Karen Topakian Collection

Karen Topakian was born on October 4, 1954. Raised in Cranston, RI, Topakian graduated from Cranston High School West in 1972, where she participated in a social studies enrichment program called Project EPIC (Economics and Politics in the Community). Topakian identified this program as her first exposure to the role of corporate pollution in environmental destruction, in particular the pollution of the Pawtuxet River and the Narragansett Bay by the Ciba-Geigy chemical plant operating in Cranston at the time. After receiving a BA in Sociology and theater from Clark University in Worcester, MA in 1976, Topakian returned to Rhode Island and began involving herself in feminist and environmentalist work, as well as in anti-war and anti-nuclear activism.

Topakian participated in notable nationwide marches on Washington, DC as part of protests against the United States’ involvement in regime changes across Latin America, which was intended to obstruct potential allies of the former Soviet Union amid the Cold War. Topakian attended marches in March and May 1983 that protested specific political involvement in El Salvador, and she was also involved in protests against the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union more broadly. On June 12, 1982, she participated in a notable Central Park demonstration that drew in a million protestors from across the country to New York City amid the United Nations Second Special Session on Disarmament. During this series of demonstrations, Topakian was arrested for the first time on June 14 alongside thirty other activists from Rhode Island for protesting the use of nuclear weapons at the Soviet Union’s Embassy in New York City. She participated in this action through the anti-nuclear organizing group Rhode Island Mobilization for Survival, which coordinated with other anti-nuclear groups across the country to simultaneously protest at other New York City embassies as part of a demonstration series called “Blockade the Bombmakers.”

Locally, Topakian organized and participated in frequent nonviolent civil disobedience actions between the years 1982 and 1984 against General Dynamics Electric Boat headquartered in Groton, CT with a facility in Quonset, RI. At the time, Electric Boat was the second-largest employer in Rhode Island next to the state itself due to the company's production and commissioning of nuclear-armed Trident submarines as part of the nuclear arms race. Actions taken to protest Electric Boat’s role in the arms race included die-ins, vigils for casualties caused by their warheads, and restricting flows of traffic around Electric Boat facilities. Some of these actions took after a method of anti-nuclear protesting that came to be known as “Plowshares” actions, linked to a larger Christian pacifist anti-nuclear movement founded by Daniel and Phillip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister that called for nuclear arms funds to be refunneled towards civilian programs. Actions in Rhode Island and Connecticut were frequently performed in solidarity with one another as part of a Coalition to Stop Trident, which consisted of anti-nuclear groups such as Rhode Island Mobilization for Survival as well as informal groups of protestors who were arrested for their actions and came to be known as Trident Nein and Plowshares #4. Anti-Electric Boat actions were also performed simultaneously with others across the country, especially in Washington, DC. Topakian was arrested and acquitted for her participation in several of these actions but was found guilty of disorderly conduct in November 1983 following a die-in action at Electric Boat’s Quonset facility on April, 15, Tax Day, of that year.

Given the choice to either pay a fine or complete 20 hours of community service, Topakian was approved to transfer her probation to the San Francisco Adult Probation Department and left Rhode Island in 1984 to attend graduate school in San Francisco, CA. She completed her community service probation at The Women’s Building by June of the same year and received an MFA in filmmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1987. Topakian went on to work at Greenpeace as a nuclear disarmament campaigner, at the Agape Foundation – Fund for Global Change as an executive director, and founded her own writing and communications consulting business, Topakian Communications.

Topakian served on Greenpeace USA’s boards of directors from 1994 through 2021, including eight years as board chair. She also served for 10 years on the board of directors of the Oakland, CA-based nuclear abolition organization, Western States Legal Foundation and on the board of the directors of the San Francisco-based Women’s AIDS Network for three.

Topakian continues to live in San Francisco with her wife, Peg Stevenson, who has been her partner since 1989, and continues to participate in nonviolent direct action. At the time of the collection’s processing, Topakian and six other Greenpeace activists had recently unfurled a 70-foot wide “RESIST” banner from a construction crane behind the White House upon the inauguration of Donald Trump to presidency in 2017. Once again Topakian completed her community service hours from this protest at The Women’s Building in San Francisco.