Chico Peace and Justice Center

July 7, 2010
Peace Garden at the Chico Peace & Justice Center

We gathered in our beautiful garden for a potluck, music, and a presentation about Cuba from one of the Caravanistas.  The caravan passed through Chico and we gave them a warm welcome.

In July 2010 the Pastors for Peace caravan will travel in school buses, trucks and cars along 13 different routes, visiting 130 US and Canadian cities. At every stop they will educate people about the blockade while collecting construction supplies and tools, medical supplies and equipment, educational and cultural supplies, to be donated to the people in Cuba.

From Texas they will travel to Cuba via Mexico, without asking for or accepting a US government license, as a disciplined collective challenge to the blockade and travel ban, and as ambassadors for a ‘people-to-people’ foreign policy based in mutual respect. When they return to the US, they will declare their travel to Cuba and their opposition to the immoral blockade.

The US embargo of Cuba causes shortages of food, medicine and other important supplies for eleven million people. The embargo is an immoral policy that uses hunger and disease as political weapons.

IFCO/Pastors for Peace works with the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center in Havana, the Cuban Council of Churches and a distribution committee with representatives from ten different Cuban denominations to deliver US-Cuba Friendshipments. These humanitarian aid shipments mitigate the impact of the embargo and mobilize thousands of US citizens in favor of an alternative. We call for an end to the embargo and normalization of relations between our two countries.

As a matter of principle, the Friendshipments refuse to apply for a license under the terms of the embargo, since to do so would be a de facto recognition of an immoral policy. From 1992 to 2006, IFCO/Pastors for Peace has delivered seventeen Friendshipments to Cuba; some encountered resistance from U.S. officials, but arrived safely in Cuba after these officials backed down. These provide proof of the power that people can have when they are organized, motivated and determined. Speaking truth to power and standing firm in the face of injustice are central to the work of IFCO/ Pastors for Peace.