At the Veterans For Peace Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, on August 26, 2018, the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation awarded its 2018 Peace Prize to David Swanson, director of World BEYOND War.

Michael Knox, Chair of the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation, remarked: 

“We have a culture of war in the U.S. Americans who oppose a war are often labeled traitors, unpatriotic, un-American, and antimilitary. As you know, to work for peace you must be brave and make great personal sacrifices.

Director/co-playwright/red diaper baby (of sorts) Mark Lonow’s semi-autobiographical Jews, Christians and Screwing Stalin cleverly interweaves the comic and the tragic, the personal and the political. Lonow claims that his grand-uncle Yakov Sverdlov had the distinct honor and pleasure of shooting Czar Nicholas II, and this two-acter has leftwing allusions galore, amidst Turgenev caliber father-son conflicts. Borscht Belt banter is interspersed with socialist shtick.

Co-written with his wife, comedy veteran Jo Anne Astrow, their turf deals with members of Mark’s Marxist meshugenah family, including his grandmother Minka Grazonsky (Cathy Ladman who, appropriately appeared on TV’s Scandal and Mad Men series), who purports to have schtupped Joseph Stalin during the heady days of the Bolshevik Revolution.