For Cora Rubin Weiss (1934-2025)
Women Strike For Peace detected
Strontium 90 in newborn’s teeth,
food, air, water. Filled Central Park
with a million activists for
nuclear disarmament.
Pedestrian gridlock stilled horns,
thrilled peace advocates everywhere.
Atomic tests were later banned.
Later, Cora chaired justice protests,
led the New Mobilization
Committee to end the American
War in Vietnam. She carried signs:
Not Our Sons. Not Your Sons as she
pursued Pentagon bigwigs, garbed in
pearls, high heels, demanding war’s end.
Hundreds of thousands followed her there.
Traffic came to a stop when she
lay down on Park Avenue with
her resistance sisters, each one
bearing names of Vietnamese
dead by US guns, bombs, napalm.
She ferried letters from Hanoi
POWs to home and back.
Carried hopes, parried criticism.
Mentored by Eleanor Roosevelt
as a girl. In college, she met,
married Peter, a civil rights
lawyer activist. Together,
they fought against bigotry – from
McCarthy to Trump. Cora knew
the key role that women play in
teaching about love, unity.
Throughout her life, she stopped traffic-
king of hate. Fought for global peace
education. Fought for humanity.
She never gave up. Never walked
away from a righteous cause. Never
stayed silent when protest was called
for. Never got up from a roadway
if something remained to fight for.
Editor's note: Peter Weiss died in November 2025 at the age of 99.
Mary K O’Melveny, a happily retired attorney, is the author of four poetry collections and a chapbook. Her most recent, If You Want To Go To Heaven, Follow A Songbird, is an album of poems, art and music. Mary’s award-winning poems have appeared in many print and on-line literary journals and anthologies and on international blog sites, including The New Verse News. Mary’s collection Flight Patterns was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Her book Merging Star Hypotheses (2020) was a semi-finalist for The Washington Prize, sponsored by The Word Works. Mary has been three-times nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is an active member of the Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group and her poetry appears in the Group’s two published anthologies An Apple In Her Hand and Rethinking The Ground Rules. Mary lives with her wife near Woodstock, New York.
