Mike Ferner

Graduating high school in 1969 "with a head full of John Wayne movies,” Mike enlisted as a Navy corpsman and tried to reassemble pieces of G.I.s who arrived at Great Lakes Naval Hospital on frequent medevac flights from Vietnam, leading him to become a war resister and conscientious objector after serving on the carrier USS Hancock.  

He has been a union organizer, member of Toledo City Council, and communications director for the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy.

Mike accompanied Kathy Kelly to Iraq just prior to the U.S. invasion in 2003, returning in 2004 for two months and wrote Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran For Peace Reports from Iraq. Through 2010 he was busy speaking against the war and getting arrested for civil resistance.

Previously he was a member and president of VFP's board, with one other stint as Interim Director.