NEWS

We, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom – US Section (WILPF-US), stand with the people of Ferguson, Missouri, as they seek justice for Michael Brown and others killed by police.

The Grand Jury in Ferguson failed to bring justice to Michael Brown, or justice to those before him and those coming after him, who die needlessly at the hands of police. This injustice, only the most recent in an ongoing pattern of events, has outraged many. The original problems remain.

We are living with a racist legacy that dates from and before Emmett Till, another Black boy who never had justice. It is not gone. Racial profiling by police is a reality. People of color, are stopped, arrested, tried, convicted and given long sentences at a higher rate even though they do not have a higher rate of crime.

Our police forces have been militarized in the way they are equipped and trained, with such force being deployed mainly in poorer communities. Ordinary people are treated as the enemy of this new army. This is a symptom of the militarization that permeates our society, based on a mentality of us and them. Certain people are viewed as other, as different, as the enemy. A military is trained to fight and kill an enemy, not to provide justice to a community.

Young people of color -black and brown, and poor people are criminalized and ghettoized, often policed by people from outside of their community, with no ties to them, no knowledge of them as people, as families. Our increasingly economically polarized economy increases the divide, the distrust and the social instability. We will not solve these problems with increasingly heavy policing. We cannot solve our social and economic problems with alienation and force.

The oft repeated narrative by police who kill, that they feared for their lives, is not borne out by reality. Last year, according to the FBI records, 27 police were killed in the line of duty. Deaths of civilians killed by police are estimated to be about one for every day of the year. In some communities, people are in more danger from the police than they are from street gangs.

When civilians kill someone, they are brought to account. Anyone acting in a policing capacity must be held to at least the same standard. They are supposed to be selected and trained to have the capacity to appropriately handle lethal weapons. Instead they are almost invariably absolved when they kill someone. By not holding those individuals accountable, a culture of tolerance among police, and distrust of them, thrives.

With the present confluence of events bringing national awareness to key problems, we need to define the true nature of the issues in order to address them. The prosecutor in the Ferguson grand jury thought he could blame the victim. Clearly that did not work. We cannot, as President Obama suggested, accept this. We cannot behave as though certain lives do not matter enough. We cannot behave as though youth of color are somehow a threat. As long as we believe that our security depends on heavy policing and distrust of others; as long as our trusted officials behave out of fear instead of understanding, we will not achieve the peace and security we say we desire, in the world or in our communities.

Photo: People praying in Ferguson, MO on August 15, 2014, after the release of the name of the officer who shot Michael Brown. Photo by Dreamstime, with permission.

For Disarm/End Wars Issue Committee by Carol Urner

November is our month to concentrate on non-violence and on ending both war and gender violence. First comes November 11, ringing bells and joining Veterans for Peace in reclaiming Armistice Day http://www.vfpchapter27.org/sites/default/files/ABFP.pdf  Then comes November 25 to December 10 and WILPF participation in Sixteen Days of Activism Against Gender Violence http://16dayscwgl.rutgers.edu

Yes, both of these are huge goals and many still dismiss them as utopian, idealistic and impossible. In WILPF we believe we must nonetheless strive for them, and that the only way to achieve them is to continue building the institutions needed to maintain peace, and ourselves growing and developing in the ways of of non-violence. That means we must continue improving in the ways we have already been building since our beginnings as an organization in April, 1915.

The reclaiming of Armistice Day on November 11 is proposed as a new project for WILPF US. If members of Disarm/ End Wars, and eventually WILPF US, embrace it we can utilize it – as our foremothers did – to continue efforts to put an end to war.

They, and the vital postwar US peace movement at the time, succeeded in getting the Kellogg-Briand Pact, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg%E2%80%93Briand_Pact  which outlawed war. Every WILPFer could learn much from reading David Swanson’s book When the World Outlawed War http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-e-levine/when-the-world-outlawed-w_b_1199354.html.   Briand and our WILPF women, including our own Jane Addams and Emily Green Balche, were among those who labored diligently to make the treaty work. Most of our citizens have forgotten or never learned about it. However, the Kellogg Briand Pact, outlawing war, is still international law and can inspire us to keep building on it now, 100 years after our own founding.

In 1954, at the height of the Cold War, the US Congress renamed Armistice Day as Veterans Day http://www.calendar-12.com/holidays/veterans_day/1957.   WILPF, Veterans for Peace and other peace movement organizations deeply care for the healing of veterans, and want to support them in return to civilian life. In WILPF we want them to learn how to promote life rather than to cause destruction and death in other nations. However, we believe that Veterans’ Day has instead become another day to celebrate and promote the militarism that most of our citizens have previously rejected.

Here is a 2012 VFP report on nationwide Armistice Day memorials http://www.veteransforpeace.org/pressroom/news/2012/10/31/veterans-plan-armistice-day-events-over-50-us-cities.  In 2011 Portland, Oregon WILPF Branch had already joined Portland VFP chapter 72 in memorializing that day and ringing their bells in the city center. Portland WILPF plans to make this an annual event, and six organizations hare now joining them. VFP now hopes we can begin enlisting churches to ring their bells for 11 minutes starting at 11 am on that day, as they did before it became Veterans Day. Here was our national call to join the effort http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/5372/t/0/blastContent.jsp?email_blast_KEY=1269005 in 2013.

THE PARTICIPATION IN THE SIXTEEN DAYS OF ACTIVISM AGAINST GENDER VIOLENCE was conceived by civil society women from around the world in 1991 http://16dayscwgl.rutgers.edu/about/activist-origins-of-the-campaign. WILPF US Advancing Human Rights Issue Committee urged us all to join in the effort and WILPFUS Disarm! Dismantle the War Committee began small scale participation in 2011. We suggest that branches order the Take Action Kit online http://16dayscwgl.rutgers.edu/2014-campaign/2014-take-action-kit  and begin planning for some kind of participation. We can all build on what we can do this year to expand our efforts in 2015.

Most of us can also use this time to deepen our understanding of gender issues and of UNSCRes 1325 http://www.peacewomen.org/themes_theme.php?id=15&subtheme=true.

Ray Acheson of Reaching Critical Will has just released a paper on gender issues for Pakistani, Afghani and other males identified as militants http://us3.campaign-archive1.com/?u=c9787c74933a00a9066ba32d5&id=b2f0e34a1e&e=79d4215bd6  in US drone strikes just because they are men.

Both of our WILPF UN web sites feature gender issues. Peace Women high lights Women, Peace and Security http://www.wilpfinternational.org/what-we-do/gender-peace-and-security  – or it could also be called Gender, Peace and Security. Reaching Critical Will includes gender in its work for nuclear disarmament and for the general and complete disarmament sought by the General Assembly and its First Committee http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/disarmament-fora/unga/2014, now in session.

Marybeth Gardam and Nancy Price, Corporations v Democracy and Earth Democracy

Corporations v Democracy and Earth Democracy Launch new
Human Right to Health and Safe Food Campaign

As Guardians of Future Generations, it’s time to assert our right to a safe environment and food.  Together, let’s carry out the Resolution passed at Congress to invoke the Precautionary Principle and assert that the chemical/agricultural complex has no right to harm our health. Your participation is key to the success of this new collaborative four-part one-year CAMPAIGN.

WILPF as a woman’s group has a role to play in lifting up the human right to health and safe food.  “Glyphosate, “as Marybeth points out, “has been found in the breast milk of nursing mothers, which gives lie to Monsanto’s claim this chemical does not accumulate in human tissue. Because the health impact of these chemicals is particularly felt by women and children, we believe this is an issue that WILPF needs to address.” 

We call on all branches and at-large members to join us in this new campaign.  Our minigrant will fund the first two parts of this four-part one-year Human Right to Health and Safe Food campaign to launch in December.   We invite all branches and members to participate in some way, no matter what your primary issue. Be as involved as you can.  A menu of options will soon be posted on the website. 

The issue: 
The campaign focus will be on education and action on the chemical/agricultural complex’s production and wide-spread use of the herbicide glyphosate on their GMO-engineered crops.  Glyphosate is the major component of Monsanto’s Roundup and Dow Chemical’s new EPA-approved ENLIST Duo that also has 2, 4-D, a component of the defoliant Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War.  Glyphosate use has increased exponentially as more “Roundup Ready” GMO seeds are developed and fields planted.  Monsanto’s Roundup is used in the U.S. and world-wide on major crops as soybeans, corn, canola, and sugar beets, and the USDA just approved Dow’s new Enlist Duo-ready GMO soybean and corn, in part because Roundup resistant weeds are now super resistant weeds and new herbicides are needed.

Marybeth emphasizes that “most of the public are unaware of that these chemical herbicides are dangerous to public health or that there are alternative safe and effective methods of weed control in both agriculture and municipal and home lawn and garden care.  Our campaign will seek to raise the visibility of this issue across America and promote more sustainable methods.“

As Nancy points out now “a decade’s worth of research and reports in peer-reviewed scientific journals  has finally identified some of the mechanisms by which glyphosate produces birth defects and the health impacts that exposure may be linked to” such as: infertility, miscarriages, various cancers, neurological developmental problems such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity (ADHD), Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s;  gastrointestinal disorders, celiac disease and gluten intolerance; obesity, diabetes, heart and chronic kidney disease or failure, respiratory disease and asthma. 

Exposure to glyphosate comes from drinking water and eating raw, cooked, or processed food contaminated with chemical residues, and from breathing contaminated air polluted by chemical drift from spraying.

The campaign:
Click here for campaign calendar. In brief, Part I will launch in December with a brochure available for bulk order and downloadable for printing, both posted on the website, along with a Fact Sheets and supplementary materials.  For Part II, we’ll join the Organic Consumers Association, Mothers Across America and other groups at the January 2015 Monsanto Shareholders meeting in St. Louis.  In Spring 2015, for Part III we’ll begin to gather a variety of evidence to build the case against glyphosate, and in Part IV, we will publish this evidence in concert with our collaborating partners and International WILPF.

Click here for a campaign description including the local, national and international components.

Local commitment and follow up:
The campaign committee will contact Branches and at-large members to invite you to engage with us in this campaign and undertake some aspect of local education and action during the year. A tool kit will be available on line. Member and Branch commitment for engagement will be asked. We’ll personally follow up to find out what activities are being pursued.  “We can only hope to have a broad national impact if we gain the support and participation of our branches and members in this campaign”, said Marybeth. “This is a real test of our strength in getting the word out and mobilizing members and branches.”

Photo credit: Marybeth Gardam

Ellen Schwartz, Congress Committee chair

Even those WILPFers who attended the 2014 Congress this summer could not attend all of the 35 workshops over two very crowded days.  But all of us can benefit from the many materials available for download at www.bit.ly/wilpfcongress. There you'll find workshop handouts, discussion questions, and other useful resources from the workshops (look at the "Workshop Resources" folder) as well as workshop outcomes, links to videos of the evening events, Congress resolutions, (up to date) minigrant forms, and more.

These materials can enliven your branch discussions and activities, help you inform the public, and serve as starting points for local flyers. Just go to  www.bit.ly/wilpfcongress to easily view and download the wide selection.

If you have questions, please contact Ellen Schwartz, WILPF 2014 Congress Committee Chair. ellen@nicetechnology.com. 916-835-4330