[News] Why is the US Government Persecuting IFCO/Pastors for Peace Humanitarian Organization?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

October 6, 2015


  Why is the US Government Persecuting IFCO/Pastors for Peace
  Humanitarian Organization?
  <http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/06/why-is-the-us-government-persecuting-ifcopastors-for-peace-humanitarian-organization/>

by W. T. Whitney <http://www.counterpunch.org/author/w-t-whitney/>

*http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/06/why-is-the-us-government-persecuting-ifcopastors-for-peace-humanitarian-organization/*

The Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO/Pastors 
for Peace) has worked tirelessly so that someday U. S. international 
dealings would be based on peace and mutual respect. Now the Internal 
Revenue Service is about to remove the tax-exempt status of that 
non-profit, humanitarian group. In the words of the late Rev. Lucius 
Walker Jr., who founded the organization, IFCO wants a “people’s foreign 
policy.”

An IRS appeals officer in September signaled that the agency would be 
upholding a ruling from December 2013 revoking IFCO’s non-profit, 
tax-exempt status. IFCO has long stood in the forefront of efforts to 
establish decent U. S. relations with Cuba. The IRS action seems to stem 
from IFCO activities in that regard.

Under Rev. Walker’s leadership, IFCO transformed lessons learned from 
civil rights struggles to fashion tactics of non-violent civil 
disobedience to advance its work on Cuba. Annually for 23 years 
IFCO/Pastors for Peace, joined by supporters, has taken humanitarian aid 
to Cuba in purposeful violation of regulations governing the U. S. 
embargo against Cuba. Until now, ironically enough, federal authorities 
have done very little to impede the flow of IFCO aid material and 
delegations to the island.

The original IRS investigation that began in March 2011 had a very 
different agenda. Conservative congresspersons had complained to the IRS 
that IFCO in 2009 served as a fiscal sponsor for the U. S. branch of the 
British group Viva Palestina that at the time was helping to organize a 
humanitarian flotilla headed for Gaza. They alleged that IFCO was 
actually backing the Hamas political organization, and thereby terrorists.

IFCO Executive Director Gail Walker on October 3 reacted sharply to news 
that the IRS had rejected her organization’s appeal: the “attack by the 
U.S. government to rescind our nonprofit status is shocking and makes no 
sense in light of the significant moves of both the Obama and Castro 
administrations to normalize relations between our two countries.”

In fact IFCO has dedicated much of its work over two decades to ending 
the U. S. embargo against Cuba. More recently IFCO/Pastors for Peace has 
recruited and supported U.S. young people to become medical doctors 
through study, at no personal cost, at Cuba’s Latin American School of 
Medicine.

On October 3, an IFCO press release pointed out that the group is “one 
of the nation’s oldest faith-based civil rights organizations and the 
first ecumenical foundation founded by and for people of color.” That 
statement called upon the U. S. government “To stop bullying IFCO for 
helping the people of Cuba and allow us to continue our life-saving 
humanitarian work.”

IFCO asks for support and action on its behalf. In particular:

1 FAX or Telephone IRS Commissioner John Koskinen at Large Business and 
International Division, Attn: SE:LB, 1111 Constitution Ave, NW, 
Washington, DC 20224, Phone: (202) 515-4400, Fax: (202) 622-5756

2 FAX or Telephone, Secretary of Treasury Jacob J. Lew, Department of 
the Treasury, 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW , Washington, D.C. 20220, 
Phone: (202) 622-2000, Fax: (202) 622-6415

(You may write them via regular mail, but FAX is better, says IFCO. A 
link is available to send a FAX: _Use this. <http://www.gotfreefax.com>_)

_Click here 
<https://www.change.org/p/do-not-remove-ifco-pastors-for-peace-non-profit-tax-status?recruiter=38856462&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink>_ 
to sign a petition which sends an email message to Commissioner John 
Koskinen, asking him to end this politically-motivated attack on IFCO. 
(and also to Pres. Obama and our friends in Congress — with one click)

/*W.T. Whitney Jr.* is a retired pediatrician and political journalist 
living in Maine./

-- 
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863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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