Cora Weiss was a local and national activist for peace

Cora Weiss, whose Waldo Avenue home served as headquarters for her efforts to promote nuclear disarmament, protest American involvement in Vietnam and forge a world without war, died on Dec. 8. She was 91. 

Weiss’s dedication to human rights sparked in ninth grade at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, where she became more aware of inequalities facing women and people of color. She would go on to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Later in life she served as executive director of the African American Students Foundation, which helped fund the Airlift to America — a project from 1959 to 1963 that brought over 800 East African students to the states for education, including President Barack Obama’s father . 

During this period, in 1961, she moved to Riverdale with her husband Peter, an advocate as well as an attorney, and their children. Weiss became involved at the Riverdale Neighborhood House, and soon a fellow Riverdalian told her about an activist group demonstrating against nuclear weapons testing called Women Strike for Peace. 

Local members started studying strontium-90, a radioactive chemical element found in nuclear waste and fallout that causes cancers in the bone, bone marrow and surrounding soft tissue. The group sent samples from their own children to be tested, and many came back positive for containing the element. 

The finding gave them credibility, and the first outlet they took it to was The Riverdale Press, run at the time by founders David and Celia Stein. 

“What I’m sure most people will remember is her energy,” former editor Bernard Stein said. “She was boisterous, loud, indefatigable.”

She continued her efforts with racial justice, and was active in the 1960s protests against Riverdale real estate agents who were steering  minorities away from local apartments . 

Robert Rubinstein, honorary vice president of Kiwanis Club of Riverdale, was also active in this movement, and told The Press that Weiss helped him establish the Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club. 

He described Weiss as someone who was “doing good things and making this a better world.” 

Rubinstein’s wife, Barbara, met Weiss when the two were little girls. They fell out of touch until Weiss moved to Riverdale and became involved in the neighborhood. 

“She was extremely bright and very progressive,” Barbara said .”You couldn’t keep her quiet. She knew what she believed in and she was very vocal about it. I admired her for that. I think we all did.” 

Weiss, along with Martin Luther King Jr. and Riverdale residents such as Theodore Kheel, Frank Montero and Clarence Jones, helped found the Gandhi Society for Human Rights, a civil rights organization.

She was also a prominent leader in the anti-Vietnam War movement throughout the later 1960s and early 1970s, and made trips to North Vietnam to carry letters from American prisoners of war, POWs, to-and-from their families. 

At the time, President Richard Nixon was using uncertainty about the number of POWs in Vietnam as an excuse to delay withdrawal from the war. So, Weiss cofounded an organization called the Committee of Liaison with Families of Servicemen Detained in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and worked with journalists to compile a list of POW names. 

She presented the list at a Congressional hearing in New York, later writing in an essay that appears in “Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War” that  “a hush went over the room as people in the audience gasped.” Not only did it show ordinary citizens were able to obtain information the government couldn’t, but it contested a justification to continue the war, she added. 

In 1996, Weiss founded the Hague Appeal for Peace, a coalition of human rights, disarmament and global justice organizations. As president, she led the 1999 Hague Appeal for Peace Conference in the Netherlands, marking the centenary of the First Hague Peace Conference. 

It became one of the largest civil-society peace gatherings, welcoming roughly 10,000 scholars, delegates and activists from more than 100 countries.

It culminated in the Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice for the 21st Century, a comprehensive plan promoting stronger international law, disarmament, conflict prevention, and a commitment to global education.

What came out of the conference would set in motion her first Nobel Peace Prize nomination in 2000, with others to follow in the coming years. In 2004, the seasoned activist finally received the Golden Dove of Peace, awarded the prize for her work in peace building and human rights — particularly in women’s rights. 

“It was one of my most humbling moments,” she told The Press in a 2004 article chronicling her achievement. “When you honor me, you honor the thousands of members of the International Peace Bureau and the Hague Appeal for Peace.”

In her acceptance speech, she called for the addition of peace education in schools and the inclusion of women in all levels of government, urging, “If there are no women, there can be no peace.”

Weiss’s husband Peter passed away in November. She is survived by her son, Daniel, daughters Judy and Tamara, five grandchildren, and brother Reed Rubin.