Arrested (Again)

Activist Karen Topakian has been arrested dozens of times for using nonviolent civil disobedience to protest nuclear proliferation, human rights abuses, environmental issues, and war. Most recently, Karen was arrested along with six other Greenpeace activists after unfurling a 70-foot “RESIST” banner from a crane near the White House. What drives her to repeatedly put her body on the line?   In turn lighthearted and moving, Karen’s story speaks to the need for Americans, now more than ever, to exercise this important First Amendment right. Following her first arrest in 1982, Karen began working at Greenpeace as a nuclear disarmament campaigner in 1987. For 16 years, she served as the executive director of the Agape Foundation-Fund for Nonviolent Social Change that awarded grants, loans, and fiscal sponsorship totaling $1.1 million dollars annually to California-based grassroots nonviolent social change organizations. In 2010, Karen became chair of the board of Greenpeace, Inc.