• Public schools reducing to four days a week in Minnesota. NPR news (10/30/11?) • A 20% increase in families turning to emergency homeless shelters as they lose their housing. NYT Times Editorial These news briefs caught my attention this past week. Local school districts, cities and towns, counties and states are making cuts to programs that are painful to the 99%. %. And they are painful in ways that are immediate--like families becoming homeless or people losing jobs because of cutbacks.

These services which are provided by local government can be bolstered by federal revenue that comes to states and local communities; our Congress will make choices about our priorities. Will they act to help create communities where every person's potential may be fulfilled?

For the past few years, FCNL has lobbied tirelessly for establishment and funding for the Complex Crises Fund. The Complex Crises Fund (CCF) provides much needed flexible, unprogrammed funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development to respond to rapidly escalating crises. This innovative tool is crucial to promoting the peaceful prevention of deadly conflict.

“As promised the rest of our troops will come home [from Iraq] by the end of the year” President Obama told reporters during an unceremonious press conference today. “After nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over.”

“America’s war” in Iraq maybe ending, but the horrors the war represented for the Iraqi people, the memories that haunt me and so many other veterans, and the devastation inflicted will forever scar our national history. This war of choice, the premise of which was fixed around false pretense, has cost hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of lives, trillions of dollars ($823.2 billion in operational costs alone) in long term costs and, in my view, a loss in morality we may never regain. Where is the accountability; where is the justice?

Many in Libya - and here in Washington - are celebrating today's news that Qaddafi was fatally wounded in battle. The demise of the dictator is being hailed as a "success" for the NATO military intervention and a demonstration of how the "responsibility to protect" doctrine should work. We at FCNL disagree.

Any time a human conflict spirals into violence and war, with state-sanctioned extra-judicial killing as its policy end, it should be considered a human tragedy and a policy failure, not a success. Libya may be free of a brutal dictator today, but the civil war and international military intervention that killed him also took many other lives - civilians as well as those who took up arms on one side or the other. As Quakers, we believe each of these lives - no matter how ill-used - is still sacred in some way. Non-military methods for protecting civilians are available but are too rarely tried.

Moreover, as despicable as the actions of Qaddafi or others of these individuals were, killing them off does little to ensure peace and stability for Libya going forward. The long hard road to peace, justice, and development for the people of Libya will be much more difficult work and will not gain the headlines - or the billions of dollars in international support - that the war has.

On the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC, a far-less famous hero died in Montana. She too--against impossible odds--had secured a measure of justice for her people. As her lawyer Keith Harper (Cherokee) said: “With any moment of progressive social change, there is always an iconic figure who will define that movement—the person who refused to get to the back of the bus. For Indian people, for this important cause, for this indelible change, that person was Elouise Cobell.” The cause was holding the federal government accountable for trust land and resource assets it controls and getting back billions of Indian people’s own money.

If you ever send an email to your members of Congress, it’s well worth your time to pay attention to Congressional Management Foundation. Their reports on how congressional offices perceive different forms of constituent communications, and what’s working and not working in that area, are invaluable to me and many others at FCNL who are trying to help you be the most effective lobbyist possible.

The foundation’s latest report examines whether congressional offices are changing the ways they respond to communications from their constituents because of the enormous influx of email the offices receive. The report documents some shifts in the ways offices are using technology and reallocating resources to respond to constituents, but it also shows ways that “ ‘old school’ habits on Capitol Hill are inhibiting the potential for Congress and citizens to have a more robust, active and meaningful relationship using online technologies.”

Late last week, President Obama notified Congress that over 100 U.S. military advisors are to be deployed to Uganda to help regional forces pursue the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). For over two decades, the LRA rebel group has threatened communities in northern Uganda and across central Africa by targeting civilians and abducting thousands of children. Even though the LRA is small in numbers, their attacks have wreaked havoc on the region and caused massive civilian displacement. Originally from northern Uganda, the LRA now operate in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), southeastern Central Africa Republic (CAR), and South Sudan.

Today we resumed the old FCNL tradition of morning meeting for worship. Former Executive Secretary Joe Volk recalls that before the renovation staff used to meet in the Wilson conference room on Monday mornings. Staring out at the Hart Senate office building this morning I enjoyed the notion that Quakers have practiced their faith in this space since 1959.

Can we practice our faith the way an athlete practices a sport or a musician practices an instrument? The word “practice” does not imply perfect execution from the outset; it suggests that we gradually improve over time.