SOA Watch Activists Meet with Bolivian President Evo Morales

Eleven days ago, School of the Americas Watch members set off on a three-week journey to Bolivia, Argentina and Uruguay to build relationships with social movements and to convince popular governments in South America to stop sending their soldiers to train at the School of the Americas, a school synonymous with torture and responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

We are happy to share the good news with you that Monday morning, three SOA Watch activists met with the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales!

President Morales listened intensely as Carlos, Lisa and Fr. Roy explained the history of the School of the Americas (SOA) and its role in Bolivia. The three also spoke of Fr. Roy’s personal history here in Bolivia during SOA grad Hugo Banzer’s dictatorship when Roy was tortured, imprisoned and expelled from the country. Lisa, Carlos and Roy formally requested that Bolivia remove its troops from the SOA. President Morales’s interest gave the three great hope as they left the meeting to journey to Uruguay.

Read more about this victory at: http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=1287

Background Info about the SOA/WHINSEC: http://www.soaw.org/new/type.php?type=8

On April 23-25, ICPJ members will be in Washington to lobby our elected representatives to close this institution that has trained so many human rights abusers in Latin America.  You can help our efforts by calling your senators and representative and tell them how critical it is that Congress take a real stand for human rights by supporting HR 1217, the bill to close and investigate the SOA/ WHINSEC.

For a sample call script, visit: http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=1285

To join ICPJ’s trip to Washington, call Chuck at 734-663-1870 or email chuck@icpj.net

I’d like to hear your thoughts about an interesting conversation last Sunday at the rally against the war in Iraq.

(Congrats to Michigan Peace Works for organizing a great event).

I was at the ICPJ table, selling buttons and handing out brochures. I invited one person there to sign up for our newsletter, and she said she used to subscribe to this email update, but she found it “too religious for me.”

Her answer surprised me. I often long for more religious perspectives on peace and justice. Conservative Christian voices have dominated the political discussion for too long, and part of ICPJ’s work is to expand the debate with progressive faith expressions from a wide variety of religious traditions.

And yes, we do value secular perspectives as part of our community.

Those are my thoughts. What do you think? Would you like to see less religion? More faith perspectives? Do you have suggestions for other faith voices to include? Or are we just right?

Please leave your comments on this post, or email your thoughts to me at chuck@icpj.net.

In peace,

-Chuck

Legislation Does Not Ensure Economic Justice

In the past week, both houses of the Michigan Legislature voted to increase the minimum wage by $1.80 per hour this October.  Two more raises are included in this bill, with the wage ultimately reaching $7.40 per hour in July of 2008.  Gov. Granholm is expected to sign this bill into law.

While the legislation is a step in the right direction, it in no way comes close to ensuring economic justice for Michigan workers the way that the current petition drive to raise the wage does.

The petition drive goes further to ensure economic justice than the legislation because:

1. The petition drive includes indexing for inflation, so the minimum wage will increase due to inflation (just like social security does). The legislation does not include indexing for inflation.

2. The petition drive covers more workers because current state law excludes a lot of workers. In particular, Senate Bill 318 excludes tipped employees.

3. The ballot proposal is more permanent because it goes into the state constitution. The legislature could vote to eliminate the statutory increase, but they couldn’t if it’s in the state constitution.

4. The ballot proposal automatically includes any increases the legislature passes.

So, to ensure lasting economic justice for more of Michigan’s workers –

Please keep collecting signatures!

Our dedicated office volunteer Jean H. has just spent an afternoon compiling all the data for the signature ad.

So far, we’ve got 118 signers and $1,045 of the almost $4,000 we need to put the ad in, so we have lots of work ahead of us for the March 13 ad deadline.

If you haven’t signed the ad already, what are you waiting for?  You can read the ad online.

If you have signed but haven’t paid, please make sure that “the check is in the mail” or that you donate online now.

If  you’ve signed and paid, thank you!  You can still help make this ad a success by telling a friend.  Just send them the link to the website and tell them what a great ad it is and how they can speak out for peace.

To give you a taste of what our keynote speaker, Jack Nelson Pallmeyer, has to offer in terms of analysis of peacemaking and faith, here’s a  re-print of an article Jack wrote for The Other Side.  Here he weaves together the threads of military and economic domination and sets against them the concepts of authentic religious peacemaking.

It’s a good read, and it makes me eager to hear what he has to say on Sunday, March 12 at the ICPJ annual meeting/40th Anniversary Celebration.

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