NEWS

Post date: Wed, 03/29/2023 - 06:41

Film Advert image. Used courtesy of film director.

by Cherrill Spencer and Ellen Thomas
Co-chairs, DISARM/End Wars Committee

April 2023

The DISARM/End Wars Committee invites you, and your family and friends, to an online showing of the documentary film The Atom: A Love Affair on Wednesday, April 19. A free webinar (via Zoom) will start at 7:45 pm EDT (4:45 PDT) and the film will start at 8 pm EDT (5 pm PDT).  

The webinar will include an introduction by the film’s director Vicki Lesley; the film will start at 8 pm EDT, and there will be a discussion after the film, which we are showing in honor of longtime DISARM member Carol Urner, who passed away in late January.

PASSION. BELIEF. BETRAYAL. HOPE. THE TURBULENT STORY OF THE WEST'S LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH NUCLEAR POWER OVER THE PAST 70 YEARS - BY THOSE WHO EXPERIENCED IT FIRSTHAND. Amongst the film’s many accolades, it has been called “a watchable and enlightening film” and “entertaining and informative.” To learn more about this film go to https://theatomfilm.com . 

To receive the Zoom link please register here. (The link will say it is a Jane Addams branch meeting, we are borrowing their meeting slot.) 

 

 

Post date: Wed, 03/29/2023 - 06:36

Pictured here are WILPF members from the United States, United Kingdom, Palestine, Ukraine,  and international staff at the WILPF Secretariat, during the meet and greet event on Thursday, March 9, 2023.

by Shilpa Pandey and Jan Corderman
WILPF US CSW Coordinators

April 2023

After a hiatus of three years due to the pandemic, the WILPF US section was able to relaunch its CSW program that consists of two parts, the Local to Global and the UN Practicum in Advocacy. It was encouraging to see enthusiastic participation from WILPF members; however, it was especially heartening to witness young students of diverse backgrounds from Boston University and Florida University join in as the Practicum participants this year.

The theme this year was “innovation and technological change and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls.”

One of the highlights of this year’s program was a special meet and greet event organized by the WILPF US section and held on the evening of Thursday, March 9th, where members from Ukraine, Palestine, the United Kingdom, and the International WILPF Secretariat came together for an informal interaction and gathering to share about their respective regions work. This was especially helpful as we rarely get an opportunity to meet with our sisters in conflict-ridden areas such as Ukraine and Palestine and learn more about the challenges they are facing. These interactions enable us to think about how we in the WILPF US section can better collaborate and extend solidarity to our international sisters.

To read more about the CSW programs and how they help build WILPF for the future, read Jan Corderman’s January 2023 eNews article.

Post date: Wed, 03/29/2023 - 06:16

Carol Urner, former WILPF US Disarm Committee co-chair.

by Ellen Thomas 
Co-chair, DISARM/End Wars Issue Committee

April 2023

WILPF friends, we have sad news.

I spoke to Kirby Urner on March 7th and learned that his mom, Carol Urner, passed on January 30th.  
 
I've missed Carol enormously since she retired as WILPF US Disarm Committee Co-Chair a few years ago. She brought me into WILPF in 2004, and was a wonderful mentor and companion. It was a special gift to have been able to travel extensively with her, and to meet the wonderful WILPF members who welcomed us along the way.

I hope we can do something really special to honor this remarkable woman in the next Peace & Freedom issue and elsewhere. Please let me know if you have any thoughts, memories, images, or videos you would like to share. Ellen Thomas et@prop1.org

Carol Urner

Here is a slideshow of five photos of Carol we’ve gathered so far.

Here is a link to the Nuclear-Free Future tour that Carol and I took around the country in 2016, which includes resources, and reports/photos from each stop.

Here are links Kirby has sent – 

  1. A Journal-embedded YouTube from a night at Multnomah Meeting featuring Carol telling stories from her life.
  2. Kirby’s blog.

We hope you will join us on Wednesday, April 19 at 7:45 pm EDT, to watch the new documentary film, The Atom: A Love Affair, which we are showing in honor of Carol Urner. You can register for the event here.

 

 

    

 

Post date: Wed, 03/29/2023 - 06:10

by Rickey Gard Diamond
Women, Money & Democracy Committee

April 2023

WILPF’s issue committees Earth Democracy and Women, Money & Democracy have a strong interest in this year’s United States Farm Bill. If you think it doesn’t apply to you, ask yourself if there’s hunger in your town, or if grocery prices are through the roof—or if you plan to eat? Men of corporate, industrial America traditionally craft the Farm Bill. Not this year! Women and young people are demanding what’s good for our children and our Mother Earth. 

Read my latest column for Ms. Magazine, "As the U.S. Looks to Revamp the Farm Bill, Women Must Be at the Table". In the column, I explain that, historically, “instead of our mothers’ fruits and vegetables, the U.S. Farm Bill largely subsidizes wheat, corn, and soybeans—most needed by global farmers and ranchers growing meat for our barbecues.” Meanwhile, a “land grab” is taking place such that “A whole new generation of younger, female, Indigenous, Black, Latinx and queer farmers are contending with land prices out of reach, and old attitudes that minimize the healthier, more sustainable production they seek.”
    
But WFAN (the Women, Food and Agriculture Network) brings together “hundreds of formidable and experienced women passionately involved in food security.” At a December 2022 conference, “They not only highlighted the racial and gendered inequities; they offered exciting solutions.”

Author Rickey Gard Diamond serves on the Women, Money & Democracy committee and writes a regular column at Ms. Magazine: Women Unscrewing Screwnomics. Each column ends with links to www.WILPFUS.org and our allied educational non-profit An Economy of Our Own. 

 

Post date: Wed, 03/29/2023 - 06:06

by Dianne Blais
Convener, Jane Addams Branch

April 2023

The Jane Addams branch just got a mini-grant to record and edit interviews with WILPF members. These recordings will be edited and made available for families and friends. Snippets of them will be used to make a video as a recruitment tool. Contact me at dianneblais@aol.com if you’re interested in being interviewed and recorded for posterity.

The Jane Addams branch meets the third Wednesday of each month but in April and May our meetings will be for all WILPF members. On April 19, The Atom: A Love Affair will be shown. This documentary is being presented to WILPF members as a gift.  On May 17, Marguerite Adelman will discuss PFAs.  She’d like RSVPs with the localities of where attendees live so she can research PFAs in their area.

 

 

Post date: Wed, 03/29/2023 - 06:02

Detroit, Michigan - March 24, 2018: A girl holds a sign that says "#EndGunViolence" and "It could have been me" while looking down on protestors marching against gun violence. Stephanie Kenner/Shutterstock.

by Judith Sheldon
Detroit Branch

April 2023

The Detroit Branch continued its ongoing “Kitchen Table Talk and Action” series, focusing on Reducing Gun Violence, on February 23, 2023. Although planned prior to the February 13th tragedy at Michigan State University, the horror and profundity of that event, coupled with the five-year anniversary of the Parkland School shooting, generated even further urgency.

Our branch had previously hosted a January 2022 forum titled “After Oxford: A Mental and Public Health Forum” in response to the school shooting in Oxford, Michigan. 

Lauren Jasinski, a former Oxford High School teacher who is now very active in End Gun Violence Michigan, spoke at length with facts, statistics, bills in the Michigan Legislature, and action steps. In talking about the rising number of gun deaths, especially suicides, during the pandemic, Jasinki noted that suicide by gunshot “is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” State Representative Ranjeev Puri, whose district includes Michigan State University, made remarks by video. 

There were more than 20 participants, many of whom asked questions and completed calls and letters to their state representatives during the “action” part of the event. A video of the event can be viewed here. Although this response is local, the issue is national; the information provided at the event is invaluable for efforts being made by WILPF in other locations. On a national level, there are growing calls to restore the assault weapons ban. WILPF members can use this link to write a letter to their U.S. Representatives and Senators telling them Congress must restore the ban.  

Information about each monthly 7 pm Kitchen Table Talk and Action event will be sent to the WILPF listserv. Please email Laura Dewey at wilpfdetroit@att.net with questions.

 

 

 

Post date: Fri, 03/03/2023 - 08:50

eyeglass cases from Gaza
Eyeglass cases from Gaza made by Atfaluna Crafts. Available from shoppalestine.org
 

For up-to-date information about the Middle East Peace & Justice Action Committee, including participation details for future planning and action meetings — please contact MEPJAction@wilpfUS.org to reach the committee leadership.

Mission

  • Educate and organize WILPF members and the community on Middle East issues
  • Urge the media to cover the Middle East with fairness and analysis of root causes
  • Lobby Congress, local governments and the United Nations for laws, policies and expenditures that respect the dignity of all Middle Eastern people
  • Collaborate with groups and communities to support a culture of peace and justice in the Middle East

Vision

We envision a Middle East in which all people have equitable access to resources, equal human rights, and fundamental freedoms.

Values

  • Adherence to international law without exceptions
  • The right of civil society to organize nonviolently for freedom and justice
  • Equal standing of all stakeholders at negotiations
  • Participation of women in the peaceful resolution of all conflicts
  • The obligation to investigate and make reparations for personal harm caused by state violence

History 

Libby Frank founded the WILPF US Section Middle East Committee in the early 1970s, the period during which WILPF International declared support for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, a peace conference under UN auspices, and the creation of a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in the area. In 1975 Libby Frank and Edith Ballantyne, WILPF International Secretary General, led a mission to Palestine, Israel and Lebanon to understand the problems Arab and Israeli women face and gain better knowledge of their status in society, their activities and their aspirations. 

Women of Jerusalem by Palestinian Artist Rawan Anani.Women of Jerusalem by Palestinian Artist Rawan Anani.

Resources

Booklet “Hamas at the Middle East Peace Table: Why?”

Barbara Taft & Ellen Rosser
Barbara Taft & Ellen Rosser, Authors

If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.
                       —Desmond Tutu

For nearly three years our Middle East Peace & Justice Action committee researched available material and wrote:  "Hamas at the Middle East Peace Table: Why?" the two women tasked with the writing have been witnesses to history as well as documentarians.  They had help from our editorial committee. Our goals in presenting this subject remain the same today, as when the booklet was written---we believe that chances of peace are greatly improved when all parties are present at the negotiating table.  This requires enemies to speak to one another--and also to listen to one another. In order for this to happen, we must urge the U.S. State Department to remove Hamas from its list of terrorist organizations. As long as Hamas remains on that list, all participants are restricted in not being able to speak with a major party which needs to be included.

We hope our readers will join with us and move to action for peace in the region.

Read the booklet by Barbara Taft and Ellen Rosser here or order copies from the national office at $1 each.

Recent Campaigns

Critique of the Israeli Government’s Actions Toward Palestinians Is Not Hatred Toward Jews 

Other recent campaigns include postcards to Congress to end the Israeli siege of Gaza, support for Palestinian children in Israeli military jails, and solidarity with Palestinian human rights organizations criminalized by Israel.   We are also part of the ongoing campaign for a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in the Middle East.

Committee members have hosted webinars and written articles for WILPF publications to share what’s happening in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria.

Bridges Not Walls

From the US/Mexico border wall to Israel’s apartheid wall, and the nearly 70 other walls across the world, walls are erected through people’s lives and lands, separating families and intensifying state violence, surveillance, repression, and exploitation. These walls are tangible monuments of militarism and domination, unilaterally defining and fortifying borders and state control.

Together, we can help build bridges and tear down walls.

From Palestine to Mexico
From the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights webpage (WILPF is a member of this coalition)

 

SPECIAL NOTE: Similar legislation will be introduced in the 118th Congress (2023-2024)

Congresswoman Betty McCollum (DFL-Minn.) introduced legislation to ensure that US funding to Israel isn’t used for specific purposes including:  ill-treatment, torture, prosecution of children in Military Courts plus – forcible transfer, home demolitions, annexation of Palestinian land – 30 official signers plus over 200 organizations.  We supported HR 2407, including instituting a postcard campaign and inviting all WILPF’s branches to participate.   

MEPJAC works in coalition with Defense for Children International-Palestine, a children’s right organization that documents, exposes and defends children against all forms of violence, whether physical or psychological.   DCI-P’s comprehensive approach focusing on monitoring, advocacy, awareness-raising and legal services, the combined impact of which is to expose and mitigate the ongoing violence against children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Since June 1967, when Israel occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip following six days of armed conflict, children living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory have inhabited an environment characterized by violence and instability. Over 1,800 children have been killed across the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2000.

Violence against children takes many forms, encompassing physical violence such as injury from gunfire or crowd control weaponry, beatings and torture, or individual attacks. It includes psychological violence that arises from fear of arrest or physical harm, as well as the psychological interrogation techniques employed by the Israeli army. It includes discrimination and neglect perpetrated by the Israeli and Palestinian authorities.

An estimated 10,000 Palestinian children have been detained by Israeli security forces and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system since 2000. Independent monitors such as Human Rights Watch have documented that these children are subject to abuse and, in some cases, torture — specifically citing the use of chokeholds, beatings, and coercive interrogation on children between the ages of 11 and 15.  In addition, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) found that Palestinian children are frequently held for extended periods without access to either their parents or attorneys. The United States Department of State and the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child have also raised serious concerns about the mistreatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military custody.

How Can I Make You Understand?
A poem by Barbara Taft, Co-chair emeritus

How can I make you understand
    That people are dying by your hand?
And how can I help, so you can see,
    That people there just want to be free?

You own much land, I’ve heard it said,
    And you must know, within your head,
That you would fight to keep that land.
    How can I make you understand?

People whose land was ripped away
    Seventy years ago still hurt today.
All they want is to return—
    The loss of land makes their hearts burn

And yearn one day to go back home.
    Without their land, they only roam.
If someone took your land away,
    I wonder if you wouldn’t say,

“This land is mine; I want it back,”
    And those who stole it, you would attack,
At first with words, but on deaf ear;
    You’d force the issue until they hear.

Would you be brave enough to die?
    Or would you only sit and cry?
Or maybe you would let stones fly
    To make the world your plight decry.

After all, when you were peaceful,
    Trying their heartstrings to pull,
They lied and said you were a threat
    As a way to shirk their debt,

And with live fire, they set upon you,
    Wreaking death and pain to all who
Wanted only what is their due—
    A chance to live as you now do,

Upon their land that they still see:
    In their mind’s eye: their history.

Past articles, statements and alerts:

May 2019: Support New Bill on Human Rights for Palestinian Children
by Genie Silver

July 2018: WILPF US supports bill to end Israeli military detention of Palestinian children
by Jan Corderman

April 2018: Rachel Corrie we will not forget you
By Odile Hugonot Haber

January 2018: The situation of the children of Palestine
by Odile Hugonot Haber

March 2016: No way to treat a child campaign
by Odile Hugonot Haber

December 8, 2017:  Yemen: Time to End its Suffering

Statement on the War in Yemen

Statement on Syria by the WILPF-US Middle East committee

Take Action Now! Cut off Aid to Egypt Until Democracy is Restored

Post date: Fri, 03/03/2023 - 06:47

International Womens Day

End women’s poverty!  Invest in caring, not killing! The Poor People’s Campaign (PPC) hosts this webinar for International Women’s Day. Help recognize the struggles and contributions of women in our communities and our movement.

Register today to get the link for this timely and important recognition of women! 

WILPF US joins the Global Women’s Strike, the National Welfare Rights Union, CodePink, and other National PPC Partners – like us – in co-sponsoring this national PPC event. It focuses on women’s poverty and how it affects our families and wider communities.  In unpaid caregiving work alone, women contribute $10.9 trillion to the economy, yet the US women and children are 70% of the poor, and around the world the statistics are similar.

International Women's DayThis International Women’s Day event will feature the PPC fusion approach, integrating music and poetry and amplifying the voices of affected women with their testimoy.  Rev. Liz Theoharis and Shailly Gupta Barnes of the PPC and special guest, Congresswoman Gwen Moore, House of Representatives, Wisconsin, will participate. Register here to get the link for this timely and important recognition of women!
(Click here to see larger flyer.)

WILPF members and branches across the country are urged to join with the PPC State Campaigns, to participate in a wide variety of ways with the PPC. Unite with the PPC to end the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation and the nation’s distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism.  (You can print or purchase your own "Uniting to End" WILPF-PPC banner.  (Scroll down there to see PPC banner, under the WILPF US Banners.)

In 2022, the WILPF national Board joined the PPC in Washington, D.C. for their June 18 Mass Poor Peoples and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls.

For further information about WILPF-PPC activities, contact info@wilpfus.org.

 

Post date: Fri, 02/24/2023 - 10:49
33rd Congress

Pre-Congress work with Des Moines Branch. 33rd Congress.

by Darien De Lu
WILPF US President

March 2023

The Congress Planning Committee will be reviewing the range of options for WILPF US’s 2024 Congress. All “bids” must be received by email by 9 pm on Wednesday, March 15. Send to President@wilpfUS.org.

Now is the time to speak up, even if you’re not entirely certain that your branch or area is ready to host the Congress in the summer of 2024. If your bid is among the top three, you’ll be contacted for further discussions.

What does your region have to offer? This is an opportunity to show the rest of the country what cultural and political work is happening in your area. And it’s a chance to show your area the way WILPF makes the connections among a wide range of political issues.

When you send in your bid, please be sure to include the following:

  • Contact person’s name, email, and phone (This person can be changed, as plans develop.)
  • The distance to the nearest international airport (if reasonably near – also mention the distance to nearest AMTRAK station)
  • Particular “local” cultural and political organizations, features, or sites
  • The facilities you suggest for housing and meals (you may offer more than one option)
  • The names and branches of at least four branch members (your branch or branches in your area) who support this bid
  • Which branch(es) involved have had a formal vote at a WILPF meeting in favor of this bid?

 

Post date: Fri, 02/24/2023 - 10:44

Dr. Caroline Shenaz Hossein

by Marybeth Gardam
ONE WILPF Call Team

March 2023

Meet the Banker Ladies
Thursday, March 9
7 pm eastern/6 pm central/5 pm mountain/4 pm pacific

The March 9th ONE WILPF Call is the last until June and will feature a subject just right for the day after International Women’s Day. We will take an optimistic look at feminist economic solutions that are being created by those most affected by financial insecurity and predatory lending. PRE-REGISTER for the ONE WILPF Call here.

Guest speaker Dr. Caroline Shenaz Hossein, Associate Professor of Global Development and Political Science at the University of Toronto Scarborough, offers her unique understanding of how immigrant women and women in developing countries create their own alternative banking solutions and, in doing so, focus on mutual aid and support rather than extracting interest and profiteering.

As long as predatory banking and loan practices are aimed squarely at people of color and poor communities, peace and social justice activists must stand with solutions that prioritize people over profits, and take back our democracy from the Wall Street banks and trillionaire financiers.

You’ll also hear about upcoming national WILPF events and actions, reports from WILPF US issue committees, and new ways to connect with your WILPF sisterhood.

The next ONE WILPF Call isn’t till June, so plan to attend this one! PRE-REGISTER here.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Caroline Shenaz Hossein is a Canada Research Chair for Africana Development & Feminist Political Economy (tier 2). She is Associate Professor of Global Development as well as cross-appointed to the graduate programme of Political Science at the University of Toronto where she teaches the core development course to PhD students.

She is founder of Diverse Solidarity Economies (DISE) Collective, and holds an Ontario Early Researcher Award (2018-2025). Hossein serves as board member to the International Association of Feminist Economics, advisor to Oxford University Press, editorial board member to the UN Task Force for the Social and Solidarity Economy Review for Black Political Economy and Kerala University’s Journal of Polity & Society.

Hossein is the author of Politicized Microfinance (2016), co-author of Critical Introduction to Business and Society (2017); editor of The Black Social Economy (2018), co-editor of Community Economies in the Global South (2022) and Beyond Racial Capitalism: Cooperatives in the African Diaspora (2023). Her forthcoming books are The Banker Ladies with University of Toronto Press and Co-operativism with Cambridge University Press. Prior to becoming an academic, she worked for 9 years in global non-profits and 8 years in consulting to the World Bank, UNDP, USAID, IRC, CIDA, IADB, and the Aga Khan Foundation.

You can follow her on Twitter @carolinehossein

 

 

 

 

 

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