The Fourth Quaker Initiative to End Torture Conference
Quaker Center  Ben Lomond, CA
September 24 - 26 2010!  

Keynote Speaker:  Scott Horton

Special Guests:

Fr Roy Bourgeois

Terry A Kupers

Hector Aristizabal

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    Read on this page>     Welcome to QUIT         John Calvi on support of QUIT         From the QUIT Blog 

Welcome to QUIT

This is the Quaker Initiative to End Torture Website.

QUIT is the spiritual work of Quakers to end torture.

This website offers information and resources for learning and taking action. Our hope is that Friends and others will come together in this work as the next great abolition movement in the United States. We want to stop torture as policy and practice forever.

As this field of work is ever changing, we hope you will check this website often for information updates as well as our blog for news stories. Please learn and choose ways to help. This is an historic time for America on this topic and large change is possible. But it may well take more than one generation of Quakers to carry this work.

Ending torture is a good spiritual work to give yourself to. We welcome your donations and all efforts you can make locally.

It Takes Just a Little More Than A Minute

Dear Friend,

Our efforts in QUIT (The Quaker Initiative to end Torture) have been blessed with many minutes of support. One of the most recent came from Dallas Friends Meeting, which said, in part:

Dallas Friends Meeting reaffirms its support of the Quaker Initiative to End Torture, its educational programs, and its commitment to bringing an end to torture.

We realize that the end of torture will not come about soon and may be the work of many lifetimes, but we have no doubt that acts of torture are counter to the spirit of love and light that Friends have given witness to for almost 400 years.

We are holding the Fourth QUIT Conference, its attendees and program leaders, in the light as they continue this vital work.

At QUIT we're grateful for that expression of support. We hope other Friends will follow its counsel and join together at the QUIT Conference at Quaker Center in California, Sept. 24-26 2010.

The conference is important to further what Baltimore Yearly Meeting added to this chorus, when it urged Friends “to find ways take up such a witness, by public education and organized effort.” The QUIT conference will provide both.

Besides compelling speakers such as Scott Horton and Roy Bourgeois, the conference will include opportunities to plan and strengthen the long work for accountability among Friends and others, especially on the West Coast.

More details of the conference schedule are available here: QUIT Conference Speakers

Online registration takes only a few minutes at: QUIT Registration

Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.

~ Hebrews 13:3 NRSV

Recognizing that of God in every person, we condemn the use of torture for any purpose by any person, group, or government. Torture by any means is immoral. It debases the humanity of the tortured, the torturer, and those who have knowledge of it. . . .

The acceptance of torture is making our society an international pariah. We appeal to Friends and others everywhere to take up this concern and follow it through. Let us bear down into the work of bringing this immoral practice into the Light. Let us do all we can to bring about the day when torture is banished from our country and from our planet.

~ Fayetteville MM of NCYM-Conservative

Help put these wonderful minutes into action. Please Join us at the Fourth Quaker Conference on Torture, Sept. 24-26.

Peace,

John Calvi, Founding convener of QUIT

From the QUIT blog

Dear Friend,

Did you read about Jay Bybee's recent "admissions" regarding US torture at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other prisons?

At the Quaker Conference on Torture, Sept. 24-26 at Quaker Center in Ben Lomond CA, seeking accountability for the actions of officials like Bybee will be part of the agenda. We hope you'll join us there, and support this work.

Bybee is currently a judge on the US Court of Appeals in San Francisco. He holds this powerful post depite being one of the main authors of the notorious "torture memo," which formed the supposed legal basis for the US torture program. Bybee drafted his memo in 2002 for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. It was later withdrawn and repudiated by the same agency.

At first glance, Bybee's recent admissions to a Congressional committee might seem startling and even incriminating: he acknowledged that detainees--most of whom were later released without charge--were tortured. And torture is (or at least once was) a crime under US law.

Read more closely, all Bybee really said was that some torturers went too far in carrying out their orders.

Went too far? How? Torture victims died, for one thing; and for another, word of the abuse leaked out, producing a rising chorus of calls for holding accountable those who built and ran this system --including Jay Bybee.

Bybee regretted the negative publicity his own role has received -- but he said "I am going to stand by the memo." "We took a muscular view of presidential authority," Bybee said. "I wasn't running a debating society, and I wasn't running a law school." Instead, he was establishing torture as a policy of the US government. Unfortunately, that basic policy still stands, and Jay Bybee still sits on one of the highest courts in the land.

A government that can torture with impunity has laid the foundation of tyranny. The Quaker Torture Conference is part of the work of overturning this torture policy, dismantling the torture network, and bringing redress to torture victims and justice to perpetrators.

This effort ranks with the epic struggle against slavery in its importance. Please join us, Sept. 24-26. You can register online now at: http://www.quit-torture-now.org

And please pass this message on to others.

John Calvi

One More Thing Is Needed – YOU!

• Scott Horton is a human rights attorney and author of Harper’s Magazine No Comment column - http://harpers.org/subjects/NoComment - his overview of torture’s legal scene is a must read and makes him one of the most in-demand speakers.  

• Fr. Roy Bourgeois is the founder of School of the America’s Watch.  For 2 decades he’s collected information about America’s instruction of torture and formed the largest annual protest in American history. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year by the American Friends Service Committee.  

• Dr. Terry Kupers is the author of Prison Madness: The Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars and What We Must Do About It. He’s expertise on torture and abuse in American prisons is known to Congress and courtrooms across the country.

This will be the best QUIT conference yet. Everything is set to go September 24-26.  Except one thing--registration is lagging.  If you’ve been intending to register- now is the time.

If you register now (click REGISTER HERE at the top of this column), QUIT can be sure to go ahead.  We want  to share all we’ve organized for the past year.  It’s going to be a great gathering of dedicated people doing good and important work.