12/26/05: Sister City Programs Foster Understanding

WNPJ member groups  Madison-Rafah (Palestine) Sister City Project and the Madison-Arcatao (El Salvador) Sister City Project are featured in this Madison Capital Times Op-Ed

Sister City Programs Foster Understanding

The Capital Times :: EDITORIAL :: 9A
Monday, December 26, 2005
Barbara Olson, Marc Rosenthal

Last month, in a move that has become sadly routine, some members of the City Council again tried to cut all funding for Madison's sister city program.
Fortunately, the sister city funding, which represents just 0.0076 percent of the city budget and provides each official group with $500, survived the budget ax.

This debate also presents another opportunity to celebrate and explain the importance of the program.

Some of Madison's many sister city relationships produce valuable business, professional or educational connections. Others facilitate cultural and artistic exchanges, tourism or humanitarian programs.

At its most basic level, sistering builds people-to-people connections at the grass roots. Sister cities allow people from all over the globe to meet and exchange ideas and experiences. Sistering also lets us humanize, support and learn from other people -- including those who are resisting oppression and struggling to build a better future.

Sistering has always been inseparable from international peace and justice issues. Historically, sistering with Latin American communities was part of the resistance to the Reagan era wars against popular movements in places like El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala. Even after these shooting wars gave way to "neo-liberal" economic and political warfare against the poor, sistering has continued to provide a vital connection between global north and south.

Today, a shooting war has erupted full-force in the Middle East, where violence is the daily cost of the dual occupations of Iraq and Palestine. The reinvigorated imperial ambitions of the same cast of older-but-not-wiser characters from the Reagan era threaten to expand the war to countries like Iran and Syria.

We believe that in the Middle East, no less than in Latin America and other parts of the "Third World," sistering helps us reach out to those who have been demonized in order to justify what would otherwise be unacceptable.

Sistering also challenges the structural injustice that underlies both the drive for war and the "ordinary" economic and political inequality between the "haves" and the "have-nots." It builds on the dignity and self-determination of both partners. It is a model of dialogue, joint planning and, above all, friendship between peoples that stands in sharp contrast to relations of dominance and exploitation.

Working together, sister cities try to counter the profit-driven globalization of the corporate elites with globalization from below, helping to forge a new global model for economic development and political relationships based on human and environmental needs.

The Madison-Arcatao Sister City Project is one of Madison's oldest official sister cities, with an established track record of helping to save lives and bring an end to war in Central America. The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project is one of the newest. The first Madison sister city ever denied official status, it has nevertheless completed almost three years of humanitarian and educational activities connecting Madisonians to people in the Middle East.

The members of these two projects and those who support us celebrated earlier this month at the first People-to-People Seasonal Dinner Dance at the Casbah restaurant.

At a time when the U.S. image is deservedly at an all-time low around the world, and the American people find themselves dangerously uninformed and cut off from their counterparts in other nations, this type of "citizen diplomacy" could not be more important.

Barbara Olson and Marc Rosenthal are founding members of the Madison-Rafah (Palestine) Sister City Project. Rosenthal is also a longtime member of the Madison-Arcatao (El Salvador) Sister City Project.