Liberal Judaism Social Action Day - Birmingham Progressive Synagogue - Sunday July 13^th

by Jonathan Drapkin

Mitzvah day 2007

The fascinating Liberal Judaism Social Action Day took place at the new Birmingham Progressive Synagogue on Sunday July 13^th.

The day began with a showing of the excellent Christian Aid / Channel 4 film “A Great African Scandal” in which black British journalist and theologian Robert Beckford visits three towns in Ghana. In the first he tries to earn a living as a rice farmer and earns 25p in a day – not enough to live on. He then visits a cocoa farmer, whose has his young niece and younger nephew working for him. Neither has ever been to school. Mr Beckford kindly arranges to send the boy to school and organises a sewing machine for the girl. One small piece of good news is that there are also fair trade cocoa farmers in Ghana. Staggeringly, only 3% of their output is actually sold at the beneficial fair trade price, but even this is enough for them to put their children through school. His last stop is an Anglo Gold Ashanti gold mine that has been polluting local land and water. There are allegations that mine guards and police physically attack local residents if they catch them panning for small amounts of gold amongst the mine waste. A couple of people demonstrate their scars.

A panel consisting of Christian Aid’s David King, John Nightingale of the Jubilee Debt Campaign and Rabbi Janet Burden explored some of the root causes of these problems. The picture they painted was of a combination of unfair global terms of trade which squeeze producers of rice, cocoa and other primary materials and large debt burdens of countries such as Ghana, which force their governments to divert scarce funds from education and health into repayment of interest and weaken their negotiating positions. The representative of the Jubilee Debt Campaign stated that only 20% of the debt write offs that had been committed to at the G8 meeting in Gleneagles had actually been implemented.

Most importantly, the panel described some of the steps that ordinary citizens can take. They said we should buy as many fair trade products as possible, but stressed that this on its own is not enough. The speakers encouraged us to pray. Citizens can write to their MPs and MEPs to ask them to push for trade justice and for further debt write-offs, although the speakers pointed out that individual lobbying is unlikely to be as effective as doing it collectively, either via the fair trade movement (www.fairtrade.org.uk ), trade justice movement (www.tjm.org.uk), jubilee debt campaign (www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk ) or similar, or by arranging with a group of friends all to write similar letters at the same time. Asked about ethical investment, the speakers referred to the Co Op, the Ethical Investment Research Service at www.eiris.org , the Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility at www.eccr.org.uk and Jubilee South at www.jubileesouth.org.

Mustafa Hassaballa spoke on the subject of Darfur. By his explanation, nomadic Arabs and pastoralist Africans used to co-exist in that region, but in 1989 the Arabs issued an ultimatum to the Sudanese government – “Grant all the land in Darfur to the Arabs or the consequences will be horrible.” Land ownership became increasingly more complicated and eventually the Africans formed two large rebel groups in 2003. The government decided that it didn’t have the resources to fight the rebels, so instead decided to treat them as “fish” and cut off their “water” by attacking the local population, in particular via the Janjaweed militia. Mustafa said that 200,000 people had been killed and 2.4 million displaced. Asked whether he would return to Darfur if the situation was safe, he said that it would be his dream to do so.

Amy Harrison of the Aegis Trust discussed ways that British citizens can try to help the situation in Darfur. She said that there was good evidence that collective action can be effective – the deportation of a Darfuri asylum seeker that had been schedule for 13 July had been postponed as a result of public pressure. Citizens can ask their MPs to push David Milliband to visit Sudan to invite the Sudanese government and rebels to come to London for a peace conference. We can also put pressure on the Prime Minister, and on the governments of the US and France. China’s role in Darfur was explored. 10% of their oil comes from Sudan, they are a 40% shareholder in the Greater Nile Petroleum Company and are alleged to be arming the Janjaweed and to be using their Security Council veto to block stronger UN action. We can support the Aegis Trust’s Fund 4 Darfur (www.fund4darfur.org) or join the Darfur Divestment campaign (www.darfurdivestment.org).

Laura Marks, national co-ordinator of Mitzvah Day UK ran a workshop about Mitzvah Day. NPLS participated in 2007. To quote from her presentation about the 2008 day, Mitzvah Day is the largest day of collective social action in the Jewish calendar in the UK, which engages thousands of volunteers through the Jewish traditions of tzedek, tikkun olam and gemilut chasadim. It engages everyone, even the unaffiliated, and builds bridges, not only within our own communities, but also between Jews and those from other faiths. Mitzvah Day UK encourage partner organisations such as NPLS to generate their own home-made projects and are also this year offering a range of ready-made projects, such as visiting senior citizens in local care homes, encouraging children to work with Barnados, getting students to set up stands in supermarkets to ask people to shop for the homeless or refugees, or various interactive workshops to kick-start a social action program. Further information at www.mitzvahday.org.uk

The concluding speaker was Shahid Malik MP, Minister for International Development and MP for the constituency of Dudley in West Yorkshire, which he said was the constituency with the greatest proportions of Muslims in the country and also the greatest share of BNP supporters. He recognised that there are many people in Britain who do not support the development agenda. In his view, only a small minority are extremists. Most have the potential to be won around. Some, he said, may change their minds when they hear the moral case, but he thought that many more could be convinced by arguments based on vested interest – in particular, that improving the lives of people in other parts of the world will reduce the risk of terrorism here. Chillingly, he added that those of us who are not racists and who do support the development agenda and the benefits of a multi-racial society should not stop communicating with these people, simply because the extremists will also be trying to win them around.

Mr Malik also took the opportunity to describe the government’s development agenda. The UK will be providing £5 billion of aid this year, £9 billion by 2010 and 0.7% of GDP by 2013, which is 2 years ahead of the EU target. The UK is a big supporter of the World Bank and is committed to trying to resolve the situation in Darfur.

The day finished with a Meditative Minchah led by LJ’s Social Action Coordinator, Orlando de Lange.