

 Participants will learn

-How to identify institutions that uphold regimes

-Strategies for how to make demands and then encourage cooperation, or impose costs on those institutions.

The emphasis is on nonviolent noncooperation tactics. The training is interactive and we will practice the application to local threats.

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.

This training, led by Josiah Quarles (NEOCH) and Suzanne Zilber (SURJ NEO), is informed by successful international movements to resist dictators and authoritarian rule.

Participants will learn:

How to identify institutions that uphold regimes

Strategies for how to make demands and then encourage cooperation, or impose costs on those institutions

The emphasis is on nonviolent noncooperation tactics. The training is interactive and we will practice the application to local threats.

to register click here

Co-Sponsors: AMIS, Blessed Trinity Catholic Church, Cleveland Peace Action, Friendship Mennonite Church (Bedford), InterReligious Task Force On Central America, Racial Equity Buddies of Greater Cleveland, Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) Northeast Ohio, Social Justice Advocacy Ministry (SJAM), Federated Church

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.

This training, led by Josiah Quarles (NEOCH) and Suzanne Zilber (SURJ NEO), is informed by successful international movements to resist dictators and authoritarian rule.

Cleveland Heights for Immigrant Rights is bringing in nine speakers including Imam Ayman Soliman, the Children's Hospital Chaplain from Cincinnati who was detained for months. Cleveland activists showed up to his Cleveland hearings and he feels gratitude for our impact. You can see the full agenda when you go to register. 

to reister click here

Sunday January 25

D'Angelo Tribute Night
21+
Party at 6:00 PM
 

Join us on January 25 for a D’Angelo Tribute Night and potluck. Bring a dish to share and get in free, or $10 entry if you don’t bring a dish. All proceeds will be donated to the Sudan Solidarity Collective. Finger foods that aren’t too messy are encouraged. Plates and silverware will be provided.

to register click here

Join DWN for our Detention 101 webinar to learn about the history of immigrant detention, the role of ICE and how to take action to help abolish immigration detention and ICE on Wednesday, January 28th, 2026 at 12pm- 1:30pm PT/ 2pm- 3:30pm CT/ 3pm-4:30pm ET. 

ICE and other federal agencies continue to escalate violence against communities across the country under Trump's second presidency. This includes the recent killing of Renee Nicole Good, the 37 year-old mother and rapid response volunteer in Minneapolis. Her death adds to the growing and deadly toll of federal immigration enforcement, with at least 31 people dying in ICE custody in 2025, an all-time high. 

When Trump was inaugurated there were 39,703 people were already held in immigrant detention; more than double the number detained when Biden took office in 2021. that number has since surged to over 68,000, surpassing the previous record of 55,000 people detained during Trump’s first administration. Trump continues to push an aggressive expansion of immigrant detention, including proposals to use warehouses. Yet across the country, people are organizing to stop detention expansion and to protect themselves, their immigrant family members, neighbors, and friends who are at risk. Join us in this resistance! 

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 from experienced community defenders to learn how to protect your neighborhood, school, daycare, or church. 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 specifically for Cleveland and NE Ohio.

American 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

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, how to intervene and how to report a sighting.

to register click here

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