Arnie Alpert
On behalf of the Martin Luther King Coalition, Arnie was presented the 24th Annual Martin Luther King Award by 1991 Recipient Valerie Cunningham at the 28th Annual Martin Luther King Day Community Celebration on Monday, January 18, 2010.
Since 1981, Arnie Alpert has been New Hampshire Program Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization devoted to social justice, peace, and nonviolent change. He is active in movements for economic justice and affordable housing, civil and worker rights, peace and disarmament, abolition of the death penalty, and an end to racism and homophobia. Arnie has years of experience leading workshops to train activists for nonviolent action and effective communication with political candidates. He also serves as Director of NH Peace Action’s Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Project.
As Communications Coordinator for the Martin Luther King Day Committee from 1988 to 1999, Arnie played a central role in the campaign for a state holiday honoring Dr. King. The holiday was enacted in 1999 and first observed officially in 2000. He also served from 1984 to 2007 on the Steering Committee of the Martin Luther King Coalition, which sponsors the annual celebration of Dr. King’s birthday in Manchester.
Arnie serves as Vice Chair of the New Hampshire Citizens Trade Policy Commission, a body created by the legislature in 2007, and is on the Steering Committee of the NH Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. He is an active member of his union, UNITE-HERE Local 66L, which represents industrial laundry workers and social change activists in the northeast. He served for several years on the Steering Committee of the Campaign for Labor Rights, a national anti-sweatshop organization. Arnie has also served on the Board of Directors of the NH Community Loan Fund, and the Steering Committee of NH Peace Action.
Arnie’s articles have been published in Peacework, the Concord Monitor, the New Hampshire Union Leader, the New Hampshire Business Review, Friends Journal, Dollars & Sense, The Progressive, and other publications. He wrote the entry on 'New Hampshire' for the encyclopedia, Civil Rights in the United States. He was a member of the AFSC Working Party on Global Economics, which produced Putting Dignity and Rights at the Heart of the Global Economy in 2004.
He was named “Citizen of the Year” by the New Hampshire Women’s Lobby in 1997, and received the NH AFL-CIO’s annual Social Justice Award in 1999. In 2004 he received the Thomas Merton-Dorothy Day Award from River College’s Peace and Justice Institute. NH Public Radio included him in its “25 for 25” series in 2007, which profiled people who have made a difference in the state. The Manchester branch of the NAACP honored Arnie with one of its recognition awards at the 2009 celebration of the organization’s centennial.
Prior to joining the AFSC, Arnie worked as a volunteer and staff member with the Clamshell Alliance, the organization that popularized nonviolent direct action to halt nuclear power plants.
Arnie Alpert received a BA in Environmental Science from Wesleyan University in 1977 and an MS in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University in 1995. He lives in Canterbury, New Hampshire with Judith Elliott.