Peace and Social Justice Center annual dinner held

By SJ Otto

This year is a major change for the Peace and Social Justice Center, of South Central Kansas.  This year’s Annual Dinner was more or less, a water shed year. The organization is planning to sell the house that has been a major part of the center. After years of being an anchor for this organization, the house is now being sold off. That is because the house is way too expensive for the peace and social justice to keep up.

Daniel DeGroot, employee for the Peace and Social Justice Center,

discussed the intended future of the Peace and Social Justice Center.

He explained that plans fore the peace house include meeting at coffee shops, libraries, and where ever people gather. The idea is to grow and be where the people are. The monthly board meetings now meet at Dan’s house.

The crowd was not as big as many in the past. The peace and social justice center did not pull the crowds it has in the past. I can remember years in which we had over a hundred people in attendance. This year it was less than half of that. It is hard to say why exactly this year had such a big drop in attendance, but as DeGroot said, this is a year of great change. We can hope that the changes implemented will result in greater membership.

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Music and entertainment was provided by Barbara Gingrich.

The main speaking event was by Mike Poage and Gretchen Eick, who have spent a lot of time in living in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As they explained it, it was not a civil war but attempts of ethnic cleansing.

That is it was an attempt to virtually wipe out large groups of people.

As the two explained it, Josip Broz Tito died in 1980. 127 heads of state came to his funeral.

“He was Communist, but not really a communist,” Poage said.

But as Poage explained Tito had prevented the kind of ethnic fighting that took part after he died.

As Poage and his wife Gretchen explained Serbia had the fourth largest army in the world and when the nations that had made up Yugoslavia began to pull away, Serbia had decided not to tolerate that. Not only did they decide to punish those who pulled away, they decided to eradicate certain people. As the two explained, between 1992 and 1996 1/3 people in those countries died. The couple described horrible atrocities committed by members of various military factions. At one point a young man was ordered to pick up pieces of his father after he had been hacked to death into little pieces. As they both explained some of he experiences they had witnessed contributed to what we would all consider PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder).

As to the role of the US, they said many citizens were grateful for the US’s role in stopping the military onslaught, but afterwards the US allowed for the countries to be divided into three separate entities based on religion. That included the Eastern-Orthodox Christians, the Croats as Roman Catholics, and the Bosnian Muslims.

Both Poage and Eick discussed Slobodan Milošević, the former president of Serbia. They were not particularly found of him.

While it was more than generous that the US would come and try to stop the slaughter of these people, we can always expect the US to try and push for their underhanded promotion of US greed and dazzlement of our support of Technological toys. That is what US culture is really all about!

The US had set up what they called “The American Corner program,” a program to learn English and learn American culture. And we all know what US culture is really all about.

So while I can support defending people’s lives and not loving the shear slaughter of others, I know that this country never gives anything to anyone without some kind o “quid per quo!”