Accomplishment at 5th Congressional District DFL Convention

We accomplished something significant at the 5th Congressional District DFL Convention yesterday in seeing a petition resolution adopted addressing Aceh. The lack of cultural competency or concern for ecological sustainability in the U.S. funded tsunami efforts that I witnessed has bothered be for several years and now I feel there is the opportunity for a reassessment of those efforts and to re-target the remaining pledged aid towards peace building and biodiversity conservation.

I created a simple handbill with the text of the resolution and the following text copied out of the Wikipedia entry for Aceh:

Aceh was the closest point of land to the epicenter of the massive 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which triggered a tsunami that devastated much of the western coast of the region, including part of the capital of Banda Aceh.

167,736 Indonesians, the overwhelming majority in Aceh, were killed or missing and 500,000 made homeless. This event helped trigger the peace agreement between the government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). With the assistance of the European Union through the Aceh monitoring mission as of December 2005, the peace has held.

For more information about petition resolutions take a look at the DFL Call.