Pastors for Peace Close to Losing Tax Exempt Status Courtesy of IRS Assault
Pastors for Peace Close to Losing Tax Exempt Status Courtesy of IRS Assault
September 2, 2016
by W. T. Whitney
Gail Walker is the executive director of IFCO/Pastors for Peace with offices in New York City. In an interview she gave which appeared August 29 as the lead posting on the prominent Cuban website Cubadebate.cu, Walker described apparent U. S. government persecution of the human- rights organization founded and headed by Rev. Lucius Walker, Gail Walker’s father, who died in 2010. In fact, the U.S. government over the course of five years has moved toward removing the tax-exempt and non-profit status Pastors for Peace and its parent organization IFCO have enjoyed since IFCO’s founding in 1967.
Introducing Walker, journalist Rosa Miriam Elizalde noted that, “In spite of the many times attempts were made at the Mexican border to block its humanitarian cargo on the way to Cuba, Pastors for Peace has maintained its caravans to Cuba uninterruptedly since 1992, including during the darkest years of the Bush administration.”
She reported that Pastors for Peace “yellow buses” still travel the streets of Cuban cities and that “hospitals and schools [in Cuba] have benefited for years” from aid brought on those buses to Cuba. Pastors of Peace volunteers traveling on the buses through the United States have informed “people about the consequences of sanctions directed at making the Cuban people surrender through a lack of food and medicines.”
Bringing their humanitarian aid material to Cuba, riders on the buses violated U.S. rules governing the blockade. They did so purposefully as a matter of civil disobedience.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/02/pastors-for-peace-close-to-losing-tax-exempt-status-courtesy-of-irs-assault/
Good Reads:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=post&forum=1016&pid=166571
