About Joe
Joe was the Vermont Program Coordinator of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker peace ad justice organization, from 1995 to 2009.
With the AFSC, Joseph worked nationally and locally for just immigration policies and an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; he founded the Central Vermont Farm Worker Coalition. The Coalition continues to advocate for the rights of undocumented and documented farm workers from Mexico and Guatemala. Joseph was a member of the Vermont Farm Health Task Force, where he co-chaired the Migrant Farm Worker Committee.
As chair-person of the Peace, Justice and Integrity of Creation committee of the Vermont Ecumenical Council and Bible Society, Joseph was the primary author of the background paper from which was derived the “Statement on Immigration,” approved by the VECBS Trustees on September 27, 2012.
In addition to teaching grade school in Brooklyn for seven years, Joseph has been a community organizer/outreach worker for Central Vermont Community Action Council, an anti-poverty agency, where he initiated the organizing of the Vermont Foodbank. He served as advocacy director for the rights of people with disabilities, and a program director and instructor of adults at Woodbury College in Montpelier.
With the AFSC Joseph helped organize the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations in central Vermont.
For about 20 years Joseph has been a member of central Vermont Reading to End Racism which organizes community members to read to students books about diversity, the civil rights movement, and men and women who have worked for social and economic justice, and talks with them about the need to confront racism when we encounter it.
For several years Joseph was a member of Central Vermont Anti-Racism Study Circles (CVARSC) which organized community discussion groups to address racism.
In October, 2009 Joseph founded Vermont Action for Peace and continues to organize opposition to militarism, war and the causes of war, abolition of nuclear weapons, opposition to the reinstatement of the death penalty in Vermont, and creating a statewide support network for migrant farm workers.
With his wife Sarah Norton, he manages a small homestead in Marshfield, Vermont. They sell organic eggs from their free range chickens to the Plainfield Food Co-op where Joseph is a member of the Board.
Joseph has a BA in American History from St. Francis College in Brooklyn, NY, and a MA in Systematic Theology from St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont.