Category: Laureates

Carol C. Mitchell, our 2025 Greater Tacoma Peace Prize Laureate

The Tacoma Peace Prize is honored to announce Carol C. Mitchell as the 2025 Laureate. Mitchell, an attorney and the founder of the Institute for Black Justice (IBJ), has demonstrated an exceptional commitment to fostering peace through the pursuit of social justice, the defense of civil and human rights, and the advancement of racial equity.

The selection committee was particularly impressed by Mitchell’s dedication to addressing systemic inequality, especially as it impacts children, youth and families.  The IBJ, founded by Mitchell in 2020, tackles critical issues such as the disproportionate involvement of Black youth in the criminal justice system, the negative effects of public benefits and housing policies on families surviving poverty, and the need for a “keeping families together” approach to child welfare. Her work provides a powerful example of how legal expertise can be used to build a more equitable society.

Mitchell’s commitment extends beyond national borders. Her engagement in Ghana, where she supports children and families in their educational pursuits, showcases her understanding of the interconnectedness of global communities and the importance of promoting peace through education and cultural exchange.

Her strong family values and connections are an integral part of Mitchell’s life and work. Raised in a large family of nine children, with five boys and four girls, she learned the importance of community, support, and advocacy from an early age. These values continue to manifest in her life, notably in her dedication to her grandchildren, demonstrating an emphasis on intergenerational peace-building and the importance of nurturing the next generation.

A cornerstone of Mitchell’s work is the Institute for Black Justice, which carries out its mission through impactful programs. The CHIMES Family Advocacy Program provides crucial support and advocacy for families navigating the complexities of the child welfare system. Additionally, the Unlocking Justice program, which includes Project Gideon, seeks to remedy the long-term disproportionate impacts of civil and criminal law on families of color.  These programs exemplify Mitchell’s and the IBJ’s comprehensive approach to achieving justice and fostering peace within the community.

As nominator Maralise Hood Quan stated, “A strong sense of justice guides how Carol invests her time and love for other people… Without justice, there can be no peace. Carol peace-creates and peace-builds through insisting on and pursuing justice.” This statement encapsulates the spirit of Mitchell’s work and its alignment with the Greater Tacoma Peace Prize’s mission.

The Tacoma Peace Prize recognizes Carol C. Mitchell for her impactful work, her holistic approach to peace-building, and her unwavering advocacy for a more just world. Her leadership, vision, and tireless efforts make her a most deserving recipient of this honor.

Diane Powers is our 2024 GTPP Laureate

In celebration of and with a firm belief that peace starts when we meet our community’s needs, the Greater Tacoma Peace Prize is proud to announce Diane Powers as the 2024 Laureate. Throughout her lengthy career, Diane Powers remained dedicated to recognizing, supporting, and advocating for the needs of our houseless neighbors, vulnerable youth, and communities of color. From her role as a United Nations World Conference Delegate Against Racism, her work at Pierce County connections and the Tacoma Office of Equity and Human Rights, to her post-retirement role as the Board President of Associated Ministries, Diane remains steadfast in her commitment to fostering peace in our community.

The Greater Tacoma Peace Prize Board recognizes the demand for work that addresses the ongoing housing crisis in our own backyard. Diane’s work addressing the needs of one of the most vulnerable houseless populations — our youth — is a testament to her unyielding commitment to Tacoma and its future. Her ongoing work and engagement at the international, county, and city levels have impressed the board and the community.

Lucas Smiraldo, who nominated Diane Powers for the Greater Tacoma Peace Prize, said:

“Diane Powers is a force for peace and racial justice in Tacoma government [and] spiritual communities, with her concern for vulnerable youth continuing to drive her advocacy.”

As we face the ongoing ramifications of a global pandemic, the ever-increasing cost of living, and systemic barriers to meeting basic needs, Diane Powers’ commitment to vulnerable youth and racial equity reminds us that individuals can and do cause change. 

Photos from Kwabi and Marilyn’s Trip to Norway

Maralise Hood Quan, Our 2023 GTPP Laureate

In the firm belief that peace begins by meeting the needs in our immediate community, the Greater Tacoma Peace Prize is proud to announce the selection of Maralise Hood Quan as the 2023 Laureate. Throughout a career spanning four decades, Maralise has dedicated herself both within her community and abroad to developing tools and systems for bringing people together to resolve conflict. Starting with coordinating the Conflict Resolution Program at the United Nations University of Peace, Maralise now serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Dialog and Resolution, located in Tacoma.

The Center for Dialog & Resolution (CDR) was founded in 1994 by members of the Pierce County community seeking low-cost ways to resolve differences, and was originally named the Pierce County Center for Dispute Resolution. By 2014, the Center was known as the “region’s best-kept secret”, and formally changed its name to better reflect the culture it sought to cultivate. In 2020 as the country began dealing with the pandemic and ongoing local and national racial injustices, Maralise began “Refresh Friday”, going live on Facebook once a week to discuss opportunities for achieving peace in our current realities. Beyond the weekly refresh, as pandemic era eviction moratorium began to be lifted across the state, Maralise joined with other dispute resolution centers across the state to develop the Eviction Resolution Pilot Program to reduce the financial burden faced by landlords, and keep tenants facing financial difficulty off the streets. Today, under Maralise’s leadership, more than 20,000 people are requesting CDR services per year to resolve a conflict in their life.

The board recognizes the need for advocates and practitioners, who are dedicated to facilitating open conversation about conflict in the community. Maralise’s work with the Center for Dialog & Resolution is a testament to her enduring commitment to parsing out resolutions with her fellow community members. Her work, and the work she facilitates alongside the staff and volunteers at CDR, has greatly impressed the board and our community.

Christine Gleason, who nominated Hood Quan, wrote:
“Maralise Hood Quan is guided by a key principle: she wants people to learn how to treat each other more humanely.”

As we rebuild and uplift a community forever changed by the local and international social justice movements of 2020, Maralise continues to find ways to expand access to the services offered by The Center. She seeks to accomplish this through the Equity and Access Initiative, which includes:
A more equitable payment structure allowing anyone to use the center’s services, which often serve as an important diversion from the legal system; A mediator recruitment plan to build a diverse mediator corps that reflects and understands the community they serve; and
A scholarship program to decrease barriers to accessing training and facilitation.

The Greater Tacoma Peace Prize is a local nonprofit honoring community members and institutions who promote, achieve, and sustain peace, justice, and reconciliation at home and abroad. First awarded in 2005, the GTPP is rooted in Norwegian-American culture and the Norwegian dedication to Peace processes. At the GTPP we are dedicated to celebrating the everyday ways people further peace in our communities, and to growing and nuancing our understanding of Peace in all its forms. 

Social media:
https://www.instagram.com/centerfordialogandresolution
https://www.facebook.com/CenterForDialogAndResolution

Address:
717 Tacoma Avenue South
Tacoma, WA 98402

Kwabi Amoah-Forson

KAF-001

Recognizing that peace begins locally, the Greater Tacoma Peace Prize is proud to announce the selection of Kwabi Amoah-Forson as the 2022 Laureate. Since 2017, Amoah-Forson has worked in Tacoma AND INTERNATIONALLY to promote peace on multiple levels. Beginning in the Spring of 2017, he began The Peace Camp every Saturday in Wright Park, where he would take posters, a radio, and a megaphone with him to hold conversations with people about what peace means to them. He continued this work by spending the next two years bringing The Peace Camp across the Northwest, to California and parts of Europe.

This first campaign for peace, led into the “The Real Peace Podcast.” Here, Amoah-Forson interviewed community members about peace, interpersonal connectivity, conflict resolution, and the importance of culture and diversity. Continuing his work outside the studio, in 2019 Amoah-Forson began driving around in The Peace Bus, a 1988 Mitsubishi Van, distributing socks to our houseless community members. In August 2019, he brought The Peace Bus to the U.S.-Mexico border and interviewed non-violence educator Michael Nagler and members of Border Patrol. Upon his return to Tacoma, Amoah-Forson started sharing his experience and messages of nonviolence, compassion, kindness, and peace with students in Tacoma schools.

The board recognizes the need for community-based activists, who are dedicated to understanding the different perspectives people bring to conversations. Amoah-Forson’s dedication to looking at a fuller picture, and his passion for bringing others along on that journey, has impressed the Board and his community.

Teresa Hunt, who nominated Amoah-Forson, wrote:
“[Kwabi] has been instrumental in promoting peace and diversity in our community, [while continuing] his numerous community services programs. [He] is the most influential peace-promoting citizen we have amongst us.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to close buildings and transition to online learning, Amoah-Forson and The Peace Bus distributed breakfast to families in need, under the belief that no Tacoma child should have to go without breakfast during the quarantine. During the Summer of 2021 Kwabi took his Peace Bus from Washington State to Washington DC, delivering hundreds of books on peace, love and understanding to Youth across the country.

Kwabi Amoah-Forson currently lives in Tacoma. He continues to work for Peace in our community and looks forward to the continuation of his recent peace campaign, “Every-Kid-Eats”, helping address child hunger in Tacoma. He also plans to finish his flight school training this year in preparation of his life long goal of flying for peace with his own airplane, “The Peace Plane.”

 

Social media:
https://www.instagram.com/thepeacebus
https://www.facebook.com/kwabi.amoahforson

The Greater Tacoma Peace Prize honors local citizens and institutions who promote, achieve, and sustain peace, justice, and reconciliation at home and abroad. First awarded in 2005, the GTPP is rooted in Norwegian-American culture and the Norwegian dedication to Peace. At the GTPP we are dedicated to celebrating the everyday ways people further peace in our communities, and to growing and nuancing our understanding of Peace in all its forms. You can learn more about the organization at TacomaPeacePrize.org.

 

Contact:
Barbara Gilchrist, board member
barbara@tacomapeaceprize.org
Cort Ockfen, publishing
cort@tacomapeaceprize.org
Greater Tacoma Peace Prize

 

Marilyn Kimmerling – 2020/2021 GTPP Laureate

Marilyn Kimmerling, 2020 Greater Tacoma Peace Prize Laureate

Recognizing the importance of both global human rights and climate justice, the Board of Directors of the Greater Tacoma Peace Prize (GTPP) proudly announces the selection of Marilyn Kimmerling as the 2020 GTPP Laureate.

Ms. Kimmerling believes in and works for worker rights, minority rights, human rights and finding peaceful solutions to conflict.  Since climate change is already resulting in mass migrations and conflicts over land and resources, her work has grown to include climate justice.

Marilyn has been a community activist since the mid 1990’s. Two organizations where she had great impact were Jobs with Justice, where she served a term as Chair, and United for Peace of Pierce County where she was one of the major organizers.

Kimmerling is one of the founding members of the Tacoma chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as a member of 350 Tacoma and an active associate-member of Veterans for Peace. In 2017, she co-founded the current Tacoma branch of the Industrial Workers of the World, and she is currently active with the Save the Wetlands Behind TCC campaign.  She is the chief organizer and writer of material for the “Raging Grannies” and their myriad performances.  She is President of Radio Tacoma, having worked tirelessly on the successful FCC application for an FM license, and she has continued volunteering with them for six years.  [Radio Tacoma is a low-power FM public access radio station, developed to serve Tacoma with opportunities for progressive groups, union members, minority groups, and local talent that might otherwise not be heard.] 

Believing that the proposed Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) storage/ refinery presented a regiona environmental and health threat, and having exhausted other means of opposition (for example, attending and speaking at numerous public meetings), and motivated by compassion and conviction, Marilyn and five others engaged in acts of civil disobedience, knowing they risked arrest. The risk was outweighed, they believed, by the plant’s potential danger and the treaty violation involved in its construction. They were indeed arrested, tried by jury, and exonerated on all counts.

In today’s world, the need for community activists is never-ending, and Marilyn continues to show up to build local and global community that is humane, compassionate, and just.  On her own initiative for more than ten years, she held Soup Sundays in her home, an open house for all of Tacoma, to build community. 


“Marilyn Kimmerling is the epitome of a human being working on behalf of others, and she possesses the “knowhow and do now” energy. Furthermore, she exudes a spirit of warmth and inclusiveness which is an inspiration to others. She is most worthy of the 2020 Greater Tacoma Peace Prize.”

Nancy Farrell, who nominated Ms. Kimmerling


The Greater Tacoma Peace Prize, inspired by the Nobel Peace Prize, was founded in 2005 in order to honor local peacemakers and has been formally endorsed by the Pierce County Council and the Tacoma City Council. In Norway, partners of the GTPP include the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Norwegians Worldwide (the Norse Federation), the Nansen Center for Peace and Dialog, Bjørknes College, the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights, the Nobel Peace Center, and the Peace Research Institute of Oslo. Recipients of the Tacoma award are honored at a Laureate Recognition Banquet in the fall and are presented with a trip to Norway in December for the Nobel Peace Prize events.


Contact: Cort Ockfen, Communications
Greater Tacoma Peace Prize
cort@tacomapeaceprize.org

Willie C. Stewart Sr.

Willie C. Stewart, Sr.

2019 Laureate

Willie C. Stewart, Sr.

EDUCATOR WILLIE C. STEWART SELECTED AS 2019 TACOMA PEACE LAUREATE

The Greater Tacoma Peace Prize is proud to announce that Willie C. Stewart, Sr. has been selected as the 2019 Laureate. Mr. Stewart was selected for his long-term service and ongoing commitment to the community and Tacoma schools, particularly in the Lincoln District and the Hilltop. As a practitioner of racial reconciliation, he has been a consistent calming influence in situations involving racial friction or conflict.

A longtime public school educator, Willie became the first black school principal in Tacoma history when he took on the role at Lincoln High School in 1970. “He was able to diffuse many of the possible ‘riots’ on campus by engaging people in conversation that could lead to a possible resolution or more peaceful ending,” wrote Linda Caspersen (Lincoln Class of ’72) in a letter to the GTTP Board nominating him for the Prize. “He had the innate ability to teach us to not look at color as a dividing factor, but rather as a unique opportunity to appreciate everyone as an individual and be part of a larger group.”

Mr. Stewart grew up in Texas where he picked cotton as a child, attended high school, earned a B.A. at Texas Southern University, and worked a series of odd jobs before eventually joining the army and retiring as a colonel. He spent 36 years working for the Tacoma School District as a teacher and administrator and sat on the Tacoma School Board from 1999 to 2005 and remains heavily involved in local organizations. He has served as the Coordinator for the Weekly Breakfast for the Homeless since 1995. He’s also a member of the Tacoma Athletic Commission, the Goodwill Industries Board, and the Boys & Girls Clubs of South Puget Sound Board of Governors.

The Greater Tacoma Peace Prize recognizes and honors Peacemakers from the Tacoma/Pierce County region. First awarded in 2005 during the Centennial celebration of Norway’s independence, the award has its roots in Norwegian-American culture. It’s founded on the idea that peace begins locally.

Willie C. Stewart in 2019 Parade

Learn more about Willie in his video Laureate Spotlight:

Melannie Denise Cunningham

Laureate 2018

For her exemplary work promoting racial reconciliation, the Board of Directors has selected Tacoma Resident Melannie Denise Cunningham as the 2018 Greater Tacoma Peace Prize Laureate.

“Melannie is a visionary, educator, community servant and consummate peace builder.”

Nominator Joanne Lisosky

Cunningham uses her years of knowledge, coalition building, and strategic planning to host The People’s Gathering. It is an annual conference which brings together business leaders, human resource professionals, educators, and students to engage in frank conversations about race. American society is moving backwards. Discussions to deny individuals their rights are no longer behind closed doors. Cunningham was inspired to encourage people to speak by a quotation from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

The People’s Gathering equips professionals with tools to use existing policy to fight cultural stereotypes, institutional racism, and discrimination in the workplace, instead of reinforcing them. The over 200 individuals that participate in the conference each year continue the sometime difficult conversations about race and move the issue forward in the greater Tacoma community.

Cunningham brings unwritten cultural knowledge back to Tacoma from one of its fourteen Sister Cities, George, South Africa. She visits George often. When apartheid policies were abolished, Cunningham saw a perfect opportunity to build solidarity based on the commonalities shared by American and South African cultures. South Africans needed to bring communities together that are separated by race, gender and class. U.S. communities, including Tacoma, face many of the same issues. Part of her efforts involve her work with Women of Vision, a non-governmental organization registered with the United Nations. Cunningham notes, “We see ourselves in the faces of women of children that cry and feel just like us.” Women of Vision brings together individuals from different backgrounds to solve community problems. They empower women and girls to make change. They improve the mind, body, and spirit. Cunningham brings those discussions back to the Tacoma community through her service on Tacoma Sister Cities Council and George, South Africa Committee.

Cunningham’s promotion of peace in Tacoma spans decades. In the late 1980s Cunningham organized the first citywide Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration. In 2015 she spearheaded an effort that led to the City of Tacoma to become the first city in the United States to accept the “Hate Won’t Win” challenge.

As the Director of Multicultural Outreach and Engagement at Pacific Lutheran University, Cunningham serves as a mentor to hundreds of students of color that join the PLU community. There are few administrators and faculty of color at PLU to serve as role models. She explains, “It is necessary for students to experience teaching and learning from people of multicultural backgrounds.” Students often discuss problems with her, and she helps them strategically approach problems and develop solutions.

Learn more about Melanie in her video Laureate Spotlight: