Fall 2004 Appeal

September 1, 2004

Dear friends,

I am writing you my last letter in my official capacity as Co-director of EPICA. After 14 years, I will be leaving the staff of EPICA to become the new Director of the Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico, an organization I helped found and staff 25 years ago. While it is always with a mixture of sadness and excitement to leave someplace that you call home in order to begin something new, I am very proud of what you have helped us accomplish during these years by your faithful support, and generous contributions.

EPICA has always been a people’s organization, supporting grassroots struggles, and modeling the kind of working relationships and spirit of solidarity that we are trying to build in our local communities and larger society. We have always looked for ways to promote, support and accompany people in the grassroots – those who are most deeply affected by the policies of our government and powerful financial institutions, and those who inspire us by their courage and vision to work for justice and seek peace.

I am very proud to have been part of such a dedicated and hard-working group of people over these 14 years – co-workers, board members, sister organizations, people in the grassroots, and people like yourselves who have contributed and supported us every step of the way. I am proud of the values we have tried to instill in our work: sharing the same salary, volunteering extra hours, valuing everyone’s contribution, working for equality and diversity within the organization, and making our home in the local immigrant community of Columbia Heights in Washington DC.

I also want you to know that I will continue to support EPICA for the indefinite future, following the lead of former Co-Directors Kathy Ogle and Ann Butwell, committing time and energy to EPICA’s work even as my paid tenure has ended.

This fall, we are once again the grateful recipients of a matching grant challenge. Two faithful and generous donors have pledged to give EPICA $12,000 if we can match that challenge from you, our contributors over the next several weeks.

I want to ask for your support once again for the important work that EPICA is doing to bridge communities and grassroots organizations throughout the Americas. We are helping to create just alternatives to the free trade and privatization policies that transnational corporations are
imposing on people throughout the hemisphere, excluding entire sectors of the population from their rightful place in the global economy.

I recently returned from participating in the Mesoamerica Forums in El Salvador, where for the fifth consecutive year grassroots organizations from Central America and southern Mexico have gathered to share their experiences struggling for “Another Americas that is possible.” The solidarity among poor communities throughout the region is inspiring to witness and participate in, as people create alternatives to the globalization of poverty that international financial institutions like the World Bank and free trade policies like NAFTA and CAFTA produce.

EPICA’s work five years ago to help create COMPA – the Convergence of Movements of the Peoples of the Americas – has flourished into a vibrant network of grassroots organizations from every sector throughout the hemisphere. It includes important struggles to cancel the debt, resist free trade, oppose the privatization of public goods like health care and water, and unite to put forward another vision of the global economy based on human dignity and the common good.

By your support, you have helped EPICA accompany COMPA in this process, and begin to reach out to grassroots organizations here in the United States who share the same struggles to save their communities and resist the corporate takeover of their lives, as they work more and more hours for less and less wages and benefits, without access to a living wage, affordable health care, decent schools, or clean water.

And by your support, you help EPICA do so much more: leading a delegation to investigate the U.S.-backed coup in Haiti last spring; offering workshops on war and globalization; translating and publishing books on economic literacy and immigration rights; monitoring the elections in El Salvador; participating in caravans to Chiapas and to Cuba; and commemorating the anniversaries of the martyrs in Central America.

We are grateful – always – for your generosity, and for your faithful support of EPICA’s mission and work for human dignity, social and economic justice, and solidarity with the peoples of Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean and their immigrant communities in the United States.

Another Americas Is Possible! Thank you for helping us do our part.

In peace and solidarity,

Scott Wright
EPICA

P.S. Please take advantage of this opportunity to have your contribution to EPICA doubled by other donors, so that our important work can continue to grow.