I am a young woman from the United States, who was raised in the Lutheran church (ELCA). Prior to CPT I studied Art History and Italian at Vassar College. I was a full-time CPTer for over three years and am now a part-time Reservist.

Where have you worked?

Mostly with the Colombia Team in Barrancabermeja. Also short-term involvement in CPT delegations to the Borderlands project in Sonora/Arizona.

How did you get involved?

During college I was active in anti-war organizing and Palestine solidarity and awareness campaigns. I think in my heart I have always been a pacifist, but I became an active pacifist in those years. As I was getting close to graduating, I realized I didn’t want to have a ‘job’ in the traditional sense, but rather wanted to be a fulltime activist. I started to look online for ways to do that, and CPT was one of many options that I explored. From there I decided to participate in a CPT delegation.

What attracted you?

On my delegation I was attracted to the openness to creativity and collaboration, and the recognition of each team member as a whole, multifaceted individual.

What are you doing this work?

I believe deeply that addressing violence must be done – confronting the in-your-face violence, and the violence that functions in the most removed way. Challenging both the foot soldiers and the structures of domination and oppression.

What does your support community think about your work?

My family, friends and community support me from their faith perspective, although not as much from their political perspective as one might hope. They try. I try to challenge them in ways that invite them to grow. My younger brother is especially supportive from a political perspective.

An inspirational story from your work:

Often the inspirational part of work is found in the days where it seems like nothing is happening – the visits to the rural Colombian communities when we drink a lot of coffee or lemonade, chat and take a nap, the public actions that do not get a rise out of the local Colombian police, three phone calls that help someone who is targeted flee safely from the city, or a bunch of letters to officials who are sick of hearing from us so that human rights cases actually get investigated. None of these things make good “stories,” but they are the daily inspirations. When nothing too thrilling is happening, that probably means our goal of reducing violence is happening through our presence.

What are the most challenging things about this work?

Some of the most challenging things are dealing with dynamics of racism, sexism, and other forms oppression that are rooted in international economic forms of domination. These can be especially challenging because our work is about active engagement with the world – we’re supposed to engage these things, both externally and within CPT.
Some other challenges:

• living in community
• the high rotation of individuals on-team
• the constant displacement of local people fleeing violence
• the temptation to try to be super-heroes and therefore not take good care of ourselves
• disconnection with friends, families and communities because of my commitment to a different geography
• constant emphasis on the need to act for change
• the reality that there are few other people in the world who have jobs like ours
• it’s hard for others to relate to this work without either ignoring it, or putting CPTers up on a pedestal, both of which are not good bases for relationships.

What would you tell someone interested in CPT to consider before joining?

Do deep self-examination before committing to CPT because there are a lot of pieces of the CPT experience that work for some and not for others. And when CPT isn’t a good fit for someone, it may have very little to do with the person’s commitment to peace work. Think seriously how well you can work as a team member – lots of jobs say they require teamwork, but I would argue none require it as much as CPT. How well can you live in community, and how well can you be “semi-nomadic” for years at a time as you move in and out of field-work?

I see anti-oppression work as central to all CPT work. We should all have a commitment to anti-oppression work, a dedication to building and bettering our anti-oppression analysis, and clarity about what privileges we do and do not have as we walk into this work.

Ask yourself the question, “Am I ready to never be the same again?” In some ways the growth and change that CPT work brings is wonderful, and in many ways extremely painful. This is hard to prepare for.

What are the rewarding parts of this work?

• We see, sometimes only briefly, spaces where real change is going through infancy and will one day be Real Change in our world.
• Communities share themselves with us on a level that cannot be explained, only experienced, and we experience this depth of sharing only when we understand that we do not have the answers.
• We can never forget the realities of capitalism and imperialism because we have friends that suffer from them; those of us who are members from the Global North can never forget that we are part of those oppressive structures.
• Most importantly, the organizations and communities we work with educate us in the skill of finding joy in pain, destruction and sadness. This skill is fundamental to our humanness. CPT work, when done well, helps us be more human.
  

Finally, I am always willing for folks who are interested in CPT to contact me by email at Suzanna.collerd [at] gmail [dot] com