Maris Cakars is best known as having served as editor of WIN (Workshop in Nonviolence) Magazine, a bi-weekly journal of the nonviolent anti-Vietnam War movement

Opposition to the Vietnam War

The movement against US involvment in the in Vietnam War began in the United States with demonstrations in 1964 and grew in strength in later years. The US became polarized between those who advocated continued involvement in Vietnam, and those who wanted peace. Peace movements consisted largely of...

, from 1970 to 1976.

During his leadership at WIN, authors such as Grace Paley

Grace Paley

Grace Paley was an American-Jewish short story writer, poet, and political activist.-Biography:Grace Paley was born in the Bronx to Isaac and Manya Ridnyik Goodside, who anglicized the family name from Gutseit on immigrating from Ukraine. Her father was a doctor. The family spoke Russian and...

, Barbara Deming

Barbara Deming

Barbara Deming was an American feminist and advocate of nonviolent social change.- Early life :Barbara Deming was born in New York. She attended a Friends school up through her high school years....

, Andrea Dworkin

Andrea Dworkin

Andrea Rita Dworkin was an American radical feminist and writer best known for her criticism of pornography, which she argued was linked to rape and other forms of violence against women....

, Abbie Hoffman

Abbie Hoffman

Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman was a political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ....

, and many others from the nonviolent Left appeared in its pages. It also published excerpts from secret files stolen by persons unknown from the FBI offices in Media, Pennsylvania. The files were described by the New York Times as "a virtually complete collection of political materials" from the FBI's regional offices, dealing with secret FBI surveillance of student, civil rights and anti-war groups.

According to Tad Richards:

As part of his work with Win, the War Resisters League

War Resisters League

The War Resisters League was formed in 1923 by men and women who had opposed World War I. It is a section of the London-based War Resisters' International.Many of the founders had been jailed during World War I for refusing military service...

 and the Committee for Non-Violent Action

Committee for Non-Violent Action

The Committee for Non-Violent Action , formed in 1957 to resist the US government's program of nuclear weapons testing, was one of the first organizations to employ nonviolent direct action to protest against the nuclear arms race....

, Cakars helped organize demonstrations at the Pentagon

The Pentagon

The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...

 and in New York, including a demonstration at a Manhattan military induction center where Dr. Benjamin Spock

Benjamin Spock

Benjamin McLane Spock was an American pediatrician whose book Baby and Child Care, published in 1946, is one of the biggest best-sellers of all time. Its message to mothers is that "you know more than you think you do."Spock was the first pediatrician to study psychoanalysis to try to understand...

 was arrested. Cakars managed to get himself arrested by both superpowers in the '70s, and for the same reasons. He was arrested in Moscow by the KGB

KGB

The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

 for passing out anti-war leaflets in Red Square

Red Square

Red Square is a city square in Moscow, Russia. The square separates the Kremlin, the former royal citadel and currently the official residence of the President of Russia, from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod...

.

His social conscience led him beyond international movements and into the local community. At a time when America seemed to be divided into hostile camps between radical peaceniks and the establishment, Cakars joined the St. Remy Volunteer Department, and rose to the rank of lieutenant. At the time of his death, he was director of publications for the New York City Fire Department.

Cakars was born in Riga

Riga

Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...

, Latvia

Latvia

Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

, which he left with his parents in 1944 to escape Soviet occupation. The family arrived in America in 1949, and he was raised in Oceanside, Long Island, New York. He studied at Lafayette College and Columbia University. He married Susan Kent, and together they had two children, a daughter, Andrea, and a son, Janis.

After he left WIN in 1976, he lived in Brooklyn. He edited Women's World and managed production for Seven Days magazines, and served as sports editor for the Guinness Book of World Records.

He died of internal hemorrhaging in 1992 at the age of 49.

Sources

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