Patience & Determination:
Tools for Ending Torture & Seeking Accountability

Preface

   Working to end torture and hold torturers accountable is difficult and stressful. Furthermore, progress on this matter requires, in the words of investigator Dick Marty, "patience and determination." (More on Dick Marty and his work below.)

      This collection is intended as a resource for those who are considering how to undertake that work, or seeking encouragement as they pursue it. Torture is a worldwide problem; however, this booklet is addressed mainly to readers in the United States, where torture became a particularly salient issue in the years since 2002.

     The selections are concise samples from this work, suitable for private reflection or reading aloud in small group discussion. The booklet is a Quaker initiative, but the booklet should be "user-friendly" for other groups.

      Of necessity, these selections are ad hoc in nature. Keeping up with the developments on torture and accountability in 2009 has been like a roller-coaster ride: full of rapid ups and downs and unexpected twists and turns, with more to come. Specific items here could become obsolete soon.

      As this white-knuckle ride continues, some patterns were becoming clear: despite an initial flurry of reform, the new administration in Washington has retained most of the interrogation policies and programs of its predecessors.

       This emerging reality has deeply dismayed those who hoped for a clear break with the history of torture, and accountability for its architects as a way of preventing its return. But it has also underlined the need for pressing forward with accountability work.

       Opposition to a real examination and uprooting of the "Torture Industrial Complex" in the United States is strong and deeply entrenched. There is still much work to do.

        This collection is designed to be useful in that ongoing effort.
Study War Some More
(If You Want To Work For Peace)

Preface

    Why a study on Quaker peace strategy?

    From some current perspectives, laboring over the strategy and history of Quaker peace work is a curiosity, if not a waste of time. Larger and more influential groups are at work on peace issues, especially in Washington DC; isn't our main role is to support or join them?

    I'm all for collaboration, but this study starts from a different premise, a credo: the conviction that the Religious Society of Friends is a gathered people. We are a distinct religious group because God called the early Friends together, to worship and do some particular work in some particular ways.

    Quakers weren’t called because we’re better; we’re just called. And we’re still here because God is not done with us yet.     

    What we have named the “Peace Testimony” is a part of that work. Concern for peace is hardly unique to Friends, but in various manifestations it has long been a Quaker emphasis. Further, the history of this concern suggests that the Society has been a fertile nurturer of both new ideas and dedicated people to pursue them.

    This creative potential is far from exhausted. Thus, Friends come to collaborative work, not merely as one more name on a coalition list, but as heirs to a productive and steadfast resource that has its own integrity and dynamism.

    This “Peace Testimony, however, is neither self-defining nor self-executing. We have to figure out what it means again and again, individually and as a group.

    This study is a contribution to this ongoing process. It was prepared from a US resident's standpoint, but I hope it might be useful to Friends from elsewhere as well.

    One more note, for full disclosure:

    If you're looking for a booklet on inner peace; this is not it.

    Ditto for peace in the family, school & neighborhood.

    All these are very worthwhile subjects.

    Here, however, we are concerned with peace as the prevention and limitation of war and militarism, with the ultimate goal of their elimination.  And by war is meant organized violence involving large groups within or between nation-states.

    Just to be clear.


                       
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