Board of Directors

Unless otherwise noted, all board members serve on Boards of Directors for the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund and the Peace Tax Foundation.
  

David Bassett, M.D., Honorary Chair

As one of the originators of the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill and a founding member of the Campaign, David is our Honorary Chair. He is an active Quaker, war tax resister, and physician (now retired). David has spent his professional career in cardiology, working toward the prevention of cardiovascular disease.

Statement of conscience.

  

Jeffrey Bird

Jeff is an engineer who lives and works in New Jersey. He is a member of Summit Friends Meeting and represents New York Yearly Meeting on the Campaign board. He is an active war tax resister. Jeff also serves on the Executive Committee of the American Friends Service Committee, New York Metropolitan Region.

Statement of conscience.

 

Oskar Castro

Oskar coordinates the National Youth & Militarism Program of the American Friends Service Committee. He has been with AFSC for the last 5 years and has, within that time, come to a greater understanding of militarism as one of the driving forces within the United States of America. It is within this context that he finds the idea of serving on the NCPTF Board extremely compelling. Oskar views the creation of a Peace Tax Fund as a crucial acknowledgment of the right to conscientiously object to war.
  

William Galvin

Bill was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War and has been a conscientious objector to paying for war since 1983. Bill is a former staff member of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors and currently works with the Center on Conscience & War, where their core mission is to extend and defend the rights of conscientious objectors. This includes educating about conscientious objection and related issues, helping COs build files to document their claims, working to prevent the draft from returning and staying on top of draft issues, as well as being part of the GI Rights Hotline and helping soldiers. He has been on the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship's National Committee since the early 1970s. He is a roller coaster connoisseur.

Statement of conscience.

 

Robert Macfarlane

Robert is the Board representative from Episcopal Peace Fellowship. A transplant from Iowa, he and Maria reside in Fairfax, Virginia. As a pastor who studied and prepared teachings on the biblical text, he early realized the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reveals a God who does not give us permission to do violence to each other.
 

Kimberly McDowell, Secretary

Kim is the pastor of the University Park Church of the Brethren. She and her husband Hooker (a health sciences librarian at Howard University) are the parents of two daughters. They live in Hyattsville, MD.
 

J.E. McNeil, Treasurer

The Executive Director of the Center on Conscience & War, J.E. has been a practicing attorney for over twenty-five years, representing military tax resistors and demonstrators. Before becoming the Executive Director, J.E. worked with CCW/NISBCO on its legal committee, where she contributed to amicus briefs and represented conscientious objectors in court. J.E. has also has supported the Peace Tax Fund in Quaker circles.
  

John Little Randall

John is the son of a W.W.II CO, and he was a CO during the Vietnam War. He maintains the Web site of Conscience and Peace Tax International (CPTI) and is a representative of CPTI at the United Nations in New York. John, a Quaker, is Treasurer of the Purchase Quarter Peace Tax Escrow account. In 1997, John and his wife Nana founded an elementary/middle school in her hometown of Kumasi, Ghana. They have two grown children and four grandchildren.

Statement of conscience.

 

Steve Ratzlaff, Chair

Steve is a long-time convinced pacifist. He is the pastor at Mennonite Community Church in Fresno, California. He and his wife Lynette have been war tax resistors in some form or another for 25 years, and this aspect of his life is very critical to him. Their witness has been influenced by the two years which they spent doing Mennonite service in Bolivia in the mid-seventies.
 

William Yolton

Bill is a Presbyterian and a longtime Board member of the Peace Tax Foundation. He was formerly the Executive Director of the National Interreligious Service Board for Conscientious Objectors (NISBCO). Now retired, Bill lives in Alexandria, Virginia. Bill is not a member of the NCPTF Board of Directors.
 
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