Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation’s Fall Conference
WWFOR was honored to have keynote presentations by Cindy and Craig Corrie at our annual fall event, Nov 23, 2024. The Corries are parents of Rachel Corrie, a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement which provides nonviolent accompaniment and witness in Palestine. Rachel was killed in 2003 trying to prevent demolition of a Palestinian house in Gaza. Cindy and Corrie have since been leaders in the organization named after their daughter, the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice. They spoke on “Working for Justice, Searching for Peace: Israeli and Palestinian Peacemakers.”
Cindy started out with a gracious acknowledgement of the importance of FOR to them over the years, and talked about the international reaction to Rachel’s death, and then about some of the many Israeli and Palestinian organizations working for peace. As she said, too many to enumerate them all. Craig showed many maps showing the increasing Israeli occupation into the West Bank; talked about experiences from their many trips to Israel, Gaza, and West Bank; and showed illustrations of the ways Israel is taking away the livelihood of Palestinian farmers. He spoke movingly about the members of Combatants for Peace, and in particular, of one Palestinian man whose daughter was killed by Israeli troops, but still rejected revenge.
Youth Activists. We were privileged to have presentations from several of the current peace fellows and assistance from “graduates” of the program.
Abigail Asare, former MYPF and now Co-coordinator of the program served as MC. Vindhya Adamala, another former MYPF served as this conference main technical worker. Current MYPFs gave brief presentations at the Fall Conference:
- · Kayla Wijesekera – promoting neurodiversity inclusion
- · Oonaugh Foster-Bill – starting a song circle for fellowship and activism
- · Rowan Santos – activism through the arts
- · Naman Mutalik Desai – soil analysis for best agriculture
- · Sai Moukthika Ganumpally – teaching critical thinking
- · Zachary Song, promoting diversity in small businesses
- · Vy Phuong Le – a system streamlining clothing donations to shelters
For general information about the Mike Yarrow Peace Fellowship program for youth activists see https://wwfor.org/mike-yarrow-peace-fellowship-4/, and for an introduction to this year’s fellows, see https://wwfor.org/2024-Mike-Yarrow-Peace-Fellows/.
More information about the conference can be found at our webpage, https://wwfor.org/2024-wwfor-fall-conference/, and a recording is available to everyone at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paMrboHoCFU
The map above shows the expansion of the land area claimed by the state of Israel. The map comes from the website: https://ifamericansknew.org/
The United States has been involved in this expansion from the beginning. Without the support of billions of dollars of aid and thousands of two-ton bombs and other military goods, Israel could never engage in what the world understands as genocide. Millions of Palestinians have been pushed off their land and forced to live in Gaza, the West Bank or in other countries. There are approximately 6 million people in the Palestinian diaspora.