Maryland United for Peace and Justice (MUPJ) was formed in 1987. MUPJ is an education and advocacy network of local (Maryland) organizations and individuals that work for peace, justice, a healthy environment and democracy.
MUPJ supports local, regional and national organizations in their work, and helps to build coalitions among them. Members of our Coordinating Body (Board) also participate in other organizations activities and serve on their Boards.
We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization.
We are planning a statewide Maryland peace and justice conference that will be in held in late Fall 2020. It will be a public event that will feature speakers discussing critical issues facing humanity and the Earth. Issues and solutions will be addressed. Those issues will be: nuclear weapons, climate change (and a Green New Deal), corruption (and democratic reforms) and others.
MUPJ has organized many statewide conferences like this in previous years. These have contributed to peace by educating the public, given other organizations and individuals opportunities to network and promote their own work, and have facilitated actions about the issues.
MUPJ has organized and coordinated multi-organization lobbying efforts on Maryland state and national issues. These efforts have included 10 or more local organizations.
The issues have included: advocating for reduced nuclear weapons; nonviolent means to addressing conflict; reduction of nonnuclear armaments, and support for treaty negotiations. Bringing several organizations together to advocate for such issues has been empowering for the Maryland peace movement, and has resulted in positive responses from elected officials.
MUPJ has also held multi-local organization Summits which have facilitated local organizations to work together and to share information and resources. In the Summits, peace and other organizations build rapport and find common ground on issues.
We also hold individual issues workshops. We try to hold these workshops on issues that other local organizations aren't already doing, but which we think may be of value to them. In doing this, we help build networks of peace and other organizations.
We offer local organizations the opportunity to post activities and issues on MUPJ's website. This helps publicize peace work being done in Maryland and the in the Washington, D.C. area.
We also hold educational workshops on specific issues.
