Thinking About Pdf & Our First Thirty Years
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peacedevelopmentsspring 2011 THE HUMAN COSTS OF WAR THINKING ABOUT PDF & OUR FIRST THIRTY YEARS From kitchen table conversations to organizing around local and international concerns to under- homes, fear our children won’t have the lives we want standing their interconnection, PDF has focused for them. Creative thinkers are needed at the kitchen on building peaceful communities, and by exten- table and elsewhere to strategize in a complex, fluid and sion, avoiding and stopping war. challenging era, headlined by one of the most reaction- ary movements we’ve seen in a long time, attacking all We as donors, Board members and staff come from many classes and colors of people. walks of life, yet we have a common goal—creating the So how do we move the peace and justice movement conditions for peace. It hasn’t been an easy road. But after to a different level that deals with the anger and fear so 30 years, we have demonstrated our will to stay with the common today? It’s not about putting energy on one side work, and to continue supporting the people for the long or another. It is about profilerating peaceful practices, haul. working with one community group at a time, embracing Here in the U.S., we’ve achieved much in the last nonviolence, and driving through the openings we see to three decades: successes for civil rights, environmental move us forward. justice, women’s rights and demographic We at PDF have been able to survive diversity within institutions. But we still and thrive with an active Board and staff haven’t been able to stop war as a tool of who have given it their all. I give thanks U.S. policy and business interests. Looking everyday to the Creator that we’ve been back over the many times we’ve writ- able to provide grants and resources to the ten and thought about war and peace, we people who need them. PDF’s grantmak- know this is a deep struggle. We hope ing and program services provide hope for these stories will remind our PDF com- many grassroots community groups and munity of our long history, and give us even for other foundations. We know what strength to keep going. we support: peace, justice, human rights. We know we still have work to do. This And no more war. is not a time to sit back. There’s a lot of fear in this country, fear of immigrants, fear of losing jobs and Teresa Juarez President CONTEMPLATING WAR waging PEACE “WE AT THE PEACE DEVELOPMENT FUND ARE DEDICATED TO MAKING SURE THAT LACK OF SUffICIENT FUNDING DOES NOT “Justice is not an act STAND IN THE WAY OF THOSE WHO WISH TO EDUCATE THE of vengeance.” students for the next six years. With $1 billion, we PUBLIC ABOUT THE DANGERS OF WAR AND WHO ARE WORKING JOHN VAUGHN could create direct and indirect jobs in education TO BUILD A MOVEMENT FOR PEACE.” (SPRING 1982) and healthcare, and clean energy in areas like Cleveland, OH that estimates say won’t return to In the three decades of PDF’s work, which included The National Priorities Project adds it all up for prerecession employment until 2024. three financial bubbles (Japanese, dot.com and the us (see www.costofwar.com), and these are just a The U.S. accounts for 42% of the world’s subprime mortgage crisis) and two recessions, few of their findings. There are 2.5 million Head military spending. It drains our pockets, it kills our the costs of war—both human and material—have Start-eligible children in the U.S., but less than children and it poisons the world. continued to escalate. In the latest recession, while a million places. The Afghan War cost for 2011 For 30 years PDF has made grants nationally states are rocked by their own financial crises, would provide Head Start funding for ALL eligible and internationally trying to slow down this war spending on the war in Afghanistan and Iraq has children for 15.6 years. It would pay for health machine. Peace, like war, we said, must be waged. continued to climb. Our grantee, the National Pri- insurance for ALL 50 million uninsured for 1.7 We and our grantees have fought for economic orities Project, wisely asks—what are real costs years. It would make a huge dent in the cost to justice, environmental sustainability, rehabilitative to ourselves, our children and our future as we convert all of the nation’s non-renewable energy justice and a principled and comprehensive im- contemplate these never-ending wars? What does production to solar or wind. migration policy, to name just a few of the issues it mean to our grantees in grassroots communities For the $1.26 trillion that the U.S. has allocated we have championed with almost 5,000 grants around the U.S. when the Obama Administration to date for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we totaling more than $21 million. These are the vital requests $119 billion for the war in Afghanistan could double the amount of Pell Grants awarded resources we bring to grassroots communities. and an additional $51 billion for the war in Iraq? to each of our 19 million college and university This is waging peace. n Another Look at Peace Proliferating Peace from Peace Developments, In the 2003 run-up to the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Winter 1987–88 PDF Executive Director John Vaughn wrote this statement on behalf of PDF. The Contra War in Nicaragua lasted approximately from 1981 to 1988. As the President for social reform, through their steadfast, The war began as a series of rebel- advances an un- non-violent resistance to stateside terror lions against the Sandinista government that overthrew the precedented policy and unrelenting systemic oppression, Somoza dictatorship in 1979. The U.S. republican administration shift that validates show us that proliferating peace is not led by President Ronald Reagan saw the Contras as a convenient war as a pre- simply about opposing war, but ac- tool for removing the Sandinistas from power in Nicaragua, after emptive strategy tively pursuing justice both at home and accusing them of supporting the guerrillas in El Salvador, being in foreign policy, abroad. too closely allied to Cuba and being Communists. Reagan’s the Peace Develop- Proliferating peace calls each of administration covertly armed and financed the war, leading to ment Fund casts its us—individually and collectively—to the the Iran-Contra scandal. Nonetheless, American support, overt lot with the peace- consistent, sustained pursuit of equi- or covert, did not favor the Contras, so both sides agreed to a makers. We stand with the legions of table relationships between and among ceasefire in March of 1988. patriotic Americans and other members of people, nations and the environment. During this period, PDF supported groups opposed to U.S. civil society around the world who oppose Seeking justice and peace requires us to financed wars in third world countries, such as the New England placing 250,000 of our sons and daughters shape American social and cultural val- Central America Network (NECAN). NECAN was a network of in harm’s way on the notion that violence ues to respect the humanity of all people, 150 grassroots groups across New England, organized to op- is the most politically expedient remedy and apply our ingenuity to the protec- pose U.S. military intervention in Central America. to real dangers in the world. tion of everyone, not just a select few. When we think of war in the Third World, the image is very Justice is not an act of vengeance. It The persistence of inequality, political different from the image of war between the superpowers. In- is a commitment to the universal appli- exclusion, xenophobia, and exploitation stead of missiles and silos with someone’s finger on the nuclear cation of certain values such as self- in domestic public and private policies trigger, we think of razed houses, starving refugees, of soldiers determination, equality, human rights translates into a flagrant disregard for breaking down the doors at dawn, or of people farming by night and unilateral global disarmament. Now cooperation in the global arena. When and hiding in trenches from bombing raids during the day. more than ever, we believe that our we allow our political leaders to cast Of the 20 million people killed in 150 wars since 1945, none national security and global stability segments of our population to the ranks have been killed by nuclear weapons. The plague of continual rests on our ability to build new partner- of acceptable “collateral damage” for the war in the Third World brings us up against the harsh truth that ships and coalitions for the advance- achievement of political and economic even with the elimination of nuclear weapons the world would ment of these life-affirming ideals. In this goals, we silently sanction the global not be safe from war and its devastation. post-September 11th era, however, our export of these practices in the name of Although the methods of warfare in the Third World may be political leadership has allowed our fear, preserving and defending our freedom. different, the causes of war are often remarkably familiar, and nationalism and military superiority to PDF adds its voice to the dissenting superpower involvement is generally close to the surface. The lead us down a path that has entrenched global majority. We do so not out of a na- struggle of Third World peoples for control of their own lands our enemies and alienated our allies.