Syria needs your help. We need your help. Next week we will be in Syria.

Dear Friends of a Sovereign, Independent and Unified Syria,

At the invitation of the Syrian Ministry of Reconciliation, a delegation of 6-8 members of the Syria Solidarity Movement will arrive in Syria on Dec. 4, 2015. Its mission is to pursue all means of supporting the internal efforts of Syrians to overcome divisions and to end foreign intervention.

The delegates include analysts, researchers, commentators and organizers like Ajamu Baraka (US, living in Colombia) and Glen Ford (US) of the Black Agenda Report, Eva Bartlett (Canada) and Paul Larudee (US) of the Free Palestine Movement and human rights advocates Vanessa Beeley (UK) and Jacob Cohen (France). Palestinian organizer and civil rights campaigner Amal Wahdan will also join us from Ramallah, and hopefully community organizer Dr. Issa Chaer from the UK, as well. Many of us are on SSM governing committees.

We will meet with former armed opposition members that have accepted government amnesty, with representatives of civil society groups, religious leaders and community representatives. We will try to arrange for some of them to come to Europe and North America on speaking tours and to meet with their counterparts, as well as government officials. We hope to challenge established thinking on the issues that are driving the conflict.

But we are in desperate need of your help in order to make this happen.

We do not need a lot of financial support to accomplish what we have in mind, but we need some. In fact, we need only $3000 to make this mission possible without cutting corners and causing hardship to the participants. But until now we have managed to raise less than $850.

PLEASE, PLEASE help. We do so much on a volunteer basis, and we’re willing to sacrifice. But we have been unable to pay even the meager stipend of $250/month that supports our hardworking webmaster, Eva, who has nonetheless accepted to continue on a volunteer basis. SNAG, our weekly news magazine has almost entirely been the volunteer work of the tireless Rick Sterling.

Please help us bring a different voice to the issues affecting Syria, one that is not well heard or understood. Shouldn’t we hear all the points of view? What is the point of having an open mind if some viewpoints are inaccessible?

SUPPORT OUR WORK with your donations, at http://www.syriasolidaritymovement.org/donate-2/. Please be generous. Thank you.

The Syria Solidarity Movement

PLEASE NOTE: A group in the UK is illegally using our name and also recommending illegal actions against Syria. We are pursuing legal remedy to compel them to stop using our name, but the process is slow. Please be aware of this problem. Your donations to help with our effort are gratefully appreciated.

All donations are US tax exempt.