On Paris, Beirut, & Burundi: Responding when the whole world hurts

BY: LUCY DUNCAN
PUBLISHED: NOVEMBER 20, 2015

Topics:

• Acting in Faith
• Posts by Lucy
• Spiritual Foundations

Blue marble earth

Photo: NASA via Flickr CC / NASA

later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere 

-Warsan Shire

Symptoms

• 128 or more killed in attacks in Paris in November
• 43 killed in suicide bombing in Beirut, Lebanon in November
• 7 killed in recent grenade attacks in Burundi as violence there escalates
• 47 killed in Kano & Yola, Nigeria in suicide bombing attacks this week
• 220,000 killed in the Syrian Civil War
• 6,000 Rohingya stranded at sea in May after fleeing Burma due to persecution
• 1051 people killed extra-judicially by police in the U.S. so far this year
• 325 mass shootings in the U.S. so far this year
• 414,481 people deported by U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement in 2014
• 1419 people have been executed on death row in the U.S. since 1976
• 215-276 children have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, & Somalia from July-Nov, 2015
• 547 children killed in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge in 2014
• $3 billion/year is sent to Israel in military aid each year (& may grow to $4.5)
• 2.2 million people are currently incarcerated in U.S. prisons
• Nearly 60% of the US discretionary budget is spent on the military

Diagnosis

A system that perpetuates trauma, answering violence with more violence. A culture based on fear, which prioritizes the right to arms (for individuals and governments) and the oppression of the poor & disenfranchised over the care of children and community. The drum beats of war beat on. The cries for all (including teachers) to arm themselves increase. We have become numb and must fight our way out of the chains of a culture that is killing us and demands an inhumane price, our souls, for its perpetuation.

Remedy?

To breathe and grieve. To listen to those who suffer most. To resist the cries to answer violence with yet more violence. To withdraw support from those who profit from the war machine. To answer fear with love. To cry out, “stop” to all the wars happening now, cry “no” to the next war. To renounce extremism, racism and religious intolerance. To sing. To commit to reparations. To cook together and share food and land. To begin with healing ourselves, then help others to heal. To see ourselves in the face of another. To knock down borders and walls. To open our hearts and our homes. To seed and create another way to live.

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About the Author

Lucy Duncan

Lucy serves as Director of Friends Relations for AFSC. She has been a storyteller for 20 years and has worked with Quaker meetings on telling stories for racial justice and of spiritual experience. Before working for AFSC, she was Director of Communications at FGC, managed QuakerBooks of FGC, and owned and managed her own children's bookstore in Omaha, The Story Monkey. She attends Green Street Friends Meeting (PhYM) and lives with her son and partner in a Quaker cemetery.

http://www.afsc.org/friends/paris-beirut-burundi-responding-when-whole-world-hurts

American Friends Service Committee

Sponsored · 

later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere

-Warsan Shire

In this Acting in Faith post Lucy Duncan considers the attacks on Paris, Beirut, and the violence elsewhere and considers a diagnosis and remedies.

On Paris, Beirut, & Burundi: Responding when the whole world hurts | AFSC @afsc_org

Remedy? To breathe and grieve. To listen to those who suffer most. To resist the cries to answer violence with yet more violence.

AFSC.ORG

US Taxpayer dollars are funding military aid to Israel - the largest US Foreign Aid recipient. 

Please consider adding your name to the petition from American Friends Service Committee. 

No military aid to Israel

The U.S. is considering giving Israel $45 billion in new military aid over the next 10 years. 

That $45 billion will purchase weapons and resources that will help Israel enforce the occupation, keep Gaza under blockade, and continue violating Palestinians’ human rights. 

These weapons will also encourage regional arms races which sustain regional conflicts and instability. 

Sign our petition to say no to military aid for Israel.  

Dear President Obama,

We, the undersigned, urge you to oppose plans for continuing and expanding U.S. military aid to Israel.

Successful negotiations to limit nuclear proliferation in the Middle East should not be used to justify increased conventional weapons proliferation.

The proposed transfer of new advanced weaponry and a new 10-year deal to provide Israel with up to $45 billion in military aid at U.S. taxpayer expense - and without accountability for human rights violations - will deepen U.S. complicity in Israel’s human rights abuses of Palestinians.

It will also fuel ongoing regional arms races, furthering regional instability and sustaining ongoing conflicts.

It’s time for the U.S. to stop giving Israel a blank check for more weapons, without any accountability for human rights violations or an end to the occupation.

We ask that you reject calls for increases in U.S. military aid to Israel and stop giving military aid to Israel altogether. 

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This petition has a goal of 10000 signatures

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AFSC: Trans-Pacific Partnership: An analysis...plus This and that.....

FOLKS, Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) really matters! 

Trans-Pacific Partnership: An analysis

After years of requests by hundreds of organizations including the American Friends Service Committee, the White House finally has released a draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) text. 

If approved by Congress, the TPP would set rules governing approximately 40 percent of the global economy.   Frighteningly, this pact puts corporations firmly in the driver’s seat shaping health, environmental and economic policies around the globe. 

The newly released text clearly demonstrates what has long been feared: The TPP’s investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions would enable investors from any of the 11 participating countries to challenge environmental and public health laws, regulations and court decisions in international tribunals that circumvent the U.S. and any other country’s judicial system.  

A number of smaller free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties already grant these powers to transnational corporations — and they are being used to attack clean air rules in Peru, mining laws in El Salvador, a provincial fracking moratorium in Canada and a court decision against the oil giant Chevron in Ecuador, among many other examples.  Expanding this system throughout the Pacific Rim would only increase the occurrence of these challenges and further open governments to lawsuits costing millions or even billions of dollars for protecting their citizens.

The ISDS provisions alone are reason to sink the entire TPP deal, but that's just one of the concessions that the over 600 corporate advisors to the negotiations have inserted that will guarantee corporate profits while harming the rest of us.  Under the TPP, U.S. exports of fracked natural gas would automatically be deemed in the public interest, bypassing certain environmental and economic reviews, if going to any of eleven TPP countries throughout the Pacific Rim – including Japan, the world’s largest importer of natural gas. 

While corporations reap a profit, AFSC's work around the world has shown us who bears the brunt of the human cost of climate change – the poorest and the most marginalized communities. 

In addition, the TPP is full of language designed to delay the introduction of low-cost generic medications and that enables pharmaceutical companies to challenge members’ public health programs’ cost-saving mechanisms.  This threatens to increase health care prices and reduce access to medicine for residents of member countries, once again lining the pockets of the wealthy off the backs of the poor. 

The TPP may benefit some Wall Street executives, but it is a disaster for the environment and for public health and it must be stopped. AFSC has been working with a nation-wide coalition of labor, environmental, consumer, and faith-based organizations to stop the TPP and push for trade policies that put people over profits. 

For more resources on the TPP, visit:

Corporate Attacks on the Public Interest

Public Citizen

Related Content: 

RESOURCE

AFSC Trans Pacific Partnership Treaty

http://afsc.org/story/trans-pacific-partnership-analysis

American Friends Service Committee

Sponsored · 

After years of requests by hundreds of organizations including the American Friends Service Committee, the White House finally has released a draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) text. Want to understand what this trade deal could mean for our environment and economy? Here's a short overview. ‪#‎TPP‬

Trans-Pacific Partnership: An analysis | AFSC @afsc_org

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) may benefit some Wall Street executives, but it is a disaster for the environment and for public health and it must be stopped.

AFSC.ORG