Connie Hogarth
 Connie Hogarth is a lifetime peace, justice and environmental activist, and the cofounder and executive director for 23 years (emeriti since 1996) of WESPAC, Westchester People’s Action Coalition in White Plains, New York.
From 1984 to 1989 she was on the board of the National Rainbow Coalition and played an active organizing role in the two presidential campaigns of the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Ongoing efforts at WESPAC included educational and activist work to shut down the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan, NY -- not yet accomplished; active support for ending apartheid in South Africa -- accomplished! And local efforts in human rights, gay rights, civil rights, affordable housing and equal educational opportunities.
Shortly after her retirement from WESPAC, she was honored with the establishment at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY of the Connie Hogarth Center for Social Action, dedicated to training students to move from academics to activism, combining conscience, career and social change. The Center occupies a major part of her current activist life working for peace education, human rights, environmental justice, criminal justice, and a broad perspective on the U.S. role in the world, particularly in the Middle East and Latin America.
Her environmental focus of the past few years has centered around climate change and the dangers of global warming. She is one of the founding members of the Climate Crisis Coalition, launched in 2004 in Lenox, Mass.
She is on the board of the national organization Defending Dissent (formerly the First Amendment Foundation). Defending the Bill of Rights and particularly the First Amendment had become more urgent than ever in these times.
After many years living in Westchester, she and her husband, Art Kamell, moved to Dutchess county, in a house facing the beloved Hudson River and Storm King Mountain. Neighbors are Pete and Toshi Seeger and with their inspiration, she has become closely involved in the Beacon Sloop Club, an offshoot of Clearwater. She is an active member of the Dutchess Democratic Committee and the Fishkill Democratic Committee, and has helped reactivate the Southern Dutchess NAACP. With the Mid-Hudson Progressive Alliance she has helped organize and lobby on issues such as ending the wars and funding human need priorities. The current focus is on health care reform, particularly working for a single payer system.
In 2009 she was given the Ossie Davis Lifetime Achievement award by the Westchester Human Rights Commission.
Overriding everything she does is a belief in nonviolence, alternatives to war and working to leave a healthy earth for our children and for seven generations ahead.
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