Despite the title of this column, this week's edition is not completely random. The peace organization Witness for Peace was formed in 1983 and so is 20 years old this year. This month, WFP is returning to each of the Latin American countries where they have been a nonviolent presence. Two friends of mine, Dan Trabue and Rick Axtell, have left to go on the WFP delegation to Nicaragua, where everything started for WFP.

Background: Latin America has had to endure 500 years of various forms of oppression, beginning with the "discovery" of the "New World" by Christopher Columbus. The various indigenous civilizations of Central and South America had to endure not only the invasion and colonialization by European peoples from Spain and Italy, but also various attempts at genocide, slavery (including both the slavery of the indigenous peoples -- "Indians" as Columbus mis-named them -- but also the trade in African slaves), and, after struggling for independence, various forms of economic and military colonization and exploitation by others, especially the United States. Nicaragua is a case in point. From 1903 to 1933, U.S. Marines occupied Nicaragua and exploited the peasants in order to protect U.S. business interests. Before the Marines were withdrawn, they installed the Samoza family as Nicaragua's dictators and trained the Nicaraguan army and national guard to brutally repress the people and keep Samoza in power (as long as U.S. business interests were protected). In 1979, Samoza was overthrown by a people's revolution -- partly through nonviolent actions such as strikes, work stoppages and slowdowns, underground newspapers, etc., but also partly through an armed guerilla struggle. The revolutionary group and new government were called the "Sandinistas" because they named themselves after an earlier labor leader, Sandino. The Sandinistas were a coalition of groups: some Marxists with various degrees of agreement with Soviet-style Communism, some Roman Catholic priests and liberation theologians, labor groups, etc. The new government's main goal was to be independent of influence from either the U.S. or the Soviet Union and to recreate their economy and society in a way that benefitted ordinary people and not just the rich. But Ronald Reagan and many others in the U.S., especially Republicans, considered the Sandinistas a "Communist threat" and proceeded to commit to their removal. The Reagan government armed former Samoza soldiers called "the Contras" (for "counter revolutionaries") who lived in camps in Costa Rica and waged terrorist attacks in the Nicaraguan countryside -- burning villages, destroying convents, schools, and hospitals, raping nuns and other women, kidnapping boys and young men as "recruited" child soldiers in the Contra troops and kidnapping girls and young women as coerced prostitutes for the Contra men, etc.

The birth of Witness for Peace. Various peace activists, church groups, and students of Latin American liberation theology in the U.S. and Canada had been interested in the struggles of ordinary people throughout Latin America since the 1960s. By 1983, many came to believe that the U.S. was using the Contras to plan a full-scale U.S. invasion and re-occupation of Nicaragua. Groups traveled to Nicaragua to better understand the situation and seek an effective response. They noticed that whenever they were in a village, the Contras wouldn't attack. They quickly realized that the Contras needed the U.S. aid in money and arms and so the Contras could not afford to kill U.S. citizens, even by accident. The activists had an idea: Why not create a nonviolent "human shield" of groups of U.S. citizens using their own money to travel to Nicaragua and live and learn from the peasants. Some would stay as "long-term volunteers" to co-ordinate the various short-term delegations. The short-term delegates would return to testify to Congress (and in churches, synagogues, civic associations, etc.) about what they had seen concerning the situation. Since most of the early leaders of WFP had connections to churches, they recruited heavily through church networks, but because some participants were Jewish (and, later, of other faiths or no particular faith), Witness for Peace has always been officially secular or "non-sectarian."

The concept worked. By 1984, so many members of Witness for Peace had returned from Nicaragua and exposed the lies of the Reagan administration that Congress cut off funding for the Contras. (The effect of older church women, business leaders, nuns, and others than the "usual peace suspects" had a large impact on Congressional leaders and many others.) Although the Reagan government continued to fund the Contras secretly and illegally (the so-called "Iran-Contra scandal"), many people are certain the WFP's work prevented a direct U.S. invasion.

(For more on this amazing story, including some times of high drama and danger, see Witness for Peace: A Story of Resistance by Ed Griffin-Nolan [Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991].)

In the late '80s and throughout the '90s, WFP expanded its work from a single focus on Nicaragua, to using a similar strategy in Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba, the Chiapas region of Mexico, and Columbia. This summer, in honor of the 20th Anniversary of WFP's first delegation, short-term delegations are returning to all those areas where WFP has ever worked and will, again, live with the people, document conditions and investigate causes -- especially factors influenced by U.S. foreign policy, and return to bear witness to their churches, synagogues or other places of worship, civic centers, the media, and to Congress -- becoming a citizen lobbying campaign for massive policy change.

I have a special place in my heart for Witness for Peace, even though I have not been as closely connected to it as many of my friends, for it was WFP which gave me my initial "experiments in truth," the truth of nonviolent witness for social change. I had become a pacifist while in the U.S. army in '82 (leading to a conscientious objector discharge). As a student at a small Baptist college in south Florida in 1983, I read about WFP in Sojourners magazine and knew that I had to participate. I applied for a delegation several months away and raised money to go from friends, relatives, and churches. I brushed up on my Spanish and went on the 3rd short-term delegation. I returned once more in '83 and again in '84. After that, my nonviolent activism changed directions to focus on the nuclear arms race and the struggle for an end to apartheid in South Africa. My only connection to WFP was to continue to receive its newsletter and, from time to time, support it by purchasing a T-shirt or bumper sticker. I put more effort into other organizations (and into academic work, church work, getting married, etc.). However, since several of my close friends and fellow church members continued to be involved with WFP, I never lost track of what they were doing. They remain officially secular, but with huge church connections. The list of those who have gone on one or more short-term delegations would read like "Who's Who in Peace Work in the United States." At least 10 people in my home congregation have made a short-term delegation with WFP. Dr. J. Michelle Tooley, a close friend and my former family deacon, is now on WFP's board and leads at least one delegation per year -- usually to Guatemala which has become her second homeland.

What does Witness for Peace's story teach us at Every Church a Peace Church? I think it teaches us to dream big and act boldly. A small group of peace activists, most with church connections, with little money and no time to waste, created a thriving citizens' movement, took on an aggressive imperialist military policy of a hugely popular U.S. president during a time of national self-righteousness and aggression and -- at least partially -- won. The economic violence against Nicaragua and the rest of Latin America continues, but, except for Columbia, almost all of Latin America is less openly violent today than 20 years ago. Witness for Peace played a large role in that change and continues to work to end the economic and other structural violence. They tapped into the hidden springs of spiritual power in faith groups, especially the Christian churches -- even some very conservative Protestant evangelical churches.

WFP also showed the power of even a small experience with nonviolent work for justice to change the lives of the volunteers. Testimony after testimony from former delegates relates that WFP changed their lives. Some changed careers. Some changed churches or their approach to their faith. Some changed political parties. Almost all have sought ways to take the lessons they learned in delegations to Latin America and apply it to the problems of neighborhoods and communities in the U.S. (E.g., I remember how, in the early '90s, a campaign to "take back the streets" of Raleigh, NC, from drugs and gangs was thoroughly nonviolent and very multicultural. Upon investigation, I found that the campaign was started by a middle-class, suburban African-American woman whose daughter had gone on several short-term WFP delegation and eventually talked her mother -- this woman -- into making a trip.) Every Church a Peace Church can and must tap into these same spiritual resources in the churches -- this time in our quest to change the churches themselves into places where gospel nonviolence is thoroughly incarnated into the lives of the members.

To learn more about Witness for Peace and its current programs, see www.witnessforpeace.org.

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