Work for Justice in Guatemala

Oakland-based NISGUA (Network in Solidarity With the People of Guatemala) is recruiting accompaniers to join their Guatemala Accompaniment Project (GAP).

The Guatemala Accompaniment Project (G.A.P.) of the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA) trains and places qualified candidates as human rights accompaniers. NISGUA is one of many organizations around the world that employs accompaniment as a vital tool in the global struggle for the respect of human rights. In the Guatemalan context, accompaniment creates a non-violent response to the threats, harassment, and violence faced by survivors of Guatemala’s 36-year-long civil war, grassroots organizations working for justice, and indigenous communities combating destructive mega-development projects on their land.
The application deadline has been extended to April 16 and the next training is planned for early June.

Visit their website to download a recruitment flyer, read more or start the application.

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Which Dr. King Will We Honor?

[ See a shorter version of this published on Truthout]

Once again, as we observe the life and example of Martin Luther King, Jr., the question arises, “Which Dr. King will we honor?”

Will we yet again observe a polished, scaled down, and non-threatening MLK, Jr.—the mere shadow of the man and his dream? At least we will recognize the leadership of the man who called for racial equality and for us to be of service to our neighbors–as we should.  We will even recognize that “we have come a long way” and “there is still further work to do” — as we should.  The further work do be done is invoked almost as an absolution, affirming our commitment to the dream, but without further specification and without discussing our troubling ongoing racial inequalities in our schools, health-care, jobs, housing, and criminal injustice system.

But gone will be the King who called for an end to militarism and far-flung imperial wars,  who said, “I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such” and who called his government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

Where’s that 2nd Bill of Rights?

Well, Happy Bill of Rights Day!

On this day in 1791 the Bill of Rights went into effect when Virginia became the 11th state to ratify them.  These first 10 amendments became part of the beloved constitution that we all know so well (right?). This bedrock document for protecting individual civil and political rights (thank you James Madison) has been a source of inspiration the world over and has been something that we have struggled to interpret, uphold, and live up to through the last 218 years.

FDR declared the day of observance in 1941.

But lesser known is FDR’s call in 1944 for a “Second Bill of Rights”–sometimes referred to as an “Economic Bill of Rights“.

hmmm…whatever happened to that?