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F%u00b0\I ^ J lC O m Q lJ n V ! & r r > o js lo v if T n a V to c : D / J t A t %u25a0L * t< v . v t / w ^ m 4 - / i a . i w u m v ' i i t %u00bb w / / l ; Contra Aid In Visit To Park SlopeBY LIZ KOCHAt first the 300 people inside the Park Slope Methodist Church Sunday morning fanned themselves with a flyer announcing the arrival of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and waited patiently for his entrance.They craned their necks and looked out the door as they sang along in a poignant rendition of %u201cBread and Roses,%u201d a strike song from earlier in the century. Small babies cried on their parents%u2019 laps and finally fell asleep, only to be jarred from their rest moments later as a cheer, accompanied by stamping feet and shouts of %u201cViva Nicaragua%u201d filled the room, and Ortega, dressed in a tan suit, stood in the doorway.One last song erupted as welcome to the president and his entourage, the anthem of the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Ortega remained standing at the front of the church, his hands crossed in front of him as the cheers began again.A hundred flyers waved in the air, the floor was rumbling and a strong rhythmic clapping started. The crowd that had overflowed outside the church could be heard cheering through the open windows of the crammed sanctuary.The church%u2019s Rev. A. Finley Schaef, welcoming Ortega to the church, said to him: %u201cMany Americans have been led to believe that we have something to fear from your country. That fear is the emotional base for funding the contras.%u201d%u201cWe have a deep sense of shame about this and with every fiber of our being we oppose funding the contras,%u201d he continued, sparking another round of avid applause, this time joined by the Nicaraguan President himself.Schaef introduced five young Brooklynites who handed Ortega a box of pencils and crayons to take back to the children in Nicaragua. %u201cThey humbly ask that you be their messanger,%u201d Schaef said.Ortega who showed little expression during his two hour visit to the church, smiled broad-%u25a0 H mNicaraguan President Daniel Ortega waves to a jubilant audience at the Park SlopeM ethodist Church last Sunday where he was welcom ed by Reverend A. Finley Schaef(left) and an overflowing crowd that spilled outside. (Phoenix/Koch Photo)ly at the small entourage and kissed the gift bearing children. Moments later he smiled for the second time as Nicole Fauteaux from the Brooklyn Sister City project bestowed a t-shirt upon him with a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge representing a link between the two countries.Ortega, who is in New York to speak beforethe United Nations Security Council, spoke to the Park Slope audience about the Reagan administration%u2019s refusal to accept the ruling of the International Court of Justice against the United States funding of the contras in Nicaragua. Ortega addressed the Council on Tuesday when it considered the World Court ruling.%u201cNicaragua has been the victim of bad policies,%u201d Ortega said, speaking through a translator. %u201cI arrived here today worried about the developing situation, now that Congress has voted but also about the injection of U.S. military advisors,%u201d he said, %u201cand all this at the time when the World Court rendered its decision.%u201cIf Mr. Reagan is so sure he has reasonChurch Gets Crank CallsDespite the overwhelmingly positive response Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega received when he spoke at the Park Slope Methodist Church on Sunday, not everyone was pleased with his visit to Brooklyn.The day after his visit, Nancy Schaef, wife of the Rev. A. Finley Schaef, was wearily answering the phone at the church taking a host of negative %u2014 and almost all anonymous %u2014 telephone calls in response to the visit.%u201cThey%u2019re calling us Communist bastards,%u201d she says. %u201cI%u2019m not a Communist and that is not why he spoke here. He is the head of state that was elected by his people,%u201d she explains.However, she adds that the phone calls do not surprise her. %u201cHe received a very warm welcome here yesterday and not everyone likes that.%u201d %u2014 L.K.and justice on his side, than why is he afraid to go to court?%u201d Ortega questioned. %u201cThe question is, will the ruling be respected or not? We think plurality is a greater force than brutality,%u201d he stressed, and added: %u201cWill the American people accept a president that goes against the law?%u201dOrtega, who regularly drew a boisterous round of applause from his audience inContinued on Page 17C o m m u n i t y F o r u m views of readersOrtega Visit Underlines Need For A Sister City Project In BrooklynBY PAUL CORRELPeople petitioning against U.S. involvement in the destabilization of another country%u2019s government amongst parishioners, a choral group singing protest songs to the congregation, and a head of state delivering the sermon: these are not the usual trappings of a Sunday worship service at your average community church.But, then again, Park Slope Methodist Church is not our average, run-of-the-mill congregation. It is a body of worshippers whose 101-year-old history has more recently been characterized as having a commitment to making %u201chuman life more human%u201d according to Rev. Wilson T. Boots, Council Director of the New York Annual Confemce of the United Methodist Church. This church official, who also spoke at the Sunday, July 27, service, said that this was in line with the Methodist tradition of being %u201con the side of the workers and the powerless to empower them.%u201dRev. Boots was one of the guest speakers at Rev. Finley Schaef%u2019s pulpit, when Daniel Ortega Saavedra, President of Nicaragua%u2019s Sandinista government, came to address Brooklyn activists and churchgoers at the Sunday morning worship service. It is fitting that this church was chosen to be the site for Pres. Ortega%u2019s address, for it was here that anti-intervention work started with the founding of the Pledge of Resistance in Brooklyn back in early 1985, and that the Brooklyn Sister City Project held its kick-off rally to announce the idea of %u201ctwinning%u201d Brooklyn%u2019s Community Board No. 6 (C.B. 6) with a city in Nicaragua on May 9th of this year.It is also fitting that Daniel Ortega should come to this church, since the congregation has declared itself a sister church with a church in Managua. So it would seem that the idea of %u201ctwinning%u201d with another like entity in Nicaragua has caught on, with cities as big as Milwaukee, Seattle and New Haven adoptingPaul Corell is a Member of BrooklynMobilization for Survival, the Sister CityProject and a Boerum Hill resident.%u201csisters%u201d in Nicaragua, and another Community Board, C.B. 1 in Manhattan, twinning with%u2014appropriately enough%u2014a part of the city of Bluefields, Nicaragua, called Barrio Nuevo York, even down to the adoption of sister churches.The purpose of adopting a sister community is a multigenerous approach to solving some of the problems created by renewed U.S. funding of the contra guerrillas on the Nicaraguan border. First and foremost, Brooklyn residents will be asking their Community Board Six representatives to pass the resolution asking to be %u201ctwinned%u201d with a part of Nicaragua near the Honduran border which is located in a province known as Nueva Segovia. The specific area in question is a group of five small towns clustered around the city San Juan de Rio Coco. The inhabitants of these five hamlets are mostly refuges from the fighting even closer to the Honduran border, where contra activity has killed relatives and friends as well as destroyed the crops and livelihoods of the people.Once the process of creating the sister citylink-up is complete, we can carry out a program of more concrete material aid to these towns (by helping them to establish schools, libraries and medical centers, etc.). Throughout the whole process it is important to keep in mind that we have to counteract the misinformation and disinformation that is being disseminated by certain politicians, chief among them our very own President. It is Reagan who supports the contras as %u201cfreedom fighters%u201d as well as the resultant killing of Nicaraguan civilians, and who thought that the Statue of Liberty was smiling down on America when the House of Representatives approved the contra aid package at the end of June. Reagan has practised the hard sell on the big lie in a big way! He has shifted the center of public debate on this issue from its rational center and that is how he finally squeezed the $100 million in aid out of Congress.One of the speakers who came to the pulpit before Daniel Ortega last Sunday was Nicole Fauteux of the C.B. 6 Sister City Project. One of the points that she made was that quite a few of us Brooklynites have a %u201cdifferent conH I F s l i y iJPfSOrtega was joined at the church by Rev. A. Finley Schaef and a choir group FourParts of the Movement. (Phoenix/Koch Photo)cept of liberty%u201d than that of Reagan and that that includes the right to self-determination for the Nicaraguan people.Some of us may have doubts about how democratic the current Nicaraguan government is, but how reasonable is it to impose the same parameters of judging civil liberties in that country, which I might point out had a very poor record in that regard under various U.S.-backed regimes, as we would for a country like Sweden, for instance, which has had a much longer tradition of democracy in its political life?To combat the charges of political repression being leveled against Nicaragua by certain people in this country, Pres. Ortega brought out the privations endured by Japanese Americans who were herded into detention camps out West during W.W. II and the censure of Ezra Pound by our government at that time for holding his pro-Fascist point of view. Nowadays we see a growing hysteria amongst certain segments in this country about Nicaragua. It catches some of our public officials totally off guard when they must consider that a left-wing government like Nicaragua%u2019s might actually make it, providing a reasonably healthy and happy environment for its citizens in the bargain. The fact that the Sandinistas might serve as an example for other governments in the region is also not lost on these right-wing ideologues.One final positive consequence of Ortega%u2019s vist to Brooklyn this past week is that we, in the audience, were able to see and hear firsthand the leader of a country which is much criticized in our media, so that we could at least get some idea of his side of the story: so that there could be some input from us back to him. After all, isn%u2019t that what building a bridge of peace and understanding from our country to his is all about?For more information about the (J.tt. b Sister City Project please call the CISPES information number (718 ) 768-0953 or write to the Project c/o Brooklyn CISPES, P.O. Box 356-A, Times Plaza Station, Brooklyn, New York 11217.J u ly 3 1 ,1 9 8 6 , T H E P H O E N IX , P a g e 19