CW Peace Team arrive in Cairo with Medical Supplies and Toys for Gaza
Frank Cordaro
From: Scott Schaeffer-Duffy <there...@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, May 9, 2009 at 1:51 PM
May 9,2009
Catholic Workers arrive in Cairo with Medical Supplies and Toys for Gaza
CAIRO- Six members of a American Catholic Worker Peace Team arrived in
Cairo, Egypt with $18,000 worth of medical supplies donated by Venture
International and with toys donated by children from Wayland,
Massachusetts which they plan to deliver to a hospital and children's
center respectively in the besieged Gaza Strip on Sunday May 10.
Access to Gaza has been severely restricted if not completely blocked
by Israel and Egypt for nearly two years,since Hamas won democratic
elections in the Palestinian occupied territories. The United Nations
and the International Red Cross have faulted this closure as a
humanitarian catastrophe and their objections came before Israel
attacked Gaza in December and January.
The Catholic Worker group is invited to hospitals and other centers in
Gaza to assess the human cost of that assault and the continued
closure. If the team is refused entry to Gaza tomorrow, it will
consider what nonviolent methods can be employed to persuade the
authorities to allow them to pass.
On Tuesday,May 12th the group is invited by the Sderot Media Center to
visit the Israel city which has suffered the highest number of missile
attacks launched from Gaza. From there, the Catholic Workers plan to
visit Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.
No previous team has successfully crossed all of these borders and
reported on the humanitarian and political situation in all three of
these places.Elizabeth Brockman of the Durham, North Carolina Catholic
Worker, a spokesperson for the group said today, " It is imperative,
as Christians and American citizens, that we cross all of these
borders to bring hope to people who have suffered so much from arms
provided by our government. We hope that our crossing will help ensure
that these borders are permanently opened so people and civilian
necessities can pass freely."
The CW Peace Team members are:
Beth Brockman <bev...@verizon.net> - a wife and mother of two,
part-time teacher, and activist from Durham, North Carolina. She is
active with the Southern Life Community, a group of Catholic Workers
resisting war, nuclear weapons, the death penalty, militarism, and
torture. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Sri Lanka where she
learned that civilians are often caught in the crossfire of war.
Mark Colville <amist...@yahoo.com> - a husband, father of five, and
founding member of the Amistad Catholic Worker in New Haven,
Connecticut. He is a nonviolent resister to war and nuclear weapons
who has traveled extensively in Latin America, including Colombia,
where he took part in an international accompaniment effort in an area
besieged by military and paramilitary occupations. In March, he is
leading a group to Guatemala to work with a Maryknoll priest
ministering to street gangs.
Brenna Cussen <brenna...@yahoo.com> - a member of the Saints
Francis & Therese Catholic Worker in Worcester, Massachusetts. She
holds a BA in Math from Holy Cross and an MA in International Peace
Studies from Notre Dame University. While a member of the South Bend,
Indiana Catholic Worker, she coordinated work at the Catholic Peace
Fellowship, assisting conscientious objectors to war through
education, counseling, and advocacy. She was a member of a CW Peace
Team to Palestine and another to Darfur. She spent three months in the
West Bank with Michigan Peace Teams.
Colin Gilbert- a high school religious studies teacher from Indio,
California who holds a BA in Theology and Spanish from Loyola
Marymount University. He studied abroad at the University of Central
America in El Salvador, where he worked with victims of the Salvadoran
Civil War. He worked in Colombia with internally displaced people, in
Panama on sustainable development with an indigenous community, and in
Quito, Ecuador teaching English. He also coordinated the Underwings
After School Program in East Los Angeles for inner-city youth affected
by gang violence.
Jenny Thomas- a single mother of four from South Royalston, Vermont,
who works at the Vermont Law School. She is a community volunteer,
free-lance writer, and founder of the Sharon Food Shelf in Sharon,
Vermont, where she is a regular volunteer. One of her sons is a United
States Army veteran of the War in Afghanistan.
Scott Schaeffer-Duffy <there...@gmail.com> - a husband, father of
four, and founding member of the Saints Francis and Therese Catholic
Worker in Worcester, Massachusetts. He holds a BA in Religious Studies
from Holy Cross and was the organizer of four previous CW Peace Teams
as well as peace campaigns in Nicaragua, Bosnia, and Iraq. He was a
human rights observer in Gaza in 1988.
Mark Colville says, “My sadness and outrage at the events in Gaza are
deep, and the response that this trip proposes to make is something I
strongly believe to be right and just at this time.” Jenny Thomas
calls the expedition “an opportunity she has been waiting for.” The
Irish Nobel peace laureate, Mairead Maguire, told the team, “Your
presence will bring encouragement and help strengthen Palestinian and
Israeli activists who struggle for a nonviolent and just solution to
the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and an end to the siege of Gaza and
Israeli Occupation.”
For more info contact:
Saints Francis and Therese Catholic Worker House
52 Mason St., Worcester MA 01610
508 753 3588
there...@gmail.com