|
On the morning of Sep. 7, the Rev.
Lucius Walker, founder and executive
director of the Interreligious
Foundation for Community Organization
(IFCO), died of an apparent
heart-attack at his home in Demarest,
New Jersey. The official cause of
death was not known at press time
pending an autopsy.
A veteran of the U.S. Civil Rights
movement, Lucius Walker was a softspoken
but towering figure in the
U.S. progressive movement. He was
most well-known for leading, over
the course of 21 years, the Friendship
Caravans to Cuba, in which medical
and educational supplies and equipment
as well as computers, bicycles,
tools, school buses, and sports and
cultural equipment were transported
from the U.S. to Cuba in defiance of
the 50-year-old U.S. economic blockade
against the island. Walker began the Caravans
after he was shot and almost killed
in 1988 when U.S.-backed contra
guerillas in Nicaragua attacked a passenger
ferry loaded with 200 civilians
and an IFCO study delegation. Two
passengers died and 29, including
Walker, were wounded.
“In response to that brutal act
of terrorism, IFCO formed a new project
- Pastors for Peace,” IFCO’s website
explains. “The aims of the project
are twofold: to deliver material aid to
support the victims of so-called “low
intensity” war in Latin America and
to initiate education and advocacy
projects to campaign for a more just
and moral US foreign policy in our
hemisphere.” The last month-long Cuba Caravan
was concluded on Aug. 3, the
Rev. Walker’s 80th birthday, which
was celebrated in Cuba by a large
gathering of friends and comrades as
it was a few days later at the 1199
Union Hall in New York.
Pastors for Peace has also organized
Friendshipment Caravans to
Central America and Chiapas in Mexico,
and delegations to Haiti and other
Central American and Caribbean nations.
In April 2001, the Rev. Walker
joined the Haiti Support Network
(HSN) for a fact-finding delegation
to the Dominican Republic to investigate
the conditions of Haitian migrant
workers there. Walker, along with other
church leaders and activists, founded
IFCO in 1967 to assist “the poor and
disenfranchised in developing and
sustaining community organizations
to fight human and civil rights
injustices,” the group’s website says.
“This work includes education about
the realities of the poor in the US and
the third world.”
IFCO’s Pastors for Peace, based
in Harlem, was also instrumental in
shepherding young North Americans
into the Cuban Medical School Scholarship
Program to be trained as doctors
at the Latin American School of
Medicine in Havana, Cuba. “When it comes to social action,
Lucius Walker was always
there,” the Rev. Luis Barrios, an IFCO
board member and Walker’s close
collaborator, told Haïti Liberté from
the Dominican/Haitian border where
he is working this year. “He showed
us through his actions what we need
to do and we are going to continue
to do exactly what he taught us: to
work for peace and justice.”
“He was an individual of incredible
rectitude and exemplary
commitment to the cause of justice,”
said Haitian unionist Ray Laforest
of the International Support Haiti
Network (ISHN), who also worked
closely with Walker. “He had particular
dedication to the Cuban people’s
struggle and he was willing to pay
a serious price for that commitment.
He was also striking in his humility.
Here was a guy who would go to
Cuba and meet with Fidel Castro and
whom Fidel would talk about in his
speeches. And yet he was incredibly
modest.” Walker was born in Roselle,
NJ on Aug. 3, 1930 and graduated
from Shaw University in Raleigh, NC
in 1954. He also held degrees from
Andover Newton Theological School
and the University of Wisconsin.
He received the Nicaraguan government’s
Sandino Award and the Cuban
government’s Order of Friendship
Award.
He is survived by his wife,
Mary, and fi ve children. |
