[WCUSP] Report from the WCUSP LT
yvonne simmons
roweenayvonne at yahoo.com
Wed Apr 11 07:53:38 CDT 2007
Three DVD's have been produced and shown on cable
access one about the WCUSP meeting in Portland, Oregon
and two at the WILPF IEC meeting in London last year
with interviews with our WILPF sisters from Israel,
Lebanon and Palestine and are available. In Peace
Yvonne.
--- "C.J. Minster" <cjminster at gmail.com> wrote:
---------------------------------
I thought y'all would appreciate this great
explanation of what theWCUSP LT has been up to since
the last board meeting. The WCUSPRepresentative to the
Program Committee & National Board, OdileHugonot
Haber, wrote the report. I am copying it below, in
case youhave difficulties opening the attachment.
Odile, I hope you don't mindme sharing this
information with the Program Committee and wider
WILPFWCUSP audience.
in sisterhood,
C.J.
Middle East Report.
Wehad a meeting in Austin the first week of November
06
Themeeting was intended for a mediation that divided
our group, questionssuch as:
· Whatis anti-Semitism, andhow does it
still exist,
· Thepath of WILPF in the allMiddle East
context,
· Focuson US Policy versussolidarity work
· Howto make the workacceptable to a
broader audience
And
our position on divestment if any, given the
direction at this time ofthewhole Middle East
movement; and around solidarity to the
oppressedpeople, toone side versus both sides; and the
concept of dual occupationconnecting with thewar in
Iraq.
Duringthis meeting we had extensive conversations. We
had wanted to interjectthatthe question of Palestine
was central to the whole Middle East issueand thepeace
movement needed to face up to it and not ignore it.
Duringthe meeting we developed a timetable for
actions.
Wealso developed the concept of the visioning project
feeling that weneeded toget more active in involving
branches and gathering the wisdom thatthey had.
Wealso thought that the neo-cons started as a think
tank and developedtheirideas into a formative policy
and that we, peace women, could alsoplant theseeds of
the policy of our dreams, hoping that in the future
years itwilldevelop into discussions, visions and
published writings that wouldeventuallyeffect the
course of events and “herstory.”
Afterthe meeting we were left with a much smaller team
as Libby Frankresignedbefore the meeting and Tura
Campanella-Cook stepped down due to familyobligations.
Wefocused on preparing a visioning kit, it was in a
major way developedby Kateand an intern with a power
point presentation from myself, that wasthenfurther
developed by the team. We were in an educational mode.
Withthe participation of Libby Frank, we developed a
position paper on: 10points toChallenge US Policy. The
development of this paper was a very longprocess
thatinvolved a lot of discussions, some involved
“feminism” and some“apartheid,”
twowords that seems very controversial. The paper was
written collectivelyand waspublished on the WILPF web
site.
Wedid a lot of research on US Aid to the Middle East:
What was the truenature ofUS Aid to this region? It
developed into an article that was thenprinted inthe
Peace and Freedom.
CJtried patiently to keep us on track and moving
forward.
KateZaidan was able to do some lobbying in Washington
and she wrote areport aboutit to encourage us to
follow her forward steps.
BarbaraTaft visited some branches in the Tucson and
San Diego and Los Angelesarea,and was a consultant on
resources to acouple of other branches such as
Sacramento and Fresno. She
waspart of the program committee and is very active
locally.
Yvonneand Pat worked on writing a few action alerts,
crisis response, for ourwebpage, and they are very
active locally.
Barbara,Pat and Odile also developed the following
action alerts, most of themwere onaid for the
Palestinian people, human rights in Gaza, and on
childrenprisonersin Israel (actually children, women
and seniors.)
Isold about 20 guides to gender study centers in
different universitiesto makeus more visible. I went
to Madison and gave a talk. I help develop
aconferenceon Women and Security in the hope to
restart a branch. I startedpassing someof our ME
papers in our local peace rallies which recruited a
few moremembers.
Ourgroup slowed down as we were hit by very serious
life crisis andconsumingoccupation such as travel, job
change, diseases that affected ourcommittee. Ithas
deeply affected us. We are in the process of relating
more tobranches andcommunicating with them better to
continue develop our campaign. Wehave notbeen good in
recruiting new volunteers We have not had any
conferencecalllately, which has handicapped us in
moving forward.
Wedid some work and we need to disseminate it and make
it more visible.We willneed to re-group in a major way
with the help of new volunteers andlaunch thethird
tiers of our campaign. Hopefully our awareness of US
policy willcontinueto evolve, we will be able to lobby
in a more focused way. We willparticipatein action
with the US Campaign to End the Occupation on June
10-11,2007.
Iam preparing to go to Israel-Palestine and will
contact both ourIsraeli andPalestinian branches and
will write a report.
OdileHugonot Haber
-------- Original Message -----
Subject: Re: [Board] Thursday Night
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 00:30:54
-0400 From: Odile Hugonot Haber
<odilehh at gmail.com> Reply-To:
board at wilpf.org To: board at wilpf.org
CC: Kate Zaidan <kzaidan at wilpf.org>
References:
<77683EC2-0111-1000-CEB8-9D207252BF04-Webmail-10023 at mac.com>
This is last minute report. It is not perfect but I
hope it will be usefulfor the board.Odile Hugonot
Haber
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