Peoples' Social Forum 2014 in Ottawa - invitations to-date III

 
   The Canadian Friends Service Committee (Quakers) told me that they won't participate, as their annual sessions are in August. But they will advertise the Forum in their social media and electronic newsletter.
   Citizens For Public Justice (CPJ) replied with interest in participating and asked for more information. 
  I contacted the Ottawa office of the Mennonite Central Committee (I'm a Mennonite) and proposed to meet them in June to talk about the Forum.
  I'm very happy with the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) Canada's involvement with the Forum. They met with organizers. There were very good things discussed in the meeting!
  I contacted the Canadian Unitarians for Social Justice (CUSJ). As I posted before, I received no reply to my emails to the First Unitarian Congregation of Ottawa. However, CUSJ is interested in participating at the Forum and is checking if I can go there to talk more about it.
  At the "Nonviolence: A Weapon of the Strong" Conference last week at Saint-Paul University (see here), I made a quick question after Mr. Rajagopal's keynote presentation mentioning the Forum to all.
  I emailed Ecclesiax in the beginning of April, but I haven't heard back.

"Things Fall Apart" - The Al-Aqsa Intifada - CPT - IV

This is another passage from the book "In Harm's Way: A History of Christian Peacemaker Teams".

"In later years of the Intifada, the U.S. boycott of the democratically elected Hamas government, which included desperately needed aid to pay salaries of teachers and medical personnel, aroused much bitterness among Palestinians. The boycott confirmed what they had suspected - that 'democracy' to the U.S. means that Palestinians should vote for the candidates the U.S. supported."

(Page 208)

"Things Fall Apart" - The Al-Aqsa Intifada - CPT - III

This is another passage from the book "In Harm's Way: A History of Christian Peacemaker Teams".

Issues Arising from West Bank Work
Culpability of the United States in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

   The predominant grievance the Arab/Muslim world holds against the United States is its default and overt support of Israel. Although the U.S. State Department has given lip service to the principle that settlement expansion is detrimental to peace, the government has continued to send massive amounts of aid to Israel that have enabled it to continue building settlements and confiscating land.
   Jeff Halper, the director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, has said that the U.S. Congress is the institution most responsible for keeping the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in place. U.S. presidents and the U.S. State Department have understood that Israeli settlements are the primary obstacle to peace in the region. More than half of the Israeli electorate thinks that Israel should get out of the West Bank and Gaza. However, the political power of the right-wing partisans of Israel is enormous. Congressional representatives who have dared to criticize Israel for its abuses of human rights or ask that it abide by United Nations resolutions and pull out of the Occupied Territories have lost their seats due to the power of the Israeli lobby.
  Hebron team members have watched the American participation in the 1995 Oslo II accords, the 1997 Hebron Protocol, the 1998 Wye River Memorandum, the 1999 Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum, the 2000 Camp David II negotiations, the 2001 Taba talks and Mitchell Report, and the 2003 "Roadmap to Peace" proposed by the "Quartet" of the European Union, Russia, U.S., and United Nations. None of these negotiations really addressed Israel's determination to hold on to settlements in the West Bank.
  Likewise, when Arabs see U.S.-built Apache and Blackhawk helicopters killing Palestinian civilians and U.S.-built Caterpillar bulldozers demolishing Palestinian homes, U.S. advocacy for "peace" negotiations rings hollow.

(Pages 206 and 207)

"Things Fall Apart" - The Al-Aqsa Intifada - CPT - II

This is another passage from the book "In Harm's Way: A History of Christian Peacemaker Teams".

"After Israel fenced in Wadi ghroos to confiscate the land in that valley, soldiers assaulted two sons of the Zalloum family, whose home CPTers tried unsuccessfully to save in 1996. Soldiers picked up the eight-year-old by his head, lifted him high up in the air, and slammed him to the ground. Then they knocked the six-year-old boy down and kicked him. Their father, Waheed Zalloum, complained to the police. When the police asked the soldier why he had done it, he said, according to Zalloum, 'They will grow up to be terrorists, so it's better if we kill them now, while they're small.'"
(Page 167).

keywords: Palestine, Israel, CPT

Peoples' Social Forum 2014 in Ottawa - invitations to-date II

   In the past week I invited by email the Christian Peacemaker Teams from Toronto to get engaged with the Peoples' Social Forum. I also sent an email to OpenMedia.ca inviting them to propose a workshop. The First United Church should have had their council meeting on the 29th of April to discuss their support for the forum, but I haven't heard back from Reverend Brian Cornelius yet. I also contacted Muslims for Progressive Values MPV Ummah Canada suggesting that they host a workshop and support the forum.
  On March 14th I wrote a generic email to Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ), inviting them to know more about the Forum. I got no reply to-date.

Encrypting Emails with Mailvelope

In this video I show how to encrypt emails using Mailvelope. Mailvelope is an open-source project that works for Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook and other webmail services. This video shows a step-by-step example on how to encrypt and decrypt emails using Mailvelope.

Como Encriptar Emails (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc)

Aqui está um vídeo que explica como encriptar emails usando o Mailvelope. Mailvelope é um projeto de código-livre que funciona para Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook e outros serviços de email. O vídeo mostra um exemplo de encriptação e desencriptação passo a passo.

Peoples' Social Forum 2014 in Ottawa - invitations to-date

I met with Reverend Brian Cornelius of the First United Church in Ottawa on the 16th of April. It was a nice meeting. He asked about the current endorsers. Other parishioners related to unions had already mentioned the Peoples' Social Forum to him. He will ask the church council on the 29th if they will formally endorse the forum.
I emailed folks from the First Unitarian Congregation of Ottawa twice, with different emails, asking to meet them. That was about one month ago. I got no response.
I emailed today the Canadian Friends Service Committee, inviting them to come to the forum and endorse it.
I put a post on the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity Facebook group inviting all to participate, but I didn't see any reply.
I emailed Reverend Joel Crouse at the St John Lutheran Church weeks ago. I emailed the church because they are listed as members of The Open Table. The council of the church met and he sent me this reply:

"Hello Gustavo,

Sorry for the late reply.  I took your proposal to our church council meeting and, while we applaud this initiative, we regret to inform you that we are not interested at this time.  We will, however, advertise the upcoming  forum within our publications for individual interest.

God bless you in your ministry.

Be well and serve,

Rev Joel Crouse

St John Lutheran Church, Pastor "

Peoples' Social Forum in Ottawa, August 21-24, 2014

I am excited with the upcoming Peoples' Social Forum happening in August here in Ottawa. I'm inviting different religious organizations and people by email to participate too. I'll post here on my blog the different invitations and responses I get. I'm inviting organizations and people to participate in the fora, to meet coordinators, to advertise the forum and to formally endorse it.

"Camus vê o Cristo como um homem, não como um sábio"

Trecho pequeno da entrevista com Arnaud Corbic na Revista Le Point número 15. (Tradução do Gustavo)
"Camus vê o Cristo como um homem, não como um sábio"

'Le Point: Camus era um ateu?
Arnaud Corbic: Não, ele até se defende de ser. Ele escreveu nos seus Cadernos: "Eu leio frequente que eu sou ateu, e ouço falar do meu ateísmo. Essas palavras não me dizem nada, elas não têm sentido pra mim. Eu não creio em Deus e eu não sou ateu." É um agnóstico para quem a questão da existência de Deus é filosoficamente indecidível. Mas é um agnóstico consequente: ele assume essa condição e vive como se Deus não existisse.'

"Camus is not a reformer"

This is part of an interview with Lou Marin published on the magazine "Le Point" number 15, about Albert Camus. Gustavo's translation.

You affirm that with his measured conception of revolt, Camus is close to the libertarian streams. How so?
There is a strong non-violent and anti-authoritarian stream at the core of the libertarian thought, and Camus is very close to it. He is not a reformer. The revolt, he says, has a relation with the revolution. But this revolution has to be made in favour of life, not against it. That is to say, in advancing History without terror, or without violence. His conception of revolt goes through a moment of total denial of oppression, questioning all domination. A moment when the power is on the streets. We saw that recently at Tahrir Square in Egypt or Taksim Place in Turkey... To Camus, this first moment, non-violent, has to remain the ideal of the revolution. Otherwise it betrays the origin of the revolt. When the revolution is faithful to its original values, Camus supports it.
...
He fought along with libertarians for the cause of conscientious objectors, those men who refused to take arms. Why does he maintain that so much?
He has always claimed the right to be a conscientious objector. To him, England had shown the excellency of its system by not suppressing this right, even during the war. He brought his support to the pacifist militant Louis Lecoin who, during the 50s, launched a campaign in favour of conscientious objectors. People blame sometimes Camus for being silence on the Algerian question in 1957 and 1958. Therefore we must be aware that at the time, to make one public declaration in favour of conscientious objectors could not not have influence!

"Can we make a party of those who are not sure to be right?", wrote Camus in Défense de l'homme in 1949... Is it not that deep inside, more than a libertarian, he was fundamentally a skeptic?
This was a sentence pronounced against the communist and Marxist ideology which, according to him, seeks to always be right, and has always seen the future in detriment of the present. But to Camus, we cannot sacrifice men to shorten the path towards a dreamed future. He was one of those who did not want to hide a truth in the name of an ideology. And for him, the writer has to speak through the weak, the oppressed, the conquered in History. He himself, because of tuberculosis, always felt near of a certain form of weakness... In his Carnets, he wrote "property is murder". That goes very far!

Violence in Brazil and Mennonites in North America

   I began last month to take action to inform Mennonites in North America about the problems of violence in Brazil. I met staff at the Ottawa Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). I also wrote an article about the subject and submitted it to the Canadian Mennonite magazine on Fabruary 12th 2014. Days before sending the article to them, I sent to a small circle of friends, asking for feedback, which was positive. I haven't heard yet any response or acknowledgement from the Canadian Mennonite magazine. Six days ago I emailed the editors asking some acknowledgement, but I haven't heard back yet.

"Things Fall Apart" - The Al-Aqsa Intifada - CPT

"On March 16, 2003, an Israeli military bulldozer crushed ISM [International Solidarity Movement] activist Rachel Corrie as she was trying to prevent it from demolishing a Palestinian home. Corrie, 23, from Olympia, Washington, had been part of an ISM team in Rafah (Gaza strip) for the previous two months. Israeli forces in Jenin shot American ISM volunteer Brian Avery in the face on April 5, 2003 - as he stood with other ISMers in front of an Armoured Personnel Carrier - for which he required several reconstructive surgeries. Five days later, Israeli soldiers shot British International Solidarity Movement volunteer Tom Hurndall in the head. Hurndall had been shepherding a group of Palestinian children out of a narrow passage where they had been playing when shooting started. Soldiers opened fire from a tank-mounted machine gun. Hurndall had just taken the hand of a little girl when the bullet hit him in the head. He remained comatose until his family disconnected him from life support in January 2004. Corrie, Avery, and Hurndall were all wearing fluorescent orange or red vests identifying them as human rights accompaniers when the Israeli military killed or injured them.
  These attacks hit everyone who had worked on the [Christian Peacemaker Team] Hebron team hard.  Corrie, Avery, and Hurndall had all participated in the trainings led by the Hebron team. Furthermore, many Hebron team members, as well as their Israeli, Palestinian, and International friends, had stood between bulldozers and their designated targets as part of their work.
  An Urgent Action put out on April 12, 2003, quoted Le Anne Clausen as saying.
  'It feels like open season on peace activists. It's been open season on Palestinians all along, now the lack of accountability in the Israeli military has reached a new level. For Palestinians, the threat of 'transfer' (ethnic cleansing) looms large; the Israeli attacks on human rights workers accompanying them seem to be part of a move by Sharon administration in this direction. If the internationals can be chased away, what will happen to the Palestinian civilians?'

Fragment from
"In Harm's Way: A History of Christian Peacemaker Teams" by Kathleen Kern.

Violence in Brazil

An article by Gustavo Frederico

   An elementary school teacher in Rio de Janeiro, a friend of mine, described once how he and the students had to duck under the tables, caught in the crossfire. In December of 2013 at a penitentiary in Maranhão, three men were decapitated in a riot. Allegedly, leader inmates would extort others to have sex with their wives during visits and the three turned down the proposal. Because of the riot, the Government “occupied” the overcrowded prison. In retaliation to that, inmates ordered from within the prison a wave of violence in São Luís, with four buses burned and police stations attacked.     On the 14^th of July of 2013, Amarildo Dias de Souza, a father-of-six construction worker, was taken by police for questioning during Operation Armed Peace, a crackdown against the poor (or drug traffickers, depending on the version) in Rocinha, the largest slum of Rio de Janeiro. Amarildo was tortured for 40 minutes by four police officers, with plastic bags and drowning. The Justice system today charges 25 police officers with involvement in his death. The operation was part of the so-called Pacifying Police Units, or UPPs, new units of the police in that city that occupy slums with heavy weapons to enforce “peace”. These are only a few stories of many that I could mention.  

    Violence is part of everyone’s everyday life in Brazil, even though certain groups are disproportionally more affected. For instance, homicide rates of blacks is twice as high as that of whites. Two well-known movies show how violence is commonplace for all: “City of God” and “Elite Squad: The Enemy Within”. A poll by the IPEA Institute in 2010 found that 79% of the population is very much afraid of being assassinated.  Only one in ten is not afraid of being assassinated. The homicide rate was 27.1 per 100 thousand inhabitants in 2011, with 106,603 homicides. While there was a noticeable decrease in the national rate around 2005, it still oscillated in recent years, and the total number of deaths is still very high. The official numbers recorded from 1980 to 2011 is of 2,347,082 violent deaths in Brazil. The rate in Canada in 2012 was 1.56 per 100 thousand inhabitants, the lowest since 1966. In the State of Alagoas, the homicide rate for young black individuals in 2011 was 201.2 per 100 thousand inhabitants. That is twice higher the homicide rate of Honduras, which ranks country number one in violence in the world.

    The “Map of Violence 2013” published by the Sangari Institute compares some numbers taking the “Global Burden of Armed Violence” report of the Geneva Declaration Secretariat. In the top 12 armed conflicts in the world from 2004 to 2007 - including Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Colombia, Congo, etc - there were officially 169,574 direct deaths. During the same period, Brazil officially recorded 206,005. In fact, that number is closer to the total official number of direct deaths of the top 62 armed conflicts in the world combined in the period: 208,349.

    Brazil is a country of contrasts. A general notion abroad is that the economy is getting better after president Lula came to power in 2003. The most recent census, however, indicate that around 11 million inhabitants suffer from hunger. The prison population grew 400% in the previous 20 years, being the 4th largest in the world today with 574,000 inmates. Even being the sixth largest economy in the world today, the country ranks very low worldwide in income distribution. While poverty and income inequality have decreased in the previous decade, with 35 million people out of extreme poverty, the rates of violence did not show similar decline in the period. From 2000 to 2009, the national homicide rate has stayed relatively stable around 26 deaths per 100 thousand inhabitants per year. 

    The Catholic National Conference of Bishops of Brazil promotes yearly the “Fraternity Campaigns” during the Lent season with different themes. Violence was the theme of 2009, 1983 and 1973. In 2004 and 2005, there was a national disarmament campaign involving different religious organizations, NGOs and the Government. More than 220 churches were collection points of firearms. With that, however, we cannot say that non-violence is a noticeable characteristic of Christian institutions in Brazil. Sadly, many Christian politicians and practitioners often profess troublesome discourses that are incompatible with a message of non-violence.   

    The Mennonite Central Committee had an office in Brazil for 44 years. It was closed in 2012. Most of the work focused on rural programs (water access, food security projects and health programs), while the latter years had local programs with issues of family violence and peace education in the city of Recife.

    I left Brazil in 1998 and violence was one important issue for the decision. I grew up in a Baptist church, but I never heard of Martin Luther King Jr. In Canada, I got to know part of the rich history of non-violence of Anabaptists. Christian Peacemaker Teams, for example, has a beautiful history of action in zones of conflict, an emphasis that deserves our continued support. Ronald J. Sider’s speech at the Mennonite World Conference of 1984, which led to the formation of CPT, said that “we need to reject the ways we have misunderstood or weakened Jesus' call to be peacemakers.” He then made a challenging appeal for North American and European Anabaptists to engage actively in direct nonviolent action, especially in zones of conflict. Since then, CPT continues to send teams to zones of conflict. It would be nice if the history of Anabaptist practices of non-violence were available in Portuguese. It would be nice if Canadian and Brazilian youth, perhaps facilitated by technology, could connect and think about what it means to be peacemakers in practice in their contexts. And it would be nice if the world kept in mind during this year of Soccer World Cup that Brazilians can laugh and cry.

Write for Human Rights Write-a-thon at the Ottawa Mennonite Church

I organized a write-a-thon for the Write for Human Rights small group at the Ottawa Mennonite Church the other Sunday. I put the announcement 3 weeks before in the bulletin. It was after service, and I scheduled 2 hours for it. Not many people stayed and participated, but the 6 that were there wrote many letters. I prepared documents with case profiles and directions for mailing the petitions. The petitions included peace in South Sudan, peace in Syria, free Rafael Braga Vieira in Brazil, close Guantanamo, and Indigenous peoples' rights & resource exploration. Here are the petitions for download.

Who but the Lord?

I listened to this poem by Langston Hughes watching the "King: a Filmed Record" DVD. In chapter 4, around 32:10. In this excerpt at Democracy Now, it's at 22:22.

Who but the Lord?
by Langston Hughes

I looked and I saw
That man they call the Law.
He was coming
Down the street at me!
I had visions in my head
Of being laid out cold and dead,
Or else murdered
By the third degree.

I said, O, Lord, if you can,
Save me from that man!
Don’t let him make a pulp out of me!
But the Lord he was not quick.
The Law raised up his stick
And beat the living hell
Out of me!

Now I do not understand
Why God don’t protect a man
From police brutality.
Being poor and black,
I’ve no weapon to strike back
So who but the Lord
Can protect me?

Justiça Restaurativa

 Intersections

Outono de 2013, volume 1, número 4
Compilado por Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz e Stephen Siemens
Justiça Restaurativa: a promessa e o desafio





(Início do texto)

O Comitê Central Menonita (MCC) tem uma história longa e pioneira de prática e teoria de justiça restaurativa tanto no Canadá como nos Estados Unidos. Por exemplo, Howard Zehr, o primeiro diretor da Secretaria de Crime e Justiça da MCC nos Estados Unidos tem o crédito de apresentar uma ótica diferente para olha nosso sistema legal e o crédito de conclamar um novo paradigma de justiça relacionada a crime. Essa mudança paradigmática envolvia mudar as perguntas feitas dentro de um sistema de justiça punitiva - "quais leis foram quebradas?","quem cometeu o crime?" e "qual deve ser a punição? - para um novo conjunto de perguntas focando no que a justiça requer de vítimas e perpetrador, questões como "quem foi ferido?", "quais necessidades surgiram do crime?", e "sobre quem recaem as obrigações de corrigir as coisas da melhor forma possível?"

On brain transplant and salvation

  I have a question for Christians: suppose that Jack is not a Christian. He goes into coma and has a cerebral death. But he receives a brain transplant from Peter and lives. Next day he converts to Christianity. The next day he dies. Who will go to heaven, Jack or Peter?

National Inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada

  The Native Women's Association  of Canada urging the Canadian government to create a National Inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls. They created a petition to the Federal Government with this request. The petition is also promoted by the United Church of Canada.
   Here are the links:

http://www.united-church.ca/getinvolved/takeaction/130612

http://www.nwac.ca/press-release-immediate-release-2013-10-18-en

  Last Sunday and the next Sunday the Adult Formation Class at the Ottawa Mennonite Church explores a "Feminist reading of the nativity story". Knowing about the schedule of the class in advance, I was able to select a petition related to the subject. I collected a good number of signatures on the one copy of the petition that I had and sent it yesterday to the Right Honourable Stephen Harper.

Write for Rights on the International Human Rights Day

  Today I went to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) to join them in their "Write for Rights" write-a-thon. Amnesty International promoted events all over the world, inviting groups to write for cases of Human Rights problems. I invited the few other members of the OMC small group to come along, but there was no reply. It was a very productive night, where we took the time to write by hand to various leaders about specific cases of Human Rights violations. I know there were other locations in Ottawa where other groups also gathered to do the same.

Open For Justice campaign in Canada

  The second petition that the Write for Human Rights small group from the Ottawa Mennonite Church signed and sent was related to the issue of mining. The Open for Justice campaign was launched this year, supported by many organizations. It asks for mining companies to be accountable for their actions abroad. And it asks for Canadian legislation to change so that affected communities have access to the Canadian courts, and have a chance of fair trial. So far this has not happened. And the behaviour of Canadian mining companies show a record of human right abuses in poor countries. And the majority of these affected communities have no access to justice in their home countries either. The self-regulatory mechanisms that Canada tried to implement, where the companies themselves would voluntarily avoid and resolve conflicts with communities did not work. More than a legal problem, mining by Canadian companies abroad pose a problem of justice: not only the justice are systems by-passed, the mining deals are in themselves extremely unfair economically to the communities living on or near the exploited areas.
  Here are the petitions that we discussed, signed and sent over. In PDF and in Word. They were addressed to the Honourable Minister Edward Fast and the Honourable Minister Peter Gordon MacKay.

  Here are some links to the campaign:
    From the United Church of Canada
    From the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability
    From Amnesty International Canada

  I sent my letter 3 weeks ago and haven't received any response yet.

Ricardo Esquivia - Colombia - Write for Human Rights

  We started at the Ottawa Mennonite Church a small group called "Write for Human Rights". We choose a subject and write petitions together. The 1st petition was on behalf of Mr. Ricardo Esquivia from Colombia, who has received threats and false accusations. To know more the case, access this link. Here are the letters that we sent: in PDF and in Word.