The Mid-Atlantic region has been sponsoring two- to three-week long
speaking tours since 1994. We find they are a very effective means
to bring out the truth about human-rights and economic conditions
in countries to our south. The result is that many communities of
our region are exposed to facts and points of view that are rarely
presented in the popular media.
Our region has sponsored at least one speaking tour every year, commonly
in the Fall. Some years we have itinerated a speaker in the Spring
and then another one in the Fall. Our speakers are knowledgeable and
experienced people in the field of human rights and labor rights,
and are generally native to one the countries where Witness for Peace
has a long-term presence, such as Nicaragua, Southern Mexico, Colombia
or Cuba. Each speaker we have brought to our region has possessed
special insight and has been able to communicate very effectively,
usually through interpreters. Our speaking tours cover communities
from Washington, DC, Baltimore, Wilmington, DE, Philadelphia, New
York City, Albany, Onondaga, NY, Syracuse, Ithaca, Erie, Pittsburgh,
Harrisburg and Lancaster, PA. Speaking engagements are usually arranged
at universities, colleges and churches/synagogue, but other venues
are also sought. Each speaker usually has a unique itinerary, dependent
on the people available to organize and promote each speaking engagement.
We were delighted to have had Marylen Serna Salinas, a campesina
woman from Colombia, speak to several groups in Syracuse, New York
City, the Philadelphia area, Columbia, Maryland, and Washington D.C.
during April 6-21, 2004. Marylen, who studied anthropology, has dedicated
her life to the Campesino movement of her village of Cajibio. She
has organized peasants to demand that the government redirect economic
resources to meet the basic needs of her communities that have been
forced to live in complete misery.
Your support enables us to get stories like Marylen's before the
public and directly to leaders on Capitol Hill. Ray Torres said he
will never forget how she electrified the Senate Foreign Relations
conference room when she and Ray met with the key staff person to
committee chair Senator Richard Lugar. The staff person spoke Spanish,
so there was no delay in translation as Marylen laid out the human
cost of the current policy inflicted on the peasants of Colombia.
She has been jailed, and death threats forced her, her husband and
two children to live in Bogota for a year. She came back to her village
because she is responsible to the group of women in the area of health
development. Fellow peasant leaders in her village area continue to
be murdered. In response to Marylen's witness to these truths, the
congressional staff person admitted that US policy is designed to
protect US interests, not the peasants. Our region creates the space
for peasant leaders like Marylen to speak truth to power.
