 March 2002
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Patrica Watson, Editor Sara Burke, Assistant Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
From the editor's desk Conventional thinking would say that organizing against the current US Administration's massive assaults on democratic practice, poor people's pocketbooks, and the earth itself is at best futile, given George Bush's approval ratings, and probably downright dangerous. Certainly it has proven too daunting for the so-called Democratic leadership in Congress. But then conventional thinking has never been Peacework's strong suit. So here's some bedtime reading for activists. Our colleague Michael McConnell, speaking in January at an AFSC convocation to chart work plans for its "No More Victims" campaign, spun out scenarios, diverting and chilling, and posed a set a questions. Back in Boston, Betsy Wright, another master organizer who works with United for a Fair Economy, wades right in to one of the hardest questions--how to talk to and reclaim all those by now somewhat tattered flags. Washington meanwhile is using the flag to wrap its budget, padding its cronies' bank accounts--with large and dangerous implications for international relations. All those weapons on the Pentagon's list will be looking for targets. Iraq? North Korea? James Carroll deconstructs Bush's ill-considered "axis." AFSC's Campaign of Conscience reminds us of the mischief and misery such thinking causes. The Campaign offers us both a chance to join in a public pledge of support for people in Iraq and a way to send real reconstruction aid, in this case a water system to replace one destroyed by the deliberate and illegal US policy of targeting civilian infrastructure during the Gulf War. (We heard yesterday from Voices in the Wilderness, the Chicago-based group that travels to Iraq carrying medicines and medical relief supplies in defiance of prohibitions by US Customs, that agents are investigating people sending any aid to families in Iraq. Customs has issued ViW a $160,000 pre-penalty notice for the so-called crime of bringing toys and medicine to Iraqi children. So people should be aware that their actions may not be purely symbolic.) Last fall a correspondent sent us an analysis of the decades-long conflict on the lovely and forgotten island of Sri Lanka. (If you're my age, you have to dredge up the fact that it used to be called Ceylon and that it sits in the Indian Ocean hugging the tip of the sub-continent.) Another friend sent a set of lessons from the struggle. Just last Friday there was a formal cease-fire agreement and 'guarded optimism' from government, rebels, and the valiant Norwegian negotiators. We're glad to be able to offer these analyses as a case study for an organizers' manual. Who will write the manual for Palestine and Israel? Just as we think the news can't get any worse, it does--suicidal terror of bombings in public places; suicidal terror of the occupier's closures, demolitions, and targeted assassinations. In this Peacework we get a glimpse into the effects of decades of occupation on two Palestinians, father and son. Global politics and global military budgets and global armies are creating a new kind of city, cut loose from moorings of community and state. Their disasters flicker briefly in the headlines, then are pushed aside for the next catastrophe. Goma, with its volcano, is one such. Afghan regions and refugee communities will probably become examples as well. For now, you can send relief and reconstruction aid to Goma through AFSC, and you can support the September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows in their compassion for fellow grieving survivors in Afghanistan. Throughout these pages you will hear the strong, clear voices of women organizing around the world. It's a good sound.
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