Speakers at our 2005 Annual Sessions

Tuesday Evening Speaker: Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz

Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz is director of the Office on Crime and Justice of Mennonite Central Committee. She serves as consultant and trainer for restorative justice programs having a victim offender mediation component. Lorraine has worked in the field of victim offender mediation since 1984, when she got involved with the first US-based program, in Elkhart, Indiana. She has co-authored a curriculum entitled "Victim Offender Conferencing in Pennsylvania's Juvenile Justice System". She received her B.S. in social work from Eastern Mennonite University, where in 2002; she was awarded the Distinguished Service Award. She holds a master of social work from Marywood University.

Carey Memorial Lecture: Vicki Cooley

Vicki Cooley has been active with the Alternatives to Violence Project since 1977 when she first particiated in a workshop. She has been a facilitator for AVP teams since 1988 working in a number of New York prisons including Attica and Elmira. She has also offered AVP workshops in schools, in community settings, and with youth in the Farmington-Scipio Quarter. "AVP as a spiritual practice has formed and transformed me," she says.

Vicki is a member of Central Finger Lakes Monthly Meeting, the NYYM Worship and Action for Peace working group, and the AFSC Finance Committee and national board. She was the director of training for the Center for Dispute Settlement, a six-county community mediation agency.

Friday Evening Speaker: David Kaczynski

David Kaczynski is executive director of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty (NYADP) and the brother of Theodore Kaczynski - the so-called Unabomber - who was arrested in 1996 after David and his wife Linda approached the FBI with their suspicions that Theodore might be involved in a series of bombings that caused three deaths and numerous injuries over 17 years. Despite his diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, Theodore was charged capitally and only avoided the death penalty after his family waged a two-year campaign to convince the US Justice Department that Theodore's delusions had precipitated his violent behavior. Under pressure from the media and advocacy groups including the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the Justice Department offered a plea bargain that spared Theodore's life, but it never publicly acknowledged that Theodore's mental illness was a mitigating factor.

Prior to joining NYADP, David was assistant director of the Equinox shelter for runaway and homeless youth in Albany, where he consistently advocated for troubled, neglected and abused youth in the Capital District. As director of NYADP and as a board member of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, he is currently working on a campaign to ban the death penalty for people with serious mental illnesses.

Through his life and his work, David has sought solutions to human problems through understanding and compassion as opposed to violence and coercion. His story touches on the things we must learn and the balances we must achieve to keep our sense of humanity alive through adversity and crisis.