Why is the US Government Persecuting IFCO/Pastors for Peace Humanitarian Organization?

Why is the US Government Persecuting IFCO/Pastors for Peace Humanitarian Organization?

by W. T. Whitney
October 6, 2015

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.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/06/why-is-the-us-government-persecuting-ifcopastors-for-peace-humanitarian-organization/