Round One Saturday, 9:45 – 10:45
Judith McDaniel, Peace Director, AFSC
(Summary Notes by Elizabeth DuVerlie & Judith McDaniel)
Judith manages the "Peace education job" of AFSC. She asked participants, in pairs, for one person to give a definition of the Peace Testimony and then ask the other to react to that definition. For instance, one definition was thinking and living in a peaceful way. Reaction: This may not get at the feeling component, of feeling "at peace" as well as having a visceral response to observing an act of violence.
A bit of history: in WWII 90% of Quakers eligible to serve in the military, did so. In 1927, the AFSC, then 10 yrs old, could not agree on the wording of the Peace Testimony. Steve Cary, Clerk of the Board, and others wrote the pamphlet, "Speak Truth to Power." In the post-Korean war, Cold War climate of 1955, these writers posited a shift in the peace testimony from saying that peace is the absence of war to saying that peace is the absence of all forms of violence.
Some outcomes of the above version of the Peace Testimony were unforeseen: when it addressed domestic violence, it "created feminists" more than (simply) peace activist women against violence. By including structural forms of violence, such as hunger or slave-like working conditions in other cultures, the Peace Testimony has expanded the terms of that dialogue and made it important to step up and speak to forms of structural violence, like that created by governments and corporations, where violence can originate and radiate outward.
An AFSC African staff has said, "If you want peace in Africa, you must first change attitudes in the U.S." So the goal is to support people in the regions who are already speaking out on the ground in those situations, e.g., Palestine, Colombia, Burundi, etc. about this "structural violence" as well as physical and cultural violence.
If peace is not the absence of war, what IS it? The presence of justice? We discussed how to find a way to "insert oneself," to know to whom to make a statement, when and how, or to take an action that is meaningful when things are so complicated it is difficult to know where to begin.
For example, how does an individual register a protest against something like IMF’s structural adjustment that are draining the resources from countries like Uganda. Professional peace activists’ job is to find entry points for the rest of us; hopefully the role of the professional peace activist as "the only actor" is coming to an end! Canada., British YM, AFSC, within the past year, are engaging Quakers in a discussion of the Peace Testimony as a result of our dissatisfaction with our response to a situation like the bombing of Kosovo. The Testimonies are guideposts for HOW WE LIVE IN THE WORLD. They require our engagement.
As a way of responding to crises as they occur, AFSC’s PeaceBuilding Unit has created the structure of "Peace Mobilization Teams" in regions throughout the US to work on changing US policies on many levels. The emphasis of these Peace Teams is not to go there (the trouble spot), but to create the infrastructure in the U.S. to mobilize "a massive response" if needed.
Judith passed out 10 copies of folders from an Israel/Palestine campaign and said that this recent project was a "failure" because there was not enough preparation for adequate participation by a large group of people committed to educating the US public about the issues of the conflict. Only four AFSC US Regions even have Middle East staff at this time and so the participation of volunteers is crucial.
In part to identify those volunteers, AFSC is doing a series of consultations on whether the Quaker Peace Testimony has any relevance for the Middle East issues. The goal is to go into Meetings throughout the country to ask and to listen. First consultation is at Earlham, in May. The title of this session will be "Active non-violence and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict: Too late, too soon, the right time?"
Goals of the Consultations:
1. To organize Quakers nationally on PeaceBuilding concerns with regard to the Israel/Palestine crisis;
2. To strengthen ties between AFSC, Peace Building, and Quaker meetings;
3. To develop a functioning network of peace education activists who will work on challenging and changing US foreign policy on the Middle East;
To begin the process of forming a Quaker Working Party with the goal of producing a new and relevant Working Paper on the Israel/Palestine crisis in the post-Oslo era.
It is time to support the voices of Palestinians wanting non-violent resistance, which is not new, but which is now, at least, reaching us through the US media.
The group asked how to find an entry point for this work?
The response: For Colombia, see the attached flyer; for Middle East, contact Judith. The Africa effort is still being organized at AFSC. Another effort under way is the UN Conference on Racism. Another is a study of the culture of violence with reference to the militarization of the entire culture in the US, including JROTC in the schools. See Youth and Militarism flyers.
Several resources were mentioned, books, speakers, etc.