SEYM Peace notes following 911 . . .
updated 12/14/04
Note from SEYM office: This page was getting so huge that some browsers were not able to load it. Therefore I have now have many of the following documents available in PDF format for downloading and printing. Hopefully this will solve this problem—thanks, LC-R

List:

  • Full text of Ben Richmond's brochure on Conscientious Objection at <www.fum.org/about/peacepage.htm> and click on Guide for Friends on Conscientious Objection to War.
  • FGC, PYM, AFSC, FCNL Joint Statement in Response to Military Attacks on Afghanistan From the General and Executive Secretaries of Four Quaker Organizations:, see text below (PDF Document 8K)
  • SEYM Clerk Dan Vaughen's Letter to the Editor on Pacifism and Nonviolence (PDF Document 8K)
  • AFSC, et al Statement, 09/12/2001 (PDF Document 4K)
  • FCNL, 09/12/2001 (PDF Document 4K)
  • William Penn House statement (PDF Document 75 K)
  • Friends Committee on Unity with Nature (FCUN) statement (PDF Document 108K)
  • Bryan Hudson, NO MORE VICTIMS materials available from AFSC (PDF document 4K)
  • Letter to President, Joe Volk's, see below (PDF Document 8K)
  • Margo Harakas Staff Writer, South Florida Sun-Sentinel; Fort Lauderdale, Sep 15, 2001, Quakers: Find Way To End Violence (PDF Document 4K) mharakas@sun-sentinel.com; article also available for purchase from <http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sun_sentinel/>
  • Harold Tribune on Sarasota MM (PDF document 88 K)
  • Alfred J Geiger list of other Peace organizations with web addresses; see below
  • Peacemakers Speak: Nobel Peace Prize winners Quotes
    <http://www.thecommunity.com/crisis/>
  • W. Hoskins forwards Marnie Mahoney notes, In Defense of Freedom, Miami Friends Meeting. see below
  • H. Haigh's references to Michael Moore with address below
  • AFSC needs blankets to send to refugees <http://www.afsc.org/nomore.htm>
  • Meeting Statements in PDF format: Jacksonville MM, St. Petersburg MM
From Val Liveoak, Co-Clerk, Friends Peace Teams, 4/25/02

Dear Friends,

Friends Peace Teams will send an exploratory team to Colombia in the last week of May, and we need your support and prayers as we go. During the three weeks there we will meet with groups and individuals who are working to build a culture of peace in the midst of the longest running civil war in the hemisphere. We will offer Alternatives to Violence Project workshops to several groups which have requested this practical, spiritually-based training in nonviolent conflict resolution. And we will discern if, how, and when Friends Peace Teams will consider further work in Colombia.

I’m excited at the prospect of this delegation, because I have been concerned about Colombia for several years. In 2000 I participated in an exploratory team for Christian Peacemaker Teams, and I was inspired by the courage and endurance of Colombian peacemakers. I was very much moved when the President of the Mennonite Church of Colombia after telling us of their many efforts for peace and the risks they run, said with tears in his eyes, “We sometimes feel so alone in this work.”

As the US government’s participation in the war increases—over 1 billion dollars was sent to the Colombian military for the “war on drugs”, and now the administration proposes sending more advisors and materiel for a growing “war on terror” (including $90+ million to protect an oil pipeline)—concerns regarding human rights, environmental degradation, displacement of small farmers and indigenous people and the spread of paramilitary activities also increase.

Groups of peacemakers, members of the Peace Communities, workers for human rights and economic justice, even ordinary citizens face great danger in their daily lives, and they beg for our help and accompaniment. Friend Peace Teams hopes to develop further work in Colombia as a result of this exploratory team.

We need to raise $9,000 in order to cover the cost of the delegation’s travel and to support the workshops we plan to offer. Please help with a donation today. Your contribution won’t come close to matching the US government’s expenditure on military aid to Colombia, but it will fund a few steps toward peace and it will support the courageous efforts of peacemakers already working there, who deeply appreciate your support and prayers.

Members of the delegation include:
  1. Jorge Arauz, member of Chestnut Hill Monthly Meeting (Philadelphia Yearly Meeting), family therapist and co-founder of Casa Amistad, a peace presence in North Philadelphia. Facilitator of AVP in Pennsylvania, California, Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia.
  2. Tobin Marsh, Member of Mexico City Monthly Meeting, sojourning with University Friends Meeting (Seattle) (North Pacific Yearly Meeting),
    former director of Casa de los Amigos on Mexico City and Peace Brigades International Mexico Project. Facilitator of AVP in California and Maryland
  3. Jane Simkin, member of Poplar Ridge (NY) (New York Yearly Meeting), nutritionist with experience in Central and South America. AVPfacilitator in New York.
  4. Val Liveoak, member of Friends Meeting of San Antonio (South Central Yearly Meeting), co-clerk of Friends Peace Teams. AVP facilitator in Texas, Louisiana, Ohio, Mexico, Canada and Cuba.

Please send you contribution to: FPT Peacebuilding in Colombia, PO Box 10372, San Antonio TX 78210. (Make checks out to Baltimore Yearly Meeting--BYM, our financial sponsor.)

For Peace, Hope and Life,

Val Liveoak, Co-Clerk, Friends Peace Teams

FGC, PYM, AFSC, FCNL Joint Statement in Response to Military Attacks on Afghanistan From the General and Executive Secretaries of Four Quaker Organizations
 
We pray at this time for the people of the United States, Afghanistan, and the rest of the world.  We hold in prayer those killed and wounded in the terrorist attacks of September 11, those being killed and wounded by the military strikes on Afghanistan that began on October 7, and all who grieve for them.
 
We regret the decision by our nation's leaders to launch military
strikes against Afghanistan, and we call upon them to halt the bombing and other military attacks.
 
We recognize the responsibility of the international community to
apprehend and try, under international law, those responsible for the recent terrorist attacks.  We urge that such efforts be undertaken as a law enforcement action not as acts of war and with great care to avoid the killing or injuring of innocent people.
 
History teaches us that violence leads to more violence.  We expect that these massive military strikes by missiles and bombers against this already devastated, starving country will almost certainly make it easier for the leaders of this terrorist struggle to recruit more people to their cause.  We must break the cycle of escalating violence.
 
The struggle against terrorism will indeed be long.  To succeed, it will have to undermine the ability of those who would use terrorism to recruit new people to carry out such attacks.  This requires ending, or greatly diminishing, the tremendous anger and hatred toward the United States and its allies felt, in particular, by many in the Muslim and Arab world.  This can only be done with prolonged, nonviolent efforts for reconciliation, justice, and long-term economic development.  It cannot be done through massive bombing and military attacks.
 
As executives of organizations of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), we continue to be guided by our historic testimony concerning God's call to renounce war and seek peace. We commit ourselves to work  and pray for the time of justice and peace promised by God when "peoples shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; and nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."  (Isaiah 2:4)
 
Bruce Birchard
General Secretary, Friends General Conference of the Religious Society of Friends
 
Thomas H. Jeavons
General Secretary, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
 
Mary Ellen McNish
General Secretary, American Friends Service Committee
 
Joe Volk
Executive Director, Friends Committee on National Legislation

From: Joe Volk, www.fcnl.org
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 09:48:22 -0400
Subject: FCNL Letter to President Bush on the bombing of Afghanistan

We seek a world free of war and the threat of war.
We seek a society with equity and justice for all.
We seek a community where every person's potential may be fulfilled.
We seek an earth restored.

-- FCNL Statement of Purpose

October 10, 2001

President George W. Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W
Washington, DC 20500


Dear President Bush,

We urge you to stop the bombing, stand down the U.S. military, feed the hungry, and work diligently through peaceful means to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people and other peoples throughout that region to the cause of justice for the victims of September 11.

We continue to grieve for those several thousand unique, precious and irreplaceable people who were murdered in the September 11 attacks on the airliners, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Our outrage at those acts of terrible violence is rooted in our profound belief that every human being is a creature of God and has been put here for a very special purpose. Those who helped in planning and carrying out the attacks have violated the most fundamental laws of a civil society. They should be held accountable under those laws.

We seek your leadership to end the downward spiral of attacks and reprisals, a spiral begun long before September 11 but propelled by those attacks. U.S. bombing and a war on terrorism will not bring justice for the victims of the September 11 attacks. Terrorism is not a person, place, or thing. You cannot blast it out of this world. On the contrary, terrorism is a vicious type of human conduct provoked by hatred or greed and carried out by fanatics and by governments. Violent retaliation by the U.S. will only sow more seeds of hatred and reap a new harvest of terror. We call on you to help lead the world out of the wilderness of war and terror and into a new world where people everywhere choose life by exercising a reverence for life.

You have said that the attacks of September 11 changed everything. Perhaps, but the thinking of our government officials and their response to violence remains unchanged. The U.S.-led military campaign is merely a high tech and more destructive version of a 19th century military strategy, and promotes the law of force over the force of law. By leading a military campaign in Afghanistan, the U.S. has fallen from its internationally recognized moral high ground to a much more morally ambiguous position in the eyes of many around the world. This response is inadequate to the demands of the 21st century and is unbecoming to America.

While we know that your administration's intent is not to harm innocent civilians with its bombing, Afghani civilians have already suffered this unintended effect. Weapons inevitably malfunction, are misdirected, or put civilians adjacent to the intended targets in harm's way. Already dozens of civilians, including four UN workers, have been killed by U.S.-led military attacks. We cannot simply consign those people who were killed to the category of "collateral damage" or an "accident of war." They, too, were unique and precious human beings who will never be replaced. The U.S. government had no right to sacrifice their lives in its pursuit of justice.

We also know that your administration's intent is not to compound a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan through military action. However, the U.S. military actions are escalating the suffering and putting ever more thousands of innocent people in jeopardy. Afghani civilians have been fleeing their homes in fear. Winter is fast approaching. Little food or shelter exist anywhere. The borders with Pakistan and Iran are closed. With the U.S. bombing, most shipments of humanitarian relief supplies into Afghanistan have been halted, and the U.S. air drops of daily food rations for 37,000 in remote regions do nothing to meet the needs of millions of starving people elsewhere in the country. How will the agonizing deaths of thousands of Afghan civilians due to starvation and winter exposure advance the cause of justice for the victims of September 11?

President Bush, let September 11 become a day of an Epiphany of Hope, rather than of evil. We appeal to you to exercise compassion for the people of Afghanistan. Stop the war, end the cycle of violence, and lead the world to
a new civil order for the 21st century. Use the solid backing of the international community to bring the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks to justice under the rule of law. Let the guns fall silent so that the world may hear freedom ring from our mountain top.

Sincerely,

Joe Volk
Executive Secretary, Friends Committee on National Legislation

Forward from: Alfred J Geiger
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001

Geigers remind us to remember and review links to:

Forward from Dave Robinson
Significantly, each advises pursuing 9/11 events as criminal acts, and eschewing violent revenge.

Peacemakers Speak: Nobel Peace Prize winners Quotes
<http://www.thecommunity.com/crisis/>

Forward from Warren Hoskins, Clerk, Miami Friends Meeting
http://miamifriends.org

From: "Marnie Mahoney"
Subject: Endorse "In Defense of Freedom at a Time of Crisis" Statement
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 15:50:51 -0400
Hi Warren. Here is the appeal to endorse the statement "In Defense of Freedom at a Time of Crisis." At meeting today, I described the endorsing organizations from memory, but I omitted many of them and am not sure I was able to accurately or comprehensively describe the various religious groups represented. To make sure the endorsers are all represented correctly, I have pasted in a list at the bottom, which I got from the website <www.indefenseoffreedom.org> (I believe that this list includes those organizations that endorsed up to the date the statement was issued on September 20.) The coalition is now urgently seeking individual endorsements. Friends who wish to endorse the statement should go to <http://www.indefenseoffreedom.org/endorse.html> where they will find a screen on which they can fill out information and submit their endorsement.
Marnie Mahoney

H. Haigh wrote and sent the following attachment:
I have been stranded on the 22 floor of a Hotel in San Diego, for the past few days, and like most people, have just taken brief trips away from the TV. I occasionally have been able to send/receive email from/to Friends from all over. Universally people are confused and not knowing what to do. There seems to be great fear of our country's response. I came across (several articles) ... and wanted to share (them) with Friends.
Yours,
H. Haigh, Clerk of Trustees and President, Ameri-Plus

Haigh sent several articles and Friendly responses to Michael Moores comments.
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