Biographical Information - William Ramsey

William Ramsey served at the Area Program Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in St. Louis for 16 years. In 1992 he coordinated media work to focus public attention on the plight of Haitian refugees through the fast of choreographer and dancer Katherine Dunham. During the spring of 1994 he co-coordinated a seven-week series of interfaith gatherings focused on peace in Bosnia. In the summer of 1995 he monitored St. Louis Post-Dispatch coverage of the 50th Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. An article based on this study appeared in the September 1995 St. Louis Journalism Review.

In the fall of 1990 he assisted with the formation and coordination of the St. Louis Forum for Peace in the Persian Gulf, planing weekly vigils numerous rallies, coordinating press work, public speaking, arranging for guest speakers, and writing commentaries. Following the Gulf War he coordinated a team of researchers who examined the St. Louis Post-Dispatch coverage of post-war Iraq. His articles based on that study have been published in the St. Louis Journalism Review and AFSC's Middle East Notes. In 1993 and 94 he authored two St. Louis Post-Dispatch commentaries examining the sanctions on Iraq and post-war U.S. military actions in Iraq.

In 1988 and 1989 he conducted a study of St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Washington Post coverage of the Central American Peace Process. The study was published as a three-part series in the St. Louis Journalism Review and was the subject of a workshops at Webster University in the fall of 1989. In 1985 he helped with the formation and development of the St. Louis Pledge of Resistance which carried out nonviolent direct action to challenge the U.S.-Contra war against Nicaragua. He edited a weekly report entitled, Preventive Papers. For three years he helped coordinate vigils, rallies, civil disobedience, speakers, and press interviews on U.S. policy in Nicaragua.

Also in 1985 he travelled with an AFSC delegation to the former East Germany to meet with dissidents and representatives of the government. In that same year, he researched and wrote the St. Louis Peace Budget examining the relationship between military spending and human needs in St. Louis.

From 1984 to 1989, the primary focus of his work was U.S. policy in Central America. He assisted in the formation and development of the Inter-Faith Committee on Latin America and its efforts to offer Central American refugees public sanctuary, send human rights observers to Nicaragua and Guatemala, and to support the rights of displaced people in El Salvador through the St. Louis-Guarjila Companion Community Project. He travelled to "repopulated communities" in rural El Salvador in January of 1988. His delegation returned to St. Louis to found the Companion Community Project. His account of that visit was published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as a commentary piece.

In 1981 and 1982 he played a key role in the formation of the St. Louis Committee for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze and served as the co-chair of the Executive Committee of the National Freeze Campaign. In 1982 he travelled to England to speak on behalf of the National Freeze Campaign.

He is a graduate of High Point College (1970) and Duke Divinity School (1973). His previous positions include educational coordinator for the Vietnamese Children's Fund (1973-74). Associate Pastor of Sparta United Methodist Church in New Jersey (1974-75); boycott organizer for the United Farm Workers of America in New Jersey (1975); Administrative Coordinator for Peace Education Programs of the Southeast Region of AFSC (1975-80); and researcher for the St. Louis Economic Conversion Project (1981-82).