Friends,
This year has been a full and momentous one for all of us.
This Saturday, we celebrate International Human Rights Day. Because of your support, the Fellowship of Reconciliation has been able to spend the entire year working for human rights, including:
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The FOR Colombia Peace Presence team, which celebrates its 10th year in 2012.
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- Hosting Jesús Emilio Tuberquia, one of the original founders of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community in Colombia, on a speaking tour throughout the United States.
- Re-printing and distributing our 1950s comic book Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, which had been used by Egyptian human rights activists as a tool for envisioning the power of active nonviolence for social and political change.
- Sending delegations of multi-generational activists to different regions in the Middle East, including to support the purification of water in Afghanistan and to create public murals that promote nonviolent resistance and empowerment.
- Producing groundbreaking research papers to expose the United States' complicity in the violent aggression of the Colombian military, paramilitary, and guerrillas against innocent civilians.
- Supporting the Occupy movement's knowledge of and commitment to nonviolent resistance by distributing our Pact for Peaceful Witness.
- Growing our community of our local chapters, religious peace fellowships, and affiliates (with a dozen new groups connected to FOR-USA!) and expanding our outreach through multimedia communication.
As we advance on our 100th anniversary, FOR could be pulled in many directions to answer the calls for peace and social justice, and thus, we’ve recognized a need to be focused in our work.
Our strategic plan, Demilitarizing Life and Land, gives us the ability to be involved in emergent campaigns like the Occupy movement and the global No Bases movement -- while placing our work and national fellowship under three task forces: the Task Force on Latin America and the Caribbean, the Task Force on the Middle East, and the Task Force on Social Economic and Social Justice.
As we look to 2012, we need you to be a continuing partner in our work through a generous year-end gift today.
Thank you, with peace and love,
Mark C. Johnson, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Fellowship of Reconciliation
Andrea Briggs
Chair, National Council, Fellowship of Reconciliation |
