Colombia Call-in Day

Please take a few minutes today to care about what our tax dollars (well, mostly yours at the moment...) are financing in Colombia.

from Peace Communities:

On Monday, May 22, call your congressional representative (House only) to ask that U.S. aid to Colombia support human rights, alternative development and the internally displaced. Call the congressional switchboard at 202.224.3121 to be connected to your representative's office. Ask to speak with the foreign policy aide. It is okay to leave a message if s/he is not available. Below is a sample script to help you with your call. Additional talking points are below. Also, if your church, school or organization has ties in Colombia, make sure to tell your representative what we're hearing directly from our partners on the ground - they are calling for greater U.S. social aid to Colombia, rather than a military focus.

Sample script:
"I am a constituent of Rep. _________ participating in Days of Prayer and Action for Colombia. I urge Representative ________ to vote in favor of amendments to the foreign aid bill that transfer funds from Colombian military aid to economic and social aid. The war in Colombia is still going on, and the country is still home to massive internal displacement, human rights abuses by all armed actors and the worst humanitarian crisis in our hemisphere. The 3 million internally displaced people in Colombia is exceeded in number only by Sudan. U.S. support for Colombia's military is only exacerbating the detrimental effect of the war on the civilian population. And recent coca growth statistics make a mockery of U.S. efforts in the War on Drugs in the Andes. Congress should approve measures to increase rural alternative development programs and help the humanitarian crisis in Colombia."

OR send an fax to your representative on this issue by visiting Sojourner's website at http://go.sojo.net/campaign/colombia_06.

In many people's opinion including my own, Plan Colombia is a royal you-know-what mess, and every day we continue to finance the Colombian military, under the guise of anti-(the new drug)terrorism, is a bad (and often dangerous) day for: Colombian workers, community leaders, union leaders, peace activists, students, mothers...you get the picture.

The military/paramilitary here work so closely together and at such a high human cost. We as US taxpayers need to speak up to say, not with our tax dollars. Isn't it about time we as a country finally learn the lesson that dumping bags of dollars in the lap of a foreign military in the midst of a civil war is a bad idea? It leads to horrific human rights abuses, paid for in part by you and by me.

Thanks to everyone who takes a minute to do this. It's so strange sometimes to be living a fairly ordinary life in a country trapped by half a century of violent conflict. And that's how it feels, trapped. Many things I would never accept at home become normalized here -- random searches nearing elections, tanks and riot soldiers to handle peaceful protestors carrying banners, the whiff of tear gas from the university drifting past my lunch spot, soldiers sitting in the park, watching, illegal armed groups' graffiti on grocery stores, meeting people who have been displaced, not once, but multiple times. People separated from their families, families torn apart by their involvement in the "conflict," which itself starts to sound like a euphemism for civil war.

Effects so pervasive, so inescapable, they become part of daily life. Self-censorship is the easiest and safest route, that and a vote for security, a vote that is a plea for ignorance, for normal life, something people are so desperate to retain. The elections are this coming weekend, and the city is tense. Two universities have already shut down to avoid protests. Yesterday we saw the most beautiful parade, for Gaviria, the Polo Democratico candidate everyone I know is supporting. Enormous wings painted like butterflies dancing on the wind, children with cat whiskers and moustaches painted on, teenagers hopping and jamming on stilts, and music music music everywhere.

from El Tiempo, 5/21/06

Gaviria filled the main plaza (more so than his opponent, reported El Tiempo) with his supporters, but he's polling around 27%. People are scared, and the security discourse has a powerful hold.

Still, walking home from the store at dusk last night, it was easy to get caught up in my roommate's little dream: what if he wins? Living here, you see what a change that would bring, what a whiff of hope and air in a stale and chastened place.

Additional talking points:

We believe that we should help our neighbor, Colombia, especially since our own demand for drugs increases the violence Colombians suffer. But to make sure we help Colombia and address our own problems at home, we ask that Congress:

1. Increase funding for internally displaced persons and victims of violence. Resources for internally displaced persons and alternative development programs are currently being cut in order to fund the paramilitary demobilization process. Assistance to victims of the conflict - including for programs that benefit internally displaced persons and Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities - should be increased at this moment, rather than decreased.

2. Focus on the social side of the equation. Support initiatives to cut military aid and increase social aid to Colombia. Increase support for alternative development programs, rural development and humanitarian aid for refugees and the displaced.

3. Don't give Colombia a blank check. Sign letters and support initiatives that urge respect for human rights and progress on breaking army ties to paramilitaries. Enforce the human rights conditions on U.S. assistance-thank you if you just signed the letter to Secretary Rice urging this! Put tough conditions on assistance for the paramilitary demobilization to ensure underlying structures are dismantled and abuses end.

4. Defend the rights of threatened civil society leaders. Support initiatives and letters that protect church workers, human rights defenders, union leaders and others under threat from all sides of the conflict.

5. End the aerial spraying program, and increase funding for alternative development programs. The aerial spraying program is not only an inhumane program-destroying food crops belonging to small farm families and polluting water sources-it is also an ineffective one. Despite the most massive spraying campaigns ever in 2004 and 2005, coca cultivation has risen instead of fallen. The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) recently reported that coca cultivation in Colombia reached 144,000 hectares in 2005, a level not seen since 2002. Fumigation forces coca farmers to plant in new areas but does little to actually reduce production. Only through alternative development in the Andes, coupled with demand-reduction through drug prevention and treatment programs at home, can we reduce the flow of drugs.
To read more on this issue visit the Adam Isacson's blog, of the Center for International Policy at www.ciponline.org/colombia/blog/archives/000243.htm.

6. Increase funding for drug treatment programs here at home. If we do not face our own problem of drug abuse, we will be chasing production back and forth across the region for decades to come. The FY07 request for federal drug control programs is more weighted than ever towards supply reduction rather than demand reduction, and includes a 19 percent cut in prevention programs.