UPCOMING RETREAT

Theme: "ACTIVISTS EMBRACING A NEW LATIN AMERICA."

Date: May 18-20, 2007

Place: Burlington Friends Meeting Conference Center in Burlington, NJ.

OUR SPEAKERS:

Marie Dennis is Director for the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Vice President of Pax Christi International. She has a Masters in Moral Theology from the Washington Theological Union. She is on the board of The Washington Office On Latin America, Sojourners Magazine, The Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico, The Latin American Working Group, and The Interhemisphere Resource Center. She is Chair of the Religious Working Group on the World Bank and IMF, a U.S. coalition of Catholic and Protestant organizations, which have given particular focus to the debt crisis and the impact of structural adjustment programs. Marie is also a member of Assisi Community, Washington D.C., a Catholic community of religious gay women and men, families, and single people who are intentional about simple lifestyle and the work for social transformation. Marie is the author of Oscar Romero and Dorothy Day: Walking with the Poor (1997); and she co-authored St. Francis and the Foolishness of God (1993) and Say To This Mountain (1997).

Tom Loudon Tom Loudon was a long-term staffer for WFP in Nicaragua during the Contra war. He has more 15 years experience in Central America and possesses long standing relationships with Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA) partner organizations in the hemisphere. From 2002 to 2004 he worked alongside many Central American groups to resist CAFTA. Tom was recently appointed Coordinator for the Quixote Center's Alliance For Responsible Trade (ART). The Quixote Center is a collective in existence now for 30 years as a multi-issue social justice center. As coordinator of ART, Tom attended the HSA in Brazil in February 2007.

Jennifer Atlee-Loudon, Tom's wife, was a long term WFP staffer in Nicaragua for 10 years. In 2001 she published Red Thread, a Spiritual Journal of Accompaniment, Trauma and Healing, which provides graphic accounts of the physical, psychological, and ultimately political effects of U.S. policy on people in Nicaragua she came to know and love. She also recounts with overwhelming elegance her own soul wrenching, spiritual crises of confronting brutality and death. Red Thread is an important document of a brutal episode in U.S. foreign policy which has faded from our memory.

Jennifer and Tom and have two daughters aged 10 and 18. The older daughter, Carmen, was recently in Nicaragua and she will share her experiences and impressions with us.

Holly MillerShank, who will lead our reflections, is pastor of Grace United Church of Christ in Lebanon PA and is a former National WFP Grassroots Coordinator.

NOTE: This year the formal program will take place only on Saturday, May 19th and meals will be provided at the center only on that day. Friday evening will be an informal sharing with movies, and Sunday will include reflections, sharing and evaluation, following by the Regional Steering Committee meeting, to which all are invited.

Saturday's program will include sessions on:

POPULAR MOVEMENTS

• New Ideologies in Latin America thwarting US intervention
• Updates on Regional Changes in Latin America - panel discussions

EMBRACING THE NEW LATIN AMERICA

• New directions for activists
• Group discussions
• Strategies for advocacy: Community Building, Delegations, Speaking Tours
• Summer Peace Building Institutes.

Plus, good fellowship, musical entertainment by Vicente Castaneda, wholesome food and the inspiration of each other!

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