Maybe it's "peace activists" that should have been in quotes - dig a little. "The conference was hosted by the Drake Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild" - the NLG is a radical left organization which, while not explicitly communist, serves as an organizing group for many such groups. The group advocates acts of civil disobedience, including vandalism, in oppostion to US actions overseas, has supported the Sandinistas and other communist groups in South and Central America, and is allied with World Workers Party and ANSWER. Bernadine Dohrn, founder of the Weather Underground, was an NLG staffer. Like many "peace" groups, NLG is tightly allied with anti-US, anti-capitalist organizations. They know exactly what they're doing, and they're tightly allied with many groups who advocate the overthrow of the US.