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Letter from the Director
What the World Needs Now: A Coordinated Citizen Response to Terrorism and War Dear IRC Friends and Supporters: The U.S. is now at war—an open-ended, international war. The IRC staffers believe these military operations are not the right, just, and smart response to the threat of international terrorism. The U.S. government’s international war on terrorism will likely lead our country into new political and military quagmires around the globe, as is already happening in Central and Southeast Asia. Reliance on traditional military strategies will fan the flames of terrorism while doing little to protect our national security. The IRC is helping to spearhead a citizen movement determined to respond to global terrorism with a foreign policy agenda that protects individual safety and national security by promoting justice. We have launched a new website at www.fpif.org/justice to help coordinate and track the citizen response, inside and outside the United States. Our Outside the U.S. project is bringing non-U.S. perspectives into the public policy debate. Our Foreign Policy In Focus project—“a think tank without walls”—has put its experts on talk shows across the nation, on the editorial pages, in the halls of Congress, and all over the Internet. The Washington Post cited the IRC in its roundup of think tanks as providing a voice of the “political left” in the new debate. Our network of experts is working closely with other organizations on a Justice Not War campaign. Fundamental to this just effort is the offering of pragmatic alternatives to counter terrorism while promoting peace and justice. The IRC has taken a leading role in offering such an alternative policy framework. Daily, more than 5,000 individuals visit the FPIF website to obtain the latest IRC analysis and information on President Bush’s war on terrorism. FPIF’s “Response to Terrorism” statement was signed by more than 1,800 individuals in just 48 hours, including scholars from 86 universities. As a policy institute, we have also formulated A New Agenda to Combat Terrorism, which is being used by citizens groups as part of their own organizing and educational strategies. Tom Barry and John Gershman write in the agenda’s introduction: “The challenge is to construct a counterterrorism policy that demonstrates America’s new commitment to protecting Americans and U.S. national security, while at the same time asserting our new commitment to constructing an international framework of peace, justice, and security that keeps terrorists out in the cold—with no home, no supporters, no money, and no rallying cry.” These are troubled, confusing, and dangerous times—ones that call for a coordinated citizen response and a new foreign policy agenda. The IRC is playing a vital role on both fronts. Join the Justice Not War citizen campaign today. Analysis and information provided by the IRC will help in your local educational and organizing efforts. A donation to the IRC will help us continue our rapid response work at this critical time. These are times that threaten our national and personal security. This global crisis demands our involvement and activism to ensure justice, and avoid a neverending war. Peace and Justice, Debra Preusch
IRC Goings On
Working With Constituencies Within 48 hours of the terrorist attacks, more than 1,800 people—including academics from over 80 universities across the United States and analysts from 18 different countries—endorsed “Response to Terrorism,” a public letter generated by Foreign Policy In Focus. The five-point sign-on letter was sent to the White House and members of Congress. Closer to home, a staffer from Congressman Udall’s office called the IRC’s anti-war statement “profound and moving.” As an organization with strong international roots, the IRC brought into play the perspectives of analysts and organizations outside the U.S. and continues to strengthen ties with our global partners. Many activist organizations are using FPIF and BIOS information in their organizing work. For example, Political Research Associates is using recent BIOS articles and analysis on immigration issues in its latest activist resource kit, “Defending Immigrant Rights.” This summer, the IRC released a community report on copper mining in Grant County, NM, the nation’s largest copper-producing county and the IRC’s home base. Community response to the report was overwhelming. During public hearings regarding mine closeout plans held in August, the report was referred to and quoted numerous times. In the Media FPIF’s immediate editorial response to the terrorist attacks, written by the IRC’s Tom Barry, was quoted in the Washington Post and featured in the Albuquerque Tribune; and articles by IRC/FPIF analyst Stephen Zunes appeared in USA Today, the Baltimore Sun, and on National Public Radio’s (NPR) “All Things Considered” in the days that followed. Many FPIF experts were besieged with requests for radio and TV interviews; one was on 56 different radio talk shows. Hispanic Vista, an online news site targeted to Latino readers, has run a number of articles and op-eds from the borderlines UPDATER in recent months. The Albuquerque Tribune continues to pick up BIOS analysis on a regular basis. Other outlets that have recently run BIOS-generated analysis include: The TQS Review, NAFTA Digest, and the Latino News Network. During the recent visit to the U.S. by Mexican President Vicente Fox, migration policy analysis authored by BIOS director George Kourous and Anne Seymour, formerly with the Mexico-U.S. advocates network, was featured on the OneWorld.net website. BIOS articles on Fox’s Plan Puebla-Panama and Mexican trade policies were also featured on the OneWorld.net website in July and August. BIOS director George Kourous was a guest on “The Morning Show with Jon Beaupre” on KPFK in Los Angeles in July and on NPR’s Albuquerque affiliate KUNM on the program “El Corazon Partido.” Engaging in Policy Debates The above attests to the IRC immersion in the policy debate regarding the appropriate response to the terrorist attacks. It is also important for IRC supporters to know that use of the FPIF website has more than doubled since September 11th. For the three weeks after the attack, the FPIF website averaged 5,393 individual users per day. The FPIF website is one of the must trusted sources for global affairs analysis and serves as a meeting place for those who want to discuss the issues. Recently, Mexico and the U.S. engaged in high-level discussions regarding bilateral relations, including trade and development issues along their shared border. Figuring in these talks has been deliberation regarding potential changes to the roles played by the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC) and the North American Development Bank (NADB), created under NAFTA to address environmental problems on the U.S.-Mexico border. In an effort to foster and deepen the debate on the future of BECC and NADB, BIOS conducted a survey from May-July in order to evaluate perceptions of BECC and NADB. Our report on the survey results, available in both English and Spanish, has prompted favorable feedback—for instance, Bernardo González-Aréchiga, a top aide to Mexican President Vicente Fox, let us know the Fox team would be using the survey to evaluate its stance on BECC-NADB reform.
Office Contact Information
Albuquerque Box 4506 Albuquerque, NM 87196-4506 Voice: (505) 842-8288 Fax: (505) 246-1601	Silver City Box 2178 Silver City, NM 88062-2178 Voice: (505) 388-0208 Fax: (505) 388-0619 Email: irc@irc-online.org