Presbyterian Peace Fellowship - 📣 We have an exciting announcement!

Anchoring Our Work In Abolition Dear friends, We are in a pivotal moment for the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship.  We learned a lot together after committing to a period of “Deep Focus” in 2020. This period began in the midst of the racial justice uprisings across the country following the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and after a history of many more deaths at the hand of the state. As we evaluated that time of study and action, we felt we needed to articulate our commitments in a new way. A small group spent about nine months of intense work together considering our history, values, and collective experience as an organization. In early 2022 they brought several concrete proposals to the Activist Council (AC) for consideration – one of which is our new vision statement!  Here’s what we see in the world right now: a rise in fascism and right-wing extremism across the globe, fueled in part by Christian Nationalism; climate chaos causing severe weather and loss of homes and livelihoods worldwide; national uprisings in the U.S. in support of Black lives; ongoing global health crises including the COVID-19 pandemic; and dangerous war threatening nuclear disaster and exacerbating the energy crises.  We will not stand by while this culture of structural violence escalates.   And: We are more clear than ever that these conditions across “issue lines” are connected to one another.  So, we strengthen our analysis and move deeper into our commitment to antiracism to understand that war is rooted in structural violence.Therefore, we seek an end to war by addressing root causes of structural violence and expressions of that violence outside of war itself. We must work against settler colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy if we hope to begin to embody the things that make for peace. PPF has a long history of taking unpopular stands that we believe are faithful to the life and witness of Jesus.  Each new stand we have taken and new direction we have chosen has come at a cost that seemed high in the moment but appears to have been faithful and bold in all the right ways in retrospect. As we commit to the abolition of policing and incarceration, we also embrace abolition as a framework that will guide all of our work together. This framework compels us to commit to over-turn cultures of domination and structural violence, as we simultaneously build and envision a new world together.  As the Southern Black Freedom Movement leader, Kwame Ture, said, “When you see people call themselves revolutionary always talking about destroying, destroying, destroying but never talking about building or creating, they’re not revolutionary. They do not understand the first thing about revolution. It’s creating.”1 From our earliest moments, we have been an abolitionist movement.  The legacy of PPF’s eighty-year history is marked by moments of significant change in direction at regular intervals in order to stay true to our overarching commitment to stand against violence and war and to focus on the things that make for peace: Support for Conscientious Objectors beginning during WWII A commitment to stop the proliferation of Nuclear weapons An embrace of nonviolent direct action in situations of high conflict, and our work to close the US Army’s “School of the Americas” Long-term, partnership-rooted accompaniment work An ongoing focus on ending gun violence A partnership with Fossil Free PCUSA to mitigate climate change and it’s resulting violence in front-line communities Our “Deep Focus” on the roots of police violence in the wake of the murder of George Floyd   And: this new vision statement calls us to imagine and create a new world together, with new cultures and systems that make for peace.  Our dedication to the abolition of war remains as strong as ever, especially in the wake of ongoing militarized violence in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Palestine, Yemen, and Ukraine, and the threat of warfare nearly everywhere. Our commitment to the abolition of fossil fuels is linked to the violence of climate change landing primarily on front-line communities.  Our efforts to abolish gun violence is vital in a country where gun deaths are rising.  Our emerging work to abolish police and prisons is a bold attack on the confluence of racism and capitalism, which has had a devastating impact on poor communities across our nation, especially those who are Black, Indigenous, or Latinx.   Our new vision statement articulates who we have always been, in words that are particular to this time and place. It also will continue to shape us as we grow and evolve together.  Together, we will wage peace, boldly and in all ways.   In solidarity,  Dr. Robert Ross and rev. abby mohaupt Co-Moderators of Presbyterian Peace Fellowship Executive Committee From a speech Kwame Ture gave at Whittier College as part of a speaking tour of American college campuses in 1971. http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/blackspeech/scarmichael-2.html Presbyterian Peace Fellowship 845-786-6743 | presbypeacefellowship.org Instagram | Facebook | Twitter DONATE