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Contact: Bruce Matthews Email: bmatthew@bhsec.bard.edu Cell: 917-361-7156
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Contact Jonathan Sheff Email:jonathan@spiritualprogressives.org Cell: 510-644-1200
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News Release
Join us on "Generosity Sunday", this April 15, to help us launch a national campaign to change the way we think about security, to end global poverty, and to heal the earth.
Coinciding with events in cities throughout the nation, including San Francisco, New York, San Diego, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Baltimore, the Global Marshall Plan Initiative USA and the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) will ask the U.S. Congress and the American people to implement a global Marshall Plan to achieve United Nations goals that were set in the year 2000.
Our use of the title "Marshall Plan" is meant to evoke the first, visionary Marshall Plan, which was instituted by the USA in 1947 to rebuild Europe after World War II. Contributing up to 2% of annual GDP, this program was enormously successful in stabilizing 16 countries of Western Europe, and since that time, has stood as an example for what could be accomplished throughout the world.
We call on America to devote at least 1% of its gross domestic product to combat poverty and counter environmental degradation throughout the world and in the United States. If we do this, the USA will keep pace with the European Union, which since 2003 has pursued a Global Marshall Plan Initiative as part of achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.
As it stands now, although all nations of the General Assembly signed onto the U.N. Millennium Goals, the USA, unlike most European nations, has failed to pony up its promised funds.
At the Group of Eight economic summit in June, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to use the European’s Global Marshall Plan Initiative as a basis for discussion on development goals worldwide.
On Generosity Sunday, groups across the continent will propose a U.S. Global Marshall Plan and encourage acts of generosity closer to home, with teach-ins, lectures and festivals in churches and other venues. Other performance events will occur at post offices on Tuesday – the day Americans actually pay taxes this year.
Please join us this Sunday at 12:30 for an informative
afternoon of talks, questions and discussion.
New York City: Schedule of Events|
Jonathan Sheff, National Coordinator, Network of Spiritual Progressives |
"NSP and the Global Marshall Plan” |
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Dr.
Bruce Matthews, US Steering Committee, Global Marshall Plan
Initiative and Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious
Studies, |
"The Utopian Imperative and the Global Marshall Plan Initiative"
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| Diane Williams, Chairperson of the NGO Committee on Spirituality, Values and Global Concerns, United Nations | “The Power of Conscious Generosity" |
| Jonathan Sheff | Next Steps & Moving Forward; closing song? |
