American Friends Service Committee Peace & Economic Security Program - Northeast Region - afsc.org/p The program focuses on:
• Halting and preventing U.S.
AFSC's Peace and Economic Security Program (PES) addresses a wide range of peace and security issues and works with a broad array of partners. wars
• The United States’ militarized “pivot toward Asia and the Pacific” and alternatives
• Reduction of military spending and related initiatives to ensure economic justice
• Nuclear disarmament and abolition
• Retiring not repurposing NATO for “out of ar
ea operations”
Peace and Economic Security staff serve as coalition and network builders, resources and speakers for local national and international initiatives. PES Director Joseph Gerson plays a leading role in building collaborations between U.S., Asian and European peace and nuclear weapons abolition movements. He is widely published and in recent years served as co-convener of the NPT Review 2010 International Planning Committee for Nuclear Abolition, Peace and Justice and of Network for a NATO-Free Future. He works closely with Gensuikyo (Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs) and other Asian and Pacific peace organizations. He also serves on the European-American No to War-No to NATO Network International Coordinating Committee. Program Associate Paul Shannon is leading the Budget For All referendum campaign and initiated, organizes the Majority Agenda Project and works closely with United for Justice and Peace, the Boston area coalition co-founded on September 11, 2001 by the PES Program. This year, PES and other AFSC staff worked with other peace and justice organizers of the Network for a NATO-Free Future to bring together over 300 activists from around the country and the world for the Counter-Summit for Peace & Economic Justice in Chicago this May (natofreefuture.org). PES staff are currently working on building support for the Budget for All referendum, a public policy question addressing the need to redirect military spending and apply fair taxes in order to meet human needs - like jobs, education, and social services like medicare, medicaid, veterans benefits, and social security - here at home (budget4allmass.org). PES's Joseph Gerson has also recently joined with other US peace movement activists and engaged scholars and academics to form the Working Group for Peace and Demilitarization of Asian and the Pacific. Its purpose is to provide vision, resources and initiatives to contribute to the building of a U.S. peace movement that is capable of challenging U.S./Asia-Pacific militarization in their comprehensive contexts, and will draw on the insights and collaborate as appropriate with partner organizations across the Asia-Pacific region. Begun in the early years of the Cold War, the goal of our program’s work (http://www.afsc.org/pes) is to create a more peaceful, just, and secure world, focusing on U.S. Middle East, Asia-Pacific and nuclear policies, as well as for greater economic security which is essential for human survival and peace. Immediately before, and in the aftermaths of both U.S. wars against Iraq, staff served as a unique resource, helping to build local, national and international coalitions, speaking at countless community meetings, giving interviews with papers with the Boston Globe, New York Times, Washington Post, and foreign press from Tokyo to Teheran. Our work with AFSC’s Eyes Wide Open project (http://www.afsc.org/eyes/) won recognition as “the best” peace event during the 2004 Democratic Party National Convention, and an exhibit of the boots of the New England Iraq war dead, and AFSC’s “Cost of War” banners (http://www.afsc.org/cost/) are available for use by community and academic groups across the region. After helping to launch the Nuclear Freeze movement in 1979, the program launched education work – publication of books, articles and the holding conferences – about the “deadly connection” between U.S. nuclear weapons and war policies and U.S. foreign military interventions. The latest book, “Empire and Bomb” is available in bookstores and from the AFSC, and our 1985 film The Last Empire can be rented from AFSC’s film/video and DVD library (http://www.afsc.org/resources/video-film.htm). The program played an important role in defeating funding for the Bush Administration’s proposed funding for a new generation of nuclear weapons and in winning the support of John Edwards, Barak Obama, Bill Richardson, and to lesser extents Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel to pledge that, if elected, they would be the president to implement Article 6 of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty – negotiation of the complete elimination of the world’s nuclear arsenals. Since the mid-1980s, the program has worked closely with the Japanese peace movement and nuclear weapons (Gensuikyo http://www10.plala.or.jp/antiatom/html/e/discription_gensuikyo.htm, Nihon Hidankyo http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hidankyo/nihon/rn_page/english/index_english/index_english.html, Peace Boat http://www.peaceboat.org/english/index.html, Japonesia Review http://www.ppjaponesia.org/) victims in Japan and other nations. Staff often speak at and brings young activists to the annual World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs held in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (http://www.afsc.org/newengland/pesp/hiroshima-2007.htm), and the program has hosted many Japanese delegations and speakers, with the next delegation scheduled to speak at the “Building a Culture of Peace” conference (http://www.peacejusticestudies.org/conference/) at the University of Portland (Oregon) and elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest in September, 2008. Our work with Asian peace movements extends beyond Japan and China. At the height of the 2003 U.S.-North Korean confrontation, we initiated a speaking tour of members of the South Korean parliament and leading members of the Korean peace movement to meet with U.S. policy makers, journalists and the U.S. peace movement. The program has also served as a bridge between U.S. and Asia-Pacific peace movements, arranging for leading U.S. peace movement figures to travel to the region to speak at conferences and to learn from their counterparts. Growing out of our leadership of the 1983 campaign to prevent Boston harbor from being transformed into a nuclear weapons base, the program has helped to initiate U.S. and international initiatives for the withdrawal of the more than 800 U.S. foreign military bases and installations which torment “host” nations and communities and increase the likelihood of war and inflict “abuses and usurpations” on host nations. Beginning in 1999, we helped to nurture the creation of the global “No Military Bases Network” (http://www.no-bases.org/), which was formally launched in March 2007 at a conference in Ecuador that brought together anti-bases activists from more than 40 countries. Since then we have helped to integrate several strands of the U.S. anti-bases movement and served the role of catalyst, helping to make possible a Congressional hearing to challenge the Bush-Maliki “Declaration of Principles” designed to ensure the permanent basing of up to 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. The program has worked with many youth interns over the years, giving them exposure to the nonviolent peace movement and an opportunity to engage in organizing and the issues addressed by the program. Some have gone on to lead national AFSC programs and the Friends Committee on National Legislation, while others have gone to work for other peace and justice organizations or into maturity with a deeper understanding of moral issues and the reality in which they find themselves. Specific program and institutional objectives include
1. Contribute to the end of the U.S. military occupation of Iraq and prevent additional U.S. wars of aggression
2. Address the human costs of the Iraq War and U.S. military spending
3. Build movement capacity and popular support to prevent development of new nuclear weapons and for nuclear weapons abolition
4. Contribute to the global movement to win withdrawal of U.S. foreign military bases.
5. Contribute to popular understandings of US. Foreign and military policies and to the development of “Common Security” and “Human Security” paradigms for the vision of the role of the United States in the world. (See definition p.10.)
6. Create a new Peace & Economic Security program generalist organizer position, building on the program’s legacies, for a new generation of activists, the primary constituencies being people 18-35 years old.
7. Develop a working group to analyze the economic security movement and how best to address economic justice issues.
8. Respond to unanticipated crises related to issues about which the program has expertise and/or has exercised leadership in the past.
