Fundraising by Erica Tenca

I walk, inshallah, for 28 days.

Twenty-eight like the years of resistance that the Comunidad de Paz de San Josè de Apartado will complete on March 23 and that I will complete on March 20.

Also on March 19 it will be one year since the massacre of Nalleli Sepulveda and Edinson David, still no form of justice has been done.

I walk to make memory of those who, like Nalleli and Edinson, dedicated their lives to justice, truth, and peace, even to the point of sacrifice. I walk to remember that today there are people who continue to do so despite adversity, injustice and horror; they see beyond and persevere. I walk to honor the unsettling power of their choices that ceaselessly interrogates. It speaks to us of a reality geographically distant despite its origin in our homes, our consumption, our history too. It asks us what we, here, do with our lives. Here, where it seems that everything must necessarily go so fast, where there is neither time, nor space, nor energy for attention, care, awareness that everything is connected. Time, space and energy are there only for property and ego growth. What spasmodically drives one to run is the rot of the rotten and dead-end system. As compost, after sublimation, something new will be there; what it will be depends on the choices of each* of us.

Dear Lila one day shared this sentence,"We would rather walk than run, because we are going very far!"

I walk to remind myself of the importance of being on the move, with eyes and heart open to accept with confidence what Life grants us and what it denies us. I walk to choose to live the deprivation of the non-essential; a condition that today, many* live without having chosen. I walk to strip myself of myself, to look at myself frankly and, in the light, in the deep questioning, the deep listening.

I walk and invite to walk.

I dedicate these steps to the path of resistance of the Comunidad de Paz de San Josè de Apartadó and to Operation Dove -nonviolent peace corps of the Pope John XXIII Community- that accompanies it.

The accompanying project in the Comunidad de Paz was opened 16 years ago in response to its call for an international presence as a deterrent to the ongoing massacres perpetrated against them because of their choice to defend the territory from neocolonial extractivist land-grabbing aims .

Here you will find links to in-depth reports on Comunidad de Paz, the Nalleli and Edinson massacre, and Operation Dove.

To support the accompanying project of Operation Dove, I have chosen to open this fundraiser.

Thank you for reading, letting you touch, reflect, share.