Taking Aim with Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone

Who We Are

Long active in political life, Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone have been involved in international resistance to imperialism and active in the workers' movement in the United States.

Ralph Schoenman was Secretary General of the International Tribunal on U.S. War Crimes in Indochina and Executive Director of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. He spent seven months in Bolivia in 1967 and was imprisoned there after the death of Che Guevara. He worked with Malcolm X with respect to the battle for the Congo and in the anti-imperialist struggles of Eastern, Central and Southern Africa.

He negotiated the release of political prisoners in many countries. He conducted one-on-one negotiations with over thirty heads of state and their deputies on matters of international affairs, including Nikita Khrushchev, Chou En-lai, Ho Chi Minh, Pham Van Dong, Fidel Castro, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Hugh Gaitskill, Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Moraji Desai, V.K. Krishna Menon, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Ayub Khan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, King Sihanouk, U Thant, Soekarno, Gamal Abdel Nasser, King Faisal, Abdel Karim Qassim, Sa'eb Salem, Ayatollah Ruhalllah Khomeini, David Ben Gurion, Shimon Peres, Yasir Arafat, George Habash, Nayef Hawatmeh, Ahmed Ben Bella, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Jomo Kenyata, Oginga Odinga, Oliver Tambo, Nana Mahomo, I.B. Tabata, Jariretundu Kosonguizi, Yusef Dadoo, Oscar Kambona, Milton Obote, Mohammad Babu, Joshua Nkomo, Kenneth Kaunda and Simon Kapwepwe.

Ralph Schoenman was a president of the International Tribunal Against the Debt, Lima, Peru and assisted in the formation of the Africa Tribunal in Johannesburg, South Africa and Los Angeles, CA.

He and Mya Shone were directors of the Committee in Defense of the Lebanese and Palestinian Peoples during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, of the Palestine Campaign, which at the time of the first Intifada called for an end to all aid to apartheid Israel and for a democratic secular Palestine, and of Workers and Artists for "Solidarity" (that is, Solidarnarsc, the Polish Workers' movement). They were the North American organizers of the International Conference Against Repression in Haiti that took place in Port-au-Prince during the oppressive Raoul Cedras regime. Ralph Schoenman was a founder of the Committee for Artistic and Intellectual Freedom in Iran and spent seven months in Iran during the revolution against the Shah.

Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone were founders and editorial members for ten years of the labor and socialist newspaper "The Organizer."

Ralph Schoenman has lectured widely on the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. His books include "The Hidden History of Zionism", "Iraq and Kuwait: A History Suppressed" and "Death and Pillage in the Congo: A Study of Western Rule" which he co-authored with Khalid Ahmed Zaki, as well as, "Prisoners of Israel" and "Homage to Palestine" which he co-authored with Mya Shone. He is the former U.S. representative of the International Committee Against Repression which is based in Paris.

His academic publications include "Plato's Theory of Education'" for which he won the 1869 McCosh Dickinson Award of Princeton University; "Verifiability Theory and the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning." He attended Princeton University and the London School of Economics.

Ralph Schoenman's analysis and discussion of the events of 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan, "World Trade Center: Uncensored History," left WBAI's audience riveted to their radios waiting for the next installment and led to the broadcast of "Taking Aim with Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone," now in its sixth year of production.

Mya Shone, an economist and graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), has a long history as an activist involved in political, community and labor issues. Her multiple activities over the years include a leading role in Casa Nicaragua and Casa El Salvador during the struggles taking place in Central America. She was the coordinator of the Tri-County (Santa Barbara, Ventura, San Luis Obispo) Labor Party chapter. She was a founder and a member of the steering committee of Health Care for All-California.

She served as a member of an international steering committee organizing campaigns against exploitation and in defense of workers' rights, and was a co-coordinator of the International Conference for Trade Union Independence and Democratic Rights that took place in San Francisco in 2000.

Mya Shone has been prominent in media production. She was a documentary filmmaker, and as a member of the pioneering video collective "Optic Nerve," produced and directed award winning social-issue documentaries, several shown on PBS. Optic Nerve was the recipient of the first award for video production by the prestigious Chicago Film Festival and received the first grant for video production from the California Public Broadcasting Commission.

Mya Shone was a newscaster and reporter at KPFK in Los Angeles. Her lecture/slide presentation "The War in Lebanon: An Inside View," including her slides from the massacre of Palestinians and Lebanese in Sabra and Shatila, received worldwide attention. Mya Shone handled communication and press for Professional and Technical Engineers, Local 21, IFPTE/AFL-CIO and United Healthcare Workers, SEIU Local 250 and for community advocacy organizations.

In addition to "Taking Aim," their weekly broadcast over WBAI-NY, Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone provide commentary for radio stations in many parts of the United States and Canada. They contributed regular commentaries for Pacifica's "War and Peace Report" throughout the duration of its broadcast.