Gail Walker, "The 2014 Cuba Caravan - Celebrating 25 Years of Friendshipments and Cuban Progress"
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is also an award-winning radio producer and an on-air host and journalist. With over 15 years of involvement with Pastors for Peace, including as Communications Director, she has staffed more than 15 caravans of humanitarian aid to Cuba and Central America and worked extensively with marginalized communities.
For many years, Pastors for Peace, founded by the Rev. Lucius Walker, has consistently stood against the U.S. embargo of Cuba and has organized yearly caravans to Cuba to deliver critical supplies. Ms. Walker will discuss present conditions in Cuba and the history of the Friendshipment caravan.
Ms. Walker also speaks about the an IRS attack on the organization to strip them of their 501(c)(3) status because of requests by Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California, and Sue Myrick, a retired Republican congressperson from North Carolina, in a rare show of bipartisan unity. They wrote to the commissioner of the IRS, the U.S. Attorney General and the Secretary of the Treasury alleging that IFCO “may be raising funds for Hamas.
The IFCO responded to the IRS charges stating, “This is a blatantly false allegation. IFCO is being persecuted because in 2009 we agreed to serve as a fiscal sponsor to the U.S. component of the project Viva Palestina. Viva Palestina is a British-based charity organization that provides food, medicine and essential goods and services needed by the civilian population [of the occupied Palestinian Territories], and that highlights the causes and results of wars with a view to achieving peace.”
