NEWS

Development Report: A Bold Plan, New Members

Post date: Wed, 04/04/2018 - 13:19

By Marybeth Gardam
Chair, Development Committee

Your Development Committee has been busy this first quarter-year working on a coordinated strategic approach and adding members. We have lots to report!

Welcome to Two New Committee Members

An introduction to our new committee members:

Marguerite Adelman (Burlington, VT) comes with tons of experience leading a branch and she is a recently retired fundraising professional.

Kim Irish (San Francisco, CA) has strategic planning expertise helping lead a legal aid nonprofit in California. A new member of WILPF US, Kim has some great international experience and plans to contact the San Francisco and East Bay branches to get more involved.

Kim and Marguerite will be joining other Development Committee members: Robin Lloyd, Nancy Price, Jan Corderman, Shilpa Pandey, Mary Hanson Harrison, and Chair Marybeth Gardam.

“This is shaping up to be a fun and effective committee,” says Gardam. “We could still use a few enthusiastic folks who know about fundraising or want to learn more about it. It’s a GREAT time to join us!”

To be part of the Development Committee, send an email to Marybeth Gardam at GrowingWILPFChair@gmail.com.

Third Year Grant

We are happy to announce that we once again were gifted a $25,000 grant from the Craigslist Charitable Fund, through our fiscal sponsor, Peace Development Fund.

Spring Appeal

The Spring Appeal for WILPF-US is in the works and we hope it will be mailed before the end of April.

The theme this year is “Seeds of Change”. Please consider contributing as much as you can when you receive your appeal. WILPF US is facing lots of costs this year as we prepare to send five delegates to the International Congress in Ghana in July. We are also budgeting dollars so that peace women from the global south can participate through scholarships.

A Bold Plan for 2018

The WILPF US Board approved the Development Committee’s new Integrated Capacity Building Plan: Strategic Sustainability. This will be a pilot project in 2018 focused on working closely with a selection of participating branches to build stronger strategic planning skills, new recruiting outreach, community and media outreach, and new leadership skills.

This bold plan is a collaboration between the Development Committee, Program Committee, Membership Development, and Leadership Institute, and it will demand full focus and cohesive strategic participation from each of those parts of WILPF. The goals for this project could potentially add between $15,000 to $45,000 to WILPF in new donations within the first year, with additional income and cities targeted in subsequent years.

Six to nine (6-9) branches in the Midwest, California, and the Middle Atlantic states are being offered this opportunity based on their stated needs and the strategic opportunities they offer. Participating branches this first year will be announced once they have formally agreed to participate. If the plan is successful we plan to continue to roll it out with more branches added each year.

Assisting with this new Development Plan will be professional Fundraising Consultant Mary Dooley and Communication Coordinator Michael Ippolito.

Mary will work in a temporary part-time position as a Fundraising Consultant to assist with creating a Case Statement for WILPF US, planning and research for approaching foundations for national and community grants, approaching major donors in the 6-9 cities where our participating branches are located, and planning for stepped-up donations among our current donors.

Temporary part-time Communications Coordinator Michael Ippolito will work with Issue Committees and branches to create a coordinated strategic communications for social media, updating our website presence and expanding outreach nationally for increased visibility and collaborataions.

In the Mid-Atlantic cities Marguerite Adelman will bring her practical experience leading a successful branch to work with those initial program branches on building leadership, strategic program planning, capacity-building, recruiting planning and connecting the branches to WILPF US resources.

In the Midwest cities Mary Hanson Harrison, Jan Corderman, and Shilpa Pandey will provide the same kinds of support working with fundraising and strategic planning consultant Mary Dooley.

In the California cities Mary Hanson Harrison, Shilpa Pandey, and Kim Irish will be reaching out to offer the same support to participating branches.

Membership Development and the Leadership Institute will be working on some training webinars that can be made available to all WILPF US members.

Joint Our Effort in 2018!

“This is the kind of coordinated strategic approach that branches have been asking for and that will support leadership, recruiting and program planning while WILPF US focuses on fundraising with major donor targets in the neighborhoods where we have the greatest presence,” explains Marybeth Gardam, Development Chair. “We are excited about the opportunities and we would really love to have more members working with us this year, even if they don’t want to commit longer term.”

For more information, contact Marybeth Gardam at GrowingWILPFChair@gmail.com.

Post date: Wed, 04/04/2018 - 13:02

Image: worldbeyondwar.org

By Nancy Price

Under this administration, the Environmental Protection Agency continues to abandon its mission to protect our health and Mother Earth. This Earth Day it is time to say: “Not on our watch”!

Speaking on April 4,1967, at Riverside Church, Martin Luther King warned in his famous “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” speech: “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

Three years later, after accumulating environmental disasters, Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed April 22, 1970, as Earth Day. Almost immediately, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its business allies worried that increasing environmental and public health regulations might curtail their successes here and abroad. For almost 45 years, the corporate, financial, and political elite have systematically been implementing the blueprint for advancing and protecting the free enterprise system spelled out in Lewis Powell’s famous 1971 memo.

Now, with the Poor People's Campaign, we can pick up where we left off when Martin Luther King was assassinated, to build a movement challenging the evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation, and the nation’s distorted morality. It’s time to change the system!

Materials

Poor People’s Campaign themes and important dates.

Handout for your Earth Day celebration.

ONE WILPF Goes Public

Post date: Wed, 04/04/2018 - 12:34

Read the Alliance for Democracy’s magazine Justice Rising: Grassroots Solutions to Corporate Power. The theme of the Fall 2016 issue was “The People’s Vote Must Count: Reclaim Elections, Restore Voting Rights, Protect Our Ballot.” Print out individual articles or full issues here. To order back print issues contact AFD or call the organization’s Hudson, MA, office: 978-333-7971.

By the ONE WILPF Call Team

On Thursday, March 8^th—International Women’s Day—WILPF US sponsored its first ever PUBLIC ONE WILPF Call. It focused on promoting WILPF as an organization that empowers women organizers. The second part of the call was devoted to two speakers who provided valuable information on election integrity.

The call attracted 17 new registrants, and 8 of them joined the call. The future for Public Calls to help boost recruiting looks promising. Feedback was that the call was too long. We’ll work on fixing that in subsequent public calls. Important to note that the majority of callers stayed on throughout the whole call even given the length.

The call was divided into two sections:

Standing on Their Shoulders

This powerpoint celebrates many of WILPF’s most amazing women organizers and you may learn facts you didn’t know about some familiar faces and voices. The powerpoint and script are available here.

The presentation is great for branches to use with their own members or with wider audiences to inform the public about WILPF, raise our visibility, and recruit new members.

Grab Them by the Midterms

(Advance Audio Cursor to 49:30). This section of the call focused on voter rights, countering voter suppression, and protecting election integrity. The speakers responded to the following topics:

What can we do now to protect the right to vote and ensure our elections are fair and honest during the Primary and November Mid-Term Elections?
What part does the upcoming US Census play in election redistricting?
How can we ensure an accurate US Census?

BREAKING NEWS: Citizenship question added to Census against strong objections of progressives. Read an article from The Nation article here about why this decision is dangerous.

The speakers provided suggestions about how to:

Guarantee accurate vote counts
End voter suppression
Have an accurate censes
End partisan redistricting (aka: gerrymandering)

The featured speakers were:

Karen McKim, former County Clerk candidate for Dane County, Wisconsin
Jan BenDor, Coordinator, Michigan Election Reform Alliance and National Election Defense Coalition Board Member
Nancy Price, Co-Chair, Alliance for Democracy

If you missed the call or wish to listen again, use this link for the audio recording.

Find the full notes (with wonderful links to resources and more information) and audio link at this link.

The next ONE WILPF Call is on Thursday, April 12^th at 4 pm pacific / 7 pm eastern

This call will be open to WILPF US members only. Our topic will be Earth Day, and our featured speaker will be environmental scientist Nancy Wood on the importance of preserving biodiversity. We’ll also ask branches to report on their Solidarity Plans for Earth Day.

Post date: Wed, 04/04/2018 - 12:17

By Paula Rochelle
Steering Committee member, San Jose Branch, and Raging Granny Co-lead

The San Jose Raging Grannies and WILPF members supported the March for Our Lives with our presence and our songs on Saturday, March 24.

Raging Grannies WILPF members and branches participated throughout the country. View a slideshow of images from St. Louis, Tucson, Pittsburgh, Des Moines, and Menlo Park, CA.

For over an hour, three Raging Grannies serenaded the marchers as they approached the rally area with a tune from the Civil Rights era, “Ain't Nobody Gonna Turn Us Around,” with words adapted for today. WILPFers stood nearby with the San Jose Banner, making our presence known to the thousands who attended the march, even in the rain.

We handed out our business cards with pins attached. My follow-up action was to ask the local grocery store to remove plastic assault rifles from their toy rack.

On the following Monday afternoon, March 26, I visited my local grocery store and asked the assistant manager why they stock plastic machine guns on the toy rack. She offered to scan the toy and approach the corporate office with a request to remove the toy from the store “considering all that is going on now.” I consider the visit a success and I will be watching the rack to see if the toy machine guns disappear.

Others in the branch will take follow-up actions focused on elected officials.

We look forward to sustaining the momentum for gun control and combating those, like the NRA, who influence our representatives.

Rachel Corrie, We Will Not Forget You!

Post date: Wed, 04/04/2018 - 12:04

Dove, artist unknown, left at Rachel’s memorial. Courtesy Rachel Corrie Foundation.

By Odile Hugonot Haber
Co-chair, Middle East Committee

On March 16-17, the Rachel Corrie Foundation organized a gathering to remember Rachel Corrie and to celebrate 15 years of Palestinian solidarity and community organizing. It was the 15^th anniversary of Rachel’s death.

Rachel Corrie, an American activist, was 23 in March 2003 when she was killed while undertaking nonviolent direct action to protect a Palestinian house from being destroyed by an Israeli-driven military bulldozer. She was crushed to death by the Caterpillar bulldozer.

Rachel had responded to a call by the group International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in 2001. ISM was founded in part by Huwaida Arraf, an American Palestinian born in Detroit. Huwaida Arraf is a lawyer who is married to Adam Shapiro, a Jewish Activist. Huwaida was invited to speak for this anniversary.

Since Rachel's death, multiple activism and organizing efforts have been carried out in her name around the world. The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice was created by her parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, in Olympia, Washington.

After her death, Rachel’s parents sued the State of Israel, first in a civil suit, and then in an appeal to the Supreme Court, but in both cases they were denied justice. In response they have been quoted as saying, “We had hoped for a different outcome through we have come to see through this experience how deeply all of Israel institutions are implicated in the impunity enjoyed by the Israeli Military.”

In 2017 alone, Israel forcibly displaced more than 650 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, demolishing their homes and a total of 400 structures. From 1967 to 2015, it had been estimated by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) that the Israeli forces have razed 48,488 Palestinian homes.

The Rachel Corrie Foundation put out this alarm on Gaza in particular:

“For over a decade, the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza have lived under a brutal Israeli-imposed blockade. The impact has been devastating, so much so that the United Nations has said that Gaza could become uninhabitable by 2020. Impoverishment, high unemployment, housing shortages, overcrowded schools, inadequate health services, and lack of sufficient access to electricity are among the daily challenges facing Palestinians in Gaza.”

From "To Gaza with Love," AFSC.

Foundation representatives also disseminated other information on Palestinian Children Under Attack #FreeAhed Tamimi and all Child Detainees. We recently learned that Ahed Tamimi was condemned to eight months in prison. There are over 300 Palestinian children currently imprisoned by the Israeli occupation.

A flyer passed at the Rachel Corrie Foundation event explained: “Ahed Tamimi is not alone; indeed she is one of over 300 Palestinian children prisoners currently by the Israeli occupation. Every year, over 700 Palestinian children face military trials and occupation. Palestinian children are subject to torture and abuse under interrogation, arbitrary military trials, denials, denial of their right to education, physical and psychological violence, and imprisonment without charge or trial on a regular basis.”

Child’s art left at Rachel’s memorial. Courtesy Rachel Corrie Foundation.

Call your representatives to support H.R.4391 the promoting of Human Rights by ending military detention of Palestinian Children Act. Ask them to release Palestinian children.

Call the House switchboard (202) 224-3121 and ask to speak to your representative's office.

To learn more and take action, go to samidoun.net (Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network).

We also want to remind everyone that there is another flotilla to Gaza that is being prepared needing support. E-mail: 2018sailtoGaza@gmail.com Facebook, click here.

Sources: Rachel Corrie Foundation, Electronic Intifada.
Photo of Rachel Corrie: Courtesy Rachel Corrie Foundation

New Trafficking Risks for Addicts

Post date: Wed, 04/04/2018 - 11:53

“Zoe” is one of the interviewees in an NBC documentary film by Emily Kassie on sex-trafficking and insurance fraud in Florida's fraudulent treatment centers.

By Jan Kubiac
Cape Cod Branch
Advancing Human Rights, Subcommittee on HumanTrafficking

Human trafficking is a form of Modern Day Slavery. Traffickers use force, fraud, or coercion to control victims for purposes of engaging in commercial sex acts or labor services against their will. People who are especially vulnerable to being trafficked are those who are homeless, disenfranchised, or drug dependent. It is these drug dependent people who are experiencing a new risk when they seek treatment for their addictions.

Traffickers have established fraudulent halfway houses to defraud the government through inflated costs of meds, assessment tools, and treatments. Addicts do not realize these are fake treatment centers. Seeking help, they instead find themselves in extreme danger.

Hunting for Addicts (12.46 min.) is an NBC film by Emily Kassie depicting this tragic situation that is spreading across the nation. This is a disturbing film but it provides valuable insight into the vulnerabilities of young people who are addicted to drugs. Traffickers have a long tradition of using drugs to maintain control over their victims. Now these young people seeking help are coming right to their door, already addicted!

There are many other people who are vulnerable to these crimes. Please see this updated flyer from WILPF. Your awareness of the red flags of trafficking can empower you to report suspicious activity and might contribute to the rescue of a victim. Also read these Tips for Staying Safe Online

For more information, contact jankubiac@yahoo.com with questions or ideas.

Post date: Wed, 04/04/2018 - 11:46

By Jan Corderman
Des Moines Branch

On World Water Day (March 22), the Des Moines Branch of WILPF rallied at the River Walk to stand up for clean water. This year’s theme for the United Nations Day of Action, "Nature for Water—exploring nature-based solutions to the water challenges we face in the 21st century,” fit in well with our message to Big Ag: No More Pollution!

Mary Hanson Harrison itemized the costs of the overuse of insecticides and fertilizers to our health, our soil, and our way of life. She asked us to take action against the proposed merger of Bayer and Monsanto, making them the world's largest integrated pesticides and seeds company.

Other speakers brought focus to the call for a moratorium on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). WILPF Des Moines is one of 50+ Organizations that have called on Iowa’s General Assembly to support a sweeping proposal for a moratorium on Iowa factory farms. The first-of-its-kind legislation moves beyond failed regulation attempts and focuses on implementing a statewide halt to new construction or expansion of factory farms in Iowa.

A harsh, unhealthy, and environmentally risky form of food production, factory farming employs an unsustainable method of raising food animals that packs together large numbers of animals into confined spaces. Currently, Iowa is home to over 10,000 factory farms, which produce more than 22 billion gallons of manure per year. The pollution generated by the industrial animal operations has resulted in widespread water contamination and diminished quality of life throughout the state.

An Iowa Farmer spoke to the direct effect of CAFOS on her family and joined our call for the health of our communities and the environment to come before the interests of Big Ag.

It's time to end Big Ag’s polluting ways!

Post date: Wed, 04/04/2018 - 11:43

By Co-Chairs Robin Lloyd, Barbara Nielsen, and Ellen Thomas, and EWNE Campaign Organizing and Capacity Building Adviser Michael Ippolito

Disarm-End Wars has been talking since last November with the founders of a new effort based in Northampton, Massachusetts that is supporting the TPNW: NuclearBan.us. Timmon Wallis and Vicki Elson are asking individuals, organizations, and local governments to become “Treaty Compliant” by pledging to boycott and not to invest in any of the 26 companies making money on nuclear weapons, and informing these companies of their actions. They are also offering workshops to groups around the country, and will be speaking soon to our Burlington (Vermont) and Boston branches and are planning on touring in California later in April. We are considering formal collaboration with nuclearban.us, who have just also joined the ICAN collaborative. Their focus will be a good fit with our work on the national petitions we have to the POTUS and US Senate, and in support of the Norton bill in the US House, and the work our branches and members are already doing on Mayors for Peace efforts around the country. More information here.

Disarm-End Wars & WILPF-US Section’s “END THE WHOLE NUCLEAR ERA” Campaign Connects with the National Poor People's Campaign—and also our “Move the Money” Campaign from our Women, Peace and Security Agenda. We are pleased to report that we will be planning actions around the third week of the PPC, Memorial Day, as that campaign focuses on veterans and militarism. Please check with Mary Bricker-Jenkins at WILPF4PPC@gmail.com for updates on the PPC, to sign up for the “LOOP” email updates, and for general PPC questions. Contact any of our committee co-chairs, below, for our committee actions around Memorial Day’s PPC connections.

Reminder: Spring Days of Action to End Wars at Home & Abroad. We are actively planning for, participating in, and supporting the “End the Wars at Home and Abroad Spring Days of Action” happening over the weekend of April 14-15, 2018. We know of major actions planned in Chicago, Minneapolis, the San Francisco Bay Area, and elsewhere. These April actions have come out of the no-US-military-bases-on-foreign-soil coalition and conference in Baltimore last January. See noforeignbases.org for more information on the coalition.

Use this website to endorse, send info on your action and see what’s happening near you. Let us know what you are doing locally! Send photos and info, and ask questions, to Ellen Thomas, email below.

Tax Day 2018—Tuesday, April 17: Let us know what you are doing by sending photos and info to Ellen Thomas, email below.

In conjunction with the high level United Nations Conference on Nuclear Disarmament to be held May 14-16, 2018, in New York City, the three Disarm-End Wars co-chairs received an invitation on behalf of all US WILPFers to be honorary money counters for Count the Nuclear Weapons Money, a major civil society action also taking place in New York City. (Info on the UN conference from Reaching Critical Will here). Please contact co-chair Robin Lloyd (info below) if you could attend this civil society action and count money with her. For planning purposes we need to know ASAP who might be able to attend.

Are you planning ACTIONS in April and May? What are you doing, branches, groups, and at-large members? Join our Disarm-End Wars Committee email listserv and conference calls to share information; and send photos and information for public posting on our WILPF US Facebook page. Please send info to Ellen Thomas, email below, or to request being added to our committee listserv.

Join our weekly Twitter calls on Wednesdays and invite everyone you know to do the same! We are promoting our national petition to the POTUS and US Senate to ratify the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty (Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons – “TPNW”). Find our petition here. Calls are open to everyone, including non-WILPF members. Time is 4 pm / 5 pm / 6 pm / 7 pm for 2 hours or as long as you can join us on the call. Register here. Questions? Ask Barbara Nielsen, email below.

Join Us for Social Media Training on a Monday night, 5 pm / 6 pm / 7 pm / 8 pm. Hesitant to join in the Wednesday Twitter calls—think you need to learn more, first? Great—we’ll train you on a Monday night! Register here and then join in the fun. We’ll help you set up an account for Twitter or Facebook, and then show you what to do on our Wednesday Twitter calls. Questions? Ask Barbara Nielsen, email below.

For more information, contact the co-chairs:
Robin Lloyd (robinlloyd8@gmail.com); Ellen Thomas (et@prop1.org); Barbara Nielsen (bln.sf.ca@gmail.com)

Pittsburgh Reaches CEDAW Milestone

Post date: Wed, 04/04/2018 - 11:32

The new executive director of the Pittsburgh Gender Equity Commission, anu jain, speaking at the March 8 press conference in the City County building, with some commission members behind her.

By Edith Bell
Coordinator, Pittsburgh Branch

Pittsburgh as a CEDAW city has reached another milestone!

The Gender Equity Commission has been formed, the Executive Director anu jain has been hired, and we are ready to go to work.

The Mayor, anu jain, and our WILPF CEDAW coordinator Marcia Bandes announced this launch at a press conference on March 8, International Women’s Day.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979, is often described as an international bill of rights for women.

A detailed article on our work to get to this point will appear in the Spring/Summer issue of Peace and Freedom.

Post date: Wed, 04/04/2018 - 11:25

Photo: Damian Dovarganes/AP

By Barbara L Nielsen
Co-chair, Advancing Human Rights Issues Committee

We are looking forward to our second AHR meeting on Thursday, April 5, and to being able to address issues under the AHR umbrella, and not only those important issues we have worked on in the past, such as CEDAW and UNSCR 1325 and its progeny on Women, Peace, and Security. Lots of people are focusing on women in ways that haven’t been in the mainstream press much until recently. Indeed, even the New York Times has put up a feature on some of the notable women it has overlooked in its obituaries since 1851, and has also published many articles on the #MeToo movement. And big and little marches and rallies took place all around the country and world in January.

And of course we have had all the assaults with weapons, including on children in schools, but now with the possibility that the NRA maybe, finally, a little, might have its clutches on legislators begin to be loosened. And a bunch of big and little marches and rallies took place all around the country, just within the week of this article’s preparation. These actions have been motivated by a potentially new group of activist voters—those high school kids whose peers have been terrified, shot, maimed, killed, in these school shootings and who, in many cases, are going to be of voting age within the next 12 months or sooner.

We are hearing that Ohio is gearing up to ban all abortions—no exceptions—yet another and more draconian assault on a woman’s right to control her own body, and other evidence of reproductive choice and reproductive rights being diminished abound. On the Ohio legislation, one Op-Ed (again, from the New York Times), suggests that this is being undertaken merely to push the legal wrangling into an opening salvo with the ultimate goal of getting a chance at overturning Roe v. Wade once and for all.

So we are having more, large and public outcries these days, but is anything proving to be effective against these numerous and disparate assaults on human rights? How effective can we be in moving our communities and governments away from the status quo?

Ana Rosa Diaz and Silvia Alfaro Walle at a Wal-Mart protest. Photo courtesy of the NGA.

Then there is human trafficking—thought by many in America to be mostly sexual slavery, which is by far the most profitable form of trafficking, but actually, the more widespread occurrence is labor trafficking, whether in the fields or other agricultural endeavors (including the meat-packing industry), or in domestic or other service circumstances. Immigration and border crossing rhetoric and policy are interrelated with this issue.

We have members who are concerned about and working around these and related issues and we would like to hear and learn from each other. We welcome everyone in the Section for whom these are issues of interest and concern. What are your ideas on how we can best address the myriad human rights issues that concern us? Can we work together to be effective, and if so, how? What forms of activism are we engaged in now, and what would make sense for us in the future? Do we have members who want to work within the UN framework to move the US forward on some of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda issues? CEDAW? More Cities for CEDAW? Work in direct action? Other ways? Please join our call to share what is important to you and your ideas for moving us forward!

We will have our next AHR 2018 meeting on Thursday, April 5.

These are Maestro conferencing calls that require registration. If you are not registered already for this Advancing Human Rights Issues Committee call series, please do so using this hyperlink:

Note: Our Racial Justice Working Group of the AHR Issues Committee has begun meeting on the fourth Thursdays of the month, at the same times (5/6/7/8 pm). In these Maestro conferencing calls, discussion, learning and activism on and about issues around race, racial justice, racism, and related matters are most directly being focused and addressed.

Click here for the hyperlink for registration for the Racial Justice Working Group:

For more information, contact:
Barbara L Nielsen, Advancing Human Rights Issues Committee Co-Chair, bln.sf.ca@gmail.com

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