Fayette Woman Heads to Iran

I've pasted in the text of an article from today's Tribune. I leave tonight for St. Louis and fly out tomorrow morning.

Fayette woman heads to Iran
‘Peace delegation’ aims to ease tense relations.

By T.J. GREANEY of the Tribune’s staff
Published Monday, April 28, 2008

A Columbia resident is preparing to take part in a rare trip to Iran.

Tomorrow, Lily Tinker Fortel will board a plane and join a 21-person "peace delegation" organized by the Fellowship of Reconciliation on a 12-day trip through the Islamic republic.

The group is scheduled to meet with professors, students, politicians and religious leaders for informal dialogue aimed at easing tensions between the United States and Iran, which now have diplomatically frigid relations.

The group will tour religious and historical sites, including Qom, the holiest city in Shiite Islam, and Isfahan, the legendary capital of medieval Persia.

Tinker Fortel, 24, is a native of Fayette and works as the Community Outreach Coordinator for Mid-Missouri Peaceworks. In a news conference this morning, she said she was headed to the Middle East with an open mind.

"The saying ‘What we don’t know won’t hurt us’ becomes especially tragic when it relates to issues of politics, social welfare and international affairs," she said. "As American people, the vast majority of us are not fully informed, and we are often misinformed by our national leaders. The friendship delegation to Iran will serve as a fact-finding mission."

FOR is a more than 90-year-old New York-based organization formed in the run-up to World War I.

Its stated mission includes promoting interfaith dialogue and nonviolent conflict resolution. This will be the seventh delegation sent to Iran by FOR. Tinker Fortel’s trip was sponsored locally through donations from 60 people and groups from the area.

Tinker Fortel said she feels compelled to correct some of the misconceptions of Americans she believes are propagated by U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

"By and large, the American people prefer peace to war, we prefer diplomacy to destructive economic sanctions and we prefer truth to lies," she said. "When our government fails to make decisions on behalf of the common good of humanity, ... we must work as individuals to take that responsibility into our own hands."

Kasra Nejat, president of the St. Louis-based American Cultural Association of Missouri, said his group does not endorse any trip that involves dialogue with government officials or with the ruling mullahs.

"For the past 30 years, the Iranian government has shown the world that it does not respect any human rights, does not respect the U.N., does not respect any international law," he said, citing Iran’s political prisons, violent nuclear ambitions and widespread poverty. "Look, when you talk about speaking or talking or negotiating, if that could happen, I personally would have done it 30 years ago."

Backers of the trip denied that it could be used for propaganda purposes by radical Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his followers.

"This is an act of U.S. citizens working to increase understanding. While, yes, we expect to be warmly received in Iran, this isn’t something they’re funding or encouraging," said Jeff Stack, coordinator of Mid-Missouri FOR.

The sponsor of the group’s visas, Tinker Fortel said, is the Tehran-based "Center for Interfaith Dialogue," a governmental organization. The visas are processed by the Swiss Embassy, a necessity because the United States has not had diplomatic relations with the country since 1980, when 52 U.S. diplomats were held hostage there for 444 days.

Tinker Fortel said she expects to tread lightly on hot-button issues, including Iran’s right to develop nuclear technology, Israel’s right to exist and Ahmadinejad’s role as leader.

"We don’t need more empty rhetoric. We don’t need inflammatory remarks about what we can do and what we would do. We need to talk," she said. Later she added, "I have to be reserved in my reflections, especially in a public meeting."

She plans to post regular blog posts during her visit at www.midmopeaceworks.org/lilyiniran.php.

See Article



Columbia Resident Embarks as Civilian Diplomat to Iran;
News Conference Monday, April 28, 9:30 a.m.

April 25, 2008

Lily Tinker Fortel, Columbia resident and Community Outreach Coordinator for Mid-Missouri Peaceworks leaves Tuesday, April 29 for a 12-day fact-finding and friendship mission to Iran. A news conference is scheduled to take place Monday April 28 at 9:30 a.m. in the Commission Chambers of the Boone County Government Center. Tinker Fortel and Jeff Stack of FOR will speak briefly about the trip and take questions from the press about the delegation to Iran.

Tinker Fortel will be part of a 21-member peace delegation organized by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), the oldest and largest interfaith peace organization in the United States. She and other delegates will learn first-hand about ordinary Iranians, even as tensions between the U.S. and Iran continue to rise amidst threats of new sanctions and rumors of military intervention in response to Iran’s nuclear program. In the wake of this month’s allegations to Congress by Gen. David Petraeus and members of the Bush administration that Iran has been interfering in efforts to stabilize the war in Iraq, the delegation provides an opportunity for citizens of both countries to exchange ideas about peaceful alternatives to the standoff between their governments and to build concrete people-to-people relationships.

Tinker Fortel was raised in Fayette and holds a B.A. in Peace and Global Studies and a minor in Religious Studies from Earlham College in Richmond, IN. She joined Mid-Missouri Peaceworks as Community Outreach Coordinator in September 2007. The trip will be Tinker Fortel’s first as a citizen diplomat. “My belief in the interconnectedness of humanity fuels my desire to work for peace and has prompted me to go to Iran as a citizen diplomat at this critical time in world history.”

The interfaith delegation – the seventh sent to Iran by FOR – includes people of Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, and Indigenous spiritual backgrounds. The delegates hail from 11 different states and range in age from 20 to 65, and include co-leader Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, the first woman rabbi to visit Iran and the first U.S. rabbi to travel there in a formal peacemaking capacity, and best-selling author Sam Keen, creator of the Faces of the Enemy book and public television series.

The civilian diplomats will visit cultural and historic centers in Tehran (the contemporary capital), Qom (world center of Shi’a theology), Hamadan (the location of the tomb of Esther & Mordecai, important Jewish biblical figures), Isfahan (legendary capital of medieval Persia), and Shiraz (jewel of classical Islamic culture, as well as the seat of Iran’s ancient pre-Islamic civilization).

The group will be hosted by Iran’s Center for Interfaith Dialogue, and meetings are scheduled with educators and students, politicians, artists, media representatives, and religious leaders from the Muslim as well as minority Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian communities. The delegation’s reports will be published on FOR’s blog, www.forpeace.net; visit www.forusa.org/programs/iran for background information about FOR’s Iran program.
Posts will also be made to www.midmopeaceworks.org/lilyiniran.php.

Tinker Fortel is available for interviews on request.

--30--



Wednesday, April 23

Today at the RHD (that's how I refer to the Columbia Peace Coalition's weekly Rush Hour Demonstrations, which happen each Wednesday at the corner of Broadway and Providence from 4:15-5:45 p.m.) I was standing with two high school students who were holding up a sign that reads "STOP THE BOMBS." I think it's a reasonable sign, and I think the woman who stopped in speaking/shouting range of us would think so, too--under some circumstances. She started out nice: "I understand what you are doing out here and I think peace is good..."

Who knows what comes next?

"...but..."

and she went on. What it came down to was this lady--a grown woman--yelling out her car window at two high school boys *and me* on a Wednesday afternoon about how we can't end the bombs as long as they are out there. They? "the Muslims," "Those Muslims." Under ordinary circumstances, I would think this was ridiculous. Today was no exception.

I spent an hour this morning having coffee and wonderful conversation with my new friends who are Muslim women. It was one of the most beautiful, enjoyable hours I have had in a long time! Had it not been for the upcoming trip to Iran, I might not have approached my new friend as she waited to speak about Islam to a group of Midwestern public school teachers at a Peace Conference last month.

I didn't honor the lady's ridiculous claims with a yelling match. I just suggested (...a couple of times) that she stop and have an actual conversation with us, turned my back so I was facing towards the Northbound traffic on Providence, and held my "Honk for Peace" sign a little higher.

For the past couple of hours, I've been thinking about this uneducated, irrational claim that first, we need to protect ourselves from Muslim people and second that bombs are an adequate way of doing so. I am left with an overwhelming sense that there is much to be done to correct the misunderstandings and to promote a method of solving conflicts, which includes dialogue rather than war, bombs, hate and fear mongering.

I spent the evening on the fourth and final conference call with my traveling companions for the trip ahead. I'm eager and excited about the trip. I'm nervous about packing and am concerned that I won't find the right clothes before I leave for Iran on Tuesday. But mostly, I'm excited and hopeful.

This post is for the lady at the RHD. May we continue to confront misunderstandings with love and an attempt at dialogue. May we recognize the human in each other. And may the travel wishes my fellow civilian diplomats and I wished for each other be true in all of our interactions.

Compassion. Humility. Good listening. Peaceful journey. Calmness in uncertainty. Health. Smiles. Joyous encounters. Wonderful trip. Coming together on a journey of peace.



Dear Friends-

Thank you for supporting my upcoming trip to Iran! After learning of my acceptance to Fellowship of Reconciliation's Friendship Delegation to Iran (FDI), I reached out to you for help. In the past months, you have come through—making what seemed in January to be a hopeful dream an ever approaching reality. One week from today I will leave for Iran with 19 other people from around the country on our journey as citizen diplomats. Our departure was postponed from April 23 to April 29 due to concerns about securing visas on time. For the first time, Fellowship of Reconciliation’s FDI has an official Iranian sponsor, Center for Interfaith Dialogue, and we learned this morning that our visas have been granted!

As you all know, the past years have seen increased anti-Iran propaganda, leading many to be concerned about the potential for US-led or supported military action on Iran. Fellowship of Reconciliation began their fact-finding and friendship delegations to Iran in December 2005 out of a desire to develop relationships between US and Iranian citizens and to foster dialogue between the two nations. The April/May 2008 delegation is the seventh such delegation to Iran.

This trip will be many things for me. A personal journey to a new place, a professional experience in dialogue and citizen diplomacy at a critical time in world history, and other things that, of course, remain to be known. Most importantly, though, I feel that this trip is ours. Ours—all of us who often feel misrepresented by our elected officials, who are concerned about messages of hate and violence that are too prominent on our TV screens and newspapers and radios. Ours—those of us who still hold steadfast to the belief that war is not the answer and to the conviction that dialogue and diplomacy are amongst our most important tools for creating a world of peace—a world in which our leaders recognize, and act upon an understanding of, the interconnectedness of humanity.

I am honored and humbled to have your support on this journey of diplomacy and understanding. I take the responsibility of sharing a message of peace with the Iranian people seriously, and I look forward to the opportunity to talk about the experience upon my return. In mid-May, I will be making phone calls in hopes of scheduling speaking engagements for the summer and fall. Please call or email if you are interested in scheduling a talk/discussion! Also, come back to this blog when you can! I will do my best to post reflections to this website during the trip and my colleague, Mark, will post group reports as he receives them from FOR's communications team.

In hope for peace and with deepest gratitude for your support,

Lily Tinker Fortel


April 2008