The Peace Breakfast at GA

Peaceseeker Award recipients Bill Galvin and Mel Duncan

by Jan Orr-Harter

Last night, some 15 of us gathered in the hotel for cookies and milk and to collate the packets for our breakfast guests. Each received Tom Driver's sermon, "Accompaniment: The Great Theme of the Bible," as well as several brochures on aspects of our work, a sign-up slip and a bookmark from the Endowment Campaign.

Today we held our PPF Peace Breakfast at the Hilton hotel in a full room with a strong and well-planned experience of our work and concerns—a tour de PPF.

Shannan Vance-Ocampo coordinated her first Peace Breakfast with skill and grace; she also recognized Sarah Henken for her work on the Accompaniment Program and Godspeed to new ventures. Jan Orr-Harter gave a brief up date on the Endowment Campaign and Peggy Howland gave a rousing call to join and support PPF. Della Orr-Harter had decorated 22 offering plates for each table. Roger Powers presented the "facts on the ground" on GA issues and kept the program running beautifully.

Andrea Leonard and Lois Baker presented the 2009 Peaceseeker Award to Bill Galvin (with text by Bill Yolton) for his work over the last 40 years with conscientious objectors to war. Galvin was obviously moved, his son Daniel was with us, as well as several conscientious objectors.

Marilyn White presented the 2010 Peaceseeker Award to Mel Duncan, co-founder of Nonviolent Peaceforce and considered a world authority on the use of trained, unarmed civilian peacekeepers in situations of violence. Mel's wife Georgia was with us, as were folks from their church, Dayton Ave. Presbyterian Church in St. Paul, one of the first supporters of Mel's work. Nonviolent Peaceforce consists of 65 member organizations around the world, but has not had a significant PC(USA) component. As a result of Mel's testimony, the award and visibility at GA, expect that to change!

At the conclusion of the breakfast, both new Peaceseekers signed the Endowment Campaign's Legacy of Peace Quilt (made by Gail Brown of NM). With those new names, we now have four decades of Peaceseekers named on the quilt.

The speaker, Camilo Mejia, was compelling with in a personal story of how he came to believe that what he and his unit were doing in the Iraq war was wrong. "Of the 33 people that our unit killed, one in ten was carrying a weapon. So 90% of the people we killed were civilians." Mejia also told the story of how torture was conducted by the unit in Iraq, the progressive violations to break down the human beings involved. He said that, after all he had been through in wrestling with the morality of war, it was a liberating experience to be imprisoned for his refusal to return to Iraq. It felt as if he taken a step to direct his own life in a life-affirming way, and that the result, through imprisoned, was a sense of peace and healing. After his release, Mejia went on to be president of Iraq Veterans Against the War and continues to speak and write on his experience and his transformation. He publicly thanked Bill Galvin "for being the voice at the other end of the phone to tell me that I was not alone and that what I was doing was right."

Just before giving the benediction, Rick Ufford-Chase announced the new initiative that PPF is taking to support the Jewish Ship for Gaza with $10,000 raised from our members. In joining with three European Jewish groups, PPF will help to challenge the blockade of Gaza and to lift up the need for a viable Palestinian state, which, Rick stated, would in fact increase the security of Israel. Walter Owensby and Len Bjorkman held an informal briefing for media on the Jewish Ship for Gaza just after the announcement.

MaryAnn Harwell and Christine Caton offered selections of books, t-shirts and resources and lots of oflks pitched in to make it all work so well. PPF always shines at the Peace Breakfast. This year we were mindful of the several saints who left us in the past few years. Nonetheless, they were "presente!"

Now back to business. Stay tuned.