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Photo credit: Quinn Dombrowski from Flickr Creative Commons

By Marybeth Gardam and James Allison, Corporations v Democracy Issue Committee

Should the Corporations v Democracy Issue Committee work on this idea for extending Medicare type benefits to newborns? Would you be willing to work on this with us? What it would mean? Why does this issue matter to a peace organization?

Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect and a professor at Brandeis, suggests that we "give every child a Medicare card at birth, good until age 30." He says this in a piece entitled "In Praise of 'Unrealistic' Ideas," in The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2016, Vol. 21, No. 4.

Jim Allison of the CvD Issue Committee has been proposing a similar idea called “BABYCARE”. Jim sent Kuttner his WILPF white paper on Babycare and a note suggesting that WILPF might be interested in this kind of thing. Meanwhile the CvD Committee has been considering making the promotion of Babycare a long range goal. In a follow up email to Kuttner (bkuttner@brandeis.edu), CvD Chair Marybeth Gardam put it this way:

Dear Professor.Kuttner,

I read your statement in the Progressive Populist, March 1, 2016, Vol. 21, No.4. in which you stated that we should "give every child a Medicare card at birth, good until age 30."

I know that a colleague of mine, Professor Emeritus Jim Allison of Indiana University, has forwarded to you his brief whitepaper on BABYCARE, a similar proposal. Many WILPF members are interested in promoting this idea of single payer healthcare for newborns, extending throughout their lives.

What does a peace and justice organization have to do with universal healthcare? WILPF, the oldest international peace organization in the world has been connecting human rights and economic justice to the roots of war since 1915.

A few years ago I attended a rare appearance of the Dalai Lama in Iowa. In a packed arena, hushed to hear the Dalai Lama's quiet voice, a woman asked what appeared to be a very naive question. "What single thing can we do as a society to bring peace to the world?"

The Dalai Lama took this simplistic question very seriously and gave an answer that was breathtakingly simple and yet which offered potential for truly changing the dynamic of peace in the world.

He said that the one single most important change we could make across the planet was to make the world more secure and less threatening for mommies and babies. He pointed out that when young mothers and their babies feel unsupported, threatened, fearful and insecure in their world, they adopt a world view that promotes fearfulness and the perception of infinite lack – positioning them immediately, and for most of their lives going forward, to grasp any means available, expediency over all else, for survival and creating a reality where they must fight and scrap for every bit of food, clothing, housing, and healthcare. The end result of so many young lives feeling abandoned and desperate produces a justification for many kinds of violence in our world, including both the military being made a handmaiden for corporate profits, and the idea that there is a lack of abundance in the world that justifies putting profits (and self) above the common good.

WILPF has been educating the public about the links between social deprivation and the increase in violence we see in our world for decades. We would be very interested in helping to promote a program which does exactly what you and Jim both suggest. Babycare, or whatever you choose to call it, is an almost inarguable idea, in which young parents and grandparents could envision a better world for their progeny, across all economic classes. And it offers the government a way to ease into universal healthcare, gradually preparing for the administrative changes necessary to move past Obamacare. Moreover, it lifts up the important idea that the common good is worthy of our common investment.

Please let me know if you would be interested in collaborating in any way to move this concept closer to reality. We would be interested in exploring ways in which to make this concept better known and accepted... to make it 'go viral'.

Based in Boston, WILPF has branches in about 40 cities around the country. Most of us are grandmothers. All of us believe that healthcare is a human right, and we accept that corporate rule has inflicted us with the price-gouging of for-profit healthcare providers and insurers, and a disturbing policy of profits over people, which has caused a precipitous descent of quality healthcare in the United States, despite the high price tag we pay for basic health coverage. We understand that the Dalai Lama was correct, that the fragility of mommies and babies unsupported by a 'community', leads to deep divisions among us and the consequent acceptance of 'the other' that leads inevitably to greed and violence.
 

If WILPF members agree with CvD that this is an effort worth promoting, we ask them to join CvD and for a subcommittee to work on this. Contact Marybeth at mbgardam@gmail.com to get started. Also, please consider raising this issue with Presidential candidates as we move forward in the election cycle. All together now!

WILPF US Program Strategic Plan

The working group set up to organize the information from the Program Retreat is seeking constructive feedback from all members on the draft document that can serve as an action plan going forward.

We believe that every voice counts and collaborative ownership of our program focus and activism, even in the first steps of review towards clarification and new action, is crucial. We recognize that the best way that branches often can discuss issues of importance is to circulate the information in advance of a periodic branch meeting and then meet in person to collaborate and pursue answers.

So we are hoping that members in branches will circulate this memo and the draft plan document and then meet in a branch meeting, hopefully, before the beginning of May 4, 2016.

Read the introduction to the strategic plan.

Interim questions can be sent to Odile and/or me, the Program Committee chairs, while we look forward to your important constructive input on how we can collectively move our program priorities and goals forward. Please send us your feedback, using our emails, shown below:

Maureen N. Eke: eke1mn@cmich.edu;

Odile Hugonot Haber: odilehh@gmail.com

Thank you for your cooperation.

Maureen N. Eke,

To make a tax-deductible donation to WILPF by check, please make out your check to the Peace Development Fund, write "WILPF Pop Up Challenge" in the memo section, and mail to:

Peace Development Fund
P.O. Box 40250
San Francisco, CA 94140-0250

Or you can make a secure credit card donation with the link below

Berta Cáceras. Photo credit: Prachatai, Flickr Creative Commons

March 10, 2016

Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, US Section (WILPF US) condemns the murder of Honduran human rights activist Berta Cáceres.
 
Click to Urgent action  
Follow International WILPF statement and comments  

On Thursday, March 3, 2016, Berta Cáceres, indigenous feminist human rights activist was murdered in her home in Honduras. This came after a series of death threats against her and other indigenous rights activists by supporters of the hydroelectricity project being built by DESA-Agua Zarca, a local private company which had been backed by several international financial companies, including China's SinoHydro, the International Finance Corporation, "the World Bank's private sector arm," and other international financial groups.

Berta Cáceres, a member of the Lenca indigenous group, and other activists were fighting to protect their lands and waterways from environmental destruction. Their activism resulted in the withdrawal of support for DESA-Agua Zarca's hydroelectricity project from SinoHydro and the World Bank, thus delaying the project. Cáceres was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015 for her activism. According to The Guardian "She has also won plaudits from international NGOs for standing up to powerful landowners, a US-funded police force, and a mercenary army of private security guards in the most murderous country in the world for environmental campaigners."

In her own words on accepting the Goldman Prize, "Our Mother Earth, militarized, fenced-in, poisoned, a place where basic rights are systematically violated, demands that we take action."

Mexican human rights activist Gustavo Castro Soto was also wounded in that attack that killed Berta Cáceres. He has been detained and prevented from leaving the country by Honduran authorities.

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, US Section joins other peace as well as human rights and women's activist organizations in strongly condemning the murder of one of our own. We deplore the role of the US government in the 2009 coup and militarization of Honduras.

On this International Women's Day, we stand in solidarity as women, peace, and human rights activists in support of the work for which Berta Cáceres lost her life. In the name of our sister, Berta Cáceres, we commit ourselves to the achievement of a world where gender equity is a reality, where there is no violence against women, and ALL people can live in peace, dignity, and respect. On this day, we demand justice for Berta! La lucha sigue!

In sisterhood, peace, and solidarity,

Maureen N. Eke, eke1mn@cmich.edu, Program Chair, WILPF US
Mary Hanson Harrison, president@wilpfus.org, President, WILPF US
 
Urgent Action  

Contact your Senators and Members of Congress, and Secretary of State John Kerry, https://register.state.gov/contactus/contactusform, asking them to insist: on an independent investigation of the murder of Berta Cáceres and that Mexican human rights activist Gustavo Castro Soto be released from Honduran custody and permitted to travel that US military aid to Honduras be withheld until the killing of environmental and human rights leaders is stopped and those responsible for the murder of Berta Cáceres are held to account.
 
Ambassador Jorge Alberto Milla Reyes // Honduras Embassy in the U.S. 202.506.4995, 202.450.3146,
E: consulado.washington@hondurasemb.org
1014 M Street, NW Washington, DC 20001

Ambassador James D. Nealon // US Embassy in Honduras   http://honduras.usembassy.gov/ :
011 (504) 2238-5114, or 2236-9320,
E: NealonJD@state.gov,  irctgu@state.gov,  usahonduras@state.gov
Avenida La Paz, Tegucigalpa M.D.C., Honduras

Ambassador Alden Rivera // Honduras Embassy in Mexico
52 55 5211 5250
Calle Alfonso Reyes #220, 06170 Ciudad de México, D.F., México,

Honorable John F. Kerry, Secretary of State, Washington DC 20520
Email form: https://register.state.gov/contactus/contactusform