‘Raging’ for 100 years

BY NAKAYLA MCCLELLAND JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Sally-Alice Thompson, activist, World War II Navy Veteran, author, and co-founder of the Albuquerque Chapter of Veterans For Peace, died recently at age 100.

Born in 1923, Thompson experienced poverty as the Great Depression raged on in her early childhood. Desperate to escape and find a better life, Thompson joined the Navy to find a route to higher education.

“We should not have to go to war just to go to college,” Thompson said to the Journal in 2019. “Education should be accessible for all, no matter how rich or poor.”

Activism

Friends, family and Albuquerque residents often talk about Thompson’s intense involvement with various peace and activism groups around

town.

“When I went to NAACP meetings (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), she was there,” said longtime friend from Veterans of Peace, Charles Powell.

“When I went to ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) she was there. Everywhere I went, she was there. She had a wide range of interests, especially when it came to peace and justice issues.”

Those missions led her to Nicaragua in the mid 1980s, where she joined two work brigades, building an elementary school for children. In 1986, she joined the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice and became influential member of the group.

Thompson walked from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. in 1986 for The Great Peace March for Global Disarmament in protest against nuclear weaponry. The following year, she founded the Albuquerque Chapter of the Raging Grannies and was responsible for composing most of their songs. The group would change popular song lyrics to represent social justice issues and bring awareness to them, even into the final year of her life.

Three years later, she would participate in another march, this time the American-Soviet Union March for Nuclear Disarmament from Leningrad to Moscow. It was there that Thompson met several people from Turkmenistan. In her life, she would travel there over 30 times, which eventually led her to create the Albuquerque-Ashgabat Sister Cities Chapter in 1989.

The chapter would sponsor exchange programs from Turkmenistan and Albuquerque. During one of those sponsorships, Thompson and her husband Don Thompson sponsored Tatiana Vetrinskaya, who later became the CEO of the New Mexico School of Music.

In her life, Thompson adopted several children through the state’s Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD). One of her daughters, Jeananne Pahl, said it was common for Thompson to extend a helping hand to anyone in need.

“Even though she had a very rough childhood, she would turn around and be a family for anybody who needed it,” said Pahl. “No matter what life threw at her, she would continue to keep giving to people.”

Thompson pivoted her focus in 1989, when she and her husband founded the Albuquerque Chapter of Veterans For Peace. In 2009, the chapter was renamed the Don and Sally-Alice Thompson Chapter of Veterans For Peace to honor their dedication to the group.

A high profile activist, Thompson was honored twice by the City of Albuquerque with her own day, once on March 8, 2021 and the second to commemorate her 100th birthday on Oct. 15, 2023. She died on July 11.

Though many would be tired in their 90s, Thompson continued to show her activism.

“Even at her age, she always kept going,” Pahl said. “She would get sick for three days, and the next day she would be at a planning meeting for whatever activist group she was with that day. She was truly a matriarch for the peace movement.”

At 91, she organized the Get the MOP (Money Out of Politics) walk from Albuquerque to Santa Fe in 2015.

Beloved by friends ands and family, Thompson was known for her ferocity and dedication to various causes and her kindness.

“I would describe her as a strong woman, independent,” Pahl said. “She lived during times when women weren’t supposed to do that and still was. She was compassionate even though she didn’t always get it, and highly intelligent even in her old age.”