2001 IDF News and Updates

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Meridith Kruse is the new Executive Driector at the IDF. In 2000 Meridith received a master's degree in Sociology from Illinois State University. After graduation she taught Women's Studies and Sociology courses for one year at ISU. She has been active with Witness For Peace, participating in a labor delegation to Nicaragua in August of 2000 and a human rights delegation to Colombia last March. This past summer she studied in Guatemala and began involvement with the Progressive Resource/Action Cooperative upon her return. Overall, she is looking forward to furthering IDF's peace with justice mission.

The drastic turn of national events this month has left all of us feeling deeply saddened and frustrated. We at the Illinois Disciples Foundation (IDF) sympathize with the victims of the recent attacks and plane crashes in New York, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania. We can only imagine the pain and confusion that their families must be feeling. However, we must also turn our thoughts to the current and future victims of terrorism in the Middle East, and to Arab, Arab American, and Muslim victims of harassment here in the U.S., who seem to be forgotten in our national discussions of mourning and injustice. People in the Middle East have been victims of U.S. foreign policy for decades, on a much larger scale than the recent attacks in the U.S., and we do not want that fact to be lost. We are deeply troubled by the Bush administration's plans of military retaliation in Afghanistan in response to the attacks, and think of the terror that such retaliation will bring for Afghani civilians, as well as Afghani and U.S. soldiers.

As a peace with justice organization, the IDF has supported victims of U.S. policies for decades. During the civil rights movement, the IDF was involved in voter registration drives in the south, and in supporting civil rights workers who were persecuted in their struggle for justice. These civil rights workers were given support from the U.S. government only reluctantly, and only after decades of struggle. During the Vietnam War, the IDF worked to stop the slaughter of Vietnamese people and the deaths of U.S. soldiers - all victims of a flawed U.S. foreign policy. The government's justifications for killing the Vietnamese, the jingoism (extreme, arrogant nationalism, characterized by a belligerent foreign policy) that characterized the country in the early stages of the conflict, and the racism against anyone of Asian decent are echoed in the language used currently on a national level in the discussions of the coming conflict. In the eighties, the IDF housed victims of oppression in Central America - victims who did not receive refuge from the U.S. government, and in fact who were victimized by terrorism in their own countries that was supported by the U.S. government. In the nineties, the IDF supported (and continues to support) the right of the Palestinian people to their own land and to live free from persecution. Also during that decade, we organized to stop the deaths of Iraqi citizens who were victims of U.S. foreign policy, and who the U.S. continues to force into starvation today through economic sanctions. Today, we know that the U.S. government is guilty of terrorism in Colombia. The corrupt military in Colombia has U.S. financial and military cooperation. We are saddened to hear the echoes of these gruesome and destructive conflicts in the rhetoric of the government and people on the streets today. We hear the hypocracy in Bush's labeling of the Middle East as "uncivilized," when it was Bush's father, as director of the CIA, who trained Bin Laden in terrorist techniques. The U.S. only labeles such tactics as "uncivilized" when they stop serving its interests.

As our mission states and our work demonstrates, we continue to oppose the use of naked aggression against innocent people. We mourn the loss of the workers, international citizens and "everyday" people who lost their lives in the recent attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We also grieve for those who have been persecuted because of racism and jingoism in the U.S. - specifically, Muslim, Arab, and Arab American people.

At the same time that we mourn for these current victims, we think of the future victims of U.S. aggression. We do not want to see another person killed or maimed as a result of unjust U.S. foreign policies. We oppose the use of force in the Middle East that the U.S. Congress has approved, and that Bush will surely carry out. The pain caused by the recent attacks on the U.S. does not give Bush license to retaliate against an entire people, especially people who had no involvement in the attack. A military response is not the answer, it will only multiply the numbers of innocent people who are dead. Rather than military action, the U.S. government can assure the safety of innocent people in our country by enacting humane and socially just foreign policies. A step in this direction would be to close the School of the Americas (a U.S. military training institute on terrorist activity), and to end their support for inhumane leaders, such as those the U.S. has backed in Iraq, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, and countless other countries. The Bush administration could act justly by ending the embargoes on Cuba and Iraq that have led to the deaths of thousands of innocent people, and by stopping funding to Israel for the slaughter of the indigenous Palestinian people.

As we write this article, we fear that the uncritical patriotism that seems to characterize much of the national mood is slipping over into jingoism, and is leading us to another war. We see misguided hate replacing the sorrow felt for the victims of the recent attack and are astounded by the talk of sacrificing U.S. residents' civil liberties for a sense of false internal security.

We ask that people take a deep breath and look critically at the plans of the Bush administration. When you take a close critical look, you will see the cruelty, imperialism, and dehumanization that lie behind its plans. We are hopeful that people of conscience will stand with us in our opposition to a conflict in Afghanistan, and thereby stand with us in our struggle for peace with justice.

*Whereas the Board of the Directors, staff, and programs of the Illinois Disciples Foundation abhor the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania against people from many nations;

*Whereas we mourn the loss of the yet untold thousands of lives as a result of the attack;

*Whereas violence begets violence in an ever tightening spiral of retaliatory violence;

*Whereas the Illinois Disciples Foundation has always stood for social justice against oppression and for self-determination for all peoples;

*Whereas the Illinois Disciples Foundation opposes racism and vigilantism, including government attacks on any group for its ethnicity or belief system;

*Whereas the Illinois Disciples Foundation is horrified by statements from U.S. government officials calling the Middle East uncivilized, thereby dehumanizing, belittling, and demonizing Arab peoples;

*Whereas the Illinois Disciples Foundation abhors the recent attacks that have occurred against Arab, Arab American, and Muslim people in the U.S. as a result of such dehumanization;

*Whereas the Illinois Disciples Foundation has consistently opposed terrorism of any form by any state or group, including U.S. carpet bombing and free-fire zones during the Vietnam War and similar bombing campaigns against the people of Iraq and other states;

*Whereas the United States Central Intelligence Agency has trained, funded, and supported terrorist groups in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and many other areas of the world, including even Osama Bin Laden himself;

*Whereas the Illinois Disciples Foundation has participated in draft and military counseling during the Vietnam and Gulf Wars, and recognizes that it is mainly working-class and poor people who give their lives in these conflicts, not members of the U.S. political or economic elite;

*Whereas the murder of innocent civilians is a crime under international law and the U.S. Constitution and ruins, the lives of those who survive, leaving pain that often results in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other debilitating forms of grieving;

*Whereas the Illinois Disciples Foundation has supported the victims of war, including the soldiers themselves;

*Whereas often nationalism such as is currently rampant in the U.S. spills over into jingoism, and the Illinois Disciples Foundation has always opposed uncritical patriotism for this reason;

*Promote continued contributions of relief aid and other support to the victims of the attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C.;

*Defend and support the civil liberties and civil rights of those who may become targets for U.S. government or vigilante attack based on their ethnicity and religious or political beliefs;

*Stand in solidarity as a religious institution with all Muslim peoples, and call on the U.S. government to assure the right of Muslim peoples to gather in worship without risk of attack;

*Use our resources to urge restraint on the part of the U.S. government in this dangerous period of national anger and shock. Thoughtless military retaliation against presumed enemies or their supporters and the use of assassination as a legitimized tool of diplomacy will not further or protect civilization, but rather, signal its formal and complete demise;

*Do everything in our power to assure that not one more person has to cope with the debilitating effects caused by participation in combat, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder;

*Call upon those bodies responsible for upholding international law to hold the U.S. accountable to these laws in its response to the recent attacks;

*Call upon U.S. citizens to look critically at U.S. foreign policy and to remember those hurt by it, including people living in the Middle East;

*Call upon the Christian Church in Illinois and Wisconsin to encourage and nurture critical social and theological analysis of Bush's policies;

*Continue our social justice mission through local education and community action with the goal of effecting positive and progressive change in United States' policies toward the rest of the world.