GREENFIELD — With a new executive director at the helm, the Traprock Center for Peace & Justice is aiming to expand its reach to younger activists and additional causes.
Founded in 1978, the grassroots organization began with a fight against the nuclear arms race of the 1980s before growing its commitment to nonviolence across several causes, including environmental justice, anti-racism, feminism, anti-war efforts and other projects that embrace peace and social justice.
Liam O’Shea started as the executive director in August, filling the vacant position after Pat Hynes, who steered Traprock for 10 years, stepped down in 2020. Between 2020 and August of this year, O’Shea and Secretary Anna Gyorgy said the group functioned as a coalition. When the time came to confirm officers in August, the board recommended that O’Shea, then an administrative assistant who was primarily focusing on social media outreach, step up as the executive director.
When O’Shea, 24, first joined Traprock last December, he said the organization often funneled its energy into one cause at a time.
“A lot of the time, they wanted everyone to be involved in one particular project and go in one direction, and the model that we’ve transitioned to now is more an umbrella for lots of smaller projects that are run by a few people that we can fund and support through direct action,” O’Shea explained in the center’s office at The LAVA Center in Greenfield.
Traprock, which Gyorgy described as a “project-based” organization, supports local partners by helping to fund their work and amplifying their causes so they reach the right ears, like the roughly 550 subscribers to Traprock’s monthly newsletter. When local groups’ missions align with Traprock’s, the organization helps pull out a platform for them, O’Shea described.
With help from the Markham-Nathan Fund for Social Justice, Traprock has multiple projects on the horizon, with collaboration at the core.
Through its Climate & Democracy Project, Traprock plans to work with the Wendell State Forest Alliance to host webinars and a public forum about the “inappropriate siting of energy-related facilities in rural areas,” according to Gyorgy. She described a current tension between the push for renewable energy and “basic needs” like land conservation.
“It’s tricky because we’ve been working for years for renewable energy, but in Franklin County, we have a very high awareness of the value of farms and forests and natural lands and wildlife, and how important it is for the climate to protect that,” Gyorgy explained. “It’s a climate issue, but it’s also a democracy issue, because we don’t want things imposed on our communities.”
Traprock also started working with the Apartheid-Free Western Massachusetts coalition and Racial Justice Rising, local organizations that O’Shea and Gyorgy said resonate with Traprock’s mission.
Other projects in Traprock’s future embody O’Shea’s vision for the organization to be a network of activists across generations.
While growing up in Conway, O’Shea first stepped into political activism while canvassing for Bernie Sanders in Greenfield at only 16 years old. Inspired by groups of young activists in Swannanoa, North Carolina, where he attended Warren Wilson College, he hopes to stretch Traprock’s reach to other kids and teens called to activism.
Along with continuing its Peacemaker Awards honoring high schoolers for social justice accomplishments in their schools and communities, Traprock has its first Bridging the Gap of Intergenerational Peace Conference slated for spring. Youth activists and former Peacemaker Award recipients will lead a full day of workshops on nonviolence and social justice issues to about 60 participants.
O’Shea said the conference aims to “keep this activist network alive.”
“In this area, there’s a lot of older people that have been leading the push for social change and social reform for decades at this point, and what we’re trying to do is get more of the younger generation involved, so that these causes can continue to be in focus, so that people still feel like they can still be politically active and stand up for what they believe in,” O’Shea explained. “We want to empower younger people to really be leaders.”
“Working with Liam and having Liam be the new director is part of a really important generation change,” Gyorgy said, adding that younger generations understand the current economic and communication landscape. “The whole internet thing is another language, so it requires of organizations a different kind of work.”
O’Shea said they also plan on creating paid positions for younger activists to provide “an opportunity for economic mobility while still operating within their values.”
“It’s not just, ‘Where are the young people?’ It’s the community needs to support young people to be able to afford to do this kind of work. This is real work,” Gyorgy said.
O’Shea hopes to develop a plan to provide transportation for young activists who want to participate in Traprock’s efforts, a roadblock for many people in rural areas.
For O’Shea, younger generations often carry with them an acute sense of the issues facing their age group and offer solid, actionable ideas for local change.
“They bring a fresh perspective, and so many of them are so passionate and so committed. It’s refreshing and honestly inspiring to see how many people are doing just that, are standing up to make a difference,” O’Shea said. “It feels like bridging the gap between generations. What we really don’t want is for the movement to die out with the older generations. We want to make sure that people who are passionate about all forms of justice have a place where they can all meet and talk and know that there is a community.”