Please pass
this urgent alert to all your friends, families, colleagues, and
networks!!!
COLOMBIA MOBILIZATION
NATIONAL CALL-IN DAY
MAY 1, 2002
How can you follow-up on what you’ve learned
at the Colombia Mobilization and put all your new energy to the
best use? Help organize your community around the Colombia Mobilization
National Call-in Day MAY 1, 2002. The good news is that Congress
is listening and hasn't done anything bad yet. But your calls
are more important than ever!!
BACKGROUND: Bush
and some Members of Congress are proposing that we make a bad
US policy even worse. So far our aid (at taxpayer expense) has
poured toxic chemicals on people, animals, and the delicate ecosystem
of the Amazon at an unprecedented rate. Now they want to double
the amount of fumigation. So far our aid has trained and equipped
the Colombian military, a military with one of the worst human
rights records in Latin America and a military with well-documented
links to right-wing paramilitary death squads that are responsible
for three-quarters of politically-motivated civilian murders.
Now, the hawks in Washington want to expand into direct counter-insurgency,
leading us into an unending quagmire that will cost too much in
terms of human lives (not to mention financially). WE MUST TELL
MEMBERS OF CONGRESS THAT THESE PROPOSALS ARE UNACCEPTABLE TO THEIR
CONSTITUENTS!!!!
TAKE ACTION: On
Wednesday, May 1, 2002, call your Senators and Representative.
If you don’t know who they are, check www.senate.gov
and www.house.gov/writerep.
The Congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121. Two proposals
must be opposed:
Emergency Counter-Terrorism bill for 2002
and
Foreign Aid Bill for 2003.
Urge your Congresspersons to support legislation
to close the School of the Americas/WHISC (House bill HR1810).
TALKING POINTS
Many members of Congress have good intentions,
and want to support an end to violence in Colombia. But adding
more military aid is not the way to do it. Tell your Senators
and Representative that you and members of your community are
against US military involvement in Colombia and are particularly
against this expansion.
1. Sending more military aid to Colombia
is not going to help protect civilians. The Colombian military
still maintains close ties with paramilitary groups, who are on
the US terrorist list and who commit upwards of 70% of civilian
killings in Colombia. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International,
and the Washington Office on Latin America released a report in
February proving the human rights situation in Colombia is EVEN
WORSE than a year ago.
2. Sending military aid to Colombia brings the
US into another Vietnam quagmire. Colombia is the size of 53 El
Salvadors, and the amount of money necessary to defeat the FARC
militarily will be tremendous, and perhaps incalculable. This
civil war has been going on for over 40-years and a political
solution is the only way out.
3. Real solutions. US support for a negotiated
peace process with the FARC and the ELN, and real pressure on
the Colombian government to break ties with the paramilitaries,
will do more to protect civilians than increased military aid
will. Violent actions on the part of the FARC have a tremendous
human cost, but supporting a military that collaborates with the
paramilitaries has a huge human cost as well.
4. Drug cultivation in Colombia has actually INCREASED
since fumigation started. More fumigation will only increase it
further. Civil society and local governments are asking for the
chance to do manual eradication and alternative development. Addicts
in the United States are asking for real drug treatment and prevention.
5. Training of Colombian soldiers at the School
of the Americas (renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for
Security Cooperation) has a fatal impact on the human rights situation
in Colombia. Despite the Pentagon PR campaign and the SOA name-change,
the SOA continues to produce repressive militaries that fight
a war against their own people.
CREATIVE IDEAS:
SPREAD THE WORD: Send this alert to everyone you
know. Organize your community now! Get all your friends and family
and colleagues (and all their friends and family and colleagues)
to call too!
MAKE IT EASY: Take some cell phones to the local
grocery store or mall, set up a table (or ironing board), and
ask people walking by to make calls. Or have them sign letters
that you then fax in.
PASS A RESOLUTION: Can your church, civic association,
or town council pass an emergency resolution on May 1 and send
it in? Congress is more likely to listen to organized/representative
groups.
USE THE MEDIA: Get a letter to the editor or an
Op-ed published in your local paper. Fax that in to your Members
of Congress on May 1. They’ll pay more attention to something
that is in the media
SEPTEMBER 27: Use May 1 as an organizing jumping
off point to organize your local days of action for Sept 27, 2002
THANKS FOR YOUR CALLS!
Janet M. Hostetler
Advocacy and Campaigns Coordinator
Witness for Peace
1229 15th St, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 588-1471
fax (202) 588-1472
