Presbyterians help retool Jubilee
debt-relief effort
Renewed campaign will address AIDS treatment,
social and economic justice
by Evan Silverstein, Presbyterian News Service
[We now have a more
complete report of plans and priorities for the newly formed
DENVER, CO -- 21-February-2001 -- The Presbyterian
Church (USA) is again among those who are calling on governments and
international lending institutions to forgive the staggering debt of
poor nations.
Three PC(USA)-related officials gathered with about 75
other ecumenical representatives and social-justice organizers last
weekend to help determine the future path of Jubilee 2000/USA.
Presbyterians
played significant roles in the coalition's much-publicized Jubilee
2000 campaign, which helped compel politicians and world banking
ministers to forgive millions of dollars of debt owed by some of the
poorest countries on Earth.
The initiative to "bury the debt" was
affiliated with a worldwide Jubilee movement that seeks a debt-free new
start for the world's most impoverished countries at the start of the
new millennium, so that there would be more money for desperately needed
social services.
"I really see the Presbyterian Church staying
very committed in the struggle to get the debt canceled," said
Melanie Hardison, a PC(USA) staff member who coordinated the
denomination's Jubilee 2000 effort and sits on the decision-making body
of the new campaign, which is building on last year's anti-debt
platform. "I think the network that we've built in the church,
which really reaches across a lot of constituencies, will be very
active. People will be mobilizing around the country. So I think the
initiatives that have been happening will continue, and the new stuff
will certainly keep them ... motivated and mobilized."
Hardison has been working since September as a member
of the campaign's transition team, helping to formulate a new structure
for the initiative, which focuses on social and health-care related
issues more than Jubilee 2000 did. She was joined for three days of
meetings in Denver by Karen Fritsch, moderator of Presbyterian Women (PW),
and DeLaina Gumbs, an intern in the denomination's Women's Ministries
program area.
"I feel like we're really moving forward and
everything is on track," Hardison said at First Unitarian Church,
where most of the proceedings were conducted. Denver is the city where
the Jubilee 2000/USA campaign began in 1997.
Originally, Jubilee 2000 was conceived as a
time-limited campaign focusing only on cancellation of debts of the
world's poorest countries by the end of the year 2000. The idea was
based on the Old Testament book of Leviticus, which describes a Year of
Jubilee that comes once every 50 years, during which slaves are freed
and debt is canceled.
While the level of debt forgiveness exceeded
expectations, members of the Jubilee 2000 USA Steering Committee,
meeting at year's end with grassroots activists and other supporters
from across the United States, decided to continue working long-term
toward "definitive debt cancellation" and to address agenda
items that were unfinished.
A transition team of eight grassroots representatives
and six members from the existing Jubilee 2000/USA Steering Committee,
including Hardison, came together last September to formulate a
long-term vision for the national bipartisan coalition of religious,
labor and social-justice groups. It determined that debt cancellation
would remain its first priority; that it would broaden its membership;
and that it would seek more input from partnering groups on Jubilee's
policies and strategies. In addition to staff, the Jubilee USA Network
includes three elements: a network council, a coordinating committee and
working groups.
"At the meetings here this weekend, our goals are
three-fold," said Larry Leaman-Miller, a Denver resident and area
program coordinator for the Colorado chapter of the American Friends
Service Committee (AFSC), a national Quaker organization made up of
people of various faiths who are committed to social justice, peace and
humanitarian service.
"One, to kind of get an update on the state of
debt-cancellation efforts worldwide, where it stands, where the debate
is. Secondly, to do some reorganization of the Jubilee Network so that
we're more broadly inclusive; and thirdly, to work on some strategies
about how we're going to continue working on these efforts."
Other groups represented at the meetings included 50
Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice, Bread for the
World and the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), as well as
representatives from the United Methodist Church and a number of
Catholic orders. Jubilee USA officials also agreed to consult on policy
and campaign positions with Jubilee South, a coalition of individual
debt-relief campaigns in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Also
represented was Drop the Debt, a London, England-based campaign targeted
to win a "New Deal on Debt" for the poorest countries by this
summer's G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy.
"It feels very much like a movement," said
Leaman-Miller. "To have all these people here from various states
and countries."
The PC(USA) has a long history of involvement in
debt-related issues. In 1989, the General Assembly (GA) approved a
document called "The Third World Debt Dilemma," on which the
denomination's policy was based. Seven years later, the GA called on
governments, lending institutions and commercial banks engaged in
international lending "to strive to insulate the poor of indebted
countries from the costs of debt payment, and to consider seriously debt
forgiveness or debt relief for the most heavily indebted and poorest
countries."
Throughout the 1990s, debt relief was a major focus of
the Presbyterian Hunger Program, a channel for Presbyterian response to
hunger-related crises around the world. In the past four years, the
program has spent nearly $70,000 of its public-policy-advocacy funds on
Jubilee-related activities and resources.
"The Presbyterian denomination really has been
the heart of this from the very beginning in supporting Jubilee 2000 and
being very active," said Dan Driscoll-Shaw, a former Maryknoll
priest who served as coordinator of the Jubilee 2000/USA initiative.
"Frankly, the Presbyterian Church has been one of the most open and
creative to say, 'We're here and we're going to move with this,' and
that's really important."
The 1998 Presbyterian GA specifically supported the
Jubilee 2000 campaign, and a year later the commissioners upheld the
denomination's commitment to debt cancellation. As part of the cause,
Presbyterians sent hundreds of letters to federal lawmakers and followed
up with visits to Capitol Hill, held Jubilee-related programs on the
congregation and presbytery levels, and turned out in force for many
national Jubilee programs and demonstrations, such as a peaceful rally
last April in Washington, D.C. In 1999, Presbyterians participated in a
nationwide "rolling fast," refusing to eat for one day as part
of an effort to raise awareness of Jubilee 2000.
Moreover, the Rev. Walter Owensby, a former
PC(USA)Washington Office staff member, helped develop key debt-relief
concepts that became part of the foreign-aid bill that President Clinton
signed into law on Nov. 6, which includes a $435-million installment on
a global effort to erase as much as $90 billion owed by impoverished
nations, most of them in Africa.
"Presbyterian Women have been very interested in
this," said Fritsch, the PW moderator and a resident of
Silverthorne, CO, about 75 miles west of Denver. "One of our main
concerns now is racism and global racism, and the debt is a systemic
thing, it just feeds right into it. "
Participants in the weekend meetings also signed off
on a revised name for the group -- the Jubilee USA Network -- and
approved several major initiatives for the campaign to pursue:
