Tag: human rights

The threat of the recent cholera outbreak in Haiti has been intensified by Hurricane Tomas. The already bad sanitary conditions combined with the flooding from the hurricane is expected to cause the infection rate to jump.

Rwandan President Kagame denied the accusations in the new U.N. report, most of all the accusations of genocide, and then responded by arresting Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, the second of three opposition presidential candidates to be jailed since attempting to contest this year’s presidential election against Kagame.

With this campaign we have to fight to plug the mass leak of people systemically pressed into nearly abject poverty. It is like watching the death of the spirit of a city that the world depends upon to be the one place where right is right and fair is fair.

With Arizona’s harsh new immigration law threatening to unleash a wave of racial profiling, Bay Area African-American clergy and community leaders traveled to Phoenix late last month on a four-day solidarity mission.

The Right to Return Weekend challenges the forced removal of all public housing residents following Hurricane Katrina and the discriminatory policies of the government to permanently displace low-income Black communities from the “new” New Orleans.

Foreclosures are soaring. Some housing experts say 4 million foreclosures are possible in 2010. To fight back, organizations across the U.S. are engaging in “housing liberation” and “housing defense” to exercise their human rights to housing. Here are a few examples.

"Damn Detroit Police Department! You burned, shot and killed Aiyana Jones, a little 7-year-old girl. You threw a stun grenade through the front window and lit the little girl’s blanket on fire! And then you shot off a bullet that landed in her neck!" - Read this account by Kimora Lee Simmons, another by a 12-year-old girl and the full story by veteran Detroit journalist Abayomi Azikiwe.

Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” (published by The New Press, 2010) looks at the invisible people and the invisible birdcage that keeps the masses of Black people locked in and alienated from society – the targets of the War on Drugs.

The People’s National Party of Belize organized a Kayak for Haiti Kayakathon to raise funds for the victims of the quake. Despite the inclement weather, Kayak for Haiti was a success because the target was met and surpassed. The total amount raised was $1,404. The money will go to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund.

Despite the fact that over a million people remained homeless in Haiti one month after the earthquake, U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Ken Merten is quoted at a State Department briefing on Feb. 12, saying: “In terms of humanitarian aid delivery … frankly, it’s working really well. And I believe that this will be something that people will be able to look back on in the future as a model for how we’ve been able to sort ourselves out as donors on the ground and responding to an earthquake.”

This statement reflects the position of an international community of adoptees of color who wish to pose a critical intervention in the discourse and actions affecting the child victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti and who feel compelled to voice our opinion about what it means to be “saved” or “rescued” through adoption.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti have had no access to clean water since the quake hit. Have you ever felt the raw fear in the gut when you are not sure where your next drink of water is going to come from? People can die within hours if they are exposed to heat without water.

Allow all Haitians in the U.S. to work and send money home. Do not allow U.S. military in Haiti to point their guns at Haitians. Do not allow the victims to be cast as criminals. Give Haiti grants as help, not loans. Enact Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. Release all Haitians in U.S. jails who are not accused of any crimes. And more.

Historic Wesley United Methodist Church, the second oldest African American church in New Orleans, the eighth oldest in the United States and a symbol of the struggle for emancipation and human rights in the state of Louisiana, is in jeopardy. Unless those who are trying to save it acquire financial support soon, the church may be torn down due to hurricane damage and replaced with a parking lot.

Communities from up and down the West Coast that had planned to converge in San Francisco to demonstrate our immense energy and BE THE CHANGE this administration needs to do what is right have been denied a previously approved permit to gather – why? on the grounds that the rally will be too large. Is this a re-run of the rise and fall of the Poor People’s Campaign’s Resurrection City on the Washington Mall in 1968?

Recently the cold war against Cuba was ratcheted up when an acrimonious debate broke out over the issue of racism in Cuba and for the first time the issue of Brazil was thrown into the mix. The brouhaha began when scores of prominent African Americans, many of whom should have known better, put their names to a petition calling upon the Cuban government to release a dissident from prison.

Paul Robeson was an extraordinary and versatile individual, world famous during his lifetime, who has been deliberately erased from the dominant myth of U.S. history for speaking the truth about conditions both domestic and abroad – his opposition to racism, fascism and colonialism and his support for civil and human rights, democracy, national liberation, socialism and the day-to-day resistance of working people of all lands to oppression, knowing that his fame would allow these messages to be more widely heard.

The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) predicts a 16-inch mid-century sea level rise, covering Bay Area coastal lands and eventually swamping downtown San Francisco up to Market Street. The primary global warming gas is carbon dioxide. Methane gas, heavily implicated in global warming, has been emitted for years from the Bayview Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Sea level rise will release methane gas from wetlands and landfill, of which much of Hunters Point is composed.

Welcome M1 of dead prez to East and West Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Sonoma, San Jose, Santa Cruz – 7 events in 7 cities on 7 days, Sept. 23-29, comparing his experiences in Gaza, Cairo and Europe with ghetto life in the U.S., benefiting SF Bay View and Block Report Radio. Check out new M1 interviews, with Min. of Info JR and KPFA Morning Show.

Welcome M-1 of dead prez to the Bay Area – East and West Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Sonoma, San Jose, Santa Cruz – for seven days, Sept. 23-29, of sharing his recent experiences in Gaza, Cairo and Europe and comparing them with ghetto life in the U.S., benefiting the SF Bay View and Block Report Radio. Read his own words and hear a KPFA interview.