Bio
Stacy Bannerman, M.F.A., M.S., was the first girl to wrestle on a boys' team under TITLE IX, launching a lifetime of firsts. She is the author of HOMEFRONT 911: How Families of Veterans Are Wounded by Our Wars (2015) and WHEN THE WAR CAME HOME: The Inside Story of Reservists and the Families They Leave Behind (2006). Stacy secured the first-ever U.S. House of Representatives Veterans Affairs hearing on how war impacts families of veterans and provided the keystone testimony. Stacy was a charter Board member of Military Families Speak Out and served on the Steering Committee. She is the ONLY peace activist in US history to testify before several Congressional committees, and singlehandedly spearheaded state and national legislative campaigns for military family leave, resulting in the passage of Oregon’s H.B. 2744, and the introduction of the federal Military Family Leave Act of 2009. Ms. Bannerman authored OR H.B. 3391, and independently secured its unanimous passage, establishing the Military Family Task Force in Oregon, the first in the nation.
She founded Women’s EcoPeace and in 2018, organized the flagship statewide coalition calling upon the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) to Divest from War, the first-ever statewide campaign to Keep Oregon Green and release all war investments in their pension portfolio. Getting PERS Money Out Of War | Jefferson Public Radio (ijpr.org)
She led the Heart2Heart Tour to Philadelphia’s Constitution Center and gave her Freedom Medal back to George W. Bush on Veterans Day, 2018. Ms. Bannerman has the distinction of being the first and only military family member to return a war award to an American President. https://popularresistance.org/military-family-member-returns-freedom-medal-to-george-w-bush/?fbclid=IwAR1A_GncboR1FFMTM4mYdTw_oNRWlhkbr9UxnVg2DBprRl0KfNFbJz7F944
Previously, she was the founding Director of The Sanctuary for Veterans & Families 501c3, which premiered the performance art piece, HOMEFRONT 911: Military Family Monologues, in Portland, OR. HOMEFRONT 911 made history when it was presented at the US Capitol in November of 2011, the first time military families had ever taken that stage. This groundbreaking performance art piece told the stories of how more than a decade of war was coming home and Bannerman was interviewed by CNN, MSNBC, and The Washington Post. Before that, she was the first white Executive Director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Outreach Center and received a settlement from the MLK Center’s Black Board of Directors for one of the country’s earliest cases of racial discrimination against a white person. Bannerman’s involvement in race relations includes creating and co-producing the We Are One multimedia human rights series that was nominated for the Inland Northwest advertising awards. She also served as past co-chair of Changing Spokane’s Image on Race and Ethnicity, and the Task Force on Race Relations.
In September of 2016, she was featured in The Forgiveness Project’s website and Huffington Post blog discussing her proposal for an American Truth & Reconciliation Commission on the war in Iraq. She testified at CODEPINK’s People’s Tribunal on the Iraq War in Washington DC, on December 1-2, 2016. Her December 28, 2016, article, Why It’s Paramount to Hold George W. Bush Accountable as Trumps Walks into the Oval Office, was the top story of the day on AlterNet, logging more than 60,000 reads and 2,500 Facebook shares.
In February of 2019, she was the RootsAction Whistleblower/Truth-teller featured on a social media campaign and email blast delivered to 1.5 million RootsAction members.
In the Spring of 2020, Ms. Bannerman’s portrait by Robert Shetterly, nationally acclaimed artist and founder of Americans Who Tell the Truth, https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/ was added to the educational traveling exhibit, featuring “citizens who courageously address issues of social, environmental, and economic fairness.”
She will be highlighted in a 2024 documentary about the human toll of war from the perspectives of veterans, veteran’s families, and those who fought against the Iraq War by BAFTA- and Emmy-award winning filmmaker/producer Deeyah Khan. Ms. Bannerman has also written several screenplays, and her first feature film script, SAVING SPERO, should be in theaters in 2025.
A compelling speaker with a powerful message, Stacy has conducted over 700 multimedia interviews, including Army Times, Hardball with Chris Matthews, BBC, Deborah Norville on MSNBC, NBC Nightly News, The Connection on PBS/NOW, appeared in The Case for War: In Defense of Freedom, and a feature story in the Washington Post. Stacy received her M.S., Magna Cum Laude, from Minnesota State University, an M.F.A in Nonfiction from Pacific University, and a B.A. in International Relations. Stacy is a contributor to The Institute for Policy Study’s Foreign Policy In Focus. She has written nearly 80 articles with bylines at Salon, The San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Tacoma News Tribune, and many others.
Born and raised in North Dakota, Ms. Bannerman was the founding Executive Director of the nation's first Care Farm in Southern Oregon www.sanctuaryone.org. She has created flagship programs for peace ecology, women veterans, caregivers of disabled veterans, and military families while serving as the founder and director of The Sanctuary for Veterans and Families and Veterans Program Manager at ColumbiaCare Services. She has also held adjunct faculty positions at several colleges and universities. Stacy resides in Virginia.
