“It’s not often that you get to fill a church like this without being dead,” Brendan Work started his acceptance speech. Each year, the Janette Rankin Peacemaker panel determines an individual who has been an outstanding advocate for peace in the community. This year, the awarded Pacemaker of the year was Brendan Work, Hellgate Arabic teacher and former journalist. He was noted as a controversial pick this year for many members of the board, as a result of his outspoken beliefs against the genocide in Gaza. Many thought that it would be more appropriate to honor a community member who stood firmly in the middle, taking a stand for neither political side, but uniting the group as a whole.
According to the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center, the awards are chosen based on three criteria: adherence to nonviolence, determination for environmental sustainability, and social justice. The criteria does continue to become much more elaborate, but is firmly based on these three ideas.
Work has been acclaimed for his work as an Arabic teacher, as the only Arabic teacher in all MCPS public high schools. He maintains the importance of this, through cultural understanding and the ability to communicate with Arabic speaking refugee students. This is even more evident through his participation at Soft Landings, a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to assisting refugee and immigrant families in Missoula, who stress the importance of volunteers who speak Arabic.
Before coming back to his hometown of Missoula to allow Arabic to be taught in the local community, he was highly recognized for his journalism in Palestine. There his advocacy against the genocide in Palestine began. Before the war that broke out, the situation in Gaza was still extremely tense and sometimes violent, though not fully declared war. Work saw, first hand, how the Palestinians in this situation lived, communicating to the American people the extreme circumstances in which he was working.
He continues his work and duty to Palestine in Missoula by organizing protests and rallies in support of Palestine with the Montanans for Palestine. Through this nonviolent work and dedication to the Palestinian people throughout his life, advocating for peace and justice in Gaza, the Jeannette Rankin Peace center determined him a worthy recipient of the Peacemaker of the Year Award. Despite this, one speaker made it known that the choice was not unanimous. Several members of the board of determines felt that Work divided the crowd, rather than brought them together, being so passionate about issues that are highly controversial in the current political climate.
At Work’s acceptance ceremony, he draped the keffiyeh over his suit, announcing that he would use his time to accept the award to spread more and more awareness about the horrors occurring in Palestine. “I don’t need to tell you that today’s circumstances are dire”, he said, followed by, “Is due process right? Is international law a fiction?” He aimed to hold our government accountable for the major infringements on human rights that they have been committing, at one point including Donald Trump and Joe Biden as equally culpable war criminals via their military support of Israel.
As a display of atrocity, Work handed out lit candles and a sheet of paper, listing names and ages. He would describe the age beginning at infancy and moving to adulthood at eighteen. Each time that he read the age out loud, the person holding the candle and sheet with the corresponding ages was to blow out their candle, indicating the death of the children whose names covered the sheet. When all the ages had been called, there were still a few candles left lit. “These are the survivors,” Work said, following with words of encouragement to do what you can in order to make sure that these survivors have adequate food, care, and shelter. He urged the crowd to continue with him after the ceremony to a march through downtown Missoula in support of Palestine.
During the ceremony, the Peace Quilters at the Jeannette Rankin Peace center unveiled the quilt that was given to Work in honor of his award. The quilt was unveiled prior to Work’s speech, sporting geometric designs and decorated in the back with the pattern of the keffiyeh, representing Work’s lifelong dedication to the people of Palestine.
