DC Fights Back on World AIDS Day

We often forget that HIV/AIDS is not just a growing epidemic on other parts of the globe, but it is also an ever growing crisis that has also been plaguing America since the 1980s.  In 2006 the HIV virus was estimated by the Center for Disease Control to have infected 1.1 million people in the United States with the number of infections growing at a rate of 56,000 more Americans a year.  A recent study, conducted by the World Health Organization, concluded that AIDS is now the leading cause of death and disease for women between the ages of 15 and 44.  International AIDS Charity Avert estimated that there were 2 million children under the age of 15 in the world infected with HIV at the end of 2007. AIDS around the globe, including America, is a growing crisis that we as global citizens need to address.

Washington DC has the highest rate of AIDS of any city in the United States.   It is estimated that one In 33 DC residents is infected with HIV/AIDS giving DC an infection rate of 3%, though he number is believed to be higher.  According to The Washington Post, DC’s infection rate is comparable to San Francisco’s during the height of the AIDS epidemic and has double the infection rate of modern day New York City.  The Center for Disease Control views an infection rate of 1% to be a crisis yet the capital the United States has three times that number.

The nation’s capital is the perfect place to voice our concern and demand an ending to the epidemic, both in DC and abroad. During the start of the Obama administration, many promises regarding AIDS were made. Promises about increased global funding for US Global AIDS programs, access to affordable generic drugs in developing countries, and lifting the federal ban on federal funding of syringe exchange were all broken as none of the promises have materialized.

On December first, World AIDS day, Washington DC will urge the administration to follow through with their promises.  In an effort to inspire the US government to take action against the dire condition of the capital city, and in many places around the globe, DC Fights Back (www.dcfightsback.org), along with other groups including AIDemocracy, will be organizing a march/rally starting in Lafayette Park (the White House) at 12 pm and ending in Freedom Plaza at 2 pm.  The rally hopes to raise awareness of DC’s and the World’s AIDS crisis and inspire policy changes.

Interested in joining the rally? Just show up at the White House at 12pm on December first, OR for more information on joining the AIDemocracy team during the rally, contact priti@aidemocracy.org.  On Facebook? You can RSVP for the rally and learn more about the issues there, visit: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=187734974082&ref=mf.

Coming Together for Farmworkers’ Rights

Students at the University of Florida are working to help farmworkers battle for fair wages and basic human rights.

By Kristen Abdullah and Richard Blake
November 16, 2009

Migrant worker Jorge Rodriguez plays the “quijada,” in Immokalee, Fla. Farmworkers celebrated the recent decision by Taco Bell to accede to the demands of local tomato pickers, who led a four-year boycott against the restaurant chain, and pay a penny more for each pound of Florida tomatoes. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

As we made the four-hour journey south to tomato-town Immokalee, Fla., we ran through the itinerary for the long weekend to come and familiarized ourselves with the 40-plus pages of reading material that we were supposed to have completed three weeks before. The thick packet of literature included stories like “Immokalee family sentenced for slavery,” “Apartheid in America,” and “A more-complete definition of ‘sustainable.’” By the time we arrived in the desolate town, just after midnight, we felt confident in our school-child ability to recite the labor history of this town and felt briefed on the ultimate reason for our visit.

After becoming fed up with the impoverished condition that enslaved them, migrant workers started a grassroots organization called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) in 1993. Consisting mostly of people from Mexico, Guatemala, and Haiti, these workers had already experienced both verbal and physical abuses since their arrival in the United States. Most of them could remember a time when, back in their own countries, they survived as subsistence farmers—selling crops and living off corn, squash, beans, and, most important, their own autonomy. They weren’t rich, but they were dignified.

But after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was established among the United States, Canada, and Mexico, these small-time farmers could not compete with subsidized crops from the States. Before, Mexico was a major wheat exporter. Now, Mexico only exports cheap labor.

USAS Wins! Honduran Union signs historic agreement with Russell Athletic!

» Breaking News: New York Times article on our historic victory on front page of NYT website!

Just over a year ago, Russell Athletic announced it would close Jerzees de Honduras in response to workers’ organizing efforts. During that year, USAS organized the largest boycott in the history of modern student activism. Now, as a direct result of our efforts, we have won an unprecedented victory — the company has agreed to meet worker demands to reopen the factory and re-hire all 1200 workers, who have been without jobs for 10 months or more. View the details of the agreement here.

Landmark Victory: A Precedent is Set
This is one of the most significant youth-led campaign victories in recent times and one of the most significant campaign victories of the global justice movement. No one has ever forced a multinational corporation to reopen a facility it shut down in the global race to the bottom. This victory has also proven that together, we can successfully fight back when those in power take advantage of the economic crisis to attack working people. We should take strength and inspiration from the example of the workers of Jerzees de Honduras. We can fight back — and WIN — against policies that benefit a privileged few and hurt our communities.

Thank You!
Your campus organizing, e-mails, faxes, phone calls, direct action and donations were essential to winning this campaign. We are standing on the shoulders of previous generations of activists. We built on top of USAS victories of the past twelve years, from the sit-ins in the late 1990s that resulted in supply chain transparency and university labor codes of conduct to the formation of the Worker Rights Consortium in 2000. As Russell and SITRAJERZEESH work to implement this agreement, please continue to support our efforts by making a tax-deductible donation to USAS. We need your continued support to sustain our movement.

The struggle continues! ¡La lucha sigue!

In solidarity,

United Students Against Sweatshops

Voices from the Other Side of the Road

“Who decides about food policies?”

“Who controls food producing resources?”

“How is food produced?”

“Who has/needs access to food?”

For the first time in history, the growing numbers of the hungry has surpassed the one billion mark.  Such numbers pose a huge risk to world peace and security.

In order to keep the challenge of food insecurity on top of the international agenda, the FAO convened a World Summit on Food Security this past weekend in Rome.

But, while heads of state met in the stately buildings of the UN, just one Metro station away, hundreds of farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists, indigenous organizations, women’s groups and urban poor organizations gathered at a parallel summit to demand a new framework for inclusive, grassroots food security–food sovereignty.

Representing 93 countries,  the People’s Forum on Food Sovereignty offered stories about real hunger, land grabbing, eviction, discrimination because they are women and the neglect of their knowledge and their traditions.  The forum

If we are to eradiccate of the roots causes of hunger and poverty, those most affected by hunger–food producers and their communities–must have a seat at the table.

Find out more

http://peoplesforum2009.foodsovereignty.org

http://farmlandgrab.org

http://www.grain.org/landgrab/

People’s Food Sovereignty Forum, Rome 13-17 novembre 2009 – video

http://www.fao.org/wsfs/world-summit/en/

Lupe Fiasco Gets Political

The hip-hop heavyweight is on a college tour, though audiences should expect to hear more weighty rhetoric than witty rhymes.

Cross-post by Delaney Rohan, Campus Progress

Laying his rap talents aside for an evening, critically-acclaimed hip-hop artist Lupe Fiasco gave George Washington University students a lesson in history this week. But unlike what’s taught in closed-door college classrooms, this lesson belonged to anyone who would listen.

Facing a darkened auditorium of over 100 students, Fiasco, drenched in a spotlight, began the evening by reading a now exalted speech Muhammad Ali once made in protest of the Vietnam War.

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over.

Nearly 40 years later—with America still mired in Iraq, the Obama Administration contemplating sending 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, and nearly 50 million people lacking access to health care –Ali’s message remained emotionally relevant.

Settling the Settlement Issue

When Barack Obama delivered his policy-defining speech in Cairo last summer, the biggest cheer from the partisan crowd came when the American President stated that “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.” Five months on and the cheers have turned to chagrin as the U.S. administration capitulates to Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to freeze settlement building whilst rubbing salt into Palestinian wounds through Hilary Clinton’s comments last week where she praised Netanyahu’s obduracy, sycophantically stating that “What the Prime Minister has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of settlements . . . is unprecedented.”

If by acquiescing to the Israeli government’s position Obama felt he could kick-start the peace process, then he is demonstrating the type of naivety that his critics so often accuse him of. The Obama administration had previously stated that peace talks would not take place until Israel froze the construction of settlements beyond the 1967 border. Yet Netanyahu and his colleagues have behaved contemptuously since taking office: Israel plans to double settler numbers in the West Bank, its ever-fulminating foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has repudiated the 2007 Annapolis agreement that promoted a two-state solution, and Netanyahu has refused to include the creation of a Palestinian state in guidelines for peace talks.

While the Israeli government road-blocks the road map to peace and the U.S. watches on, Palestinians feel a mixture of anger and apathy. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s announcement this week that he would stand down in January was another indicator that many Palestinians have already lost faith in the Obama administration’s peace credentials. Nabil Abu Rudeinah, a spokesman for Mr. Abbas, summed up the feelings of many by saying, “The negotiations are in a state of paralysis, and the result of Israel’s intransigence and America’s back-pedaling is that there is no hope of negotiations on the horizon.”

The new administration must show the world that Obama is not merely a talented orator with empty rhetoric. Israel’s refusal to freeze settlement construction is not simply a slap in the face for Palestinians; it is also a brazen attempt to undermine the U.S.’s role as peacemaker in the region. In 1991, George H.W. Bush withheld US$10bn in loan guarantees to Israel until it froze settlement construction. President Obama may not want to replicate many moves from the Bush playbook, but this should be the exception to that rule. Doing something of this nature will pour cold water on the incendiary “too late for two states” discourse which has begun to permeate Israeli politics and signal that he is ready to act on his Middle Eastern promise. It is time for the winner of the Nobel peace prize to live up to his title.

Michael Collins, November 2009

michael.mc.collins@gmail.com

Happy Anniversary, Obama. Now Sign a Climate Deal.

Cross-post by  Janet Redman, Institute for Policy Studies

Developed countries have an obligation to direct financial and technical support to developing nations to enable them to shift to low-carbon growth pathways.

It’s been a year since Barack Obama’s historic election as our first African-American president. That night, many Americans shed tears of joy, exchanged congratulatory embraces, and voiced high expectations for real change.

As the Obama administration’s first year draws to a close, we’re approaching another historic moment. The world’s nations are negotiating a deal to steer the planet away from catastrophic climate change. And by December, if an agreement is reached at a summit in Copenhagen, developed countries like the United States will have to step forward and put binding targets for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions on the table.

Yes, developing countries-with their increasing carbon footprints-should come to the table, too (and in fact, many are already making great strides at implementing renewable energy and energy efficiency programs). But the responsibility rests squarely on wealthy industrialized nations to own up to our historical role in causing the climate crisis and make the first move. And legally, developed countries have an obligation to direct financial and technical support to developing nations to enable them to shift to low-carbon growth pathways.

But our government says it can’t get out ahead of Congress and commit to anything internationally until lawmakers pass a domestic climate bill. Meanwhile, Congress says it’s waiting for the White House to send the right signals before pushing hard on targets and climate finance for poorer countries.

So instead of leading on climate, as he’d promised to do in campaign speeches, Obama’s administration has called for each country-rich or poor-to simply pledge its individual domestic climate commitment.

No Justice for Russian Journalists

It was a quintessentially cold night in Moscow when Anna Politkovskaya arrived back at her flat with her shopping on October 7, 2006. As she took the elevator down for the last bag of groceries, she was confronted by a gunman who shot her twice in the chest and once in the head. She died instantly. Ms. Politkovskaya’s murder sparked worldwide outrage because she was a prominent journalist and an outspoken critic of Vladmir Putin, the Russian government and its polices in Chechynya. Her death has come to personify the long, lamentable list of journalists killed in Russia, whose murders remain unsolved.

It is estimated that over 300 journalists have died or disappeared in Russia since 1993 as a result of their work.  This figure is all the more shocking when we consider that the impune murder of journalists is acknowledged as a sign that a country does not observe the fundamental right to freedom of speech and is the reason that Russia is ranked by the CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists) as the third-deadliest country in the world for journalists. Despite the fact that current Russian President Dimitri Medvedev came to power last year promising to end the legal nihilism that peremeates the country’s judicial system, the Russian government’s unwillingness to prosecute many of the cases has persisted. While justice lags, the murders continue unabated, as demonstrated by the murder this year of Stanislav Markelov, and Natalia Estemriova.

The international community has reacted in typically futile fashion. The EU keeps its mouth closed for fear that Russian criticism will adversely affect its gas supply, something Ukraine experienced last winter. Meanwhile, the Obama adminstration is eager to reset relations with Russia and is therefore reluctant to make demands, given that it needs Russia’s cooperation on Iran and nuclear proliferation. On a trip to Russia last month, U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was pushed by Russian journalists to make a statement on the Russian Government’s refusal to comprehensively investigate the murders of their colleagues. Clinton responded by commenting that the situation “is a matter of grave concern”.

Yet it is clear that merely paying lip service to human rights groups will not be enough to end this wanton wave of violence. It is high time that the U.S. and the E.U. pressurized Russia into taking action on this matter. Medvedev, Putin and co. must realize that while they may not be pulling the trigger, they are ultimately responsible for the failures of the justice system. Although the days of Gulags and communist repression are long gone in Russia, blood remains on the hands of those in the Kremlin.

Michael Collins, November 2009

michael.mc.collins@gmail.com

---

Thoughts from Kenya: It is time for a workers bailout!

Cross-post from Labor Is Not a Commodity, by Steve O. Akoth, Labour Awareness and Resource Centre

When reports appeared in the media two years ago detailing failure in mortgage repayments in the United States, the government of Kenya alongside many others in Africa, claimed that that was a US affair.  The treasury bureaucrats and politicians were quick to reassure Kenyans that our economy was safe.  In fact, new projections of 2% annual growth were given.  But this was nothing more than the usual political talk show and regular political performance that is not uncommon in Kenya.

Our government, rather than deceive us, should appreciate that Kenyan workers know that they are part of a huge interconnected web.  When a small scale farmer in Tigoni plants runner beans to sell to Homegrown for instance, she knows that the beans shall end up in the supermarket of Mars and Spencer in the United Kingdom.  For that reason, the farmer is interested and is affected by the purchasing power of a consumer in the UK.  Similarly, a worker on the stitching line in an Export Processing Zone (EPZ) in Ruaraka, knows that the garment shall be sold off through Wal-Mart’s shelves.  The workers are therefore invested in the purchasing power of the average American who wants to buy a “cheap” designer garment from Wal-Mart.  So the shrinking global market and the resulting economic nationalism in the northern countries in the name of bailout is an important subject for the worker in Kenya and trade unions engaged in Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) discussions in Kenya.  In the long run, it is the working poor who experience the recession most, it does not matter whether it starts in China or the US.

The Pursuit of Foreign Assistance Reform Continues: A Case for Optimism

Post by Alex Simon, George Washington University

When Lily first invited me to a discussion on foreign assistance reform on Capitol Hill, I must admit my expectations were low.  Not only had I come to think of government approaches to global development as weakened by their bureaucratic processes and special interests, but looking briefly at the history of attempted foreign aid reform, there hasn’t been a lot of progress.

To my surprise, the meeting, convened by House Foreign Affairs Committee Senior Staffer Diana Ohlbaum last Tuesday, was filled with optimism and a sense that the time to modernize US foreign assistance has finally come.

The topic of discussion:  “Discussion Paper #1: Development Assistance Reforms” released by Chairman Berman’s committee staff on October 6^th of this year.  Currently, foreign assistance priorities are driven by Washington, not by the needs of the countries receiving the cash and long-term development success is compromised by annual appropriations and Congressional earmarks.

The paper outlines 10 reforms directed at fixing these bureaucratic barriers and balancing what are often perceived as competing objectives.  According to the paper, the following reforms could

“Provide greater support for country-owned plans while serving U.S. national interests; allow greater input from USAID field missions while advancing policy priorities; offer greater flexibility while demanding greater accountability; respond to areas of greatest need while rewarding good performance and addressing security threats; and achieve a measurable impact that leads to sustained economic growth.”