Witness for Peace
Southeast Region

"Come travel with us. Experience a new reality."

Pilgrimage for Justice and Peace 2011, photo by Lori Fernald Khamala Witness for Peace is a faith-based movement dedicated to changing U.S. government policies that contribute to poverty and oppression in Latin America and the Caribbean.  Gail Phares serves as the director for Witness for Peace Southeast. We undertake advocacy campaigns, press work, skills training, workshops, conferences, film festivals and delegations to Latin America and the Caribbean. We act according to the principles of non-violence. Please see "About Us" for additional information.

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 Updated 2/2/12

Urgent/ Highest Priority/Calls to Action
  • 2 Feb 2012 Witness for Peace Southeast is sponsoring a "Roots of Migration" delegation to Mexico May 19-31, 2012. We need help with recruitment. We will visit both Oaxaca and Alabama to protest the very negative anti-immigration laws there. Could each of you try to recruit one or two people? We would like to send a full delegation of at least 15 people. Let us know if you have people who might be interested in joining the delegation. Registration closes on April 15. We count on your help. See Delegations page for details.

  • 9 Jan 2012: We travel to Cuba this summer. The delegation is full: Cuba: Sustainable Agriculture: People-to-People Licensed Delegation, June 03-13, 2012 Delegation Coordinators Gail Phares and Sylvia O’Connor [919-782-0536]

  • 26 Sept 2011: New Faces: Deputy Director Eric Burnette and Associate Director Emily Zucchino have joined Gail Phares in planning and carrying out our various missions. Please welcome them when you meet them. After 30 years at the helm, Gail is working on a staff transition as she contemplates retirement. she is training Eric and Emily in the many, many tasks she has carried out over the years. We will need greater financial resources to fund the transition, so please give generously.

  • 29 July 2011: We endorse the NC Commission of Inquiry on Torture. See the organization website for details of this important initiative and for a full list of endorsing organizations and individuals.

  • 10 Things You Can Do to Bring Peace

  • End the travel ban on Cuba

    News, Letters, Reports
  • Read Gail Phares's report on the January 17-27, 2012, Colombia delegation.

  • Read Richard Smith-Overman's critique of anti-immigrant "law enforcement" in Alamance County. Raleigh News & Observer, 17 Dec 2011 Excerpt: "Recently, Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson told a General Assembly committee on immigration that his beloved 287(g) program - aimed at deporting immigrants - only applies to criminals. If that's true, then most of us are probably criminals. Two UNC reports, one in 2009 and one in 2010, showed that 82 percent of the criminals ensnared by Johnson's 287(g) program were arrested for misdemeanors and that the overwhelming majority were minor traffic violations."

    Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/12/17/1715233/tough-in-alamance.html#ixzz1go2s3tHB
  • 5 Nov 2011 The "War on Drugs" - Interview with Gail Phares, Director of Witness for Peace, Southeast Chapter PDF

  • 5 Nov 2011Forced Disappearances in Colombia

  • Report on the Nicaragua Teen Delegation Reunion, 2011

  • With pacts, the jobs aren't here, op-ed critital of free trade agreements by Eric Burnette, Raleigh News & Observer, Oct 7, 2011

  • 27 Aug 2011 Report on the 2011 Teen delegation to Nicaragua by Colleen Kane PDF

  • 1 Aug 2011 "We Returned Home Changed:" Reflections on the 2011 Teen Delegation to Nicaragua *** PDF version of the report

  • Published 28 Aug 2011. Raleigh News & Observer Dear Editor,

    Hurrah for the Obama administration stating that they would stop deportation proceedings against immigrants who pose no threat to national security or public safety!(Aug 19 News and Observer).

    For too long innocent immigrants have been stopped for minor traffic offences and jailed here in Wake County, Mecklenburg and Alamance County and across the country under the Secure Communities act. Families have been torn apart and untold suffering has been inflicted on immigrants.

    Now it is time to begin work on true immigration reform. Enough of scapegoating immigrants. Let us solve this problem once and for all. It is long past time to change our out of date immigration laws. We must provide a legal means for people to come to work through our ports of entry. There must be a way for people who have lived and worked here in the U.S. for years to gain citizenship. We must stop tearing families apart.
    Sincerely,
    Gail S Phares

  • 15 Aug 2011 Over 100 people attended this annual event that included a South of the Border style dinner and raised more than $2400 to cover two scholarships for the Student Peacemaker Award. NC Peace Action administers the award. Sanjo Tree presented "Drug Wars, Free Trade, and Immigration Market Madness vs. Sustainable Traditions." on Sunday August 7, 2011.

  • 13 July 2011 Expanded Cary ICE detention center canceled Read the N&O story on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement dropping consideration of an empty Kroger store at N.C. 55 and High House Road as detention site. Local opposition was key! But watch for their future plans!

  • 5 July 2011: Worth reading Infelicitous 40: The Anniversary of the U.S.’s War on Drugs AND Mexican Drug Violence Fueled by U.S. Guns

  • 16 May 2011: Report on activities, Jan-June 2011

  • 2011 Pilgrimage News--25th Anniversary of this moving event

  • 25 Apr 2011L: Report on 2011 Pilgrimage Also view Starlet Tetteh's audiovisual record of her experiences on the Pilgrimage.

  • 23 Feb 2011/14 Apr: Documents, news coverage, video and photos relating to the 2011 Pilgrimage for Justice and Peace

    Human Rights Abuses and Trade Deal Reports from Colombia

  • 31 May 2011: Policy Statements on US Policies toward Colombia by the Mingas Network, a group of individuals from across the United States, Canada and Colombia who are concerned with improving labor conditions, promoting sovereignty and strengthening democracy and in Colombia. We are united in our support for social movements and our rejection of all acts of violence in Colombia, regardless of their source.
  • 28 Apr 2011: Letter to Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela, Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, critiquing US policy in Colombia
  • 18 April 2011: Inter American Commission on Human Rights Colombia Report The report underlines the “continued existence of circumstantial or structural situations that, for various reasons, seriously and gravely affect the enjoyment and exercise of the basic rights enshrined in the American Convention on Human Rights.”
  • 27 Apr 2011: Sierra Club Remains Strongly Opposed to U.S.-Colombia Trade Deal
  • 14 April 2011: two men tried to break into the home of Zoraida Hernández, President of human rights NGO Corporación Sembrar, in Bogotá, Colombia
  • April 2011: Paramilitaries’ Heirs The New Face of Violence in Colombia, a 122-page report by Human Rights Watch Report documents widespread and serious abuses by successor groups to the paramilitary coalition known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC).
  • Colombian peasant farmer union president, Jailer Gonzalez arbitrarily arrested by troops on April 16th President of Astracatol, a union of peasant farmers affiliated to FENSUAGRO. His arrest closely follows the killings on the 30th of March of Hector Orozco, the Vice-President of the Astracatol Chaparral section, and Gildardo Garcia, a lay member of the union, less than 400 metes from an army checkpoint.
  • 18 Mar 2011: Sign a petition to strop the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia. We cannot let this unfair agreement move forward. President Obama must not consider it until there are major improvements in human rights and labor conditions in Colombia.
  • 7 Feb 2011: Read a Report on the 2011 Colombia delegation by Susan Baylies
  • 7 Feb 2011: View View photographs by Susan Baylies of the 2011 Colombia delegation [toward the bottom of the page]
  • Most website photos by Jerry Markatos. 2011 Pilgrimage photos on this page by Lori Fernald Khamala, American Friends Service Committee, NC Immigrant Rights Program