Speakers

Featured Speakers

Keynote Address. Saturday, Sept. 22. 10am. Jeff Dietrich: How the Milwaukee 14 Changed my Life


Jeff Dietrich has lived and worked at the LA Catholic Worker since 1970. When he walked out of LA county jail from visiting a friend he would have walked right by the old battered blue and white laundry van where a man was giving out coffee and donuts to releases. But he saw the words Catholic Worker painted on the side and he knew from a retreat in Saint Louis what that was. By the next week, he was the third member of the newly formed LA Catholic worker and the editor of it's yet to be formed newspaper the Catholic Agitator. He is the author of three books and has been published in numerous journals The Milwaukee 14 had a very formative part in his life.



Story Teller. Saturday, Sept. 22.  11am.   “Bad Brother: Religion and Politics in 68” Written and Performed by Loren Niemi

Loren Niemi

Loren has spent more than a quarter century as a professional storyteller, creating, collecting, performing and teaching stories to audiences of all ages in urban and rural settings. His work has been called "post-modern", "with the dark beauty of language that is not ashamed of poetry." It is, as storyteller, Kate Lutz said, "a sensibility that owes more to the New Yorker than to the Old Farmer's Almanac."

"I began as a child fibber but soon discovered that I was less interested in telling lies than I was in improving the truth."

Storytelling is also at the core of thirty-five years of working as a community organizer and public policy advocate and trainer with neighborhoods, non-profit groups and NGO's to articulate their dreams and resolve their conflicts. In 1998, Loren was a recipient of a Bush Leadership Fellowship to research the vital role of storytelling in neighborhood and community development. In 2001 he created Public Policy Project, working with Children's Home Society & Family Services (St. Paul, MN), helping low-wealth and communities of color shape and tell stories that illuminate issues of race, equity and social change.  

Nonviolent Direct Action. Saturday Sept. 22. 1pm   Milwaukee 14 members reflect on their experiences along with participants in other draft board actions. Moderated by Rosalie Riegle

Rosalie Riegle

Rosalie Riegle became a nonviolent activist in 1968, receiving inspiration both from her students and from the Milwaukee 14 action. Years later she interviewed Michael and Nettie Cullen in Ireland and still later interviewed other M14 participants for her oral history project, “Crossing Lines and Doing Time.” The project resulted in two books, Doing Time for Peace: Resistance, Family and Community and Crossing the Line: Nonviolent Resisters Speak Out for Peace. Rosalie taught English for 33 years at Saginaw Valley State University and co-founded two Catholic Worker houses in Saginaw, Michigan after writing Voices from the Catholic Worker, an oral history of the movement, and Dorothy Day: Portraits by Those Who Knew Her. In 2004 she moved to Evanston to be closer to her grandchildren. She continues to resist war and militarism is currently very involved with Su Casa Catholic Worker in Chicago.

Panelist: Fred Ojile

After release from prison in the summer of 1970, I taught auto mechanics, math and reading at Freedom House School, an alternative grade and high school in Minneapolis. After that, in 1972 I lived in Southeast Minnesota for three years, working as a farm mechanic and eventually as a front

end mechanic for Eversole Motors in LaCrosse. We moved back to Minneapolis in 1975 where we were involved in the cooperative movement for several years. I purchased The Car Shop and trained young adults to become certified mechanics and served the community as a garage open to all.
I returned to law school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and graduated in 1980.  In 1984 I started my own law firm, Messinger & Ojile, and continue to this day to practice law.

Over the years I focused on addressing domestic violence and developed a practice in which domestic violence clients would be retained regardless of their ability to pay. My practice became one in which half of my clients were unable to pay for legal services. For years I was a single parent of three and in 1985 I married my wife Fay and we raised our four children together. We enjoy our seven grandchildren and are semi-retired.


Panelist:  Joe Mulligan, S.J

After taking part in anti-war demonstrations and turning in my draft card (with the seminarians’ exemption), on May 25, 1969 I was part of the Chicago 15 action of burning draft files. For this, four of us spent almost two years at the medium-security federal prison at Sandstone, Minn. I was

ordained by Bishop Tom Gumbleton of Detroit a year after release.  In Chicago and Detroit I worked with groups in solidarity with the struggles for justice in Latin America.

Since 1986 I have been privileged to live in Nicaragua and to work with the Christian Base Communities and with folks with disabilities (some of whom were victims of the U.S.-supported Contras) and in more recent years with the Jesuit Volunteers. In the communities I have lived and breathed the best of liberation theology and have been part of a non-clericalist, lay-led model of Church with a true “option for the poor.”

Unrepentant regarding civil disobedience, in 1990 I joined Phil Berrigan in pouring blood on the gateposts of the White House as a protest against the US government’s complicity in the Salvadoran army’s massacre of 6 Jesuits and two women at the Jesuit university in San Salvador in 1989 (picture shows me being arrested); many others were arrested for doing a die-in on the same day in front of the White House.

In 1997 four of us did a sit-in in the doorway of the US embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, demanding that the US government declassify all files concerning Fr. James “Guadalupe” Carney, who “was disappeared” in Honduras in 1983. At the end of the day we were gently removed by US Marines and deposited on the sidewalk.

In 2003 I joined about 30 others in “crossing the line” at Ft. Benning, Ga., in a protest against the US Army’s training of Latin American torturers and repressors at the School of the Americas. This resulted in 90 days in local county jails.

Panelist: Bob Graf

Member of the Milwaukee 14. Active in the civil rights and peace movements of 60’s. Co-founder of Independent Learning Center High School, Community organizer, businessman, educator, Youth Minister and Director of Religious Education. Now retired but active in peace and social justice issues





Panelist: Doug Marvy

Doug Marvy is an elder statesman without a state, an unpublished author, a blogger with no blog, and a communist without a party. He lives in Houston, has a couple of children who long ago stopped being children and a few grandchildren who are also not children.







Nonviolent Direct Action in Milwaukee Today. Saturday Sept. 22, 2:30pm. Moderated by Brian Terrell.  Sunday, 2pm Keynote Speaker. "Spirit of Milwaukee 14 Alive in Peace and Justice Movements Today "

Brian Terrell

Brian Terrell has been a part of the Catholic Worker movement for more than 40 years. A Wisconsin native, Brian attended St Norbert College for a year before he joined the Catholic Worker movement in New York City in 1975 at the age of 19. He presently lives at Strangers and Guests Catholic Worker Farm in Maloy, Iowa. Brian is a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and on the council of the Nevada Desert Experience. From the farm in Maloy, he travels around the United States and beyond, speaking and acting with communities that are working for justice and peace. His travels include participation in delegations to Palestine, Iraq, Bahrain, Korea and Russia and he visits Afghanistan regularly. He has participated in anti-nuclear, anti-war and human rights protests around the United States, Latin America and Europe. He has spent more than 2 years in jails and prisons and has been deported from 3 counties as a result of these protests. In recent years, Brian has been active in resistance to remote controlled murders by drones with friends in Nevada, Wisconsin, New York and Missouri.

Panelist Janice Sevre-Duszynska

Milwaukee native Janice Sevre-Duszynska is an activist priest in the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests (ARCWP), a community circular (non-hierarchal) in governance and in celebrating liturgies where all are welcome. She has been an advocate for the equality of women in church and society and as a board member of Women’s Ordination Conference she led the "Ministry of Irritation" witnessing to the US Catholic bishops. She celebrates Eucharist at School of the Americas Watch gatherings, the Des Moines Catholic Worker, and other Catholic Worker Houses and in Rome in 2013 three hours before Francis was elected Pope. She is the Grandmother of the Emmaus Community in Lexington, KY and the Resurrection Community in Cincinnati. A retired ESL teacher and journalist, she does resistance with the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Witness Against Torture, CODEPINK Women for Peace, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Close Down ROTC on Jesuit campuses, and the Baltimore Nonviolence Center. She is a former Prisoner of Conscience for SOA Watch.


Panelist Maria Hamilton. Mothers for Justice United

Maria Hamilton (center) leading the Million Mom's March

Maria Hamilton has been a leading and inspirational force for justice after her son Dontre Hamilton was murdered by Milwaukee Police Officer Christopher Manney on April 30, 2014. Dontre, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia two years before, had been resting in a Red Arrow Park in downtown on that mild spring afternoon. Employees of a nearby Starbucks called the police repeatedly with concerns about Dontre, who was not bothering anyone. After a team of officers responded on two separate occasions and found no issue with Dontre, Officer Manney apparently re-classified the complaint and responded alone. Manney conducted an out-of-policy pat down (for which he was subsequently fired from the police force), and went on to beat Dontre severely with his baton. Dontre struggled for the baton which was being used to subdue him. Officer Manney then shot Dontre fourteen times, which resulted in Dontre’s death.

Maria became determined to reach out to other bereaved mothers, in an effort to support each other and to advocate together for justice, and for a humane response and recognition from their fellow citizens. She founded Mothers for Justice United and MFJU organized the Million Moms March that took place in Washington, D.C. on Mother’s Day Weekend – May 9-10, 2015, to have their voices heard, to demand justice for their murdered children and to put an end to the race-based policies of police and vigilante violence that harm communities of color. Her dream is to mobilize mothers across the United States to come together to stop the senseless killing of childre

A award winning film on her struggle, Blood is at your Doorstep documents her struggle.

Panelist: Christine Neumann-Ortiz



Christine Neumann-Ortiz is the founding Executive Director of Voces de la Frontera. Ms. Neumann-Ortiz is recognized as a national leader in the immigrant rights movement.

In 2012, Ms. Neumann-Ortiz was named by The Huffington Post in its list of “50 Young Progressive Activists Who Are Changing America.” Ms. Neumann-Ortiz has received numerous awards including the Community Change Champion Award for Community Organizing and Leadership from The Center for Community Change and the Equal Justice Medal by Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee.

Through her leadership, Voces has grown from a small, grassroots worker center to a state and national leader in the immigrant rights movement. In 2017 Voces successfully organized two statewide general strikes against 287g in Milwaukee County that resulted in blocking its implementation and the resignation of former Sheriff Clarke. In 2016, The Nation magazine awarded Voces for “Most Valuable Strategy” in honor of the February 18th Day without Latinos & Immigrants statewide general strike, which defeated a state anti-sanctuary bill. In 2012, The Nation named Voces the “Most Valuable Grassroots Organization” in the country. In 2009, the Wisconsin State Assembly recognized Voces for its role in achieving passage of in-state tuition rights for immigrant students as part of the 2009-2011 state budget.

Ms. Neumann-Ortiz earned her Master’s Degree in US/ Chicano History at the University of Texas-Austin and her Bachelor of Art degree in English at the University of Wisconsin- Madison.

Panelist: Isabel Martinez

Isabel Martinez, 13, is from Manitowoc. She and her mother are members of Voces de la Frontera.

Isabel and her family became involved in the immigrant rights movement in 2012 after ICE detained and ultimately deported her father. Isabel has spoken at Voces rallies and participated in civil disobedience actions to defend immigrants and families threatened by deportation.

Panelist:  Don Timmerman

Don Timmerman has been a Catholic Worker at Casa Maria since 1973. We at Casa Maria have been demonstrating once a month and sometimes doing c.d. at Marquette U. for over 30 years, calling for MU to be faithful to the Gospel and not hosting the ROTC on campus since it teaches the opposite of what Christ taught....to love one's enemies, and do good to them. I am an alumnus of M.U. graduating in 1966 and then went to Tanzania as a seminarian to do mission work, studied at Kipalapala seminary for 4 yrs. of theology, worked with Mother Theresa who started a hospice near the seminary. I was ordained in Tanzania and worked as a parish priest and teacher of catechists at the Lukuledi mission. My goal is to give the message of Christ to others on how to be happy and at peace in this life.