Education

Bradford Lyttle received degrees from Earlham College  (B.A., philosophy, 1949), University of Chicago (M.A., English literature, 1951), and University of Illinois at Chicago (M.A., political science, 1976).

Political and Pacifist Action

• September, 1996, announced candidacy for the Presidency of the United States under the auspices of the United States Pacifist Party (USPP).
• August, 1996, went to Baghdad and Basrah in Iraq with a second Voices in the Wilderness delegation. Delivered medicines to the St. Raphael Hospital in Baghdad, and the Basrah Pediatrics and Gynecology Hospital.

• March, 1996, went to Amman, Jordan, as part of the project "Voices in the Wilderness," whose purpose was to violate the sanctions against Iraq by taking medicines to Iraqi hospitals.
• 1994, took primary responsibility for bringing two Bosnian refugee young people to the U.S. to study at Abington Friends School, Jenkintown, Pennsylvania.
• December, 1993, participated in "Sjeme Mira," a peace project in Croatia and Bosnia, that included visits to West and East Mostar.
• July-August, 1993, participated in "Mir Sada/We Share One Peace," in which approximately 2,000 people went on a peace project to Rumboci/Prozor in central Bosnia. Accompanied a contingent to a rally in West Mostar.
• March, 1993, participated in "ELF," a nonviolent action project against the extremely low frequency antenna installation in northern Wisconsin used for communicating with Trident subs. Arrested for trespassing on the ELF base.
• December, 1992, member of "Solidarity for Peace in Sarajevo," in which more than 500 people went on a bus trip of solidarity and peace to Sarajevo, Bosnia.
• October, 1992, participated in "Healing Global Wounds," an international project against nuclear weapons testing at Mercury, Nevada. Imprisoned with more than 600 others for trespassing on the nuclear weapons testing range.
• March, 1992, participated in the civil disobedience war tax resistance demonstrations at Colrain, Massachusetts.
• Since 1986, published the Midwest Pacifist Commentator, an occasional periodical devoted to topics related to pacifism and nonviolence.
• March, 1983, founded the "United States Pacifist Party" (USPP), and ran for President in the 1984 national elections.
• Spring, 1971, co-coordinator of the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice's mass march and rally, People's Lobby, and "Mayday" demonstrations at Washington, D.C. Was one of the more than 13,000 people arrested during the Mayday demonstrations.
• May, 1970, co-coordinator of logistics for the mass demonstration against the invasion of Cambodia, at the Ellipse, Washington, D.C.
• 1969-1970, national coordinator of "War Tax Resistance."
• November, 1969, co-coordinator of logistics for the mass anti- war demonstrations in Washington sponsored by the New Mobilization Against the War in Vietnam.
• 1969, spring, coordinator of a nonviolent protest demonstration at the Philadelphia Navy Yard against the sending of the battleship New Jersey to Vietnam.
• 1966, spring, a member of a team of six U.S. pacifists who protested the war in Saigon. The team eventually was arrested and deported.
• 1965, coordinated an anti-Vietnam War speak-in at the Pentagon, and a draft card burning demonstration in Union Square, New York City.
• 1963-64, conceived and coordinated the "Quebec-Washington- Guantanamo Walk for Peace," in the course of which he and more than 20 other demonstrators were brutalized by police in Griffin and Macon, Georgia, and undertook an approximately two-months fast of protest against their imprisonment for attempting to conduct a racially integrated peace walk in Albany, Georgia.
• 1960-61, helped to originate, and then coordinated, the "San Francisco-to-Moscow Walk for Peace," a multi-national project that carried the pacifist message of unilateral disarmament and defense by nonviolent resistance across the United States, through parts of England, France and the Netherlands, across Belgium and East Germany, across Poland, and across Russia to Moscow. This was the first of the transcontinental U.S. peace walks.
• Summer, 1960, as National Secretary of CNVA, coordinated Polaris Action. Demonstrations focussed on missile-launching submarine establishments at Groton and New London, Connecticut, but ranged along the East Coast from Portland, Maine, to Norfolk, Virginia.
• 1957-58, Associate Peace Secretary of the Chicago office of the AFSC. Took primary responsibility for coordinating the "Week for World Peace," the first mass, post-World War II, peace march and outdoor rally, in Chicago. 1958, summer, participated in "An Appeal to Cheyenne," the earliest demonstrations against strategic missile bases (the first Atlas missile bases then were being constructed near Cheyenne, Wyoming).
• 1954-55, refused to cooperate with Selective Service law and was incarcerated for nine months in the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners, Springfield, Missouri.
• 1952, as Associate Peace Secretary of the Des Moines office of the American Friends Service Committee, coordinated opposition to universal military training legislation.

Organizational Affiliations

Member of Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), Peacemakers, United States Pacifist Party, War Resisters League (WRL), and Wider Quaker Fellowship.

Selected  Writing

• The Chicago Anti-Vietnam War Movement; A study of the background, development, character, and possible consequences of the anti-Vietnam War movement in Chicago; A 173-page book published April, 1988.
• The Flaw in Deterrence; A detailed examination of deterrence's failure probability; 71-page booklet; 1982.
• The Apocalypse Equation;  Two letters to Harvard Magazine, regarding a mathematical analysis of the failure probability of deterrence; 1982.
• May Ninth; Commentaries by David Gelber, Fred Halstead, Arthur Waskow and Bradford Lyttle; A booklet about the Washington anti-Cambodian invasion demonstrations; 1970; 20pp.
• Washington Action, Nov. 13-15, 1969: report and comments from the viewpoint of a practical organizer; 1969; 57pp.
• Political Power: Quotations and Reflections; Includes an analysis off Gandhi's sources of influence and power; c. 1965; 44pp.
• Haymarket: Violence Destroys a Movement; A study of the Chicago "Haymarket Riot"; 1965; 8pp.
• Nonviolence in Vietnam; Liberation Magazine article about the nonviolent resistance movement in Vietnam, and its transformation into an armed struggle movement; 1965.
• National Defense thru Nonviolent Resistance; 1958; 69pp.
• The Conscientious Objectors' Guide to Cook County Jail; 1954; approx. 20pp.

Award

Adin Ballou Grassroots Peace Award of the Unitarian/Universalist Association, 1987

E-mail Address

blyttle@igc.org.

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Please send any comments to Bradford Lyttle, blyttle@igc.org.