The
Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO/Pastors for Peace)
has worked tirelessly so that someday U. S. international dealings would be
based on peace and mutual respect. Now the Internal Revenue Service is about to
remove the tax-exempt status of that non-profit, humanitarian group. In the
words of the late Rev. Lucius Walker Jr., who founded the organization, IFCO
wants a “people’s foreign policy.”
An IRS
appeals officer in September signaled that the agency would be upholding a
ruling from December 2013 revoking IFCO’s non-profit, tax-exempt status. IFCO
has long stood in the forefront of efforts to establish decent U. S. relations
with Cuba. The IRS action seems to stem from IFCO activities in that regard.
Under
Rev. Walker’s leadership, IFCO transformed lessons learned from civil rights
struggles to fashion tactics of non-violent civil disobedience to advance its
work on Cuba. Annually for 23 years IFCO/Pastors for Peace, joined by
supporters, has taken humanitarian aid to Cuba in purposeful violation of
regulations governing the U. S. embargo against Cuba. Until now, ironically
enough, federal authorities have done very little to impede the flow of IFCO
aid material and delegations to the island.
The
original IRS investigation that began in March 2011 had a very different
agenda. Conservative congresspersons had complained to the IRS that IFCO in
2009 served as a fiscal sponsor for the U. S. branch of the British group Viva
Palestina that at the time was helping to organize a humanitarian flotilla
headed for Gaza. They alleged that IFCO was actually backing the Hamas
political organization, and thereby terrorists.
IFCO
Executive Director Gail Walker on October 3 reacted sharply to news that the
IRS had rejected her organization’s appeal: the “attack by the U.S. government
to rescind our nonprofit status is shocking and makes no sense in light of the
significant moves of both the Obama and Castro administrations to normalize
relations between our two countries.”
In fact
IFCO has dedicated much of its work over two decades to ending the U. S.
embargo against Cuba. More recently IFCO/Pastors for Peace has recruited and
supported U.S. young people to become medical doctors through study, at no
personal cost, at Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine.
On
October 3, an IFCO press release pointed out that the group is “one of the
nation’s oldest faith-based civil rights organizations and the first ecumenical
foundation founded by and for people of color.” That statement called upon the
U. S. government “To stop bullying IFCO for helping the people of Cuba and
allow us to continue our life-saving humanitarian work.”
IFCO
asks for support and action on its behalf. In particular:
1 FAX or Telephone IRS Commissioner John Koskinen at Large Business and International Division, Attn: SE:LB, 1111 Constitution Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20224, Phone: (202) 515-4400, Fax: (202) 622-5756
2 FAX or Telephone, Secretary of Treasury Jacob J. Lew, Department of the Treasury, 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW , Washington, D.C. 20220, Phone: (202) 622-2000, Fax: (202) 622-6415
(You may
write them via regular mail, but FAX is better, says IFCO. A link is available
to send a FAX: Use this.)
Click here to sign a petition which sends an email message to Commissioner John
Koskinen, asking him to end this politically-motivated attack on IFCO. (and
also to Pres. Obama and our friends in Congress — with one click)