RCNV - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Administrative Assistant
- Administrative Assistant for the Resource Center
Amanda Harris Altice is the Administrative Assistant for the Resource Center and has been a community organizer for 5 years. She has a degree in Psychology and worked for most of her career as a Clinical Lab Scientist before transitioning into grassroots organizing. Amanda also holds a degree in Digital Media from Cabrillo College and uses her skills to support grassroots efforts and even helped build this very website. Amanda enjoys doing yoga, hiking, and reading in her free time.
Job Titles:
- Board and Staff
- Resource Center 's Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator
Bob Fitch was a leading social movement photojournalist. His photographs were used to promote civil rights, labor rights, and war resistance movements. Bob Fitch devoted his life to community organizing for multiracial democracy after reading James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. Bob Fitch worked and lived at the Resource Center for Nonviolence from 1999 to 2006, and lived in Watsonville from 2006 until his death in 2016.
In 1965 Fitch was invited by Hosea Williams to be a staff photographer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) during the civil rights movement. "I was told, Bob, we can't send African-American journalists and photographers into the field 'cause they'll get beat up and killed,'" Fitch recalled in an interview on the website wagingnonviolence.org. "‘Every week you'll come back with a news story in print and photos, and you'll send them to the major Black print media around the nation.'"
Fitch photographed voter registration, voting, and recruitment and training for African-American political candidates during the first election following the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. He documented everyday lives of African-Americans, and marches, demonstrations, meetings during SCLC's organizing efforts in Chicago, People-to-People tours in Alabama, the Meredith Mississippi March Against Fear, and the Citizenship Education Program in Alabama by Septima Clark and Dorothy Cotton.
Watsonville immigrant rights march includes Peregrinación Por la Paz, 2006. Photo by Bob Fitch from the Stanford archive
Presente! We miss our beloved Board Member and constant supporter. Read more about Darrell Darling.
Job Titles:
- United Farm Workers Union Vice President, Nagi Daifullah Funeral, 1973. Photo by Bob Fitch from the Stanford Archive
Dolores Huerta (speaking), United Farm Workers Union Vice President, at a rally in Salinas, CA, 1970. Photo by Bob Fitch from the Stanford archive.
His work is presented in Hippie Is Necessary, 1967, My Eyes Have Seen, 1971, Richard Steven Street's Photographing Farmworkers in California, and the anthology This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement.
A resident of Santa Cruz since 2000, Joe has been involved with the Santa Cruz Peace Coalition, Santa Cruz Indymedia, and Santa Cruz Art & Revolution. A longtime volunteer with RCNV (DAMIT - Draft and Military Information Team; GI Rights Network), he has counseled conscientious objectors and done counter-recruitment work in local schools. Joe is a steward for SEIU-UHW at Dominican Hospital and a voting delegate on the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council. He has twice run for US Congress for the Peace & Freedom Party.
Karis's background is in political science and peacebuilding. She currently works across sectors as a people process designer, helping groups to align around and achieve a common mission. Karis is passionate about deep ecology and spends her spare time hiking in the redwoods of California.
Peter is a co-founder of RCNV, and serves as a volunteer and Secretary of the Board of Directors. He is a self-identified slow, lifelong learner and learns social accountability from; LGBTQ, Black, Latinx, Palestinian, Asian, Indigenous, and Jewish mentors. Gender and environmental accountability from his marriage partner Liz. As well as nonviolence possibility from so many companions, mentor's examples, and antiracism from current RCNV companions.
Peter learned questioning authority and community organizing from Scott Kennedy and accountability in work during his years in electrical construction and from his Dad Jim. His mother Ruth led him to seek. More recently, Peter learns presence and humor from two pre-school aged grandkids. Black Gospel music and Bob Dylan music/poetry feed his soul.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director
- Executive Director for the Resource Center for Nonviolence
Silvia Morales is the Executive Director for the Resource Center for Nonviolence. She is trained as a public interest lawyer and has a passion for civil rights. In her life-long role as advocate for the Latinx community, she has remained dedicated to providing spaces for racial healing and understanding. She loves the Central Coast of California because it continues to provide her and her family a life filled with beauty and purpose.
Suzanne has been a social service nonprofit administrator in Santa Cruz County for over 25
years. She co-founded a nonprofit in Ghana which provided support for members of the Ewe
tribe in developing sustainable cottage industries. She has served as an officer of the Sonoma County NAACP and is currently the executive director of Advocacy Inc., a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of seniors in long-term care facilities and for mental health clients in residential programs. She is honored to be on the Board of the RCNV and looks forward to supporting the agency's mission and vision.
Tom is a co-founder of the Center and currently serves as the Board Treasurer. In this role he develops budgets and analyzes the monthly financial statements. He reviews both big and small donations from our supporters with great delight and views these donations as a vote of confidence in the work of the Center in highlighting a variety of important issues in our society today.
Tom's career was in non-profit organizations as both a direct service provider and administrator.
In his spare time, Tom is one of the white-haired seniors you can find walking around Santa Cruz with binoculars, seeking a glimpse of a rare or familiar bird.
Job Titles:
- Facility and Technology Manager