Dear Congressman Kildee:

Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to meet with us today. We are very excited to have an ally like you in Congress and we look forward to a productive and mutually beneficial relationship.

We were very pleased to see your vote against war authorization for Iraq this past fall. It would help us immensely in our local organizing efforts if you wrote an op ed piece and submitted it to the Flint and Tri-City area papers explaining your principled if nuanced position on the war. Senator Robert Byrd referred to the "ominous, dreadful silence" in Congress about the war. We think that our country would do well to listen more to leaders like you. When leaders like you explain your decisions, even people who disagree gain greater respect for you.

Another issue of great concern to us is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. As US taxpayers, we are concerned that our hard-earned money is being thrown like gasoline onto a raging fire. We support neither the terrorism in the discos of Tel Aviv nor in the ghettos of Nablus. We support the efforts of the International Solidarity Movement to defend the human rights of Palestinian civilians and actively promote nonviolent political expression. The military has attacked the international peacekeeping movement directly. We strongly believe that not only is it the right of international peacekeepers to be there but that they are doing exactly what Jesus would do. One of our members, Joan McCoy, will be going to Palestine in April to do peacekeeping work. We hope that you are willing to call the Israeli Embassy or appropriate diplomat on our behalf if the military violates the human rights of a US citizen.

The Colombia situation is similar to that in Israel/Palestine in that the terrorism on all sides is wrong and our government keeps giving money to one of the sides. Due to intensive lobbying by chemical companies like Monsanto, we have over-prioritized the destruction of coca plants (and every other crop that gets fumigated) and de-prioritized the development of alternative agriculture for coca farmers. We will be in dialogue with you about Colombia bills as the 2004 budget comes up for a vote. In the meantime, we would like you to consider co-sponsoring HR 1810, a bill to close the notorious School of Americas, whose graduates were responsible for the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero and today are busy murdering union leaders in Colombia.

Finally, since we know you have been a champion of Native American rights, we plan to work with you to defend the rights of indigenous groups in Latin America from the full-scale assault on their land and culture by exploitative trade initiatives like the Plan Puebla Panama and the Central American Free Trade Agreement. As a nation with much wealth to share, we should base our economic relationships with other countries upon genuine interest in their empowerment rather than the creation of an exploitative dependency.

We are glad that the district lines were redrawn to make you our congressman. Your track record is exemplary and we look forward to collaborating with you to create a more just world.

Sincerely,

Tri-City Action for Peace Delegation