Karen Talbot

Karen Talbot

Karen Talbot died Oct. 12 2003in San Francisco after a two-month struggle against cancer. She was 69. She survived by three daughters, Peggy Talbot, Sonya Talbot, and Majken Talbot, and her brother, Claude Sandell. Was married to Steve Talbot.

From Denver to the United Nations

The song “Bread and Roses” held special significance for Karen Talbot. It was the song sung at her mother’s funeral in 1938 when Karen was just four years old. As a result of the Great Depression, her mother, Peggy Sandell, died needlessly in childbirth due to lack of affordable prenatal care. Times were hard and money was scarce. She was buried without a headstone. At the time of her death, Karen’s mother was the Denver, Colorado, District Secretary of the Communist Party USA.

Karen’s father, a son of Swedish immigrants, had graduated from the music conservatory in Denver but was unable to pursue his career in music. Jobs were hard to come by, and even then a musician’s pay could not support a family. The Sandell family moved to Oregon in an attempt to survive on a small farm there. Through the WPA, her father eventually got a job as a machinist. He remained politically active himself, performing with Pete Seeger and working in the civil rights movement. At one point, the famous African American contralto Marian Anderson stayed at their small house because she was denied a room at the hotels in Eugene.

At the age of eleven, on Karen’s birthday, August 6th, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Looking back, Karen often reflected how pivotal this seminal, tragic event was in shaping her awareness of the horrors poised by nuclear weapons. An impressionable young girl, she felt a keen empathy and solidarity for the school-aged children of Hiroshima. This keen compassion for the suffering of others is what fueled Karen’s lifelong dedication to the struggle for peace and justice.

In her thirties, Talbot participated in the movement to end the war in Vietnam. She was in the West Coast leadership of the Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and became the project manager for the large anti-war demonstration held in San Francisco on April 15, 1967. She was active in Democratic Party politics and the women’s peace movement. Among other things, she coordinated a 100-organization coalition on economic and social justice and peace issues. During this time, she also worked for the People's World. Soon promoted to business manager, she worked assiduously toward expanding the paper’s readership.

On the international stage

In the early 1970s, an opportunity arose for Karen to take her activism to the international arena. Karen joined the World Peace Council and quickly took on leadership roles. Her family relocated to Finland, where the main offices of the WPC were located. Finland was one of the few European countries unaligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact.

For more than 12 years, Karen Talbot was the WPC’s permanent representative to the United Nations. As a member of the WPC Secretariat, she was responsible for three of its departments: Nuclear Disarmament, the United Nations, and Women. She edited the WPC publication, Disarmament Forum, which was produced as a contribution to the World Disarmament Campaign of the United Nations.

One of Karen’s major responsibilities was the 1975 New Stockholm Peace Appeal. This petition campaign demanded united action to stop the arms race and ban all nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, while calling for general and complete disarmament and a United Nations World Disarmament Conference. More than 500 million people signed the appeal (representing 700 million persons), including representatives of national legislatures, presidents of nations (such as President Kekkonen of Finland), leaders of political parties, and presidents of national trade unions.

Karen also served as Deputy Secretary-General of the International Liaison Forum of Peace Forces, which for several years conducted international dialogues in the Austrian capital on crucial issues of world peace and security. She worked alongside elected officials and political party representatives from around the world, scientists and academics, and leaders and activists of peace and justice groups.

On September 20–23, 1977, the NGO Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Population took place. It was the first UN conference with Indigenous delegates attending and speaking for themselves at the UN. Karen, along with her husband Steve Talbot, played an important role in organizing and participating in this historic event.

Karen was deeply involved in the NGO Planning Committees for the world conferences of women in Copenhagen and Nairobi, and she led the WPC delegations to both the NGO Forums and the UN Conferences.

World Peace Council

In the late 1970s, the Information Centre of the Soviet front World Peace Council, Helsinki Finland, published a booklet naming members of the organization, worldwide.

We publish in this booklet a list of members of the World Peace Council elected at the Council's Session in Warsaw in 1977.

U.S. members listed, included; Karen Talbot , Secretary, World Peace Council ; WPC representative to UN

On December 15, 1981, Ron Dellums' then assistant, Barbara Lee, wrote to the World Peace Council asking for airline tickets and hotel accommodations for Dellums and two staff members to attend the WPC Conference in Vienna. The letter was addressed to Karen Talbot, an American working for the WPC in Helsinki. Talbot was formerly business manager of Peoples World, the Communist Party USA newspaper, published in Dellums' district.

World Peace Council US tour

Erma Henderson center, Maryann Mahaffey, fourth from right, Clyde Cleveland, third from right

From September 29, to October 12, 1975 the Soviet front World Peace Council sent a delegation on a ten-day tour of the United States of America, where it was "warmly and enthusiastically received". In six of the ten cities visited, the delegation was officially welcomed by the mayors' offices and presented with "keys to the city", medals and proclamations.

The delegation was composed of Romesh Chandra, Secretary General of the World Peace Council; Josef Cyrankiewicz, former Premier of Poland, for many years a prisoner at the infamous Auschwitz prison camp, "outstanding anti-fascist fighter", and Chairman of the Polish Peace Committee; Ambassador Harald Edelstam, Swedish Ambassador to Algeria, formerly Ambassador to Chile during the Allende Presidency,"renowned for his rescue of hundreds of Chileans from the fascist junta"; Purabhi Mukherji, General Secretary of the Congress Party of India, member of Parliament and formerly a minister of the Indian government ~ for 15 years; James Lamond, Labour member of British Parliament, former Mayor of Aberdeen, Scotland, and active member of the Engineering Workers Union; Yacov Lomko, Editor-in-Chief of the Moscow News, leading member of the Soviet Peace Committee, and Communist Party USA member Karen Talbot, US member of the WPC Secretariat.

San Francisco activism

After her tenure with the WPC, Karen continued her struggle for peace and justice. During the last years of her life, she worked with Ramsey Clark around the Iraq war and traveled to Korea in support of reunification. In San Francisco, she founded and directed the International Center for Peace and Justice and worked with the San Francisco Labor Council. She also continued her long affiliation and work with the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom. At the time of her death, she was a member of the National Committee of the CPUSA.

In 1994 she received the Martin Luther King Jr. award for peace. She also received the United Nations Messenger of Peace award on behalf of the Gray Panthers as their executive director.

A prolific writer, Karen wrote on numerous issues, including NATO’s role in the war in Yugoslavia for Covert Action Quarterly. Twice she was selected by Project Censored for authoring one of the 25 most suppressed stories, one of which was “Coup-Making in Venezuela: The Bush Administration and Oil Factors” published in the People's Weekly World. Karen’s deep Marxist understanding of the roots of war mongering and war profiteering meant she was consistently in the vanguard of voices to speak out against a new call for US military action. Just two months after 9/11, Karen provided a prescient insight into Bush’s “war on terror.”

Endorsed Communist Party Call

On March 30 2002 the Communist Party USA paper People’s Weekly World called for a national holiday in honor of late Farm Workers Union leader Cesar Chavez. The article was followed by a long list of endorsers including Karen Talbot, Almost all endorsers were confirmed members of the Communist Party USA.

Committees of Correspondence 2002 Conference

At the Committees of Correspondence National Conference and Convention, July 25-28, 2002 San Francisco State University.

Disarmament and the Military Budget. Panelists included: Kenneth Riley, David Bacon,, Marilyn Albert, Renee Saucedo, Angela Sambrano, Cathi Tactaquin, Marty Price, Patrice Sewell, Joan Cohen, Claire Carsman, James Campbell, Peter Orris, Thelma Correll, Edith Pollach, Amaha Kassa, Harry Targ, Steve Williams, Karen Talbot, Mort Frank, David Cohen.

References

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