Peace for Life’s Second People’s Forum

We are pleased to invite you to Peace for Life’s Second People’s Forum, on the theme “Without Fear of Empire: Global People’s Resistance,” scheduled to take place in Bogotá, Colombia, from the 20th to the 23rd of March 2009. (PfL’s First People’s Forum, the founding forum, was held in Davao City, Philippines, in December 2004).

The Second People’s Forum is being held in cooperation with a group of Colombian organisations that includes Proyecto Justicia y Vida; Movimiento de Cristianos y Cristianas por la Paz; Comisión Interfranciscana de Justicia, Paz y Reverencia con la Creación; Movimiento de Maestros y Maestras; Movimiento Campesino Colombiano; Movimiento Indígena Colombiano; Movimiento de Víctimas de Crímenes del Sector Financiero.

We invite all members of the PfL Forum along with individuals who are deeply involved in PfL issues (as described below), or those interested in future involvement. Please note that given our limited financial capability, we expect participants to raise their own funds for travel. The organisers, however, will cover food and accommodation expenses for the entire duration of the forum.

In view of necessary preparations for this international event, we request that you send us notice of your intent to participate no later than the 15th of December 2008.

We will be sending you more information in the coming weeks along with details of the programme and other lined up activities. Please send your questions, if any, to secretariatpeaceforlife.org.

I. BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE

PfL defines its peace and justice objectives against the core issues of empire, state terrorism, and militarised neoliberal globalisation. Specifically it has identified the empire-building of the United States as the single most formidable force today impeding the realisation of fundamental ethical values of justice, equality, human dignity, human rights, and respect for the integrity of creation.

The People’s Forum is a regular event primarily envisioned as a space where these core issues are viewed in their particular empirical context, an arena for discourses and debates, for analyses and opinions—a seat for reaffirmation of our common humanity, dedication to justice and respect for life. It is also cultural event and a symbolic tribunal where ideas of solidarity and resistance are expressed in various forms, where stories about people’s struggles are told and aspirations articulated. Organisationally it functions as PfL’s equivalent of a general assembly.

These forums are aimed at re-invigorating the theology of resistance and liberation, nurturing progressive discourse within and among different faiths, and mobilizing faith communities to be in solidarity with movements for resistance against injustice and exploitation.

In the aftermath of the solidarity visit to Palestine and the following conference in Amman, we expressed our desire take on the subject of the Palestinian occupation and Middle East peace as the central thematic concern and the context from which 2nd People’s Forum would be organised. It was to be scheduled late this year in the Middle East.

It was not to be. Despite congenial responses from possible partners in the region, a thorough assessment of requirements and demands for holding the People’s Forum showed that more work would be necessary to build PfL’s capability to mount such an activity in an area as complex as the Middle East. Needless to say, the decision on the forum’s venue does not impinge on our commitment for a continuing engagement in the overall issue of justice and peace in the Middle East and in Palestine in particular.

Empire and the Global South

The turn of the last century and the beginning of the 21st can be characterised by the unrivalled global hegemony of the United States that clearly manifested in an aggressive empire building codified by its borderless ‘war on terror,’ which legitimised pre-emptive attacks, unilateralism, privatisation of war—the blatant militarisation of the globalisation agenda. It also marked the era of a global adherence to the doctrine of neoliberal economics, which deregulated the financial market and committed nearly all state governments worldwide (thanks to the IMF, World Bank, and the WTO) to the idea that economic growth could only materialize in an unregulated economy, where capital could move freely in pursuit of highest return.

What ensued was crisis after economic crisis in every major region, the most recent of which is the financial meltdown at the centre of empire itself. But more tragic, albeit less visible, are the effects of the free-market doctrine on the people of the non-industrial South: a situation of external debt servicing outpacing export earnings, foreign exchange instability and massive capital flights in a recessionary environment; bankruptcies becoming a common occurrence, victimizing entire economies, not just individuals and small businesses. In social terms, it has translated into the exacerbation of venality within state bureaucracies, of existing inequalities in various aspects of power relations, and of mass poverty and hunger. Environmental and health concerns as well as safeguards for people’s rights have become mere economic “externalities,” distortions or “trade barriers.” For the majority of the world’s people, women and children especially, the mantra of free trade and liberalised economy has come to mean suffering the violence of depredation—loss of jobs, destruction of farms, demise of emergent national industries, compromised food security, erosion of social services, growing insecurity, environmental degradation, the subordination of the imperatives of a human society to the demands of capital accumulation.

For the people of the Global South, most of whom live in areas colonised for hundreds of years and have only achieved independence in the last half of the 20th century, U.S. global hegemony is nothing more than a continuation of their colonial experience. And as in the colonialism of the old, freedom can only be realised through knowledge, unity, and resistance.

Latin America: Neocolonies in Resistance

Latin America has been the Empire’s backyard for many decades. As historian Greg Grandin has pointed out, Latin America is where the United States has the most extensive imperial experience, the area where it “learned how to be an exceptional empire,”— to “administer extraterritorial countries without actual direct colonialism,” where its foreign policy has served as model for U.S. actions in the Middle East and beyond.

Most of the countries in the region got rid of the old colonial masters earlier than most countries of the world, which also meant that the U.S. dominance of the region—ensured by the Monroe Doctrine— had been much longer than in other parts. It is in the many evolutions of the doctrine that the United States honed its foreign policy towards the entire Global South and made modern neoconservative thought operative. As such, the region has been subject to intense political intervention and economic exploitation, has fallen prey to the vagaries of the U.S. ideological wars and hegemonic assertions, resulting in some of the most murderous campaigns in history.

Colombia is currently a most important country for the Empire’s geopolitical interests in the Americas as Israel is for its interests in the Middle East. And it is evidenced by the fact that for some years now, it is the world’s third largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel and Egypt, and through Plan Colombia and Plan Patriota U.S. troops and private-sector forces participate in the country’s conflict.

This meddling in the armed conflict goes beyond the Empire’s inherent ideological hostility for the guerrillas. It is also a means of strengthening its military power in the region especially in view of the growing militancy of the working classes and the indigenous populations within the entire region. This phenomenon and the combined effects of militarism and bankruptcies that came as a result of neoliberal policies have drawn the majority in a number of countries to elect leaders perceived to be of the stuff that can stand against the impositions of the United States.

Colombia is in the throes of war. For 40 years the people have suffered living under a civil war, as guerrilla groups wage their struggle against the Colombian government, which response (invariably through various administrations, albeit in varying degrees) has been a scorched-earth military strategy. Additionally, the government seizes upon the conflict to strengthen further the elite groups in the country, and secure for them and for transnational interests—the very tentacles of empire—greater control of resources and capital.

But beyond the nightmare that is the civil war, and one which many even within the peace movement fail to see, is the reason for the conflict in the first place. Clearly there is the need to acknowledge that the current conflict has its roots in the unjust social system that the majority of Colombians have suffered for so long and the resulting poverty and dispossession from centuries of colonialist plunder and years of overall subordination to U.S. neoliberal economics.

The situation in Colombia requires a closer look not only for its gravity, in terms of human cost and the degradation of the land and its people, but also to better understand the interlocking interests that power empire building, along with methods employed to frustrate resistance, of which Israel has been the emperor’s sorcerer, consistently conjuring and creating ever-new draconian strategies of security, surveillance and counter-insurgency warfare.

Common Concerns of Faith Communities and People’s Movements

Taking Colombia as the venue for the Second People’s Forum derives partly from a recognition of the apparent parallels between Colombia’s social struggles, its overall socio-political context, and those of the Philippines, host of the First People’s Forum. Being in Colombia, as in the Philippines, offers an opportunity to experience a situation where the ruling system’s interests coincide with the dictates of empire, and where the government itself turns against its own people and tramples upon their aspirations for justice and freedom. It is in this kind of concrete reality that PfL hopes to situate its concept of solidarity for peace.

This people’s forum, which is being held also as ageneral assembly, takes cognisance of PfL’s stated objective to promote social movements’ agenda for peace among religious leaders and identify areas where the churches can be in total solidarity with the constituencies of these movements; it is call that stems from the recognition that the struggle against empire is integral to the attainment of social justice and peace, and is, thus, part of the faith communities’ social obligation and moral responsibility.

To quote from the final statement of the First People’s Forum, “Peace for Life stands with a variety of networks, alliances, and movements where the poor, deprived and marginalised play a central leadership role. We draw strength in sharing one another’s grassroots stories and experiences to inspire, motivate, sustain and transform us in our struggle for just and lasting peace. We celebrate people’s victories, however small, as moments that foster an ethic and spirituality for overcoming empire.”

The forum, thus, will dramatise what activists the world over often cry: that the struggle for emancipation from all forces and designs of empire is “one struggle,” a common struggle for people of all faiths and conviction.

II. OBJECTIVES

To frame a shared understanding of the current stage of the U.S. global hegemony, especially the continuing militarisation and imposition of neoliberal economics, as it manifests in Latin America, paying particular attention to the religious, ideological and socio-cultural ethos within which imperial objectives are pursued;
To analyse and assess recent developments in Latin America—the rise of progressive popular movements, regional integration outside the rubric of U.S. domination, election to office of progressive nationalist leaders—within the purview of the overall struggle for social justice and liberation;
To understand the conflict in Colombia from various perspectives and deliberate on how the international community, particularly ecumenical and interfaith groups, can help promote a peace process that addresses the roots of conflict;
To deliberate on the question of liberation movements/struggles in the framing of peace discourses and alternative visions that will help set the stage for faith communities’ engagement in the task of peace building and challenging the current hegemonic order;
To express PfL’s solidarity with the Colombian people as a way to support their struggle, but which is also part of the resistance on every continent against the empire’s global project ;
To build on, and consolidate, the gains of the 2007 Peace Pilgrimage and Solidarity Mission to Palestine-Israel and carry forward the commitments made at the Amman international conference on justice for Palestine;
To draw lessons from and follow up on the 2006 Peace and Solidarity Mission to Nepal, the 2006 International Peace Festival in Mumbai, India, and the 2004 inaugural people’s forum in Davao, Philippines;
To provide a platform for launching PfL’s emerging concerns: (a) indigenous peoples and women confronting war and empire; and (b) ecological justice;
To expand and strengthen PfL as a movement where people grounded in the churches, faith communities and social movements converge, gather strength and build on the transformative power of the faith to press on with the struggle against global hegemony; and,
To assess and review the urgent tasks of PfL formulated in the “First People’s Forum” in the context of the challenges and opportunities facing the global peace movement and ecumenical/ interfaith peace initiatives, specifically in the convergence of social as well as ecological justice and anti-war agendas and strategies.

III. FORMAT AND PROGRAMME COMPONENTS

Pre-Forum events As in the first People’s Forum, the second will aim to undertake pre-forum events that will allow participants, particularly the international delegates, to have a close interaction with local communities and victims as well as dialogues with organised groups that share a common vision with PfL.

Pre-forum activities on PfL’s emerging concerns (Indigenous People’s and Women Confronting War and Empire, and Ecological Justice) are also envisaged.

Pre-forum activities will commence on the 17th of March 2009.

Forum Proper
The forum proper will have the following components:

Opening Ceremonies - Open to a bigger audience, this formal opening will be an interfaith, multi-cultural event featuring rituals, inspirational talks, sharing of stories, music, dance, performances and other creative activities.
Thematic Inputs and Plenary Discussions
Thematic Workshops
Organisational Workshops
Reports and Plenary Discussions
Closing Sessions

IV. FORUM PARTICIPATION AND HOSTING

The main participants of the Second People’s Forum are current members of the PfL Forum or those who, one way or the other, have been part of PfL’s activities, and representatives of organisations and other groupings in Latin American countries with advocacies in areas circumscribed by the forum’s theme and programme. Also expected to participate are other individuals who share PfL’s convictions.

Local partner organisation takes on the responsibility of inviting local participants, based on criteria previously agreed on.

The opening ceremonies is open to a bigger audience open to everyone interested to attend particularly those who have suffered victimisation from the prevailing conditions and those working in defence of their rights.

Reference:

Peace for Life Secretariat

BLVM Ecumenical Center 2/F

NCCP Compound, 879 EDSA

West Triangle, Quezon City, Philippines

Telefax: 632-9278043

People’s Forum in Colombia 2009 (Project Proposal)