Human rights delegation begins two-week trip through Colombia

For two weeks, eight of us are part of a delegation in Colombia organized by the Bogota office of the Fellowship of Reconciliation: Brandy Bauer, a native of Virginia presently living and working in Denmark; Joe de Raymond and Sarah Snider of Freemansburg, Pennsylvania; Kelly Dowdell of Calgary, Alberta; Ivan Kasimoff of Los Angeles, California; William Northrup of Nashville, Tennessee; Adrian Martinez Valencia of Las Loma, El Salvador; and me, hailing from Dundas, Ontario, and currently serving as the chairperson of FOR's National Council. During our first days we are learning especially about the local context of issues under discussion in North America, such as the Free Trade Agreements signed by Canada and the United States, and the proposals related to locating U.S. military forces to bases in Colombia.

At times overwhelmed, we watched, in one session, a film and discussed a Minga held in 2004. A Minga is a nonviolent response to oppression, respectful of the humanity of one's opponents, and also action against the oppression; it is a form of Andean, and especially indigenous, collective analysis and decision making. People have responded to violence from several sources. As one person put it in the video, "We can not remain victims. We will be free through our collective action."

The 2004 Minga put forward five key proposals: first, a rejection of Free Trade Agreements that serve the interests of elites, not the people, not Mother Earth; second, a rejection of terror; third, respect of treaties with indigenous peoples; and fourth, a rejection of laws forced upon the people. Finally, the people called for grassroots movements in Colombia and around the world to come together to build a better world.

The phrase ser para tener o tener para ser spoke to the delegation; namely: Are we born to possess or do we seek what we need in order to live? This recalled for me a passage in Deuteronomy 30, cited often in the anti-nuclear demonstrations of the 1980s, where Yahweh offers a way of life or death and calls upon people to choose the way of life. Perhaps those presently in governments here in Colombia — as well as in the rich North, representing the powerful economic elites of the world — will come to see that their way is a way of death. Earth can not bear the greed of the few.

But I am not naive that the elites can come to such a perspective without nonviolent action, such as the courageous work of grassroots communities here in Colombia.

For the delegation, we are exploring ways to respond not only here, but when we return to our respective communities with greater resolve to create communities of resistance in solidarity with friends here and around the world. I do believe , in words of the World Social Forum, that another world is possible.