Steve Burke Receives PAM's Peacemaker Award for Individual Leadership
excerpted from Barbara West's presentation at the Peace Supper

Peace Supper Cleanup Crew Extraordinaire, Becky and John Smith

This year we honor one of our all-around activists, one of the most versatile I have ever known. Steve Burke can turn his hand to most anything the movement for justice and peace requires. His screen printing business produces beautiful t-shirts. On the east coast leg of the Pastors for Peace caravans of aid for Cuba, driving from Maine to Texas almost every year, Steve is one of the shade-tree mechanics who keeps the odd assortment of vehicles on the road. For antiwar demonstrations in January and again this month, he's one of our three bus-meisters, reserving and quickly filling every bus that can be located in the state of Maine. Need a press release? Steve's your man. Not only does he write them, his computer is set up to send them to all the local papers in the state.

And his menu of activist work is as broad as his heart is huge. Anyone resisting injustice can count on Steve to join in, with energy, good humor, and probably a few creative ideas. The resistance to widening Route One through Warren, right by his dooryard, was developed into a real movement, connecting longtime activists and mainstream neighbors not accustomed to opposing their government, largely with Steve's persistence and enthusiasm. I suspect that his low-key, aw-shucks manner misled the DOT at first about what an intransigent opponent they had engaged. But they soon learned.

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Back to Peace Talk Index, Spring, 2003