Project Censored “conducts research on important national news stories that are underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by the US corporate media. Each year, Project Censored publishes a ranking of the top 25 most censored nationally important news stories in the yearbook, Censored: Media Democracy in Action, which is released in September.

Between 700 and 1000 stories are submitted to Project Censored each year from journalists, scholars, librarians, and concerned citizens around the world.”

Its reviewers write:

Chevron’s [2010] annual report to its shareholders is a glossy celebration heralding the company’s most profitable year in its history. 

What [it] does not reveal is the true cost paid for those financial returns: lives lost, wars fought, communities destroyed, environments decimated, livelihoods ruined, and political voices silenced. 

Thus, the communities, and their allies, who bear the consequences of Chevron’s oil and natural gas production, refineries, depots, pipelines, exploration, offshore drilling rigs, coal fields, chemical plants, political control, consumer abuse, false promises, and much more, have prepared an Alternative Annual Report for Chevron.

The review goes on to describe some of the more egregious of Chevron’s operations around the world.  Here are a few highlights:

The alternative account reveals the true impact of just a handful of Chevron’s operations in the US in communities across Alaska, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, the Gulf Coast, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Utah, and Wyoming; and internationally across Angola, Burma, Canada, Chad, Cameroon, Ecuador, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, and the Philippines…. These accounts include active lawsuits against the company from around the world, totaling in the tens of billions of dollars, which threaten its vaulted financial gains—for when a company operates in blatant disregard for the health, security, livelihood, safety, and environment of the communities within which it operates, there can be real financial repercussions.

This alternative report shows Chevron’s pattern of hiring harsh military “protection” against local residents, evidenced in Iraq, the Niger Delta, Chad, Cameroon, Angola, and Burma, where massive increases in military presence and widespread abuses of human rights—including forced labor, murder, rape, forced relocation of villages, and more—are ongoing against communities living in and around Chevron projects.

In Ecuador, Texaco (now Chevron) oil production has irreversibly altered and degraded an environment that people have called home for millennia. Indigenous peoples who knew the forest intimately and lived sustainably off its resources for countless generations have found themselves forced into dire poverty, unable to make a living in their traditional ways when the now toxic rivers and forests are empty of fish and game. The physical ailments they suffer from oil pollution are accentuated by the cultural impoverishment that the oil industry has brought to the region, in many cases amounting to the almost total loss of ancient traditions and wisdom.

As affected Amazon residents battle Chevron for accountability, Chevron has engaged in repeated attempts to subvert the judicial process, ranging from the use of deceptive sampling techniques in scientific studies of the contamination, to lobbying efforts in Washington to tie the renewal of Ecuador’s trade privileges to its dismissal of the case.

The reviewers describe the efforts of local communities to hold Chevron accountable for its blatant disregard for human rights and environmental standards, culminating in a May 25-26 press conference and demonstration at Chevron’s Houston headquarters, where the company held its annual shareholder meeting in a futile attempt to escape its opposition in California.  Five activists were arrested at the meeting and charged with trespassing and disrupting the meeting despite the credentials they presented to Chevron security officials.  All five are facing potential fines and/or time in prison.  Despite Chevron’s cynical legal maneuvers, they continue to support communities across the United States and abroad that the company has harmed.

More information on the True Cost of Chevron Network’s activities in Houston can be found here.

The True Cost of Chevron Alternative Annual Report can be downloaded here.

You can also follow The Energy Program at Global Exchange, a member of the True Cost of Chevron Network, via Facebook and Twitter.

Project Censored “conducts research on important national news stories that are underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by the US corporate media. Each year, Project Censored publishes a ranking of the top 25 most censored nationally important news stories in the yearbook, Censored: Media Democracy in Action, which is released in September.

Between 700 and 1000 stories are submitted to Project Censored each year from journalists, scholars, librarians, and concerned citizens around the world.”

Its reviewers write:

Chevron’s [2010] annual report to its shareholders is a glossy celebration heralding the company’s most profitable year in its history. 

What [it] does not reveal is the true cost paid for those financial returns: lives lost, wars fought, communities destroyed, environments decimated, livelihoods ruined, and political voices silenced. 

Thus, the communities, and their allies, who bear the consequences of Chevron’s oil and natural gas production, refineries, depots, pipelines, exploration, offshore drilling rigs, coal fields, chemical plants, political control, consumer abuse, false promises, and much more, have prepared an Alternative Annual Report for Chevron.

The review goes on to describe some of the more egregious of Chevron’s operations around the world.  Here are a few highlights:

The alternative account reveals the true impact of just a handful of Chevron’s operations in the US in communities across Alaska, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, the Gulf Coast, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Utah, and Wyoming; and internationally across Angola, Burma, Canada, Chad, Cameroon, Ecuador, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, and the Philippines…. These accounts include active lawsuits against the company from around the world, totaling in the tens of billions of dollars, which threaten its vaulted financial gains—for when a company operates in blatant disregard for the health, security, livelihood, safety, and environment of the communities within which it operates, there can be real financial repercussions.

This alternative report shows Chevron’s pattern of hiring harsh military “protection” against local residents, evidenced in Iraq, the Niger Delta, Chad, Cameroon, Angola, and Burma, where massive increases in military presence and widespread abuses of human rights—including forced labor, murder, rape, forced relocation of villages, and more—are ongoing against communities living in and around Chevron projects.

In Ecuador, Texaco (now Chevron) oil production has irreversibly altered and degraded an environment that people have called home for millennia. Indigenous peoples who knew the forest intimately and lived sustainably off its resources for countless generations have found themselves forced into dire poverty, unable to make a living in their traditional ways when the now toxic rivers and forests are empty of fish and game. The physical ailments they suffer from oil pollution are accentuated by the cultural impoverishment that the oil industry has brought to the region, in many cases amounting to the almost total loss of ancient traditions and wisdom.

As affected Amazon residents battle Chevron for accountability, Chevron has engaged in repeated attempts to subvert the judicial process, ranging from the use of deceptive sampling techniques in scientific studies of the contamination, to lobbying efforts in Washington to tie the renewal of Ecuador’s trade privileges to its dismissal of the case.

The reviewers describe the efforts of local communities to hold Chevron accountable for its blatant disregard for human rights and environmental standards, culminating in a May 25-26 press conference and demonstration at Chevron’s Houston headquarters, where the company held its annual shareholder meeting in a futile attempt to escape its opposition in California.  Five activists were arrested at the meeting and charged with trespassing and disrupting the meeting despite the credentials they presented to Chevron security officials.  All five are facing potential fines and/or time in prison.  Despite Chevron’s cynical legal maneuvers, they continue to support communities across the United States and abroad that the company has harmed.

More information on the True Cost of Chevron Network’s activities in Houston can be found here.

The True Cost of Chevron Alternative Annual Report can be downloaded here.

You can also follow The Energy Program at Global Exchange, a member of the True Cost of Chevron Network, via Facebook and Twitter.

Why Greenpeace gets it and everybody else should quit running around in circles and hum along.

Actually, my friends at Greenpeace will probably kill me for linking them to a blog whose title sounds so nihilistic. But I’ll deal with that tomorrow…

It hit me as I was reading What Bush Wrought, the 10/7 installment of NYT’s blog duet, The Conversation. Gail Collins and David Brooks use their blog to engage in reasonably friendly sniping at one another from mainstream “liberal” and “conservative” positions, rarely challenging their readers to actually think things through. Reading The Conversation is a harmless pastime, not to be confused with serious reading. Nice and relaxing. Which is why I was shocked to realize that this particular column had spawned a major revelation.

It’s probably more accurate to describe what happened to me in the process of reading What Bush Wrought as becoming resigned to the increasingly apparent metastasis of Congressional necrosis.  (too much?  okay, how about “the increasingly obvious uselessness of Congress as an instrument of progressive change.”  satisfied?)

I don’t really want to give Collins and Brooks too much credit here, because their contribution was relatively minimal.  Here’s Gail Collins talking to David Brooks about the prospects for climate legislation:

The odds of breaking out of this terrible inertia seem hopeless. You have written very vivid descriptions of how the House and Senate Democrats macerate bold ideas and turn a noteworthy leap forward into a mushy, uninspiring baby step in an uncertain direction.

And I have made my own little effort to point out how the House and Senate Republicans consistently make progress almost impossible — even progress in directions they actually approve of deep down in their teeny little hearts.

But even if these people were way braver and more principled than they are, it’s just a fact of life that legislatures are terrible at doing anything that inflicts pain on their constituents. And any decent energy bill would do that.

Actually, Collins is underestimating the problem. Legislatures do indeed have difficulty inflicting pain on their constituents. She’s right about that. But the constituents our Congress folks can’t bear to disappoint aren’t you and me. It’s corporations that our Congress caters to.

The true conservatives are those of us who believe in conserving nature, so future generations will not curse us for leaving them a burnt cinder of a planet with depleted resources.

To be conservative does not mean taking a right-wing position on all issues; it means to conserve, to not waste resources. Yet most of the people in Washington who call themselves conservatives do not believe in conserving anything.

They promote policies allowing corporations to convert our natural resources into money: cut down the forests, take all the minerals out of the ground, remove whole mountain tops to get at the coal inside, and inject poisonous “fracking” chemicals into the Earth to get at the last remnants of fossil fuels.

Reclaiming the word conservative to its true meaning would also help progressives get out of their culture of NO: no more wars, no more racial discrimination, no more destruction of the environment.

It is easy to understand how the left in the United States developed a culture of NO. We got really good at denouncing things such as U.S. support for white-minority rule in Southern Africa, and the way U.S. companies set up sweatshops abroad that take away jobs at home. Protesting these things came naturally to people who give a damn about the welfare of others, no matter what their nationality.

It was logical that well-educated people opposed to the U.S. role as imperial enforcer of global capitalism would rise up in protest. But stating clearly what you are against, does not create an alternative.

So decades ago the progressive movement started to build alternative institutions that could create jobs and heal the damage we do to natural systems. This could be called the sustainability movement or the green economy movement, but it amounted to a new model of doing business: a triple-bottom-line model that unites social justice, environmental restoration and financial sustainability.

Whether it is renewable energy, green building, organic agriculture, biofuels, water conservation technology, or recycling and composting, this new conservation economy is where the growth and profits will be in the future for the simple reason that as the natural resources gets depleted, the profitability of saving the environment goes up.

This movement for “conservation economics” is proving to be popular with governments and private investors alike. The city of Los Angeles will save $10 million per year after it replaces its streetlights with energy efficient LED lights.

Cities as conservative as Salt Lake City and Anchorage are capturing the methane that comes off their garbage landfills and sewage treatment plants, burning the methane in generators that power those facilities, thus saving money on electricity and protecting the climate from a gas that is far worse than CO2 for trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Companies both large (InterfaceFlor, the giant carpet company) and small (TerraCycle takes refuse out of the waste stream and makes dozens of products) are proving that there are ways to make more profits saving nature than destroying it. The Green Festivals—weekend green economy shows cosponsored by Green America and Global Exchange— attract 25,000-35,000 participants in diverse cities. So the green of money and the green of the environment are coming together.

And just at the time when the progressive movement is transitioning out of its NO culture into creating positive alternatives to nature-destroying capitalism, the right in the United States is painting itself into a corner of standing against science: denying climate change, opposing investments in green energy, and generally taking on a culture of NO.

So here is a project for the left. The right took the word liberal and made it negative. We should take the word conservative and make it positive.

Who are the real conservatives? It is the left and the scientific community, who are telling us that we cannot physically sustain an economy where money values rule over the life cycle, and we need to accelerate the transition to an economy where life values rule over the money cycle.

So let’s start using that word conservative in the proper way, and take away the adjective that has been so abused by the right.

TAKE ACTION!

What do you think of Kevin’s call to action; “So here is a project for the left. The right took the word liberal and made it negative. We should take the word conservative and make it positive.” Share your thoughts in the Comments Section.

Dr. Kevin Danaher is a co-founder of Global Exchange and the Green Festivals.

I also share his love for information in print. Like him, I end most days away from the neon computer screen, curled up flipping pages. But with my work in Fair Trade and studies in Anthropology, our interests don’t always line up, nor do our reading topics.

I usually don’t find my dad deep in his reading about cultural heritage and weaving in the highlands of Peru. And he probably won’t read this blog.  But where we do come together is in the celebration of craftsmanship, resourcefulness, and ingenuity in design.

So when I told him about a group of artisans in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam who are making beautiful, functional housewares out of recycled magazines similar to those he has stacked around his apartment, he wanted to know more.

We print lovers know paper can really pile up. And the thought of newspapers and magazines being printed on fresh paper everyday is disturbing to many.

This is why my Dad and I are so excited about the scrap paper industry, which taps into the ongoing potential of collecting paper scraps and upcycling them into viable end products.

A growing number of paper upcycling efforts are popping up in the U.S, including undeliverable mail  being made into new envelopes and scrap paper getting recycled into biodegradable mulch mats for reforestation projects.

In Ho Chi Minh City, 60 artisans are employed in the creation of housewares handmade from recycled magazines and newspapers, coiled and wound in the same style as their traditional bamboo tableware.  The beautiful frames, bowls, plates & coasters wound from yesterday’s news, hold the dual function of brightening up your home while reducing the amount of scrap paper in the waste stream. My dad thinks that makes sense.

The business was started by Hien and Binh who were trained by their uncle Duc in traditional paper craft.  With the support of Mai Handicrafts, a Vietnam based World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) member that provides sustainable employment and business development opportunities for Vietnamese artisans, the business grew by incorporating their traditional techniques in the creation of innovative, functional products.

Today, 20 artisans work together in a workshop that undergoes regular inspection according to WFTO standards and 40 more work from the comfort of their homes.

Visit Global Exchange for recycled paper Father’s Day gifts!

The Global Exchange Fair Trade Stores have partnered with Mai Handicrafts to make this innovative product line available to you. My Father’s Day gift this year will be a photo of Dad and me in a recycled magazine frame.  What better gift for Father’s Day then a gift that just plain makes sense!

The following is a guest post by the folks at Smithsonian Folkways about a recently released collection of songs written and performed by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim coffee farmers of the Peace Kawomera (Delicious Peace) Fair Trade cooperative in Mbale, Uganda.

Delicious Peace: Coffee, Music & Interfaith Harmony in Uganda

Delicious Peace: Coffee, Music & Interfaith Harmony in Uganda which came out April 9th on Smithsonian Folkways, aims to overcome religious conflict and bring peace through song. Written and performed by coffee farmers of the Peace Kawomera (Delicious Peace) Fair Trade cooperative in Mbale, Uganda, the album features uplifting, multi-lingual songs that teach cooperation through music.

Listen to a sneak preview of Delicious Peace: Coffee, Music & Interfaith Harmony in  Uganda.

Jewish Ugandan coffee farmer and musician J. J. Keki founded Peace Kawomera after witnessing the attacks of September 11, 2001 firsthand during a trip to New York City. Deeply moved, he felt compelled to bring different religions together in peace.

When Keki returned to Uganda, he walked from village to village, enlisting Jewish, Christian and Muslim farmers to join his Fair Trade cooperative. Today, over 1,000 farmers have joined Peace Kawomera.

Watch J.J. Keki explain the inspiration for Delicious Peace: Coffee, Music & Interfaith Harmony in Uganda.

Grammy award-nominated Tufts University professor and Rabbi Jeffrey A. Summit recorded the album in various Ugandan locales from muddy coffee fields to local synagogues. Summit previously produced the 2005 GRAMMY nominated album Abayudaya: Music from the Jewish People of Uganda for Smithsonian Folkways.

Royalties from the sale of this recording support education for the children of the Peace Kawomera cooperative. 

Village guitar groups and women’s choirs sing to stress the transformative impact of Fair Trade prices and to encourage their neighbors to join the coffee cooperative.  They are accompanied by traditional instruments, such as embaire (xylophone with wooden keys), ngoma (drum), akadongo (lamellaphone, often referred to as a thumb piano), endingidi (one-string fiddle), and nsasi (shaker).

The performers combine various Ugandan languages and musical styles, occasionally adding Swahili, Arabic, Hebrew, and English. The people of Peace Kawomera come together to sing of the benefits of interfaith cooperation and, through music, teach new members how to produce great coffee.

TAKE ACTION!

• Read the liner notes by Jeffrey A. Summit to learn more about the album.
• Digital downloads and on-demand CDs can be purchased directly from Smithsonian Folkways at www.folkways.si.edu. Full-album purchases include complete, original liner notes, color photographs and song translations as .PDF files.

Charlie Hinton

The following guest post was written by long-time Global Exchange member Charlie Hinton. Charlie and others are sharing their Global Exchange stories as we celebrate 25 years of activism for human rights.

—

I’ve worked with and been a member of Global Exchange for almost 20 years.

I always admired their mix of action, solidarity, and education, but became more involved in 1994 when I went to a teach-in on the structural adjustment programs of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund that were leading to massive impoverishment throughout the Global South (and in this country under the name of Reaganomics.)

One of the speakers was Kevin Danaher, co-founder of Global Exchange, who explained in a way that made perfect sense how this maze of cutbacks in government services, privatization of state run enterprises, sell-offs of natural resources, destruction of labor and environmental laws, police and military repression, and the transformation of viable economies into mono-crop agriculture for export and free-trade zones actually works.
 
Although I’d graduated from college with a degree in economics, economics never made sense to me until this teach-in. As a result I collaborated with Kevin and Global Exchange for 5 years developing the national and local campaign called Fifty Years Is Enough to educate about and work to reverse these disastrous policies.
 
Global Exchange has developed their entire organization out of the need to respond to this international crisis and build alternatives. They educate through their Reality tours, newsletters, books, forums and website. Their stores and Fair Trade program build understanding and solidarity, not charity, with people worldwide who desperately need political support and markets for their products, and their Green Festivals showcase sustainable products and new ways of looking at the world. And GX participates in a wide variety of campaigns that get people directly involved to stand up for what we believe in and create a better and more just world, from fighting sweatshops, to war, to fracking.
 
GX’s dedicated staff works hard and smart. As an estimator at Inkworks Press, where they have supported our local, collectively owned and managed printing union company for many years (A BIG THANK YOU!) I can attest that they spend their money wisely and without any glitz.
 
All this work is a reflection on the wonderful people I’ve met through GX over the years, from the visionary founders Medea, Kirsten, and Kevin, to others I know as friends and those I’ve met professionally through Inkworks. Many thanks and congratulations to Global Exchange for 25 years of work well done.
 
Charlie Hinton
San Francisco, CA

TAKE ACTION!

Do you have a memorable Global Exchange story? We invite you to share YOUR story with us.

Global Exchange is celebrating 25 years, and we are proud to honor the dedication of people like you who have sweat and sacrificed to forge a working alternative from the ground up.

To share your stories, memories, and moments with us, we have a handy dandy form you can use to Share Your Story right here.

—

On May 30th 2013, Californians (including some Global Exchange staff and interns) gathered in front of San Francisco City Hall to express our strong sentiment against hydraulic fracturing, better known as “fracking”.

Communities across the state have become increasingly aware of the dire consequences fracking imposes upon the environment. So we Californians took a stand, let our voices be heard, and made sure to tell the State Department that communities have the power to say “NO!” to fracking.

Global Exchange helps support communities to ban hydraulic fracturing. We work with concerned citizens from communities including Culver City, Santa Barbara, Goleta, Morro Bay, SLO, Atascadero, Arroyo Grande, and Pismo Beach to pass local laws that assert their rights to ban fracking within their respective localities.

It is important to spread the word about the destructive effects of fracking, which ultimately endangers the safety of our environment and people, and we are not alone in our commitment to ban fracking; a national movement is happening!

At the May 30th  rally, we witnessed the coming together of Californians Against Fracking.  We are proud to have seen an increasing number of concerned citizens who are taking action. In solidarity, we hope to spread the awareness of this issue and support more communities to ban fracking in their neighborhoods.

We are one in this fight to ban fracking.

TAKE ACTION!
Check out the Californians Against Fracking photos on Facebook from the May 30th action, and share them with your friends to help spread the word about this important issue and the dangers fracking represents in California and throughout the country.

We’re doing everything we can to make sure the planet is inhabitable for generations to come, and we want you to join us.

So we’ve put  put together this five point plan of action to address the climate crisis in the coming year:

1)    Safeguarding our water by passing community ordinances to ban fracking;
2)    Halting the Keystone XL Pipeline, and saying NO to more dirty Tar Sands oil extraction;
3)    Protecting the world’s working class by promoting Fair Trade;
4)    Exposing lobbyists and corporations who undermine our democracy and prevent law makers from taking meaningful steps to address climate change;
5)    Stopping the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), slated to become the biggest ‘free trade’ agreement of all time that would have devastating effects on ecosystems and labor movements across the globe if ratified.

In order to make this plan into a reality, we’re going to raise $40,000.  And this year, for the first time ever in our 25 years, we’re reaching out to members, supporters, and blog readers (hint hint) to lend a hand with our fundraising efforts.

Take Action!  You tell your story, tapping into your strengths to make an impassioned request on behalf of our ailing planet, and ask your community to join us as we Beat the Heat this summer. Making use of Firstgiving.com, you’ll be able to set up personalized fundraising pages to share with friends and family, whose donations to Global Exchange will be put to immediate use supporting our ongoing work to address climate change.

And just to make things interesting, we’re offering prizes for your participation! From June 7th to July 15th, we’re hosting the Beat the Heat contest with an amazing top prize.

A beautiful cemetery in Oaxaca, Mexico. One of the amazing destinations on the 25th Anniversary trip!

Everyone who raises over $500 will be entered into a drawing to win an all expenses paid* Reality Tour to Oaxaca, Mexico in October of 2013. You’ll celebrate Global Exchange’s 25th anniversary in a region of rich culture and a history of organizing against repression.

Other great prizes include:

• Top Fundraiser: a prize package valued at over $500, including a one-year subscription to the Earth Island Journal magazine, a $300 Gift Certificate to Pave Fine Jewelry, a gift package from Little Moon Essentials, and a five DVD set from Focus Features
• Most Creative: An Equal Exchange Fair Trade prize package including Fair Trade coffee, chocolate, tea, and a unisex hoodie from American Apparel..
• People who raise $150 and up: Everyone who raises $150 or more will recieve a 2 month supply of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream**
• EVERYONE: Just by setting up a Firstgiving.com fundraising page, you’ll be entered to win a Fair Indigo prize package, including a hand embroidered travel sling and rattan.

Act Now! Contest begins June 12th and ends July 17th.

If you’re interested in learning more about the contest, visit beattheheat.globalexchange.org or shoot an email to corey@globalexchange.org.

Good luck!

*Return airfare and ground expenses for the Anniversary trip to Oaxaca available to entrants within the contiguous 48 United States. For those outside of this area, a prize of 2 ground expenses for the Anniversary trips to Oaxaca is available.

** Two month supply consists of two Ben&Jerry’s gift certificates

Biowatch’s Agro-Ecology Manager Lawrence Mkhaliphi with a farmer who has learned the value of seed saving. Photo Credit: IDEX

The following guest post by Program Manager, Grassroots Alliances at IDEX Katherine Zavala originally appeared on IDEX (International Development Exchange.)

Food Justice – Where Local Meets Global

Growing up in a regular family in an urban environment in the Global South, the idea of where my food came from was not a question that came up often. I had always trusted that the supermarket was going to provide us with the best ingredients to eat delicious and nutritional home-cooked meals on a daily basis. It was not until I lived in rural Guatemala eight years ago, in a mostly indigenous community, that I started to build my own awareness of the relationship between humanity, the environment and food justice.

At the time, I was volunteering with IDEX’s Guatemalan Partner, AFEDES (Women’s Association for the Development of Sacatepéquez), an indigenous, women-led organization promoting economic empowerment and women’s rights. Almost all of the indigenous women AFEDES worked with were rural farmworkers, who were cultivating local vegetables on their own parcels of land. Over multiple visits with them, these women proudly shared their stories of successfully growing crops to both feed their families and earn extra income.

For the first time in my life I was living far from restaurants and fast food chains, so my only choice was to buy groceries at the local market and prepare my own meals with fresh produce. In the most basic way, I learned that I had surprisingly easy access to food and, in many cases, a personal relationship with people who produced it. My experience in Guatemala sowed the seed in my consciousness to care more about food; where it came from, who produced it and how.

After joining the IDEX team in 2006 I visited more rural organizations in other areas of Guatemala, as well as Mexico and South Africa. These community-led organizations extended my knowledge of seed-saving, agroecology and food sovereignty.

One of IDEX’s South African Partners, Biowatch—a grassroots organization working in the field of biodiversity, food sovereignty and social justice—gave me an analytical context of the global food system, as well as an appreciation of their courage and determination, in fighting for everyone’s right to food in a nine-year battle against the big seed company, Monsanto, and the South African State Department. A seemingly simple request by Biowatch for information from the National Department of Agriculture about the environmental releases of genetically modified (GM) crops in South Africa, led to a legal victory in which most of this information was granted. But there was an unexpected twist: a devastating order for Biowatch to pay all the legal costs, for both sides. This led, in 2009, to the case being heard – and the costs order overturned – by the highest court in South Africa, the Constitutional Court.

IDEX saw a powerful opportunity in 2010 to bring Biowatch to the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, to share how they mobilized their allies and strategized to win a case against Monsanto and the South African government. The inspiration of this victorious case was passed to residents of Detroit and Forum participants from across the U.S.

In cities like Detroit and Oakland, liquor stores, fast-food restaurants and gas stations are the nearest food-related establishments. Most city stores have a very limited variety of fresh vegetables and fruits, and most foods are canned, boxed, frozen and/or highly processed. These stores also lack food alternatives for persons with the chronic conditions, such as heart disease, hypertension and diabetes. These and other chronic health conditions exist and at alarming rates in the African-American community, and their prevalence is growing. As Biowatch shared their experience, Detroit residents started to express how valuable it was to them to learn that with perseverance and the support of peer allies, people like them could challenge these giant corporations to demand their right to non-GM foods and an alternative food system.

It was in this moment that I understood how interconnected we all were in this world. Essentially we all want the same thing: easily accessible, nutritional food, produced sustainably and without harming the environment, for this generation and future ones.

Katherine Zavala is the Program Manager, Grassroots Alliances at IDEX. She will be speaking at Food for Thought: In Conversation with Leaders of the Food Justice Movement on Friday, June 7th. Buy your tickets today to join Katherine, Ocean Robbins, Nikki Henderson and Armando Nieto for a rousing discussion on the intersection of food justice and agroecology.

Ann Wright and others at front of Bradley Manning march. Ft. Meade 6/1/13 Photo Credit: codepinkhq

The following post is written by Medea Benjamin, founder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange, and retired US Army Colonel and former US diplomat Ann Wright.

—
Leaving Truth Outside the Court House at Bradley Manning’s Trial

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who loves his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.” ~ H.L. Mencken”
 
It was an early morning, getting out to Ft. Meade, Maryland by 7am to join the group of hearty activists standing out (in) the rain, greeting the journalists coming into the Bradley Manning hearing with chants of “Whistleblowing is not a crime, Free Bradley Manning.” The activists, many with groups like The Bradley Manning Support Committee, Veterans for Peace, CODEPINK and Iraq Vets Against the War, had come from all over the country to show support for Manning during the upcoming weeks of the trial.
 
After a stint at the bullhorn, we got into the car to drive onto the base and get on line to try to get into the courtroom or the overflow room. With Ann Wright’s retired military ID, we got to bypass the long line of cars snaking around the checkpoint and breeze right in. About a dozen people were already on line, in the rain. Some were well-known characters, like professor Cornell West, author Chris Hedges, lawyer Michael Ratner and ACLU lawyer Ben Wisner; others were individuals who had come from as far away as Ireland and Mexico to support Manning.

It’s great that court martial trials are open to the public. But it’s absurd that this epic trial is being held in a tiny courtroom that only fits a total of 50 people. “It’s a trial of the century being conducted in a shoebox,” complained attorney Michael Ratner. Only 16 spaces were allocated to the public; the rest had to go to an overflow theatre that seated about 100, or a trailer next to the courtroom with room for 35. The press had a separate room where they could bring their computers and phones, although they were not allowed to transmit anything during the trial—just during the breaks.

Going through security for the courtroom, we were not allowed to bring any electronics. And there was a bit of a dust-up around t-shirts: some people with slogans on their shirts were made to turn them inside out, while others escaped the censors. It seems that “LOVE”, “Peace” and “Stay Human” could sneak by, but “TRUTH” and “Free Bradley” didn’t make it.

Once inside, we immediately saw the back of Bradley Manning’s shaved head, and his wire-rimmed glasses jutting out from the side. “He looks just like my grandson,” said CODEPINK Barbara Briggs from Sebastapol, California. “How tragic that this 25-year-old is facing life in prison.”

It was also sad to see that almost none of Manning’s family was there—only an aunt and cousin.

Manning had requested a court-martial by judge rather than by a jury of his peers.The judge, Colonel Denise Lind, said last month she would close parts of the trial to the public to protect classified material.

The Prosecution presented its opening statement using an extensive power point that detailed the charges and specifications, and a brief synopsis that the testimony each witness will give.  The Prosecution said that FPC Manning had purposefully aided and abetted the enemy through the Wikileaks documents that Manning downloaded. He concluded by saying that Osama bin Laden requested and received a copy of internal U.S. military logs of the war in Afghanistan from another member of al-Qaeda.

The Defense’s opening statement responded that Manning is young and naïve but with good intentions.  Manning’s attorney David Coombs said Manning thought that the public should know what goes on in war and how one’s government operates.  He was troubled by the response of the government to requests for information from the Reuters news agency concerning the deaths of their journalists from an Apache helicopter attack (the video now known as Collateral Murder), as well as the 2009 Gharani air strike that killed 150 civilians.  Coombs insisted that Manning made the documents available for the public, not for the enemy, and that the documents leaked were largely publicly available information with no critical intelligence sources.

At a pretrial hearing in February, Manning admitted to 10 offenses that could land him 20 years in prison. But the government insisted on upping the ante by accusing him of “aiding the enemy”—a charge that could result in life in prison. The court-martial may take 2 or 3 months to complete the presentation of evidence for the 12 counts to which Manning has not plead guilty. Numerous secret witnesses will be testifying for the prosecution.

While the “aiding the enemy” charge is going to be very difficult to prove, Michael Ratner, the president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the fact that the government is pursuing this charge “sends a message to every soldier and every journalist that they are literally taking their lives in their hands if they dare speak out against wrongdoing.”

Manning’s trial, which is slated to last three months, is the most stark example of the Obama administration’s relentless stance against whistleblowers. “This president has the  tried to prosecute six whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, twice as many as all previous presidencies combined,” said Cornell West. “President Obama is determined to stop the public from knowing about government wrongdoing.”

In pretrial proceedings, Manning said his motivation was to “spark a domestic debate over the role of the military and our foreign policy in general.” Certainly that debate is long overdue. So is the debate about (the) right of the public to be informed about what our governments are doing in our name.

—

Medea Benjamin, founder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange, is author of “Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.” Ann Wright is a retired US Army Colonel and former US diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War.  She is the co-author of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”

—

Inder Comar (l) with Iraqi refugee plaintiff Sundus Shaker Saleh (r) in her apartment in Amman

Help Me Hold Bush-Era Leaders Accountable For The Iraq War

As Americans, we are fortunate to have a functioning judiciary: we are heirs to an 800 year tradition extending back to Magna Carta that says when someone is injured, he may seek civil redress in a court of law against the people who injured him.

On March 13, 2013, I did just that over the Iraq War. I filed two lawsuits in a California federal court on behalf of an Iraqi refugee now living in Jordan, and on behalf of myself as a US citizen, against six former Bush-era officials: Richard Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, and George W. Bush himself.

The lawsuits seek damages under our civil system. They seek to hold these six people accountable for the illegal planning and waging of the Iraq War.

I am handling these cases because I believe in them. The evidence is terrible as it is plain: members of the Bush Administration, particularly Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld, publicly planned and advocated for war against Iraq in 1998; upon coming to power, they and other Administration officials used 9/11 as an excuse to scare and mislead the public into supporting a war that had no basis in international law.

Plaintiff Sundus Saleh with her four children

My Iraqi client, Ms. Sundus Saleh, alleges that the Iraq War was a “war of aggression,” a term that was defined at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. She has exercised the jurisdiction of the court through the Alien Tort Statute, a law passed by the first Congress in 1789. 

My case seeks to set new precedent regarding the obligations of government leaders. I am asking the court to acknowledge that I have a common law and/or constitutional right (premised in the First Amendment) to receive honest and candid information from government officials with respect to war and peace. I have also alleged that the defendants violated California’s false advertising law in planning and waging the Iraq War.

All six defendants have been notified by letter of these lawsuits and I am currently waiting for their counsel to contact me to discuss service of the complaints and other preliminary matters.

I am handling these cases completely pro bono. I have litigated numerous cases in the federal courts, including civil and human rights cases, both as an associate for a major law firm and now with my own practice. I want to win these cases, both for my client and for myself.

But these lawsuits won’t go anywhere without the help of people like you.

First, the more people who care, the more likely the courts will care. We are now building a broad movement of people who want to see a trial for the Iraq War. And what better way to build a broad movement then to seek a simple pledge of one dollar from anyone who wants to see such a trial? We are asking people to donate a dollar to show support for the suits, and to tell a friend to do the same.

Second, I need the support of passionate, intelligent and thoughtful people to secure the court orders that I want for my client and for myself. American leaders no longer feel the pressure of accountability; only the force of a public movement, composed of caring Americans, will force a change in behavior such that leaders recognize that their first duty is always to the public, and that they cannot go to war for unjust and illegal reasons.

Please join me to make this trial a reality. You can help by supporting our fundraising campaign at indiegogo, by spreading the word about the lawsuits, and by reaching out to me if you want to get involved.

Please help me hold our leaders accountable. Please help to prevent another Iraq War.

Inder Comar Esq.

Inder Comar, Esq. is principal at Comar Law (www.comarlaw.com) and practices law in San Francisco, California. Comar Law provides legal strategy to innovators. He can be contacted at inder@comarlaw.com.

TAKE ACTION! Watch these new videos with Inder Comar who is in Jordan right now taking interviews with Iraqi refugees including:

• Plaintiff Sundus Saleh (gets cut off a bit at the end)

• Iraqi refugee who needs to find a kidney donor.

Beilul Naizghi, Global Exchange Fair Trade intern

Hi Fair Trade Activistas!

Today’s Fair Trade Roundup introduces Fairtrade America’s new Executive Director and recaps World Fair Trade Day. Plus get to know our summer Fair Trade intern. (And don’t forget the usual vetted list of Fair Trade related articles below.)

Roundup Sections:

1. Featured Fair Trade Updates
   
2. Global Exchange Fair Trade Update
   
3. Fair Trade News to Peruse
   

—

FEATURED FAIR TRADE UPDATES

Hans P. Theyer Photo Credit: Fairtrade America

Hans P. Theyer to Lead Fairtrade America

Congratulations and welcome Hans P. Theyer, Fairtrade America’s New Executive Director!

Bama Athreya, Chair, Fairtrade America Board of Directors, had this to say about Hans Theyer’s appointment:

“Hans brings a fantastic combination of business and international development experience to Fairtrade America.  We look forward to working with Hans as he leads us in our efforts to bring the best of the international Fairtrade system to the United States and to build a collaborative, diverse coalition that is united in its belief in producer development and empowerment.”

Here’s Hans speaking about his new appointment:

“I am proud to lead the U.S. organization that will expand the benefits of the international Fairtrade system, and I look forward to raising public awareness and working in partnership with companies, retailers, producers and all fair trade advocates that share our vision of building a vibrant fair trade movement in the United States.”

You can learn more about Hans here.

—

Can you guess how many people attended World Fair Trade Day 2013 events this year?

World Fair Trade Day (WFTD) is the largest Fair Trade event of the year in N. America, and events took place May 4-19 in 2013. So how many people attended these events?

According to Fair Trade Resource Network, around 100,000 people attended nearly 1000 World Fair Trade Day events in N. America this year.

You’ll find lots of fun WFTD 2013 photos on Fair Trade Resource Network’s Facebook page.

—

Beilul Naizghi protesting in front of GAP during its annual shareholder meeting last week

GLOBAL EXCHANGE FAIR TRADE UPDATE

Meet Global Exchange’s new Fair Trade intern, Beilul Naizghi. Beilul is a rising sophomore studying international development at Brown University in Providence, RI. She will be spending her summer interning with Global Exchange in San Francisco, working on Fair Trade projects.

Her first week at Global Exchange, Beilul was already protesting outside of GAP headquarters during its annual Shareholder meeting!

When asked why she chose to intern with Global Exchange’s Fair Trade program this summer, Beilul had this to say:

“I’m interested in learning more about Fair Trade from the perspective of an NGO advocacy group.”

Here’s to a great summer internship experience, Beilul!

FAIR TRADE NEWS TO PERUSE

• Confectionery News: Fair Trade USA labeling rules: Hoax or fair enough?
• The New York Times: Before You Buy That T-Shirt
• The Guardian: How ‘fair trade’ could tackle sweatshops
• AllAfrica: Fairtrade Loses an Impassioned Leader
• Chicago Fair Trade: Ecuador forms fair trade export consortium for banana growers
• Blogher.com: Drink Green: Organic and Fair Trade Wines
• Fair Trade Towns USA: The Impact of a Fair Trade Campaign
• Voxy: Parliament gets Fair Trade accreditation
• Entrepreneur: Lessons From Fair Trade on How to Make Your Brand Message More Powerful

THE FAIR TRADE ROUNDUP AND YOU!
•    Subscribe to our Fair Trade blog to receive new Fair Trade blog posts automatically.
•    News to share? If you’ve got big Fair Trade news to share, email me.
•    Enjoy this Fair Trade Roundup? Then click the Like and Tweet buttons on the top right of this post to share with others. Thanks!

Is this Mordor or Tar Sands?!

Tar Sands extraction in northern Alberta is called many things – an environmental disaster, a carbon ‘bomb’, and it’s often likened to Tolkien’s Mordor. For someone who has been there, I think it’s an apt description. This summer, First Nations and Metis communities living at ground zero are inviting people to come together to join the fourth Healing Walk.

Forward on Climate rally in DC, Feb 2013

As the Summer Heat actions begin across the United States, “from where fossil fuels leave the ground, to the halls of power…” to challenge the fossil fuel industry and as activists prepare “…to stand up – peacefully but firmly — to the industry that is wrecking our future,” the Healing Walk invites us to, “come and see the impacts of the tar sands and be a part of the healing.”

I’m honored to be going. Sharing solidarity, ceremony and the Walk with communities on the frontlines of the tar sands is essential for me to re-commit to fight to stop the tar sands alongside those impacted by it. And also to recognize that those in power, often supported by immense corporate interests have failed to protect land, air, and water for future generations.

As the Healing Walk site says,

“No one feels this more then the people that have lived in the Athabasca River region for generations. They have watched their land get destroyed, they are forced to breathe dirty air, and in many communities they can no longer drink the water. The wildlife they have traditionally harvested are getting scarce, the fish they harvest have tumours, and the medicinal plants are disappearing along with the permanently changed landscape.”

Sign up to join the Healing Walk here.

When you join the Healing Walk, you will see the tar sands for yourself and have the opportunity to join others to heal the communities and land, and return home to take action with passion and determination. You will be amongst those directly affected by the tar sands who stand up everyday to speak on behalf of the land. You will march with Beaver Lake Cree Nation mother and tar sands fighter, Crystal Lameman, who was honored just last month at Global Exchange’s Human Rights Awards and inspired everyone in the audience with her telling words,

Crystal Lameman received the Grassroots Award in San Francisco, May 2013

“When disaster strikes it is not going to know race, color or creed. I’m here to tell you, when that happens, the greed is going to see that it cannot eat money and you cannot drink oil.  And that we all bleed the same color. …If the government and industry think that throwing money at us is going to make this better, I choose life and my children’s lives and I choose health over money.”

And with the news of the planet hitting 400 parts per million of CO2, a number way beyond the limit of what is needed to maintain a healthy planet, her words are even more prescient.

TAKE ACTION!

• Join the Healing Walk and be part of the solution to stop the destruction.

Details about the events and logistics for July 5th and & 6th are straightforward and lots of support is being provided for accommodations and transportation. Sign up now.

• Please be in touch if you want to join me July 5th & 6th on the Healing Walk. Together we’ll come back ready to Beat the Heat this summer, fight the Keystone XL pipeline, work for climate justice and stop the tar sands.

Other things they got right: long hair and mustaches.

We’ve certainly had our fair share of help along the way, often coming from the most unexpected places. When Global Exchange first started in 1988, our office was furnished with donations, our decor a mishmash of orange desks and a number of posture-enhancing chairs from a Catholic girls school (some of which are still in the office today!) A kindly guy at Kinkos let us come in after midnight to print our pamphlets for free. And our first major donor gave us $15,000 – allowing us to hire our first staff person AND buy a laser printer. (Laser printers were a pretty big deal back in 1988).

The perfect color for driving global revolution

The generosity and dedication of many people helped us through our early days, and a diverse, international network of supporters continues to provide the foundation and strength for all we do. A quarter century of help from our friends has allowed us to accomplish a great deal in advancing human rights and promoting resilient ecosystems. From challenging the travel ban to Cuba to demanding Freedom From Oil, you’ve been there.

But we’re not done yet. Far from it.

We’re putting out a call to our support network to help us drive the next quarter century of change by becoming Global Exchange Monthly Sustainers (GEMS). By making a regular, monthly gift, you can provide a bedrock of financial support that allows us to focus our energies on the most pressing issues of our time: ending the drug war, stopping fracking, and getting money out of politics.

Sign up here to become a Global Exchange Monthly Sustainer.

One of these could be yours if you become a GEMS today. Blue desk not included.

Over the next month, we’re recruiting 25 new monthly givers, each giving $25 or more a month: 25 GEMS for 25 years! We’re going to raise $7,500 to give our work a boost over the coming year.

Will you be one of the 25? A gift awaits you.

There’s a special bonus when you become a GEMS at $25 or more a month; you will receive a book signed by Noam Chomsky, our 2013 Human Rights Award Honoree. If you’re interested, you better hurry. We can only guarantee books for the first 25 people to sign up at $25 or more a month.

Click here to sign up now.

And if you happen to have an extra orange desk lying around…just kidding.

Devastatingly, as we follow, protest, monkey wrench and resist the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiation round taking place in Lima, Peru this week, we have a concrete example. Free Trade looks like the 1,127 workers who perished in the sweatshops in the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh.

Since April 24, corporations have rushed to distance connections with the fugitive owner of the unsafe building, pledged compensation to the grieving families, and stepped up to act more responsibly. And while the negative PR from the disaster was enough to finally break European companies like H&M, Zara, Primark and Canadian grocery giant, Loblaws into signing a legally binding agreement to pay for third party safety inspections of their operations, the underlying cause of this, and other disasters, has yet to be challenged.

Primark operated in Rana Plaza.

Across the world in countries like Bangladesh, companies operate to supply the North with cheap clothes made in sweatshops, made ‘competitive’ in the global market through corporate globalization.

Thanks to Free Trade agreements, companies pay workers less than a dollar a day (the workers in Rana Plaza were making $38 a month, an amount considered high – after it was raised following protests a year ago), make the right to organize illegal, ignore safety and environmental rights and sometimes bribe local officials to override local law to reap in billion dollar profits.

So, while the effort to rescue survivors and recover bodies from Rana Plaza now becomes an effort to clear and demolish the site, corporations like those that operated in Rana Plaza are, right now, lobbying for more Free Trade, for the TPP.

As the Lima round of TPP negotiations are underway (May 15-24) corporate interests are lobbying for more access to operate more sweatshops in Brunei, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. The Citizen’s Trade Campaign factsheet called ‘What Corporations Want With the TPP‘ directly links corporate lobbying to disappear worker protections and rights in pursuit of cheaper manufacturing and higher profits. They say:

“Many corporations are looking for ways reduce labor costs and undercut worker power in the United States, China and throughout the world. The TPP would grant corporations easier access to labor markets in countries such as Vietnam where workers are paid even less than Chinese sweatshop workers. Whether or not corporations decide to move their production to these lower-paid countries, the threat of moving there (or of being undercut by competitors who have already done so) can be used suppress employee compensation virtually anywhere in the world.“

We cannot let the victims of Rana Plaza be forgotten. The U.S. retail giants like GAP and Walmart that have refused to sign the safety agreement must be pressured to do so. But the TPP is slated to become the largest Free Trade Agreement in the world, and if we don’t stop it from happening and demand fair trade, we will suffer more even disasters.

TAKE ACTION! (Action items updated on 5/21/2013):

• Watch a (recorded) video conversation with Fair Trade activists in Lima; Listen to a great interview, it’s a comprehensive TPP primer; and learn more about the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
•  Tell GAP to end death traps and sign the legally-binding Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement.
• Join a Reality Tour to learn more about the impacts of the corporate global economy on workers and the environment.

350.org in Australia

It took a couple of years for the number to stick:  350. Its the number (parts per million of C02) that we need to maintain if we want to save our lovely planet. But this weekend we topped 400 and like the frog in the pot of water that is slowly coming to a boil we may have reached a point of no return.  But we can’t live like that – fear and despair won’t change anything.

Crystal Lameman, of the Beaver Creek Cree who was honored at this year’s Global Exchange Human Right’s award says: “When disaster strikes it is not going to know race, color or creed. I’m here to tell you, when that happens, the greed is going see that it cannot eat money and you cannot drink oil.  And that we all bleed the same color. . .…If the government and industry think that throwing money at us is going to make this better, I choose life and my children’s lives and I choose health over money.”

Crystal Lameman and Carleen Pickard at Global Exchange Human Rights Awards

350.org has been building the broadest possible movement to fight climate change — making links around the world from Uzbekistan to Argentina, keeping that 350 number in front of UN negotiators and student activists alike. So it was with some trepidation that I saw a long e-mail from Bill McKibben cross my computer screen this weekend. What could he say that would lift my spirits and encourage me to keep up the fight even as the water begins to boil.

He calls us to fight – to do hard, important and powerful things this summer.  As we start experiencing the climate chaos of the summer months he says we have to turn up the heat on our politicians to get the number down again. “Summer Heat”– is a call to do something to stop our addiction to fossil fuels and the policies we’ve built around that addiction to maintain it — from fracking in California to the Keystone XL pipe line, to oil company’s dirty refineries to the struggles by front-line communities suffering from impossibly brutal extraction techniques, to mountain top removal and toxic sludge. To survive we have to struggle together.

Carleen Pickard, our Executive Director, said when she introduced Crystal Lameman, “I believe struggling for climate justice is our highest calling and greatest challenge as a movement. Some think of climate change as a distant or untouchable crisis, but we know every pollutant and every carbon emission is generated in a real place in real time. And as we confront this crisis together with the leaders from the front lines, we know an injury to any community on our beautiful planet will eventually injure us all.

Protecting the vitality of the atmosphere that sustains all life on Earth means we have to forge a new path past the international institutions have failed and abandoned us in the wake of corporate globalization. We must be brave. We must be fearless, and relentless. We must work together.”

Thank you Bill Mckibben! Thank Crystal Lameman, Thank you Carleen Pickard!  It is one big fight we all want to be part of.

Join us at Global Exchange this summer to Beat the Heat!  This will be a chance for thousands of us to show the courage and love we need to bring the number down!

Update 5/21/2013: Guatemala genocide conviction overturned.

From CNN.com:

When former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt was convicted of genocide and sentenced to 80 years in prison this month, it was not expected to be the end of story.

Observers knew that an appeal was coming, but it was a separate action — a ruling by Guatemala’s Constitutional Court — that provided the latest twist in the case.

The Constitutional Court on Monday overturned Rios Montt’s conviction and sentence, and ordered the proceedings to return to the trial phase.

The ruling does not annul the entire trial, but everything that happened after April 19, notably the closing arguments and conviction.

Read more about the overturning of the conviction on CNN.

—

Genocide and the Trial of the Century in Guatemala: But Where Will It End?

This guest post was written by human rights activist and lawyer, Jennifer K. Harbury, whose husband was disappeared by the Guatemalan government in 1992. Her book, Searching for Everardo, revealed the CIA’s complicity in the fate of her husband and thousands of others. Jennifer was the Director of Human Rights at Global Exchange in the 1990s.

On May 10, 2013 Judge Jazmin Barrios declared former President and General Efrain Rios Montt guilty of genocide in Guatemala, and sentenced him to eighty years in prison. The case sets a historic precedent: this is the first time a President has been tried and sentenced for such war crimes by a domestic court in Latin America. Many hail this as a death knell for the blanket impunity long enjoyed by military leaders throughout the hemisphere for the war crimes they commanded during the “Dirty Wars”.

Even more was at stake in this trial, however, as evidenced by the extraordinary reaction of the audience as the sentencia was read aloud. People erupted into cheers and applause, weeping openly for their own long lost loved ones. Bells rang and cars honked throughout the streets. The Mayan survivors, dressed in their hand- woven traditional clothing, stood and cried out “Tantiq! Tantiq!”, or “Thank You, Thank You!” to the Judge in their ancestral language. As journalists swarmed the stunned General Rios Montt, the audience began to sing the words of Otto Renee Castillo, a young and gifted Guatemalan poet assassinated by army death squads long ago.

Justice is long overdue. Guatemala is much like the old South Africa, with a tiny and wealthy upper class composed of the Conquistador and other European descendents. The indigenous Mayans comprise eighty percent of the population but have long been stripped of their lands and treated as serfs in their own nation, suffering extreme poverty, malnutrition and racism. For nearly 500 years, every attempt at rebellion or dissent has been crushed by a brutal army created to protect the interests of the landowners. Reform efforts of President Arbenz came to an abrupt end in 1954, when the CIA backed a violent military coup. A blood bath ensued, and the army carried out a forty year “counter insurgency” campaign that earned them the title of worst human rights violator in the hemisphere, no small feat given the competition. When the Peace Accords were signed in 1996, the U.N. Truth Commission found that army had systematically engaged in torture, murder and forced disappearances, and bore responsibility for 94% of the 200,000 deaths and 640 massacres that had occurred. The great majority of the victims were Mayan men women and children. Accordingly the Commission also held the army responsible for genocide.

General Rios Montt was the President in 1982, and had commanded some of most frightening campaigns against the Mayan civilian population, declaring entire regions to be insurgents or supporters. One of the worst-hit areas was the Ixil triangle in Quiche highlands. Pursuant to the military “Plan Sofia” the army marched village to village, burning small farms and torturing and killing every Mayan man woman or child encountered. As one soldier testified, it was a matter of “Indio visto, Indio muerto”. The mass cemeteries are still being unearthed.

The genocide trial was based on the 1982 massacres in the Ixil triangle. Despite the constant death threats , nearly 100 survivors, most of them Mayan women, travelled to the Capital and gave their horrific testimonies. One, after recounting her own long torture and rape, and the loss of her family and friends, said simply, “ This happened 31 years ago. For 31 years I have waited to tell the truth. Now I have spoken.”

The case began more than a decade ago but like all of the other war crimes cases, it had long been obstructed in Guatemala. As the trial date approached, the right wing forced a de facto amnesty through Congress. The bill was passed by President and General Otto Perez Molina, who also participated in the 1982 Ixil massacres. (Although the press declared him popularly elected a year ago, in fact nearly half of the Mayans cannot vote.) International uproar forced the cancellation of the bill. Next, as reported by Allan Nairn, a key official involved in the case was told that he had a choice. Accept one million dollars, to be placed in an offshore account, or, as the visitor explained as he placed a gun on the table, they knew where to find his children. Precisely the same offer had shut down an investigation of President Otto Perez Molina’s involvement in the Bamaca case earlier. For the first time, however, there was an extraordinary team consisting of the Attorney General Claudia Paz, a solid prosecutor under her command, a brilliant and idealistic young private attorney representing the Ixiles, and Judge Jazmin Barrios herself. No one gave in to the firestorm.

Reaction in the court room to the guilty verdict. Photo credit: AP

As the case advanced, the Defense attorneys openly threatened and insulted the Judge, filed endless bad faith appeals for delay purposes, and at one point simply walked out of the court room and refused to answer the Judge’s demands that they return at once. When a soldier testified that Otto Perez Molina was also involved in the Ixil atrocities, a judge in a different court ordered the entire case annulled, spinning it off schedule for weeks. In the end however, the trial reached its conclusion and the General received his verdict. Guilty.

The battle for justice is far from over however. President Otto Perez Molina has long declared that genocide never occurred in Guatemala and that the UN Truth Commission was simply mistaken. He is now urging everyone to remember that the ruling is not final, and that numerous issues remain on appeal. Unfortunately this is true. Traditionally, many human rights rulings have been overturned on appeal months later, once all the internationals have gone home and the public scrutiny has died down. Meanwhile a state of siege has been declared in a number of Indigenous regions and once again there is a massive military presence there. Judge Jazmin Barrio is under a wave of attacks and demands that she be put on trial herself for the abuse of power and corruption. CACIF, the coffee growers association, has publicly demanded that the trial be annulled.

The Ixil survivors have returned home in the highlands. They have spoken and thus honored their dead. But will they survive this time?

TAKE ACTION!

• Support Global Exchange’s Human Rights programs. Join us as a member, and receive a copy of Jennifer K. Harbury’s book, Searching for Everardo: A Story of Love, War, and the CIA in Guatemala.
• Travel to Guatemala on a Reality Tour and explore how U.S. fair trade activists and women’s cooperatives in Guatemala are working together to use fair trade to advance local development efforts in Latin America’s most impoverished communities.

On May 10, 2013 Judge Jazmin Barrios declared former President and General Efrain Rios Montt guilty of genocide in Guatemala, and sentenced him to eighty years in prison. The case sets a historic precedent: this is the first time a President has been tried and sentenced for such war crimes by a domestic court in Latin America. Many hail this as a death knell for the blanket impunity long enjoyed by military leaders throughout the hemisphere for the war crimes they commanded during the “Dirty Wars”.

Even more was at stake in this trial, however, as evidenced by the extraordinary reaction of the audience as the sentencia was read aloud. People erupted into cheers and applause, weeping openly for their own long lost loved ones. Bells rang and cars honked throughout the streets. The Mayan survivors, dressed in their hand- woven traditional clothing, stood and cried out “Tantiq! Tantiq!”, or “Thank You, Thank You!” to the Judge in their ancestral language. As journalists swarmed the stunned General Rios Montt, the audience began to sing the words of Otto Renee Castillo, a young and gifted Guatemalan poet assassinated by army death squads long ago.

Justice is long overdue. Guatemala is much like the old South Africa, with a tiny and wealthy upper class composed of the Conquistador and other European descendents. The indigenous Mayans comprise eighty percent of the population but have long been stripped of their lands and treated as serfs in their own nation, suffering extreme poverty, malnutrition and racism. For nearly 500 years, every attempt at rebellion or dissent has been crushed by a brutal army created to protect the interests of the landowners. Reform efforts of President Arbenz came to an abrupt end in 1954, when the CIA backed a violent military coup. A blood bath ensued, and the army carried out a forty year “counter insurgency” campaign that earned them the title of worst human rights violator in the hemisphere, no small feat given the competition. When the Peace Accords were signed in 1996, the U.N. Truth Commission found that army had systematically engaged in torture, murder and forced disappearances, and bore responsibility for 94% of the 200,000 deaths and 640 massacres that had occurred. The great majority of the victims were Mayan men women and children. Accordingly the Commission also held the army responsible for genocide.

General Rios Montt was the President in 1982, and had commanded some of most frightening campaigns against the Mayan civilian population, declaring entire regions to be insurgents or supporters. One of the worst-hit areas was the Ixil triangle in Quiche highlands. Pursuant to the military “Plan Sofia” the army marched village to village, burning small farms and torturing and killing every Mayan man woman or child encountered. As one soldier testified, it was a matter of “Indio visto, Indio muerto”. The mass cemeteries are still being unearthed.

The genocide trial was based on the 1982 massacres in the Ixil triangle. Despite the constant death threats , nearly 100 survivors, most of them Mayan women, travelled to the Capital and gave their horrific testimonies. One, after recounting her own long torture and rape, and the loss of her family and friends, said simply, “ This happened 31 years ago. For 31 years I have waited to tell the truth. Now I have spoken.”

The case began more than a decade ago but like all of the other war crimes cases, it had long been obstructed in Guatemala. As the trial date approached, the right wing forced a de facto amnesty through Congress. The bill was passed by President and General Otto Perez Molina, who also participated in the 1982 Ixil massacres. (Although the press declared him popularly elected a year ago, in fact nearly half of the Mayans cannot vote.) International uproar forced the cancellation of the bill. Next, as reported by Allan Nairn, a key official involved in the case was told that he had a choice. Accept one million dollars, to be placed in an offshore account, or, as the visitor explained as he placed a gun on the table, they knew where to find his children. Precisely the same offer had shut down an investigation of President Otto Perez Molina’s involvement in the Bamaca case earlier. For the first time, however, there was an extraordinary team consisting of the Attorney General Claudia Paz, a solid prosecutor under her command, a brilliant and idealistic young private attorney representing the Ixiles, and Judge Jazmin Barrios herself. No one gave in to the firestorm.

Reaction in the court room to the guilty verdict. Photo credit: AP

As the case advanced, the Defense attorneys openly threatened and insulted the Judge, filed endless bad faith appeals for delay purposes, and at one point simply walked out of the court room and refused to answer the Judge’s demands that they return at once. When a soldier testified that Otto Perez Molina was also involved in the Ixil atrocities, a judge in a different court ordered the entire case annulled, spinning it off schedule for weeks. In the end however, the trial reached its conclusion and the General received his verdict. Guilty.

The battle for justice is far from over however. President Otto Perez Molina has long declared that genocide never occurred in Guatemala and that the UN Truth Commission was simply mistaken. He is now urging everyone to remember that the ruling is not final, and that numerous issues remain on appeal. Unfortunately this is true. Traditionally, many human rights rulings have been overturned on appeal months later, once all the internationals have gone home and the public scrutiny has died down. Meanwhile a state of siege has been declared in a number of Indigenous regions and once again there is a massive military presence there. Judge Jazmin Barrio is under a wave of attacks and demands that she be put on trial herself for the abuse of power and corruption. CACIF, the coffee growers association, has publicly demanded that the trial be annulled.

The Ixil survivors have returned home in the highlands. They have spoken and thus honored their dead. But will they survive this time?

TAKE ACTION!

• Support Global Exchange’s Human Rights programs. Join us as a member, and receive a copy of Jennifer K. Harbury’s book, Searching for Everardo: A Story of Love, War, and the CIA in Guatemala.
• Travel to Guatemala on a Reality Tour and explore how U.S. fair trade activists and women’s cooperatives in Guatemala are working together to use fair trade to advance local development efforts in Latin America’s most impoverished communities.

On May 10, 2013 Judge Jazmin Barrios declared former President and General Efrain Rios Montt guilty of genocide in Guatemala, and sentenced him to eighty years in prison. The case sets a historic precedent: this is the first time a President has been tried and sentenced for such war crimes by a domestic court in Latin America. Many hail this as a death knell for the blanket impunity long enjoyed by military leaders throughout the hemisphere for the war crimes they commanded during the “Dirty Wars”.

Even more was at stake in this trial, however, as evidenced by the extraordinary reaction of the audience as the sentencia was read aloud. People erupted into cheers and applause, weeping openly for their own long lost loved ones. Bells rang and cars honked throughout the streets. The Mayan survivors, dressed in their hand- woven traditional clothing, stood and cried out “Tantiq! Tantiq!”, or “Thank You, Thank You!” to the Judge in their ancestral language. As journalists swarmed the stunned General Rios Montt, the audience began to sing the words of Otto Renee Castillo, a young and gifted Guatemalan poet assassinated by army death squads long ago.

Justice is long overdue. Guatemala is much like the old South Africa, with a tiny and wealthy upper class composed of the Conquistador and other European descendents. The indigenous Mayans comprise eighty percent of the population but have long been stripped of their lands and treated as serfs in their own nation, suffering extreme poverty, malnutrition and racism. For nearly 500 years, every attempt at rebellion or dissent has been crushed by a brutal army created to protect the interests of the landowners. Reform efforts of President Arbenz came to an abrupt end in 1954, when the CIA backed a violent military coup. A blood bath ensued, and the army carried out a forty year “counter insurgency” campaign that earned them the title of worst human rights violator in the hemisphere, no small feat given the competition. When the Peace Accords were signed in 1996, the U.N. Truth Commission found that army had systematically engaged in torture, murder and forced disappearances, and bore responsibility for 94% of the 200,000 deaths and 640 massacres that had occurred. The great majority of the victims were Mayan men women and children. Accordingly the Commission also held the army responsible for genocide.

General Rios Montt was the President in 1982, and had commanded some of most frightening campaigns against the Mayan civilian population, declaring entire regions to be insurgents or supporters. One of the worst-hit areas was the Ixil triangle in Quiche highlands. Pursuant to the military “Plan Sofia” the army marched village to village, burning small farms and torturing and killing every Mayan man woman or child encountered. As one soldier testified, it was a matter of “Indio visto, Indio muerto”. The mass cemeteries are still being unearthed.

The genocide trial was based on the 1982 massacres in the Ixil triangle. Despite the constant death threats , nearly 100 survivors, most of them Mayan women, travelled to the Capital and gave their horrific testimonies. One, after recounting her own long torture and rape, and the loss of her family and friends, said simply, “ This happened 31 years ago. For 31 years I have waited to tell the truth. Now I have spoken.”

The case began more than a decade ago but like all of the other war crimes cases, it had long been obstructed in Guatemala. As the trial date approached, the right wing forced a de facto amnesty through Congress. The bill was passed by President and General Otto Perez Molina, who also participated in the 1982 Ixil massacres. (Although the press declared him popularly elected a year ago, in fact nearly half of the Mayans cannot vote.) International uproar forced the cancellation of the bill. Next, as reported by Allan Nairn, a key official involved in the case was told that he had a choice. Accept one million dollars, to be placed in an offshore account, or, as the visitor explained as he placed a gun on the table, they knew where to find his children. Precisely the same offer had shut down an investigation of President Otto Perez Molina’s involvement in the Bamaca case earlier. For the first time, however, there was an extraordinary team consisting of the Attorney General Claudia Paz, a solid prosecutor under her command, a brilliant and idealistic young private attorney representing the Ixiles, and Judge Jazmin Barrios herself. No one gave in to the firestorm.

Reaction in the court room to the guilty verdict. Photo credit: AP

As the case advanced, the Defense attorneys openly threatened and insulted the Judge, filed endless bad faith appeals for delay purposes, and at one point simply walked out of the court room and refused to answer the Judge’s demands that they return at once. When a soldier testified that Otto Perez Molina was also involved in the Ixil atrocities, a judge in a different court ordered the entire case annulled, spinning it off schedule for weeks. In the end however, the trial reached its conclusion and the General received his verdict. Guilty.

The battle for justice is far from over however. President Otto Perez Molina has long declared that genocide never occurred in Guatemala and that the UN Truth Commission was simply mistaken. He is now urging everyone to remember that the ruling is not final, and that numerous issues remain on appeal. Unfortunately this is true. Traditionally, many human rights rulings have been overturned on appeal months later, once all the internationals have gone home and the public scrutiny has died down. Meanwhile a state of siege has been declared in a number of Indigenous regions and once again there is a massive military presence there. Judge Jazmin Barrio is under a wave of attacks and demands that she be put on trial herself for the abuse of power and corruption. CACIF, the coffee growers association, has publicly demanded that the trial be annulled.

The Ixil survivors have returned home in the highlands. They have spoken and thus honored their dead. But will they survive this time?

TAKE ACTION!

• Support Global Exchange’s Human Rights programs. Join us as a member, and receive a copy of Jennifer K. Harbury’s book, Searching for Everardo: A Story of Love, War, and the CIA in Guatemala.
• Travel to Guatemala on a Reality Tour and explore how U.S. fair trade activists and women’s cooperatives in Guatemala are working together to use fair trade to advance local development efforts in Latin America’s most impoverished communities.