2010 Days of Prayer and Action for Colombia

2010 Days of Prayer and Action for Colombia, a letter of thanks from our National Grassroots Organizer...

You and over 43,000 other participants made this year's National Days of Action for Colombia a resounding success.  The surge of action brought an unprecedented 70 cities face-to-face with Colombia's 5 million displaced people, shedding light on our hemisphere's hidden humanitarian crisis and the U.S. policies behind it.

Here's the evidence that our call for policy change is growing louder:

• 43,850 people participated in 134 awareness-raising events in 70 cities across the U.S. and Colombia (a 50% increase over last year's overall participation).  Click here to see participating groups. 

• 1,500 activists crafted hundreds of posters of Colombia's displaced.  Over 36,000 people viewed the faces and stories of the displaced in 32 public poster displays.

• 55 U.S. congregations and 55 Colombian congregations prayed and spoke out for meaningful policy change in displacement-focused worship services. 

Beyond these direct participants, many heard the voice of Colombia's displaced through televised coverage of events, online articles, and over a dozen radio interviews.   Click here to check out the full lineup of media coverage.  Here are some highlights:

• What do Avatar (the movie) and Colombia have in common?  Watch this TV news coverage of our culminating rally for Colombia's displaced in Washington, D.C. 

• PalTalk News Network quotes displaced Colombians in this article published for its 4 million online readers. 

• Semana, Colombia's most-read magazine, produced this video of the hundreds of posters of displaced Colombians crisscrossing the front lawn of the White House (en español)

This groundswell of action has started to bear fruit.  Through the National Days of Action, over 4,000 advocates have now emailed, called, and met with Congressional representatives to push U.S. policies that would mitigate, not exacerbate Colombia's crisis.  To send a message to your rep, click here. 

Backing up these efforts, fellow Days of Action organizers and I have started meeting with key Congressional and Administrative offices to deliver your posters of the displaced and present this year's upswing in Days of Action participation as evidence of the growing movement for policy change.  Read here the letter we delivered to Rep. Nita Lowey, signed by 15 Days of Action organizations, which reports solid campaign results alongside a strong call for policy change.  

As this movement blossoms every year, we move closer and closer to a fundamental overhaul of U.S.-Colombia policies.  Soon we will reach the day that our taxes fund Colombia's victims rather than its perpetrators, the day that the U.S. supports small-scale farmers instead of displacing them with fumigations and "free trade," the day that our government stands on the right side of Colombians' struggle for a just peace.  Thanks again for helping us take another step toward that reality.  

Adelante,

Ben Beachy National Grassroots Organizer

Special Thanks to Northwest participants

Northwest Regional Organizer, Colette Cosner, just returned home from a Colombia delegation.  Read her latest posts about Colombia, "Memory As Resistance," on the People Transforming Policy Blog.