Afghanistan: Locally Based Development or War?

Speaker: Gary Moorehead, Field Director, Marigold Fund (right)

AFSC, 2161 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Thursday, May 14, 7:00 p.m.

Amherst-based Gary Moorehead, Field Director of the Marigold Fund, has recently returned from Takhar Province, Afghanistan.  Marigold is a people-to-people effort to help Afghans rebuild their country after decades of war and to establish friendship and understanding between Afghans and Westerners.   In Takhar,  Marigold sponsors a midwife training program, is building a tuberculosis clinic, and is setting up a vocational training project which manufactures school furniture.

Can locally-based reconstruction efforts like Marigold make the difference in Afghanistan?   Although President Obama said he favors reconstruction aid, his policy spends over 90% of the Afghanistan-Pakistan money on military, including 21,000 troops and drone aircraft raids.   The aid money that is provided is channeled through large-scale bureaucracies which waste much of the aid money and do little to build up Afghan civil society.

In the next few weeks Congress will vote on the President’s request for a supplemental appropriation of $83.4 billion to fund the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.   

In coordination with the national UFPJ coalition, the UJP Afghanistan task force will join a Media Day of Action on May 21 to reach the American people with a message of opposition to the Afghanistan escalation.    We'll do letters to the editor, blogs, Facebook, radio, and TV!

This evening will include:

• an introduction to the Marigold Fund’s work by Gary Moorehead
• a summary of the Congressional situation by the UJP Afghanistan task force
• training on use of new and old media to prepare for the Media Day of Action.

www.marigoldfund.org

ujpcoalition@gmail.com 617-491-4UJP www.justicewithpeace.org