A Quiet, Persistent Commitment to Peace. . . Jerilynn C. Prior

Nuclear Weapons Revisited: But "The Times They are a-Changin' ". . . Betty Peterson

"We" are Working with Conflict. . . Elaine Bishop

"If thine enemy hunger, feed him". . . David Gracie

A Quiet, Persistent Commitment to Peace

Jerilynn C. Prior - Vancouver MM

I renew my commitment to peace every early spring, before the light has returned, as crocuses poke their heads up in Vancouver or the snow has melted in colder climes. Since the spring of 1970 when, with great apprehension, I illegally altered my tax withholding form at Boston City Hospital so my income tax would not be deducted from my puny internship salary, I have been speaking for peace with my income tax return. This is my leading. I will continue until I am led to do otherwise.

In 1997, if I owe taxes on my clinical practice income, I will re-direct the percentage going to Canadian military endeavour and place it in a Peace Trust Account. This spring I am still waiting for Revenue Canada to seize from my bank account the $1200 I paid to the Conscience Canada Peace Trust Account last year.

As I explained in I Feel the Winds of God Today, a Quaker Pamphlet of the Sunderland P. Gardener lecture I gave in 1992, my aversion to military and violence goes back to my childhood. As an adult, I found witness through my income tax to be a very clear and persistent leading. I have no doubt that, as a true conscientious objector to military, I must do something about my culpability in the Somalia and Bosnian actions of Canadian troops. I also believe that, symbolically, I am paying for Canadian military actions with my tax dollars. What I am never quite clear about is whether I should continue doing this in silence, year after year, or whether I should try to make a larger witness.

I once acted publically, with support of friends from Vancouver Monthly Meeting (but not the Meeting), and Conscience Canada. We gathered a lot of support and money to take the issue of conscientious objectors being forced to pay for the military, through the Canadian Court system. In 1986, the Tax Court meeting in Vancouver, ruled that there was no relationship between taxes and conscience. I subsequently appealed that decision, with the help of Thomas Berger, a prominent Vancouver human rights lawyer We appealed twice to the Supreme Court and once to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. Universally each court said that what I pay in taxes is not an offense to my conscience, nor does the requirement to pay for war contradict my Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantee of freedom of conscience and religion.

So, every spring I remember the intensity of earlier springs, the frustration which came from a lack of satisfactory resolution, the feeling of being violated when my accounts are seized. And I ask myself whether I should tell the news media when my accounts are seized--or if any one cares. Despite the efforts of Canadian Yearly Meeting to support CYM employees who wish to no have taxes withheld, and the cooperation of a CYM committee on Peace Tax with efforts to write yet another Peace Tax Bill with MP Svend Robinson, I feel virtually alone in this ongoing witness.

This spring I am more aware than ever that, if a larger number of F/friends felt and acted as I do, that something would happen. It is not very difficult to subtract the calculated portion of the government expenditures going to military (which have ranged from 7 to 12 percent since 1981) from Federal Taxes owing. I always show the subtraction and write a note on the form about the percentage I am deducting and that I conscientiously object to military. I then write a cheque for that amount to Conscience Canada and mail a copy with my return (so no one can accuse me of not paying the full amount). I send the return with the remaining taxes owed. I usually also write a letter to the Minister of National Revenue with copies to my MP, the Prime Minister etc.

If others of you would do what I have been doing since 1981 in Canada, (and since 1970 when I lived in the United States) something positive would happen. Something positive about Canadian rights and freedoms in general, something constructive about so-called peace keeping using soldiers, and something very important and right about the Quaker witness for peace would occur. If your entire income is from a salary and taxes are deducted by your employer, you can still include a hand-written note with your return addressed to the Minister of National Revenue.

The returning light of spring, and my commitment to act for peace has come again. Does what I do matter? I don't know. At a minimum, it is what I must do for myself.

Nuclear Weapons Revisited: But "The Times They are a-Changin' "

Betty Peterson - Halifax MM

Some of us Quakers and peace folks have been working against nuclear weapons since Hiroshima in 1945. Others have joined in along the way in efforts which seemed to reach a peak in the 1980s: against cruise missile testing, nuclear testing in the atmosphere and on the ground, nuclear stockpiling, nuclear weapons positioned in European NATO countries, low level testing over the Innu by NATO countries, nuclear subs in Halifax Harbour and Nanoose Bay...

But then came the end of the Cold War and people relaxed, including peace groups, and attention focussed on the global economy, local violence, poverty, unemployment, local community development and support and social cutbacks in Canada and worldwide. New-conservatism became the villain. I myself have been working all out in these directions for the last several years.

Suddenly, however, nuclear threats are back in the headlines: Canada selling Candu reactors to China, the proposal of Atomic Energy of Canada (AECL) to bury depleted nuclear waste in the Canadian shield (public hearings have been taking place in Canada in 1996-97), the importing of weapons grade plutonium from the States to burn in Canadian reactors (Federal Environment Minister Sergio Marchi announced on December er 10, 1996, that Canada will gladly accept this plutonium and possibly from Russia, at the same time amending and weakening Canadian Environmental Protection provisions and process). These are critical issues and deserve separate though related efforts of peace people, including me.

But, as well, in these dark days is there somewhere to focus one's positive energies? Emphatically YES! On the abolishment of nuclear weapons. There is substantial HOPE because of the rather amazing alignment of recent world-wide events. Read on... These events are:

1. 1995 - Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) called for "systematic efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally with the goal of elimination." It indefinitely extended the review process with annual preparatory meetings starting in 1997 (April 7 - 17).
2. July 8, 1996: The World Court issued an Advisory Opinion which cast strong doubt on the legality of the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons which contravene humanitarian law. This is a BIGGIE, which nations are seriously studying.
3. August 14, 1996: Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons (Australia). Seventeen leading international figures stated, "Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat" and urged all nuclear weapons countries to commit themselves immediately and unequivocally to eliminating all nuclear weapons.
4. September 10, 1996: The United Nations General Assembly adopted a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) that, if ratified, would end nuclear weapons testing (158 in favour, 3 opposed: India, Libya, Bhutan). To become international law, the treaty must be ratified by the 44 countries possessing nuclear reactors. This is a BIGGIE, as a start.
5. December 5, 1996: Statement issued by 60 Generals and Admirals from thirteen countries, mostly from Russia and the U.S., called nuclear weapons "a peril to global peace.... We have been presented with a challenge of the highest possible historic importance: the creation of a nuclear weapons-free world."
6. December 10, 1996: The Malaysian Resolution was brought before the UN General Assembly by the Un First (Disarmament) Committee. It passed 115 to 22 with 32 abstentions. Among its resolutions: "...to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control." and "...calls upon all states to fulfill that obligation immediately by commencing multilateral negotiations in 1997 leading to an early conclusion of a nuclear weapons convention prohibiting the development, production, testing, deployment, stockpiling, transfer, threat or use of nuclear weapons and providing for their elimination."

Canada Voted No: It had led a move to vote separately on the above two statements, i.e. voting for "negotiations in good faith," but not on the call "to all states to fulfill that obligation immediately." Norway, Denmark and Iceland (members of NATO abstained.

This resolution has a wide base of support and non-nuclear governments can urge the beginning of such negotiations at the preparatory conference for Non Proliferation Treaty Review on April 7-17, 1997. The International Peace Bureau (IPB) urges its 161 member organizations all over the world, including Canada, to approach their Foreign Ministers to set in motion reviews of policies on nuclear weapons.

• Meanwhile in Canada in September 1996, Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, in the light of the World Court judgement, issued an invitation to all Canadians to respond to a series of questions on Canadian disarmament policy, specifically nuclear non-proliferation and arms control with: 1) Views on the implications of the World Court opinion on Canada; 2) Views on Canada's current pursuit of initiatives aimed at preventing proliferation, eliminating nuclear testing, cutting production of fissile materials and then focussing on the comprehensive multilateral nuclear disarmament. (The current step by step approach rather than to set in place NOW a framework and timetable by the year 2000 for the abolition of nuclear weapons.); 3) How should Canada respond to the World Court asking the international community to correct the imperfections of international law (in order to provide a clear answer to the nuclear question.)
• Axworthy has also set up a Commons Committee to review Canada's nuclear arms policy and NATO membership in the wake of the World Court Opinion and the Canberra Commission (see above) and the Project Ploughshares Roundtables (see below). In addition he has decided to create a unit of civilian peace professionals available for rapid deployment to global trouble spots and to unilaterally introduce a timetable for a global ban on antipersonnel land mines.
• Finally in the month of September 1996 Project Ploughshares, an Interchurch Coalition to which Canadian Yearly Meeting belongs and sends representatives, conducted a series of community Roundtables in 18 Canadian cities in 10 provinces with 404 community leaders discussing nuclear abolition and answering questions posed by Minister Axworthy. These were chaired by Douglas Roche, former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament at the UN. He and representatives of Project Ploughshares and Physicians for Global Survival presented the final report on these Roundtables to Lloyd Axworthy for his consideration on October 10, 1996.
• Meanwhile before any of these events, in 1995, a group of non-governmental organizations launched ABOLITION 2000. Its goal is to secure the political will and commitment of the world's governments to complete negotiations by the year 2000 on an international convention that will set a firm timetable for the elimination of all nuclear weapons. This statement has now been signed by more than 600 organizations around the world, including Canada. Here this group is called Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, sponsored by some fourteen peace groups. CNANW was formed in April 1996 and its goal is "to build support within the Canadian public and the Canadian government, through education and dialogue, around the feasibility of the elimination of nuclear weapons."

In this hopeful climate caused by so many international calls for the elimination of nuclear weapons and by the openness of the Canadian Foreign Minister to public input, peace groups across the country are becoming recharged. We remember that causes such as the World Court Project and the Elimination of Land Mines have succeeded of late because many NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) united on one action with full publicity and public education. As well, development, aid, human rights and environment groups realize that war and the preparation for war destroy their own priorities and goals in a very physical way as well as by bankrupting the social programmes that are so desperately needed over the world - needed yet so drastically diminished in every country to pay for violence and death. And is there a greater environmental hazard than nuclear?

What an opportunity for Quakers, other peace folk and organizations to respond to Lloyd Axworthy right now. Call it the Quaker 20 minute peace action. Commend him on Canada's stand on Land Mines and why cannot we similarly take the lead at the NPT Review in April in helping to set in place a convention with a firm timetable by the year 2000 to eliminate nuclear weapons. Commend him on voting for the CTBT and ask why Canada voted against the resolution before the UN General Assembly calling for such multilateral negotiations to commence in 1997.

In Halifax, Ploughshares, Voice of Women, Veterans Against Nuclear Arms and Physicians for Global Survival are joining together for Abolition 2000 and CNANW through public education, letters, petitions and visits to MLAs. We hope to convince the enlarged Halifax Regional Council to approve the CNANW statement, as have many other municipal councils elsewhere.

The statement reads: "that Parliament (and Canada) support the immediate initiation and conclusion by the year 2000 of an international convention which will set out a binding timetable for the abolition of all nuclear weapons."

Surely this is a statement which all Quakers can formally endorse, from Monthly Meetings to CFSC to Canadian Yearly Meeting, hopefully in August 1997.

As a recent editorial said in regard to the Generals for Nuclear Weapons Elimination (Manchester Guardian - December 15, 1996):

"Those who spoke out against nuclear weapons before, who were labelled peaceniks or comsymps, who were the target of secret surveillance, harassment and dirty tricks, may be allowed a quiet smile now that their heresies have become so widely accepted."

So let us pause for a quiet smile, but let us do something together to put this 52 year-old dream over the top at last.

"We" are Working with Conflict

Elaine Bishop - Woodbrooke College

We spent the morning immersed in the situation of colleagues from northern Nigeria. The flash point of the conflict had been the location of the local market. The roots of the conflict reached back years, even centuries, and was a complex knot of religion--Christianity and Islam--ethnicity and differences in political and economic power. The result had been an eruption of violence in 1992 that had led to the deaths and injuries of many men on both sides of the conflict. Both of our presenters, the Imam and the Pastor, had been involved in the conflict. Both their families experienced loss. In small groups we explored the conflict searching for entry points--potential places where tiny roots of peace making might begin. Mapping of the conflict--visual presentation of those involved and their relationships--helped. Then the Pastor and the Imam spoke about their personal journeys. Each had known about, and kept dossiers on, the other as each was a senior youth leader in his tradition. They met three years after the violence at a meeting about health and immunisation. A common acquaintance introduced them. They drank tea together and each shared his desire for change. From this common ground their friendship has grown. Slowly they have persuaded their organisations--Christian and Muslim--of the wisdom of working together for peace. They are jointly developing a peace education programme. They have come here together to learn more. By sharing their experience they hope to prevent other communities being torn apart by similar conflicts. Our morning, which had started in heaviness and pain, became a story of courage, friendship, potential and hope. "We" are Working With Conflict 7 (WWC7), the seventh course of the small, Quaker initiated organisation, Responding to Conflict. We have come together for eleven intensive weeks to explore ways of working with conflict. We are twenty seven students with four tutors bringing together pragmatic experience from nineteen countries. I am the only student whose first language is English although that is our working language. Some have come directly out of zones of conflict. We study, and most of us live, at Woodbrooke College in Birmingham, England. As the second of five modules ends we have explored sources of conflict and learned new analytical tools. We have looked at organisation building, engaged in a simulation game about power in development and role played a negotiation in which I "negotiated" on behalf of government--good heavens! Still to come are modules that, among other things, will explore facing violence, mediation, personal safety and just outcomes. We also will have opportunity to develop projects to implement which we leave. One aspect of exploring conflict is understanding the identities of those involved. Part of the identity that I bring is that of a Quaker - a member of the Religious Society. I continue to struggle with what this means in situations of conflict because one of the things I started to understand up north, working on aboriginal land rights, was why some peoples choose to use violence in their struggles for justice. Unlike my colleagues in Nigeria, and many of the other countries represented in WWC7, I am not faced with a decision of how to defend my home, food supply, house of worship or self-determination from the immediate aggression of others. Yet I cannot avoid acknowledging my part in the sources of conflict. Map many regional conflicts, and back a level or two or three are links to the interests of my region and country. What wisdom does Friends' peace testimony have in this situation? The 1660 declaration to King Charles II is often thought to be a definitive statement of the peace testimony. Yet it was developed as much to "answer to that clause of the King's late Proclamation which mentions the Quakers, to clear them from the plot and fighting which therein is mentioned, and for the clearing of their innocency" (The Quaker Peace Testimony, Quaker Peace and Service, 1993, p. 42) as to be a declaration of what became our testimony. At the time that the declaration was drafted, the Quaker movement was not yet fully committed to a peace testimony. In Scotland, at the time, Friends' missionary efforts were most successful amongst members of Cromwell's army of occupation. Those convinced were not necessarily expected to become pacifists. Initially their dismissals from the military were as a result of "the levelling principle"- as the Inner Light was in all, there was refusal to acknowledge rank and reluctance to "prompt obedience" (The Story of Quakerism in Scotland, William H. Marwick, 1952, p. 42.). Some who were forced out of the military for this were listed as having suffered for their faith. Yet also there, in that original declaration, are the seeds of a deep commitment to peace "to seek peace, and ensure it and to follow that righteousness and the knowledge of God seeking the good and welfare and doing that which tends to the peace of all." (The Quaker Peace Testimony, p. 42.) From a particular geographic and historical context this declaration served well. From it and through it has grown a precious web of passion and witness for peace. Individual Friends have found the courage to engage in conscientious objection and tax resistance and to address issues of injustice in its many faces, including slavery, aboriginal justice, racism and world poverty. Friends' meetings have acted corporately supporting their members, issuing statements during times of war, serving as places of sanctuary and searching between times for ways of addressing those conditions that lead to violent conflict. I am deeply grateful for the models who have gone before me! And I know that, at times, I hesitate to speak for fear of offending. And yet... I find myself struggling. It often seems that current understandings of the peace testimony are grounded in a world that no longer exists. Now much of the violence in my world is "exported." In my own country much is structural--economic policy that creates poverty, homelessness and despair. More overt violence takes place in isolated places away from my eyes: Indigenous territories, poor areas of cities or behind family walls. Much more of the world's violence takes place well away from the economically developed world although actions taken there historically and presently may be important contributing factors. Legislation then excludes many refugees who may try to come here fleeing these situations. Examples include the towering debt of Africa, unfair conditions under the World Trade Organisation, environmental degradation and exploitation of workers, many of them women, and environmental laxity in the free trade zones of Central America, Philippines and other countries. How can the peace testimony unfold to engage further with this? And how does this struggle for the justice that must precede the coming of peace get moved from the edges of much of life towards the centre - not just in the Religious Society of Friends but throughout the larger society of which we are a part? We are beneficiaries of injustice. Products produced in free trade zones benefit shoppers in Canada. Banks in the economically developed world - us - receive more in interest payments per year from Africa than Africa receives in aid, and still Africa owes those banks more now than it originally borrowed! My voluntary low income is perceived as wealth by the marginalised in the rest of the world, including refugees and many Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. Voluntary poverty is a luxury available only to the wealthy and educated. I continue to consume more than my just share of the world's resources. And for my companions in the "South" with whom I share this journey on Mother Earth as we enter the twenty first century things are getting worse, not better! Friends in Aotearoa/New Zealand say to their government, in their 1987 statement to review defence policy "We equally and actively oppose all that leads to violence among people and nations, and violence to other species and to our planet." (The Quaker Peace Testimony, p. 46.) I see a deeply spiritual challenge for Friends in the economically developed world to engage much more profoundly with economic justice and environmental survival. This demands that we reduce our personal, corporate and national disproportionate use of resources. I have a vision of an expanded peace testimony, deeply rooted in our past, nourished by living waters of faith and by the experiences of Friends and companion travellers. A peace testimony transformed. Sending out living shoots it will emerge in forms that we hardly recognise to engage us all in diverse ways with struggles for economic justice, aboriginal justice, environmental transformation, and racial, ethnic and interfaith coexistence. It calls us to risk, risk of letting go of some of our share in the world's wealth, risk of opening our Meetings, communities countries and corporations to new relationships, and risk that the transformation will be painful! It will require us to make do with less - less travel, fewer things. And yet the vision hold promise, promise of relationships of wholeness now missing with others with whom we share the Earth, promise or a depth of spirituality and relationship with the Divine perhaps beyond our imagining. My favourite section in Christian Faith and Practice continues to be #605, a statement from the All Friends Conference in 1920, which holds up this ideal: "In considering the character and basis for our testimony for peace ... its deepest foundation lies in the nature of God, ... and must be inclusive of all life. ...God's essential nature is love ... spiritual forces are the mightiest. ... We must set before us the highest ideal, that which ought to be, rather than that which is, believing that God is not alone the God of things as they are but the God of things as they are meant to be."

"If thine enemy hunger, feed him"--Proverbs 25:21

by David Gracie
AFSC

In 1947, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and the British Friends Service Council (FSC) received the Nobel Peace Prize, on behalf of the Religious Society of Friends. While the award was presented to the AFSC and the FSC, it was clear that the award was given to the Religious Society of Friends as a whole, for humanitarian service, work for reconciliation, and the spirit in which these were carried out.

This fiftieth anniversary helps us remember the post-World War II feeding program in Germany undertaken by the AFSC and FSC, and leads us to reflect on the motivation for Quaker service then and now. The citation for the Peace Prize included these words from a young Quaker worker: "We've come out for a definite purpose, to build up in a spirit of love what has been destroyed in a spirit of hatred."

Certainly, one reason to remember the World War II relief effort is that citizens of countries so recently at war felt led to help their former enemies. Many of the enablers were Quakers, members of a religious society that has always tried to overcome enmity with love. Is the example given to the world fifty years ago still relevant today? As we commemorate the Peace Award, shouldn't we respond in like manner to people of "enemy nations" who suffer hunger and exclusion today?

Six years ago, the United States fought a war against Iraq and more recently came dangerously close to another war with North Korea, two countries that many in the United States consider "enemy" nations. And through eight presidencies, the United States has maintained a policy of isolation and strangulation of Cuba. The Cold War is over, the Gulf War is past, but the people of these "enemy states" continue to suffer.

How can we today "build up in a spirit of love what has been destroyed in a spirit of hatred?" Our first obligation is to make others aware of the human price that is being paid by so many for simply bearing the label of enemy.

In the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) famine conditions--the result of major floods and poor harvests in both 1995 and 1996--are reaching disastrous levels. The international community's response to United Nations' aid appeals has been minimal and the reporting of these humanitarian crises by the U.S. media has been sporadic. In Iraq, the suffering of the civilian population after bombings in 1991 and years of economic sanctions has only recently begun to register in the West. The United Nations World Food Programme estimates that one fifth of Iraq's population of 20 million is at severe nutritional risk and that 100 children are dying every day.

Responses to these situations of need could ease movement toward negotiated peaceful relations with both North Korea and Iraq. And while the policies against Cuba are directed at the government, in fact, the unilateral economic measures have led to shortages of medicines, medical supplies, and some food, which affect ordinary citizens.

One of the roles of service agencies like the AFSC is to identify human needs, publicize them, and support or create channels of aid. We have a moral responsibility to try to change policies of governments, especially our own, that block aid or the possibility of reconciliation with other peoples.

While we believe that social and economic deterioration undermine true peace, we also believe that appropriate relief could ease movement toward negotiated peaceful relations. There are opportunities to aid the people of Cuba, Iraq, and North Korea. Citizens can contribute through private relief channels and demand that governments, including our own, put no licensing barriers between charitable organizations and the delivery of relief. Citizens should ask their governments to contribute funds for food relief to North Korea. Citizens can demand an end to the economic blockade against Cuba.

In Germany, people remember the food that sustained their lives after the war and they remember that the food came from people in the United States and Great Britain who had so recently been regarded as enemies.

At some future date will the people of Iraq, North Korea, and Cuba be able to recall a response to their needs that transcended histories of war and distrust and that enabled enemies to become friends? The AFSC urges Friends and all people of good will to honor the memory of 1947 and to live up to the Peace Award by taking action today.

David Gracie is the director of AFSC's Peace Education Division

For more information about AFSC's work in connection with Cuba, Iraq, North Korea, or other parts of the world where AFSC is working for reconciliation and peace, contact: Susan Gunn, AFSC International Division, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia, PA 19102.

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