More on Ghost Ranch '01

Plans emerge from seminar on
militarism and globalization

"How Militarism Makes Globalization Possible":
Ghost Ranch, August 2001

Witherspoon and Peace Fellowship participants shape plans for action focusing on US military action in Colombia

[10-5-01]

by Anne Barstow

When the 50 members of the joint Witherspoon-Peace Fellowship seminar gathered in a circle to introduce themselves, we discovered that we were a rich resource in ourselves. Amongst us we accounted for social activism in dozens of areas -- anti-land mines, hunger programs, peace marches, hand gun control, C. O. support, anti-racism work, and on and on. A third of us had kept vigil and prayed at Ft. Benning. We came to this first joint seminar of these two Presbyterian activist groups to learn about how military power is essential to the economic take-over of the globe. Our two case studies were US policy in the current crisis in Colombia and the militarizing of the Mexican border.

To guide us we had three excellent, committed resource persons:

	Alice Winters has served for 25 years as a Presbyterian mission worker in Colombia, is now acting dean of the Reformed School of Theology in Barranquilla. When the violence reached a frightening level there, the Mission Board asked our workers to come home. Alice has chosen to stay, to help congregations assist the huge refugee population.
	Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer teaches Justice and Peace Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis. He writes and speaks all over the country about the arms race and the way that US foreign policy impacts on the lives of third world people. He is a major speaker each year at Ft. Benning, calling for the closing of the School of the Americas there.
	Rick Ufford-Chase is founder and director of Borderlinks in Tucson and Nogales, Mexico. Rick's organization offers educational tours across the border to hundreds of church and community groups, enabling them to see the way US corporations exploit the labor force there. Recently he co-founded Humane Borders, a group that provides water and blankets to immigrants making the dangerous desert crossing.

Although the three speakers had not met before, they provided us with a beautifully integrated week of lectures and discussions. We learned of the havoc tearing at Colombia as four armies fight over it, a tragedy now compounded by US military aid. This aid, given under the guise of "the war on drugs," is in fact forcing the removal of small farmers from their lands, producing an internal refugee population of over two million people. In regard to the Mexican border, we learned about another misguided strategy of the US drug war, the assigning of army troops to our southern border. This policy in fact militarizes the border, applying draconian restrictions on immigrants who have nothing to do with the drug trade.

Each of the speakers wove together the web of exploitation that US policy imposes on smaller countries whose resources and markets we covet: how we train and equip foreign militaries to "clear the land" of resistance so that US corporations can come in unopposed to develop natural resources (in Colombia: oil, lumber, coal, gas, uranium) and to open up new transportation to support that exploitation (in Colombia, a new canal to replace the Panama Canal, a highway to connect western Brazil with the Pacific, etc.). That many local people are killed as they resist losing their land, and many more driven into refugee camps, is considered "the price that must be paid" for American business to expand.

Two moments that jolted us: when we learned that underneath the Colombian coca fields currently being sprayed with poison lies the largest undeveloped oil field in Latin America (so, "it's not about drugs, it's about oil") and - when we realized that the Presbyterian Church of Colombia had written twice within the last year calling for support from the PCUSA but none of us knew about those requests.

We were challenged to think about what this means for Christians. Nelson-Pallmeyer pointed out the ways that Jesus broke with the idea that God's justice requires violence: by rejecting the ideas of apocalypse and of hating one's enemies. To love one's enemies thus becomes the very mark of a Christian. He calls for a new theology that repudiates the idea of a warlike God. Ufford-Chase asked us to imagine what the New Church would be like -- a church that gives top priority to ways to change an unjust society, and that feeds our spirits by its hunger for justice. Winters challenged us to read the Bible through the eyes of those living at survival level, to prepare ourselves to bring to light the way economic inequality is at the heart of the world's troubles.

In small discussion groups we hammered out what we must do:

	Call on the PCUSA to keep us informed about what the Colombian church is going through; send Colombia letters to the Synods.
	Urge World-Wide Ministries to send the Moderator and Stated Clerk to Colombia.
	Send a joint Witherspoon-PPF delegation to Colombia, through Witness for Peace (this is being scheduled for late Spring, 2002; the leader is Betty Kersting). [Plans are moving ahead for this!]
	Recruit a person from each Presbytery to see that every Presbytery is represented on trips to Colombia and Borderlinks trips to Mexico.
	Give financial support to Humane Borders in Arizona.
	We agreed to ask our government for no more military aid to the repressive Colombian army, no more poison spraying of Colombian fields, but instead more money for drug prevention and cure in this country.

And we took time off from these urgent matters to write a letter to the PCUSA calling for respectful treatment of our Moderator.

The lecture-discussions were supplemented by slide shows on Colombia by Anne Barstow and Tom Driver, and on the Mid-East crisis by Len Bjorkman. Meanwhile, Witherspooners and PPFers enjoyed time for leisurely discussion among themselves. One group even found time to climb the gorgeous cliffs that surround Ghost Ranch.

One participant commented, "This is the way the church should do 'practical theology' -- with high quality speakers...and vigorous discussion." Another said, "The course far exceeded my expectations in all respects." Still another added that "...the input by the whole group was an integral part; it produced an integrated plan of action by the whole group."

On the final day Jane Hanna showed a video about the militarizing of space, documenting the Bush administration's plan to assert unilateral US hegemony over space, guaranteed by weapons in space. This tremendously important topic will be the subject of next summer's second joint seminar at Ghost Ranch, scheduled for July 29 - Aug 4, 2002. The Children's Program will be in operation, so families with children and grandchildren should plan to come.

We ended as we began, in a circle. In light of the danger and inhumanity we had learned about, our prayers were simple: that our country be a force for building peace, not destroying it; that God may bless the Colombian church's effort to become "sanctuaries of peace"; that we may do this work in the name of Jesus.

Ross Kinsler has provided a shorter report, also worth reading!