You are here: Home / About Us

About Us

John Newton Hickox
Executive Director

John is ACJT’s founder, primary blogger, and general all-around go-fer. He lives and does a little farming on an idyllic 40 acre spot up on the east shoulder of Mt. Hood in Oregon. With a nod to the restorative gift that music provides he calls this nourishing place, Harmony Park.

Claude Oswald Anderson, John’s grandfather taught him patience. His father, Dean Ralph Hickox taught him to advocate for justice. Patience and Justice are not easy partners. It has taken him 74 years but John is now finally evolving into a change agent. He is actively seeking new aspirants to the title “agent for change.”

John is ordained in the United Church of Christ, the “God Is Still Speaking” church. He is also a Board Certified Chaplain, occasionally deploying to National Disasters. Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy are examples. (National Disaster is an unfortunate term but it’s a whole lot better than ‘Act of God.’)  John loves preaching, officiating at weddings, and singing the National Anthem at football games and rodeos. He still takes the occasional group to Palestine so folks can see for themselves what’s really going on over there.

In addition to passionately advocating for Palestinian human rights,  he has come to believe there is a pervasive threat to our future due to what Chris Hedges calls the Corporate  State.  John likes to make the case that our most threatening issues these days—which include “Too Big to Jail” Bankers, our country’s non-response to Climate Change, along with Israel’s  entirely negative influence on Middle East geo-politics are due, not only to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, but also to the fact that all three branches of our government are bought and paid for by the 1%.

Tom-McAfeeTom McAfee
Director and Vice President

Tom is currently a “self-unemployed” videographer living in Marin County just north of San Francisco.  Recently re-united and married to a sweetheart from his twenties, he now is able to divide his time between shooting and editing for causes he deems worthwhile (which can mean morally/politically or financially, but rarely both), hiking the hills with his beloved, visiting his children, or volunteering at the local community access TV station.
 
Operating a small but successful commercial photography studio in San Francisco since the early 80’s and generally living in the “family raising” bubble, Tom’s life was turned upside-down when he, his first wife Mary, and John met up by chance on SF’s Market Street while marching with several hundred thousand others in protest against the impending invasion of Iraq in March, 2003, after not having seen each other since Christmas, 1998 when John was a seminary intern at Calvary Presbyterian Church in SF.  John had just returned from Israel/Palestine with some 30 hours of videotaped interviews that he was sure would fix everything, and he just needed to find the right video editor.  Tom, on the other hand, didn’t know the West Bank from the Left Bank, and was led by John and others through a slow but steady process of education. Over the next few years, Tom and his wife and children made a total of seven trips to Palestine together and/or individually over the next six years, witnessing, filming, working with groups such as Sabeel, ICAHD, the PC(USA) and Code Pink.
 
Most recently Tom has filmed interviews with Richard Falk, streamed the Jewish Voice for Peace National Conference in Baltimore this past March, while producing videos for 350.org, Keep Hope Alive -USA, etc.  Tom shares John’s concern about the state of corruption within the US government epitomized and solidified by the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizen’s United decision. He finds hope in the possibility of a Sanders-Warren ticket in 2016, and the eventual, inevitable success of MoveToAmend.org.