David Hartsough was a Quaker and a lifelong peace and justice activist and author of his memoir, Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist, PM Press. Hartsough organized many peace efforts and worked with nonviolent movements in such far-flung locations as the Soviet Union, Nicaragua, Philippines, and Kosovo. In 1987 Hartsough co-founded the Nuremberg Actions blocking munitions trains carrying munitions to Central America. In 2002 he co-founded the Nonviolent Peaceforce www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org which has peace teams with over 300 nonviolent peacemakers/peacekeepers working in conflict areas around the world.

Hartsough Co-founded World Beyond War, a global movement to put an end to all war in 2014 www.worldbeyondwar.org. Hartsough was arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience in his work for peace and justice more than 150 times, most recently at the Livermore nuclear weapons laboratory. His first arrest was for taking part in the first civil rights “Sit-ins” in Maryland and Virginia in 1960 with other students from Howard University where they successfully integrated the lunch counters in Arlington, VA. Hartsough visited the Montgomery bus boycott in Montgomery, AL where he met Martin Luther King in 1956. Hartsough organized six citizens diplomacy delegations between 1961 and 2016 to help bring the US and the Soviet Union/Russia back from the brink of nuclear war. Hartsough also led three peacemaking delegations to Iran. Hartsough was active in the Poor People’s Campaign from 1968 to his passing. Hartsough was the Director of PEACEWORKERS from 1993 to his passing as well. 

From 1971 to 1991, Hartsough worked with the American Friends Service Committee building nonviolent campaigns and doing peace education. In 2021 Hartsough received the Clarence B. Jones Award for Kingian Nonviolence at the University of San Francisco.

Hartsough was a husband, father and grandfather and lived in San Francisco, CA.