PfL and U.S. partners to hold ‘World Without Empire’ event in New York

Peace for Life and its partners in the United States are organising a global event on the theme "World Without Empire" in New York City on 23-24 April 2010.

World Without Empire: A People’s Congress and Peace Festival on Spirit, Movements and the End of U.S. Domination is an interfaith (primarily Christian-Muslim), intergenerational, feminist gathering of grassroots groups and intellectuals from the U.S. and Global South aiming to promote a North-South engagement in counter-imperial struggle and the elaboration of domination-free spirituality.


This event is another step in PfL’s responses to the current geopolitical reality of empire, with its expansionist militarisation, neoliberal economics, hegemonic control of the world’s resources, and untrammelled ecological destruction.

The focus of the World Without Empire events is grounded on PfL's recognition that in order to imagine a world without empire, all forms of empire consciousness and relations of dominance must be surmounted.

As a South-based solidarity network, Peace for Life has sought to address the problem of empire through people's forums, solidarity missions, roundtables, peace festivals in Manila, Mindanao, Hong Kong, Kathmandu, Mumbai, Karachi, Nairobi, the West Bank, Amman and Bogotá.

But while it has organised its activities mostly throughout the South, Peace for Life has not yet convened at the centre of empire nor adequately drawn upon the perspectives of those who are the South in the North – racial/ethnic and immigrant communities as well as the poor and unemployed.

Significantly, the World Without Empire events will be held in New York, the symbolic capital of the Empire and a city teeming with social contradictions.

Peace for Life too has yet to highlight the analysis of women and youth as those significantly affected by empire dynamics. Women and youth representation is particularly problematic in patriarchal religious communities whose religious leaders are most often men, and whose youth remain poorly represented in the leadership.

Through the New York gathering, Peace for Life hopes to respond to the imperative to imagine a future that is not a reproduction of old ideologies and power relations.

In planning for this event, PfL and its U.S. partners anticipate a new social imagination and new strategies against the U.S. Empire emerging from the conversation between Global North-based youth, women of colour, new immigrants, faith-based communities and social movements, and their counterparts in the Global South.

Representatives of struggles in the Global South that PfL has supported (i.e., in the Philippines, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Palestine and Colombia) will especially join the New York event in order to pose their challenges to the centre of empire.

Marginalising the voice of privilege, the People’s Congress and Peace Festival will be shaped by three moments: a day of dialogue between movements of the North and South; a public fishbowl forum; and a Peace Festival.

Envisioned as a symbolic journey out of empire, the Peace Festival will feature youth involved in staged political resistance and in the naming of oppression through the arts. Artistic expression will be the catalyst of the Peace Festival’s mission of comprehending empire and envisioning a new way of living without global hegemony.

World Without Empire will link the global resistance to empire with the more national and local struggles and perspectives against forms of imperial domination within the U.S. It will also move away from institutional counter-imperial faith-based action to one that is geared to movements—South-led and South-driven—with a focus on women and youth and emphasising South-South solidarity for world peace and justice-making.

Including inter-religious voices and their concerns is especially important as religion now is increasingly being used to buttress and legitimise the US imperial drive. World Without Empire will however give particular emphasis to Muslim-Christian exchange while focusing on women and youth in both communities, recognising the special ways that the Muslim world is under U.S. hegemony today. The conference will thus seek to facilitate solidarity and partnerships with Muslim struggles in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The participants shall include U.S. grassroots activists, specially women and youth, from popular emancipatory movements, inter-religious movements, as well as from institutions and academic communities. Several representative international delegates from faith communities and social movements mainly in the South will be invited.

The People’s Congress and Peace Festival will take place on 23-24 April 2010, excluding dates of travel. The Union Theological Seminary (UTS) in New York will be hosting the events on its campus.

Also involved in organising the events as co-sponsors are the Drew University, World Student Christian Federation (WSCF)-North America Coordination, and United Methodist Church General Board of Global Ministries (UMC-GBGM).

Peace for Life is a South-based solidarity network identifying modern empire building as the single most formidable force impeding the realization of fundamental values of justice, equality, human rights and integrity of creation. It harnesses faith, spirituality and solidarity for transformative action.

Peace for Life is an international movement committed to inter-religious, South-South and North-South solidarity against empire. It harnesses faith, spirituality and solidarity for transformative action.

Contact:

Carmencita Karagdag
Coordinator, Peace for Life
2/F, BLVM Ecumenical Center
879 EDSA, West Triangle
Quezon City, Philippines 1104
Tel/Fax: (+632) 9278043
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