The Thirty-Sixth Annual
Joe A. Callaway
Award for Civic Courage
is hereby presented to
Michael Ferner

In recognition of his commitment to peace advocacy and peace education.

Ferner, was a Navy Corpsman (1969-1973), is a former Toledo, Ohio city council member, Vietnam-era veteran, author, peace activist and leader in the national group Veterans for Peace.

In 1989 Ferner was elected as an independent to the city council and proposed the creation of a small municipal utility to compete with Toledo Edison. He ran for mayor in 1993 with this as a major campaign plank, but lost by 672 out of 92,740 votes cast.

In March 2006 Ferner, along with fellow activists Pete Perry, Malachy Kilbride, and David Barrows, interrupted the US House Appropriations Committee that was in the process of voting on tens of billions of dollars in military funding for the US war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2006 he published – Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran For Peace Reports from Iraq – recounting his trips to Iraq, just before and after the U.S. invasion.

In July 2006, Ferner was arrested for wearing a Veterans For Peace t-shirt inside a VA Medical Center in Chicago . “If you’re wearing that shirt in here, you’re protesting,” the officer said. After the incident garnered national publicity, all charges were dropped.

A practitioner of open non-violent civil disobedience, Ferner has often risked arrest and incarceration. Ferner is leading a group of Veterans For Peace and other peace advocates in New York to begin a 40-day fast, demanding full humanitarian aid to Gaza and no more weapons to Israel.

“Watching hundreds of people maimed, burned, and killed every day just tears at my insides —too much like when I nursed hundreds of wounded from our war in Việt Nam,” Ferner said. “I’m fasting to demand humanitarian aid resumption under UN authority and to stop U.S. weapons from fueling the genocide. And also to tell Americans that the same corporations that made billions by butchering people in Việt Nam cleaned up in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now in Gaza, right before our eyes in real time. Our taxes help Israel provide full health care to all its citizens while millions of Americans go without it, and we spend billions killing people. This madness will only stop when enough Americans demand it stops.”

The entire veteran community and the American public are deeply indebted to Mike Ferner for his relentless civic advocacy on behalf of the people of the world, against War and for Peace and Justice.