EDUCATION FOR SOLIDARITY

16 April, International Day against Child Slavery. No Longer Slaves, but Brothers and Sisters

2015-04-17T18:53:00.003+02:00

What is there behind a label that says "dress for 9€" or "unbeatable prices"? What is there behind a toy, or a pair of shoes, or a mobile phone, or an ad for cosmetics, or behind certain brands…? Let’s have a look behind these labels, these prices, this publicity... They hide the sweat and blood of the slaves of the 21st century. Child slaves are present in every sector of the economy, where the human being itself is regarded as a throw-away commodity.

Murdered on 16th April 1995, in Pakistan,

when he was 12. [1983-1995]

Testimony of true activist and solidarity trade-unionism.

On 16 April, it was the anniversary of IQBAL MASIH’s murder (1995-2015), a Christian non-violent militant for Justice in the fight against Child Slavery in the world.

In commemoration of his death, the 16th April is the INTERNATIONAL DAY AGAINST CHILD SLAVERY, and rallies, different events, street actions and solidarity marches against child slavery were held in Spain and Latin America

On 16 April 1995, a child slave, Iqbal Masih, was murdered in Pakistan because he fought against child slavery.

Every day we can find products made by enslaved children, in our homes, in our streets, in shopping malls, in our consumption. At present, millions of children breath the smoke of rubbish landfills, they risk their lives as pearl divers, they work in the mines to get the minerals for our cosmetics or for new technologies, they are kidnapped to become child soldiers, they live amidst bullets and rapes in the streets, they are used for the trade in human organs, in brothels, in sweatshop... Children who have been deprived of their childhood and education. Children who are subjugated, enslaved, humiliated.

When we talk about an economic crisis in international forums and in the media, no one says that this crisis will be paid by the poor and especially by children who will be aborted or subjected to more bondage.

If we consider why child slavery exists and why it is on the rise, the analysis will lead us to the same causes of hunger and unemployment. It is the same causes, the same institutions, the same inner mechanism that produces hunger, unemployment and child slavery. The causes of this crime have a clear economic dimension: a radically unfair international economic system, tailored to the requirements of large multinational companies and of a global financial system seeking to maximize profits at all costs and having no qualms about using child slave labor. All WB and IMF programs, as well as those of European financial institutions, are geared to promoting this multinational strategy that directly causes child slavery.

All the reforms being carried out by Europe are causing more slavery and a greater growth of the informal economy, which drives millions of children out of school and into sweatshops, agricultural fields, mines and warehouses.

Also, this drama is caused by a unionism that has betrayed its history of solidarity fight, in enriched countries with its silence about child slavery; thus making evident their complicity and their lack of solidarity with the impoverished workers of the world and of Spain.

Child slavery is the first problem facing the world of work, and as well as unemployment, it is the result of a savage economic system.

Unemployment and Child Slavery have the same causes and therefore common solutions.

Child slavery is a moral and political problem, and its solution can only come from these two fields: the Moral and the Political ones. We therefore demand that unions and political parties denounce the causes of child slavery.

We must defend children’s right to have a school, an education, a family, to be able to play and become Persons.

From MCC (Christian Cultural Movement)'s Communique on the International Day Against Child Slavery

See the complete communique in Spanish and English on their web: www.solidaridad.net

Sold to the Sea

2015-04-17T18:16:00.000+02:00

Human Trafficking at Sea

ETCHINGS ON THE WALL IN THE ROOM WHERE TRAFFICKING VICTIMS WERE HELD:
“Don’t think too much about life. It cannot be destroyed so easily.”
“Let’s fight together.”
“No matter the rain is heavy; even it may dissolve a mountain; my love will survive.”
“Let’s pass through the difficult journey.”
“You are on your own in Thailand.”

See video:

Click on this link to read and download the Complete PDF Report

Nobel Lecture by Kailash Satyarthi.

2015-01-16T21:28:00.002+01:00

Nobel Lecture by Kailash Satyarthi

Nobel Lecture by Kailash Satyarthi

Some outstanding extract:

"We have utterly failed in imparting an education to our children. An education that gives the meaning and objective of life and a secure future. An education that builds a sense of global citizenship among the young people."

"Solutions are not found only in the deliberations in conferences and prescriptions from a distance. They lie in small groups and local organisations and individuals, who confront the problem every day, even if they remain unrecognised and unknown to the world."

"You may ask: what can one person do? Let me tell you a story I remember from my childhood: A terrible fire had broken out in the forest. All the animals were running away, including the lion, king of the forest. Suddenly, the lion saw a tiny bird rushing towards the fire. He asked the bird, "what are you doing?” To the lion's surprise, the bird replied "I am on my way to extinguish the fire.” He laughed and said, "how can you kill the fire with just one drop of water, in your beak?” The bird was adamant, and said, "But I am doing my bit.”

You and I live in the age of rapid globalisation. We are connected through high-speed Internet. We exchange goods and services in a single global market. Each day, thousands of flights connect us to every corner of the globe. But there is one serious disconnect. It is the lack of compassion. Let us inculcate and transform the individuals' compassion into a global movement. Let us globalise compassion. Not passive compassion, but transformative compassion that leads to justice, equality, and freedom."

"Whose children are they who stitch footballs, yet have never played with one? They are our children. Whose children are they who mine stones and minerals? They are our children. Whose children are they who harvest cocoa, yet do not know the taste of a chocolate? They are all our children."

"We need collective actions with a sense of urgency. Every single minute matters, every single child matters, every single childhood matters. I challenge the passivity and pessimism surrounding our children. I challenge this culture of silence, this culture of neutrality."

(My dear children of the world…)

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies, distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, dear brother Tom Harkin, brothers and sisters, a and my dear daughter Malala.

From this podium of peace and humanity, I am deeply honoured to recite a mantra from the ancient texts of wisdom, Vedas.

This mantra carries a prayer, an aspiration and a resolve that has the potential to liberate humanity from all man-made crises.

Let's walk together. In the pursuit of global progress, not a single person should be left out or left behind in any corner of the world, from East to West, from South to North.

Let's speak together, let our minds come together! Learning from the experiences of our ancestors, let us together create knowledge for all that benefits all.

I bow to my late parents, to my motherland India, and to the mother earth.

With a warm heart I recall how thousands of times, I have been liberated, each time I have freed a child from slavery. In the first smile of freedom on their beautiful faces, I see the Gods smiling.

I give the biggest credit of this honour to my movement's Kaalu Kumar, Dhoom Das and Adarsh Kishore from India and Iqbal Masih from Pakistan who made the supreme sacrifice for protecting the freedom and dignity of children. I humbly accept this award on behalf of all such martyrs, my fellow activists across the world and my countrymen.

My journey from the great land of Lord Buddha, Guru Nanak and Mahatma Gandhi; India to Norway is a connect between the two centres of global peace and brotherhood, ancient and modern.

Friends, the Nobel Committee generously invited me to deliver a "lecture.” Respectfully, I am unable to do that.

I represent here the sound of silence. The cry of innocence. And, the face of invisibility. I have come here to share the voices and dreams of our children, our children, because they are all our children.

I have looked into their frightened and exhausted eyes. And I have heard their urgent questions:

Twenty years ago, in the foothills of the Himalayas, I met a small, skinny boy. He asked me: "Is the world so poor that it cannot give me a toy and a book, instead of forcing me to take a tool or gun?”

I met with a Sudanese child-soldier who was kidnapped by an extremist militia. As his first training, he was forced to kill his friends and family. He asked me: "What is my fault?”

Twelve years ago, a child-mother from the streets of Colombia – trafficked, raped, enslaved – asked me this: "I have never had a dream. Can my child have one?”

There is no greater violence than to deny the dreams of our children.

The single aim of my life is that every child is:

free to be a child,

free to grow and develop,

free to eat, sleep, see daylight,

free to laugh and cry,

free to play,

free to learn, free to go to school, and above all,

free to dream.

All the great religions tell us to care for children. Jesus said: "Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to them.” The Holy Quran says: "Kill not your children because of poverty.”

I refuse to accept that all the temples and mosques and churches and prayer houses have no place for the dreams of our children.

I refuse to accept that the world is so poor, when just one week of global spending on armies is enough to bring all of our children into classrooms.

I refuse to accept that all the laws and constitutions, and the judges and the police are not able to protect our children.

I refuse to accept that the shackles of slavery can ever be stronger than the quest for freedom.

I REFUSE TO ACCEPT.

I am privileged to work with many courageous souls who also refuse to accept. We have never given up against any threat and attack, and we will never. Undoubtedly, progress has been made in the last couple of decades. The number of out of school children has been halved. Child mortality and malnutrition has been reduced, and millions of child deaths have been prevented. The number of child labourers in the world has been reduced by a third. Make no mistake, great challenges still remain.

Friends, the biggest crisis knocking on the doors of humanity today is intolerance.

We have utterly failed in imparting an education to our children. An education that gives the meaning and objective of life and a secure future. An education that builds a sense of global citizenship among the young people. I am afraid that the day is not far when the cumulative result of this failure will culminate in unprecedented violence that will be suicidal for humankind.

Yet, young people like Malala, are rising up everywhere and choosing peace over violence, tolerance over extremism, and courage over fear.

Solutions are not found only in the deliberations in conferences and prescriptions from a distance. They lie in small groups and local organisations and individuals, who confront the problem every day, even if they remain unrecognised and unknown to the world

Eighteen years ago, millions of my brothers and sisters in 103 countries marched across 80,000 kilometres. And, a new international law against child labour was born. We have done this.

You may ask: what can one person do? Let me tell you a story I remember from my childhood: A terrible fire had broken out in the forest. All the animals were running away, including the lion, king of the forest. Suddenly, the lion saw a tiny bird rushing towards the fire. He asked the bird, "what are you doing?” To the lion's surprise, the bird replied "I am on my way to extinguish the fire.” He laughed and said, "how can you kill the fire with just one drop of water, in your beak?” The bird was adamant, and said, "But I am doing my bit.”

But there is one serious disconnect. It is the lack of compassion. Let us inculcate and transform the individuals' compassion into a global movement. Let us globalise compassion. Not passive compassion, but transformative compassion that leads to justice, equality, and freedom.

Mahatma Gandhi said, "If we are to teach real peace in this world... we shall have to begin with the children.” I humbly add, let us unite the world through the compassion for our children.

Whose children are they who stitch footballs, yet have never played with one? They are our children. Whose children are they who mine stones and minerals? They are our children. Whose children are they who harvest cocoa, yet do not know the taste of a chocolate? They are all our children.

Devli was born into intergenerational debt and bonded labour in India. Sitting in my car immediately after her rescue the eight-year-old girl asked: Why did you not come earlier? Her angry question still shakes me – and has the power to shake the world. Her question is for all of us. Why did we not come earlier? What are we waiting for? How many more Devlis will we allow to go without rescue? How many more girls will be abducted, confined and abused? Children, like Devli across the world are questioning our inaction and watching our actions.

We need collective actions with a sense of urgency. Every single minute matters, every single child matters, every single childhood matters.

I challenge the passivity and pessimism surrounding our children. I challenge this culture of silence, this culture of neutrality.

I, therefore, call upon all the governments, intergovernmental agencies, businesses, faith leaders, the civil society, and each one of us, to put an end to all forms of violence against children. Slavery, trafficking, child marriages, child labour, sexual abuse, and illiteracy have no place in any civilised society.

Friends, we can do this.

Governments must make child friendly policies, and invest in education and young people.

Businesses must be more responsible and open to innovative partnerships.

Intergovernmental agencies must work together to accelerate action.

Global civil society must rise above business-as-usual and scattered agendas.

Faith leaders and institutions, and all of us must stand with our children.

We must be bold, we must be ambitious, and we must have the will. We must keep our promises.

Over fifty years ago, on the first day of my school I met a cobbler boy my age sitting at the school gate, polishing shoes. I asked my teachers these questions: "Why is he working outside? Why is he not coming to school with me?” My teachers had no answer. One day, I gathered the courage to ask the boys' father. He said: "Sir, I have never thought about it. We are just born to work.” This made me angry. It still makes me angry. I challenged it then, and I am challenging it today.

As a child, I had a vision of tomorrow. That cobbler boy was studying with me in my classroom. Now, that tomorrow has become TODAY. I am TODAY, and you are TODAY. TODAY it is time for every child to have the right to life, the right to freedom, the right to health, the right to education, the right to safety, the right to dignity, the right to equality, and the right to peace.

TODAY, beyond the darkness, I see the smiling faces of our children in the blinking stars. TODAY, in every wave of every ocean, I see our children playing and dancing. TODAY, in every plant, tree, and mountain, I see that little cobbler boy sitting with me in the classroom.

I want you to see and feel this TODAY inside you. My dear sisters and brothers, may I ask you to close your eyes and put your hand close to your heart for a moment? Can you feel the child inside you? Now, listen to this child. I am sure you can!

Today, I see thousands of Mahatma Gandhis, Martin Luther Kings, and Nelson Mandelas marching forward and calling on us. The boys and girls have joined. I have joined in. We ask you to join too.

Let us democratise knowledge.

Let us universalise justice.

Together, let us globalise compassion, for our children!

I call upon you in this room, and all across the world.

I call for a march from exploitation to education, from poverty to shared prosperity, a march from slavery to liberty, and a march from violence to peace.

Let us march from darkness to light. Let us march from mortality to divinity.

Let us march!

Malala Yousafzai Nobel Peace Prize Speech

2015-01-16T20:41:00.001+01:00

Malala Yousafzai Nobel Peace Prize Speech

Nobel Lecture

Bismillah hir rahman ir rahim. In the name of God, the most merciful, the most beneficent.

Your Majesties, Your royal highnesses, distinguished members of the Norweigan Nobel Committee,

Dear sisters and brothers, today is a day of great happiness for me. I am humbled that the Nobel Committee has selected me for this precious award.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support and love. Thank you for the letters and cards that I still receive from all around the world. Your kind and encouraging words strengthens and inspires me.

I would like to thank my parents for their unconditional love. Thank you to my father for not clipping my wings and for letting me fly. Thank you to my mother for inspiring me to be patient and to always speak the truth- which we strongly believe is the true message of Islam. And also thank you to all my wonderful teachers, who inspired me to believe in myself and be brave.

I am proud, well in fact, I am very proud to be the first Pashtun, the first Pakistani, and the youngest person to receive this award. Along with that, along with that, I am pretty certain that I am also the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who still fights with her younger brothers. I want there to be peace everywhere, but my brothers and I are still working on that.

I am also honoured to receive this award together with Kailash Satyarthi, who has been a champion for children's rights for a long time. Twice as long, in fact, than I have been alive. I am proud that we can work together, we can work together and show the world that an Indian and a Pakistani, they can work together and achieve their goals of children's rights.

Dear brothers and sisters, I was named after the inspirational Malalai of Maiwand who is the Pashtun Joan of Arc. The word Malala means grief stricken", sad", but in order to lend some happiness to it, my grandfather would always call me Malala – The happiest girl in the world" and today I am very happy that we are together fighting for an important cause.

This award is not just for me. It is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change.

I am here to stand up for their rights, to raise their voice… it is not time to pity them. It is not time to pity them. It is time to take action so it becomes the last time, the last time, so it becomes the last time that we see a child deprived of education.

I have found that people describe me in many different ways.

Some people call me the girl who was shot by the Taliban.

And some, the girl who fought for her rights.

Some people, call me a "Nobel Laureate" now.

However, my brothers still call me that annoying bossy sister. As far as I know, I am just a committed and even stubborn person who wants to see every child getting quality education, who wants to see women having equal rights and who wants peace in every corner of the world.

Education is one of the blessings of life—and one of its necessities. That has been my experience during the 17 years of my life. In my paradise home, Swat, I always loved learning and discovering new things. I remember when my friends and I would decorate our hands with henna on special occasions. And instead of drawing flowers and patterns we would paint our hands with mathematical formulas and equations.

We had a thirst for education, we had a thirst for education because our future was right there in that classroom. We would sit and learn and read together. We loved to wear neat and tidy school uniforms and we would sit there with big dreams in our eyes. We wanted to make our parents proud and prove that we could also excel in our studies and achieve those goals, which some people think only boys can.

But things did not remain the same. When I was in Swat, which was a place of tourism and beauty, suddenly changed into a place of terrorism. I was just ten that more than 400 schools were destroyed. Women were flogged. People were killed. And our beautiful dreams turned into nightmares.

Education went from being a right to being a crime.

Girls were stopped from going to school.

When my world suddenly changed, my priorities changed too.

I had two options. One was to remain silent and wait to be killed. And the second was to speak up and then be killed.

I chose the second one. I decided to speak up.

We could not just stand by and see those injustices of the terrorists denying our rights, ruthlessly killing people and misusing the name of Islam. We decided to raise our voice and tell them: Have you not learnt, have you not learnt that in the Holy Quran Allah says: if you kill one person it is as if you kill the whole humanity?

Do you not know that Mohammad, peace be upon him, the prophet of mercy, he says, do not harm yourself or others".

And do you not know that the very first word of the Holy Quran is the word Iqra", which means read"?

The terrorists tried to stop us and attacked me and my friends who are here today, on our school bus in 2012, but neither their ideas nor their bullets could win.

We survived. And since that day, our voices have grown louder and louder.

I tell my story, not because it is unique, but because it is not.

It is the story of many girls.

Today, I tell their stories too. I have brought with me some of my sisters from Pakistan, from Nigeria and from Syria, who share this story. My brave sisters Shazia and Kainat who were also shot that day on our school bus. But they have not stopped learning. And my brave sister Kainat Soomro who went through severe abuse and extreme violence, even her brother was killed, but she did not succumb.

Also my sisters here, whom I have met during my Malala Fund campaign. My 16-year-old courageous sister, Mezon from Syria, who now lives in Jordan as refugee and goes from tent to tent encouraging girls and boys to learn. And my sister Amina, from the North of Nigeria, where Boko Haram threatens, and stops girls and even kidnaps girls, just for wanting to go to school.

Though I appear as one girl, though I appear as one girl, one person, who is 5 foot 2 inches tall, if you include my high heels. (It means I am 5 foot only) I am not a lone voice, I am not a lone voice, I am many.

I am Malala. But I am also Shazia.

I am Kainat.

I am Kainat Soomro.

I am Mezon.

I am Amina. I am those 66 million girls who are deprived of education. And today I am not raising my voice, it is the voice of those 66 million girls.

Sometimes people like to ask me why should girls go to school, why is it important for them. But I think the more important question is why shouldn't they, why shouldn't they have this right to go to school.

Dear sisters and brothers, today, in half of the world, we see rapid progress and development. However, there are many countries where millions still suffer from the very old problems of war, poverty, and injustice.

We still see conflicts in which innocent people lose their lives and children become orphans. We see many people becoming refugees in Syria, Gaza and Iraq. In Afghanistan, we see families being killed in suicide attacks and bomb blasts.

Many children in Africa do not have access to education because of poverty. And as I said, we still see, we still see girls who have no freedom to go to school in the north of Nigeria.

Many children in countries like Pakistan and India, as Kailash Satyarthi mentioned, many children, especially in India and Pakistan are deprived of their right to education because of social taboos, or they have been forced into child marriage or into child labour.

One of my very good school friends, the same age as me, who had always been a bold and confident girl, dreamed of becoming a doctor. But her dream remained a dream. At the age of 12, she was forced to get married. And then soon she had a son, she had a child when she herself was still a child – only 14. I know that she could have been a very good doctor.

But she couldn't ... because she was a girl.

Her story is why I dedicate the Nobel Peace Prize money to the Malala Fund, to help give girls quality education, everywhere, anywhere in the world and to raise their voices. The first place this funding will go to is where my heart is, to build schools in Pakistan—especially in my home of Swat and Shangla.

In my own village, there is still no secondary school for girls. And it is my wish and my commitment, and now my challenge to build one so that my friends and my sisters can go there to school and get quality education and to get this opportunity to fulfil their dreams.

This is where I will begin, but it is not where I will stop. I will continue this fight until I see every child, every child in school.

Dear brothers and sisters, great people, who brought change, like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Aung San Suu Kyi, once stood here on this stage. I hope the steps that Kailash Satyarthi and I have taken so far and will take on this journey will also bring change – lasting change.

My great hope is that this will be the last time, this will be the last time we must fight for education. Let's solve this once and for all.

We have already taken many steps. Now it is time to take a leap.

It is not time to tell the world leaders to realise how important education is - they already know it - their own children are in good schools. Now it is time to call them to take action for the rest of the world's children.

We ask the world leaders to unite and make education their top priority.

Fifteen years ago, the world leaders decided on a set of global goals, the Millennium Development Goals. In the years that have followed, we have seen some progress. The number of children out of school has been halved, as Kailash Satyarthi said. However, the world focused only on primary education, and progress did not reach everyone.

In year 2015, representatives from all around the world will meet in the United Nations to set the next set of goals, the Sustainable Development Goals. This will set the world's ambition for the next generations.

The world can no longer accept, the world can no longer accept that basic education is enough. Why do leaders accept that for children in developing countries, only basic literacy is sufficient, when their own children do homework in Algebra, Mathematics, Science and Physics?

Leaders must seize this opportunity to guarantee a free, quality, primary andsecondary education for every child.

Some will say this is impractical, or too expensive, or too hard. Or maybe even impossible. But it is time the world thinks bigger.

Dear sisters and brothers, the so-called world of adults may understand it, but we children don't. Why is it that countries which we call strong" are so powerful in creating wars but are so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard? Why is it, why is it that making tanks is so easy, but building schools is so hard?

We are living in the modern age and we believe that nothing is impossible. We have reached the moon 45 years ago and maybe will soon land on Mars. Then, in this 21st century, we must be able to give every child quality education.

Dear sisters and brothers, dear fellow children, we must work… not wait. Not just the politicians and the world leaders, we all need to contribute. Me. You. We. It is our duty.

Let us become the first generation to decide to be the last , let us become the first generation that decides to be the last that sees empty classrooms, lost childhoods, and wasted potentials.

Let this be the last time that a girl or a boy spends their childhood in a factory.

Let this be the last time that a girl is forced into early child marriage.

Let this be the last time that a child loses life in war.

Let this be the last time that we see a child out of school.

Let this end with us.

Let's begin this ending ... together ... today ... right here, right now. Let's begin this ending now.

Thank you so much.

Lesson Plan for The Help (2011) "Criadas y Señoras" -in Spanish-

2015-01-04T02:46:00.001+01:00

Told through the point of view of three different women living in Jackson, Mississippi, The Help chronicles events from late summer of 1962 through 1964. Skeeter Phelan, who has just graduated from Ole Miss, returns home to the family plantation, ambitious to become a writer.

Taking the advice of a New York editor to hone her skills, Skeeter begins to write a column for the local newspaper while searching for a topic that she truly cares about.

Missing her beloved childhood family maid and confronted by the overt racism of her friend Hilly Holbrook’s campaign to require a separate bathroom for the black help, Skeeter proposes to write about the lives of the black maids in Jackson. Knowing she will need to interview black maids to tell their stories but without realizing the danger of what she is asking, Skeeter approaches Aibileen, the maid of one of her close friends.

With an increasing sense of bitterness at the injustice of her situation, Aibileen agrees to help, and later recruits Minny and eventually other maids. As they work on this project to tell their true stories, including stories of the prejudice and injustice that the maids experience in their everyday lives, a close relationship develops between Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minny. The three women come to confront and resist the intimidation experienced daily by the black maids. Woven throughout the stories are the key events of these seminal years of the civil rights movement.

Click to see futher information on the film

ACTIVITIES

Before watching the film

For an overview of the Civil Right Movement and the conditions of black people living in America, students can visit the following pages:

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html#events-1960

http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/index.html

https://hunniebrown.wordpress.com/lynching-in-america/

Address the following topics to help students add to their background knowledge:

1. Where did most Afroamericans live?

2. What was the Second Great Migration that occurred between 1940-1970?

3. Why did coloured people move to the North in such numbers?

4. What kinds of work were typical for coloured people in the South? Why?

5. What were the Jim Crow laws?

6. How did this affect the daily lives of coloured people, especially in the South?

7. What violence or threat of violence affected them?

8. What was their response? How did they resist the violence of racism?

While watching the film

Ask students to write down the following questions below and to focus their attention on the answers to them while watching the film. Pauses can be made while watching the film for the students to answer the questions or they can answer them after the film.

1. What are some of the forces that contribute to the segregation that arises in cities?

2. What are some of the rules that Skeeter gets from her mother, and what do these say about the kind of behavior considered proper for young white women of the time?

3. Why do you think Skeeter and her mother have different attitudes about these rules?

4. What deepens Aibileen’s bitterness toward white society?

5. What is it about Miss Celia’s background that makes her different from the other club women, and why do you think she wants to be accepted by them so badly?

6. In what ways has Constantine helped Skeeter to grow up? How has Constantine taught Skeeter kindness and self respect?

7. How has Aibileen helped Skeeter get the idea for her book?

8. How does Aibileen try to counteract the negative effects of Elizabeth’s criticism and coldness to Mae Mobley?

9. Why does the opportunity to tell the truth about working for white people weigh so heavily on Minny?

10. How are the Jim Crow Laws that Skeeter discovers in the library similar to Hilly’s bathroom plan?

11. What is motivating Skeeter to collect and publish the maids’ stories? Is it personal ambition or something more worthy?

12. Does Skeeter serve Hilly right when she causes old toilets to be dumped on Hilly’s lawn? Why do you think this action is appropriate or inappropriate?

13. Although Minny is very strong in some ways, she submits to physical abuse from her husband. What are possible reasons why she takes this abuse and does not stand up to him

14. What evidence of white violence to blacks do you find in the novel?

15. Why is Skeeter so eager to get out of Mississippi?

16. How has Aibileen changed through the events in the novel and the publication of the book?

After watching the film

1. List the following themes on a large chart and brainstorm how these themes are present in the film.

- Impact of elitism and racism on those who are prejudiced as well as the victims of prejudice

- Social pressures/conformity

- Man’s inhumanity towards man

- Searching for truth through writing/the power of the written word

2. Now ask them if these same themes can also be found in our present society. They can brainstorm examples to quote for their answers.

1. Characters in the novel are well aware of “rules” governing black-white interactions and the “lines” that divide the races in the South of the sixties. Ask students to consider if they are aware of “lines” that divide people at present in their country.

2. See the following video from The Guardian about segregation in Spain:

Salad slaves: Who really provides our vegetables

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2011/feb/07/food-spain-migrants

3. Read the following extract from a Report on Involuntary Domestic Servitude:

Involuntary Domestic Servitude

July 9, 2012

The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that there are at least 52.6 million and up to 100 million domestic workers around the world, cleaning and maintaining homes,

preparing meals, and caring for children and elderly. They perform these duties outside of the formal work sector and its protections, invisible to the neighbors and the law, often left vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

Too often, domestic work is not regarded as work at all, discrediting the value of child care and work performed in the home. Moreover, there is scant legal recourse available should labor violations, ranging up to and including forced labor, occur. This lack of legal protections, when combined with the social isolation and a lack of personal autonomy inherent in live-in domestic service, provides an enabling environment for servitude. As the Trafficking in Persons Report details and the recently adopted Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers seeks to address, domestic workers are trapped and exploited in nearly every country.

The vast majority of domestic workers are women and girls from developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, many of whom are migrants sending money home to their families. There are reports of criminal behavior on the part of recruiters, including searching domestic workers’ luggage to strip them of any phone numbers or information that might allow them to seek help; training workers to accept abuse as part of the job; and deceiving workers about their jobs’ responsibilities and sometimes even the location. Employers pay recruiters exorbitant fees, which leave some employers feeling that they have purchased the worker and deserve a return on their investment. Others pass that debt on to the workers. Meanwhile, workers also pay for training and job placement and then owe months’ worth of salary to pay off the often inflated or invented debt. And so before the work has begun, migrant domestic workers find themselves indebted to a degree of desperation.

Threats of arrest and summary deportation are common regardless of whether the worker is an undocumented migrant or a legal temporary guestworker. Traffickers use any combination of these elements to compel service, and the psychological and physical toll of this traumatic experience cannot be underestimated. Accounts abound of sexual assault and physical abuse, suicides and unexplained deaths. There are also reports of employers who sexually assaulted domestic workers and turned them over to third parties for prostitution.

Outside of the recruiting regime for migrant workers, in many countries children comprise the majority of domestic workers. They too can be subjected to long, punishing hours with heavy lifting, exposure to harmful chemicals, typically no wages at all, inhumane treatment, and physical and sexual abuse.

http://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/fs/2012/194709.htm

4. What factors create barriers between people? Do “lines” really exist between people, or are they just made up?

5. Students can construct a comparative chart to do so:

6. Discuss the factors that cause the “lines” between people. Examples: immigrants and people who are nationals of the country; people who have menial jobs and people who have intellectual jobs; people who hold high and low positions in a company…

7. Discuss in groups:

What is the main type of violence depicted in The Help?

What is the main type of violence exerted on people at present?

8. Ask students to think about the maids’ stories. Why is it important that they tell these stories? What do they hope to accomplish?

9. Are the students aware of any stories that need to be told today?

10. Ask students to search for present stories that should be told on the Internet and to share these stories in small groups. They can also upload them on their FB pages, Twitter…

This guide on the film "The Help" includes information taken from the guide for the book "The Help" written by JEANNE M. McGLINN, Professor in the Department of Education at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

The Help (2011) "Criadas y Señoras" -in Spanish-

2015-01-04T02:34:00.001+01:00

"The Help" - Criadas y Señoras (in Spanish) (2011) 146 mins.

Drama

An aspiring author during the civil rights movement of the 1960s decides to write a book detailing the African-American maids' point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis.

Director: Tate Taylor
Writers: Tate Taylor (screenplay),

Kathryn Stockett (novel)

Stars: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer

The Help received four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Actress for Davis, Best Supporting Actress for Chastain, and a win for Best Supporting Actress for Spencer. On January 29, 2012, the film won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

Follow this link to see Lesson Plan on the film

See the Trailer

Kailash Satyarthi’s Nobel Peace Prize: Decades of Fighting Child Slavery in India

2014-10-17T15:04:00.001+02:00

Kailash Satyarthi: “The people from everywhere in the world should feel, number one, that slavery’s bad, that exploitation of children is bad, it has to go, and, secondly, they should have a belief that it is possible, it is happening, it is not that it is very pessimistic and say: oh they are poor, they are poor countries and that thing could happen. It is not true. Poor people, poor countries can bring about change, and it is happening here. So, they should have a belief that the change is possible, that we can make a better world to live in, and that will happen.”

Article from The New York Times

Oct. 10, 2014

NEW DELHI — Many years have passed, but a police chief named Amitabh Thakur can remember the precise moment when he first set eyes on Kailash Satyarthi, who won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

Mr. Satyarthi was lying on the ground, bleeding profusely from the head, while a group of men converged on him with bats and iron rods. They worked for the Great Roman Circus, which was illegally employing teenagers trafficked from Nepal as dancing girls. Mr. Satyarthi, a Gandhian activist in a simple white cotton tunic, had come to free them.

As he approached the scene, the chief realized he was interrupting a savage beating.

“I remember that when I reached this man, he was rather composed,” Mr. Thakur said. “I was very impressed, for the simple reason that a man was putting his life in danger for a noble cause.”

Mr. Satyarthi is not an international celebrity like 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, with whom he is sharing the prize. Instead, he has labored for three decades to shave away at the numbingly huge problem of child slavery in India, using undercover operatives and camera crews to find the airless workrooms and mine shafts where children were being kept.

The circus raid was a reminder of the factors that converge in favor of employers using bonded labor in India: caste differences, religious differences, political and economic leverage. About 28 million children ages 6 to 14 are working in India, according to Unicef. Mr. Satyarthi’s organization, called Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or Save the Children Mission, is credited with freeing some 70,000 of them. In 1994, he started Rugmark, now GoodWeave International, in which rugs are certified to have been made without child slavery.

Asked to explain the origin of his life’s work, Mr. Satyarthi sometimes tells a story from his childhood, when he proudly entered a schoolyard for the first time and noticed a boy his own age, the son of a cobbler, gazing at him from outside the gate. He screwed up his courage and approached the cobbler, asking why his son did not go to school.

“He replied, ‘Look, sir, we are the people who are born to work,’ ” he said. “I was so disturbed. Why do we people have so many dreams, and they have none? This has gone so deep to my heart, and that is when I started working with poor children. It was a nonissue in my country.”

Mr. Satyarthi is the eighth Indian to win a Nobel, and only the second — after Mother Teresa — to win the Peace Prize.

As India undergoes swift economic expansion, a growing middle class has created a surging demand for domestic workers, jobs often filled by children. There is virtually no enforcement of labor laws, and newspapers regularly carry accounts of children sold into service and confined in horrific conditions, paid nothing and barely fed. They are sought-after employees, and in a population struggling with dire poverty, there is little will to stamp out the practice.

Simon Steyne, a longtime friend and colleague of Mr. Satyarthi’s, said reducing child slavery was ultimately the responsibility of governments and lawmakers. “I don’t think Kailash would say, ‘We are going to go out and rescue the other 168 million,’ ” Mr. Steyne said. But he added that his friend was driven by a sense of moral urgency and a ground-level network of informants who continually provide reports of exploitation.

“If there is intelligence that there are children being physically trafficked on a train, they will get raid and rescue workers together at a station,” said Mr. Steyne, an official at the International Labor Organization. “And when the train stops, they’ll board the train and rescue the children.”

Born about six and a half years after India won independence, Mr. Satyarthi, 60, was so deeply impressed with Gandhi’s teachings that, as a teenager, he invited a group of high-caste local bigwigs to a meal prepared by low-caste “untouchables”; the invited guests boycotted the event and then shunned his family. Deeply upset, the boy dropped his Brahmin family name in favor of Satyarthi, which means “seeker of truth,” according to an account on his website.

A few years later, Mr. Satyarthi was studying engineering at college when Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency, cracking down on civil liberties and suspending elections. Already a Marxist, he mobilized students against the government and spent much of the period avoiding arrest warrants, said Prabhat Kumar, a longtime friend and fellow activist.

Mr. Satyarthi ultimately came to prominence by organizing raids to free child laborers. Undercover operatives posing as buyers or laborers would persuade businesspeople to reveal the location of child slaves.

A2002 documentary for PBS followed Mr. Satyarthi to a quarry at 5 a.m., where he found children and adult workers living in brick shacks. Some of the children cry as he hugs them. The workers lift cloth parcels with their belongings onto their heads, and he ushers 52 people onto a truck to take them away.

“If they are caught, any kind of torture is meted out to them,” he tells the camera. “They are beaten up severely, burned with cigarettes, sometimes tied down on trees and beaten with stones.” He added, “It’s very difficult for them to realize or internalize freedom.”

Many of the children were temporarily resettled at an ashram run by Bachpan Bachao Andolan before returning to their villages.

Among those who celebrated on Friday was Mohammad Manan Ansari, who began working at a mica mine at 6, digging ore that would sell for 5 to 20 cents a pound. Mr. Ansari, now a college student in his late teens, recalled watching as a small friend was crushed by falling rocks in one of the mine’s tunnels. He said he would be grateful to Mr. Satyarthi for the rest of his life.

“My happiest moment was when Bachpan Bachao Andolan workers came and saved me,” he said. “Now Kailash’s Nobel is the second happiest moment of my life. I can’t explain my joy in my own words.”

Malala Yousafzai's Nobel Prize Speech

2014-10-17T14:49:00.000+02:00

Malala Yousafzai

Born: 12 July 1997, Mingora, Pakistan
Residence at the time of the award:United Kingdom
Prize motivation: "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education"

17-year-old Malala Yousafzai became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner for her work promoting young people's rights. Here she is, accepting the prrize.

Your Food Ties to Slavery

2014-08-28T14:33:00.000+02:00

Antonio Martinez stood in the hot sun, exhausted from a cross-country journey, and waited. Just 21 years old, he had traveled from Mexico to the U.S. with the promise of a well-paid construction job in California. But now he stood in a field in central Florida, listening to one man pay another man $500 to own him.

“I realized I had been sold like an animal without any compassion," Antonio thought at the time, more than 10 years ago.

He was right. In modern times, in the United States, Antonio had been sold into slavery in Florida's tomato fields.

IMMOKALEE: A STORY OF SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

Antonio is not alone

Unfortunately, Antonio’s case is not an isolated one. Many enslaved farmworkers in Florida pick the tomatoes that end up on sliced onto sandwiches, mixed into salads and stacked on supermarket shelves across the country. Over the last decade, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an award-winning farmworker advocacy organization, has identified more than 1,200 victims of human trafficking picking produce in Florida's fields.

These slaves often work for 10-12 hours a day, seven days a week. They are kept in crampt and dirty trailers, constantly monitored, and have wages garnished to pay a debt invented by the trafficker to keep victims enslaved. Many victims face threats to themselves or their families, regular beatings, sexual harassment and rape. They can't leave, can't seek help. They are in every way trapped.

Exploitation in the tomato industry isn't just the work of a handful of immoral individuals – it's the result of a supply chain which is set up to support the exploitation of the very people who keep it running.

Slavery’s connections to products you buy

Tomato pickers in Florida are paid less than two pennies for each pound of tomatoes they pick. That's the same pound you buy at the grocery store for anywhere between $1.50 and $4.00, depending on location and season. It's a poverty-inducing wage that has diminished in real value since the 1970s, even as the retail price of tomatoes has increased.

Here's what happens in the supply chain: major corporate buyers such as supermarkets, fast food chains and food service companies regularly purchase a massive amount of produce. Their huge purchases allow these companies to leverage their buying power and demand the lowest possible prices from tomato growers. This, in turn, exerts a powerful downward pressure on wages and working conditions in tomato suppliers' operations.

The result of this dynamic is thousands of workers like Antonio was – exploited, enslaved or held in debt bondage so growers can eke out a few more pennies and meet the major companies' bargain basement expectations. It's a dynamic that has existed for decades. But over the past few years, one grassroots organization has started to challenge the big buyers. And they're winning.

The Campaign for Fair Food

To help fight the rampant human trafficking and other injustices in the tomato industry, The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) launched the Campaign for Fair Food in 2001. Their goal is to reverse the trend that exploits workers by harnessing the purchasing power of the food industry for the betterment of farmworker wages and working conditions. Over the past decade, they've made major headway.

CIW has succeeded in getting Taco Bell, McDonald's, Subway and Burger King to support raising farmworker wages by a penny-per-pound and implementing protections against human trafficking, sexual harassment, and other forms of exploitation. They've also convinced major food service companies, including Aramark and Sodexo, as well as the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, the largest tomato grower organization in Florida, to do the same. Now, they’re turning their attention to supermarkets (Whole Foods has supported CIW since 2008.)

ALSO SEE: Victory over Taco Bell

‘UBUNTU’: “I am because we are”

2014-08-26T20:11:00.003+02:00

An anthropologist proposed a game to the kids in an African tribe. He put a basket full of fruit near a tree and told the kids that whoever got there first would win the sweet fruits. When he told them to run they all took each other’s hands and ran together, then sat together enjoying their treats. When he asked them why they had run like that as one could have had all the fruits for himself they said: ”UBUNTU, how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?”

‘UBUNTU’ in the Xhosa culture means: “I am because we are”.

"Ubuntu is nothing more or less than compassion brought into colourful practice."

"Ubuntu is a concept that is present here in Africa but I also believe it is present in every human being if it is allowed to thrive and prosper."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu offered this definition: A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed. Tutu further explained: One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality Ubuntu you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.

Nelson Mandela explained Ubuntu as follows: A traveler through a country would stop at a village and he didn’t have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food, entertain him. That is one aspect of Ubuntu, but it will have various aspects. Ubuntu does not mean that people should not enrich themselves. The question therefore is: Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to be able to improve?

Botswana

In the Tswana language the same concept exists. It is called botho, and the phrase that a person is a person through other people translates to motho ke motho ka batho. Botho is one of Botswana’s five national principles (the others being Democracy, Development, Self Reliance and Unity) Botswana’s Vision states: Botho defines a process for earning respect by first giving it, and to gain empowerment by empowering others. It encourages people to applaud rather than resent those who succeed. It disapproves of anti-social, disgraceful, inhuman and criminal behaviour, and encourages social justice for all.

Malawi

In Malawi, the same philosophy is called “uMunthu”. Malawian philosophers have been writing about uMunthu for years. According to the Catholic Diocese of Zomba bishop Rt. Rev. Fr. Thomas Msusa, The African worldview is about living as one family, belonging to God. Msusa noted that in Africa We say I am because we are, or in Chichewa kali kokha nkanyama, tili awiri ntiwanthu (when you are on your own you are as good as an animal of the wild; when there are two of you, you form a community). The philosophy of uMunthu has been passed on through proverbs such as Mwana wa mnzako ngwako yemwe, ukachenjera manja udya naye (your neighbor’s child is your own, his/her success is your success too).

Rwanda and Burundi

In Kinyarwanda and Kirundi, the national languages respectively for Rwanda and Burundi, ubuntu means, among other things, ‘human generosity’ as well as humanity (as above). In Rwanda and Burundi society it is common for people to exhort or appeal to others to “gira ubuntu” meaning to “have consideration and be humane” towards others; thus it has the extended meanings of ‘generosity’ and ‘free, given at no cost’. It also has the general meaning of “human’s essence”, which also include the other meanings of the word, as it will be said of a person who shows neither mercy nor consideration to others that he is an animal (igikoko, inyamaswa)

Uganda

In Kitara, obuntu refers to the human characteristics of generosity, consideration and humaneness towards others in the community. In Ganda, the language of central Uganda, obuntu bulamu means being humane, showing kindness and refers to the same characteristics. In Lugwere, a language spoken in eastern Uganda, Kobuntu means the behaviour generally accepted by humans and its natural characteristics.

Kenya and Tanzania

In Kiswahili, a language spoken throughout the coast of East Africa and some of Kenya, the word may refer to “utu”, which means humanness. It is a concept that condemns acts and deeds that seem unfair even in the slightest. The Bantu speakers of East Africa are believed to have originated from the Congo basin and in precolonial times “utu” was the main philosophy governing them. It meant that everything that was done was for the benefit of the whole community. In Luhya (umundu), Kikuyu (undu), Kamba, Meru (untu) and Kisii languages, spoken mainly in the Western, Central, Eastern and Nyanza provinces of Kenya, the “umundu” stands for humanness or the act of being humane to other human beings and to nature in general.

Prostitution: Victims or Whores?

2014-08-05T13:54:00.003+02:00

Extract

by Captain Danielle Strickland

I’ve been immersed recently in prostitution legislation. A year and a half ago I was neck high in a raging debate around the legalising of prostitution in Canada. Some very vocal proponents were upholding the ‘rights of women’ to prostitute themselves. After all – it is their body. This neo-liberal feminism (far from the classic feminism that spear-headed abolition, women voting and the rights of children around the world) suggests that prostitution isn’t oppression but a profession and should be dignified with proper acceptance, education and wages – with protection of workers rights. There is a classic case of a ‘co-operative brothel’ operating right now (albeit illegally) in Victoria, BC on the west coast of Canada.

The problem is that the rhetoric around legalising prostitution sounds pretty good (in promised form anyway)… a society that no longer judges women or uses morality as a grid to punish those who don’t adopt a pure lifestyle… billed as a liberation and a right – it makes opposing it sound like a puritanical rant against the freedom of women. You’d think the only people left opposing legalizing prostitution were a bunch of old fashioned, purist holy rollers trying to save poor lasses from the den of iniquity and the fires of hell.

The truth is that classic feminism rages on and presents from a women’s right perspective, an impressive argument against legalising prostitution. Not simply theoretical in recent years they have presented a new model many governments around the world are adopting to combat violence and oppression against women through sexual slavery and prostitution. It all started in Sweden.

Gunilla Ekberg was at the helm of the new legislation that suggested (with a proper understanding of prostitution) any society that seeks to uphold the rights of women and children must stop it. On it’s website at the height of the experiment Sweden had written, ‘we want the world to know that in Sweden, women and children are NOT FOR SALE.’ Bring it. (Swedish Model of Sex Industry Reform) This women’s right perspective suggests abolition as the only proper feminist response to prostitution. But why? Well, it’s all about understanding oppression. Let’s break it down:

Who are they?

Prostituted women are almost always oppressed women. Studies the world over suggest that women who end up working by selling their bodies are desperate. 84% of prostituted women in Australia (where prostitution has been legalised for 14 years in the State of Victoria – but more on that later!) said they would do anything else if they could. They are most likely to be uneducated, from low economic backgrounds, minorities, addicted and abused. It’s not exactly a poster child for women’s rights. Unlike the popular media suggests prostituted persons do not consists of young sexually liberated women choosing to exercise their ‘right’ to sell themselves - they are overwhelmingly poor, uneducated and neglected – suffering from abuse.

Read: Harms of Prostitution

What do they do?

Ekberg spells it out much clearer than I can given the readership of this article - suffice to say it’s a list of things that include rape, gang rape, oral sex, vaginal tearing, beatings, bondage and death.

Read: Misunderstanding the Issue

What are the costs?

The costs to the women themselves are astronomical. Damage to their body and their emotions, fear, addiction (70% of women develop an addiction while involved in prostitution), 80% suffer physical harm, 60% suffer sexual assault, 80% emotional abuse, 70% verbal threats, not to mention post traumatic stress disorder, death (suicide is a common death for prostituted persons), and murder.

Read: Making the Harm Visible

The costs to society are also shocking. Violence toward all women increases with societies assumption that it’s completely normal to purchase women’s bodies. Marriage breakdowns, infectious diseases, police intervention, and trauma costs just to name a few. Not only that, but the problems of illegal trafficking only increase with legalisation according to several studies.

Read: Legalising Prostitution is Not the Answer: Australia

Read: How Legalising Prostitution Has Failed: Germany -5 articles-

Read: Why Even Amsterdam Doesn't Want Legal Brothels

Gunilla rocks.

Gunilla Ekberg, the Swedish social reformer who introduced brand new legislation into the country that has upheld the rights of women and virtually eliminated the need for prostitution, suggests that two things are necessary to change nations. Nation changers pay attention:

1. Imagine a better world. You can’t do what you can’t imagine. Wilberforce did it with slavery… not just change the law but changed civilization’s acceptance of the practise.

2. Understand oppression. That was the idea of the first blog on prostitution. If we really understand prostitution – who they are, what they do and the consequences of it – it’s not that hard to fight against. In fact, it would be ludicrous not too. The down side of this point (and perhaps why it’s not often practised) is it takes work and it gets you dirty. In order to understand oppression you have to get close. You have to get filthy. There is no way to understand oppression from the safety of a boardroom (even in a uniform)– you’ve got to smell the stuff. You remember the scene in Amazing Grace (the movie on Wilberforce) where the rich folk are taking a nice cruise and start to smell a nasty odor? Turns out it’s Wilberforce on a slave ship and he tells them to stop covering their noises… breath in the smell of death he says… if you are going to support it you really ought to understand what it is. How much of the enemy’s work is done in secret? How much of prostitution is media slick covering the truth of the realities of violence and oppression against women? How many closed brothel doors have we even bothered to knock on in the desperate hopes perhaps of believing the lie so as not to have to uncover the truth and deal with the dirty consequences?

Turns out changing a nation isn’t so easy after all. Wanted: crazy fanatics who dream of a better world, willing to get dirty and broken, with friends in low places.

The Real Protagonists of 2014 Solidarity March

2014-07-19T19:15:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, Solidarity Youth Path (SYP -Camino Juvenil Solidario-) received, undoubtedly, the most important support that 2014 Solidarity March can have had. Through BLLF (Bonded Labor Liberation Front) Societies, the real protagonists of this March, child slaves from brick factories in Mirpurkhas Sindh –Pakistan– have sent SYP in Spain photos where children can be seen holding their banners. Some in English and others in Urdu say: WE WANT EDUCATION and EDUCATION IS OUR RIGHT. These are their mottos.

Through these banners, they are joining their voices with the young people that have been demonstrating against unemployment and child slavery throughout the streets of Spain since Monday, 14 July. These photos put a human face to 400 million reasons to march. May they be the driving force for those who are walking, may they encourage more people to join this March during the following days and may this march not be over after its main meeting and performances in Puerta del Sol, Madrid, on 26 July. May our lives be a march along the path against unemployment and child slavery!

Below is the email, SYP (CJS) has received with the photos:

Hope you are doing well and the March in Spain is going well. Please find attached pictures from children working on Brik Lins in Mirpurkhas Sindh. These pictures are sent by Bonded Labor Liberation Front society Mirpurkhas in solidarity with the March in Spain by youth of SAIN.

The placard in Urdu language says 'Education is our Right'.

Best Regards

Atiqa
Nation Project Coordinator
BLLF societies

Click Read More to see more pics:

2014 SOLIDARITY MARCH is just around the corner

2014-07-08T17:24:00.001+02:00

2014 SOLIDARITY MARCH

Against Unemployment and Child Salvery

From 13 to 26 July

At the beginning of the 21st century, millions of child slaves in the world are exploited in many varied forms:

- Children harvesting our food
-         Children manufacturing our goods
-         Children in mines
-         Child soldiers
-         Sexually exploited children
-         Children murdered for trafficking in human organs

More than 400 million children exploited as slaves!

By being deprived of their childhood, right to play and to education, they are being deprived of their lives.

It is child slavery. It is not child labour

In parallel to this outrageous fact, there are more than 1,600 million unemployed people in the world.

On 13^th July, the Christian Cultural Movement and Solidarity Youth Path start the march they are organizing against these evils and hundreds of people will be marching throughout Spain for 15 days to culminate the march with performances and different actions in Puerta del Sol, Madrid, on 26^th July.

During these 15 days there will be thousands of meetings; thousands of shared efforts which will let us experience solidarity and which will help us think of the next steps to take so that a whole generation of young people can discover the path of solidarity.

Lesson Plan for the Film: Elysium

2014-05-26T15:31:00.000+02:00

Elysium’s takes place in 2154 in a devastated Los Angeles. Max -the hero- is now a man, but through flashes back to his childhood, we can learn he was an orphan raised by nuns alongside a girl named Frey, who remains his love-interest throughout his life. Max has a checkered past -he’s a reformed thief, trying to scratch out a living among the rest of his poor peers on Earth. They live in the shadow of Elysium, a utopian, wealthy and privileged world, devoid of illness, which shimmers in the sky like beacon, always visible but impossible to reach.

The film has many logical flaws and will not get points for originality. However, it has lots of strong sci-fi violence and teens will love it. The plot is very easy to follow and the film can be used to deal with and analyze topics such as migration, frontiers, the role of countries that do the dirty work and keep migrants far away from the first world (Kruger), injustice, poverty, bravery… Then, I believe it can be a good educational film and resource.

Clik to see further info. about the film

ACTIVITIES

Before watching the film

Click on the link:

See the pictures, read the extracts of the news and answer the questions.

Ask students to do this exercise in pairs or teams of 3 or 4 students. Then have a sharing section.

Watch the film

After watching the film

Ask students to answer the questionnaire in teams.

Questionnaire on “Elysium”

Can you compare the situation Max is going through and how he feels when he is talking to the parole officer robot with any situation you have been in?
Why do people want to go to Elysium? Can you summarize your answer in one word?
What treatment does Max receive as a worker? Mention 3 facts that can illustrate your reply.
Why do you think three different languages are used: English, Spanish and French? What does each one represent?
What role does technology have in the film? How is it used at the end of the film?
Compare the following characters of the film with people, things, institutions or nations of the world we live in.

a. ELYSIUM
b. UNDOCUMENTED TRAVELLERS

c. UNDOCUMENTED TRANSBORDERS
d. KRUGER
e. SPIDER
f. JOHN CARLYLE
g. JESSICA DELACOURT
h. MAX

7. What happens at the end of the film? Why has Max decided to lay down his life?

8. What has been achieved for the world

9. What virtues do you think have been put into practice to defeat injustice?

10.Can you imagine what will happen next?

Debriefing:

Have a sharing section and a dialogue.

Boko Haram Doesn’t Respond to #Hashtags

2014-05-15T15:30:00.002+02:00

The tone of this article is not in line with other articles published in this blog. This blog means to side with the impoverished, the oppressed, the victims... when giving ideas for a better education or commenting on different issues.

The person who writes the article below centres his analysis on how the USA has tackled the drama of the Nigerian girls' kidnapping to the detriment of the USA and what should be done in the interest of this country. Notwithstanding, it serves the purpose of explaining the reason for the international uproar over this case.

Extract from: The Daily Caller

By Joseph Miller

On the evening of April 14, 2014, Boko Haram, a Nigerian Islamic terrorist group with links to al-Qaida kidnapped 276 school girls. The group initially said it took the girls so that they could become wives to its members. The group has changed its mind twice in the last two weeks, though, and has since offered to either sell the girls or trade them for imprisoned Islamic terrorists.

In the time since the incident took place, the world has expressed outrage over the incident — though the supposedly outraged nations have taken little action to address the situation. The kidnapping has galvanized the American public in particular, and it has become a trending topic on social media. Despite the uproar, the Obama White House has refused to take military action.

Why advocate for military action in Nigeria? While it is terrible that Boko Haram has kidnapped a large group of school girls, does the U.S. really have a national security interest in Nigeria? The answer is simple: Yes.

The United States has a national security interest in Nigeria and in countering and ultimately neutralizing nascent terrorist groups like BokoHaram. That interest is oil. Nigeria is the single largest producer of oil in Africa, and at one time was the world’s fourth-largest producer of liquid natural gas. The West African country is a member of OPEC and has been, up until recently, a relatively stable democracy. Additionally, Nigeria has not suffered from many of the issues that have caused instability in the Middle East, and has maintained good relations with the United States.

Nearly all of Nigeria’s fossil fuel deposits are located in the southern half of the country, which is predominantly Christian and peaceful. For these reasons, Nigeria seemed to be a viable alternate source of oil imports for the U.S., in order to reduce the nation’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Middle Eastern oil has served as a catalyst or at least a contributing factor into the decision to initiate conflict in the Arab world. Those wars have been costly in terms of blood and treasure. Diversification could reduce the likelihood that the nation is forced to fight one of these conflicts again and allow the country to focus on limited counter-terrorism operations instead.

In 2001, the George W. Bush administration joined previous Democratic and Republican administrations in concluding that energy import diversification was one of the steps required to increase American energy security. Bush’s National Energy Policy Development Group, led by then-Vice President Cheney, recommended that the U.S. increase its oil imports from countries like Nigeria in order to achieve diversification goals and reduce dependency on Middle Eastern oil. That dependency has made the U.S. vulnerable to rapid and significant decreases in supply as the Middle East has been plagued by instability.

Analysts have concluded that West African oil could account for 25 percent of all oil imported to the United States. However, terrorist attacks committed by groups like Boko Haram in the north, and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta in the South, have significantly reduced Nigeria’s daily production of oil and its security. For these reasons, the Obama administration should have been paying closer attention to the security situation in Nigeria and should have taken decisive clandestine military action a long time ago. It should not have taken the kidnapping of 276 school girls for Obama’s foreign policy team to realize that we have a problem in Nigeria.

The Democratic political machine decided the best way to solve the crisis was to send the first lady out to do the president’s job while his administration can’t seem to figure out what its foreign policy doctrine is, let alone a specific policy toward Nigeria. This is par for the course for an administration that has bungled every major national security problem that it has faced since taking power.

The first lady’s response was to launch an Internet-based social media appeal to free the kidnapped school girls using the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. I hate to break it to Michelle Obama, but al-Qaida-affiliated terrorist groups like Boko Haram don’t respond to hashtags or change.org petitions. Only the might of the U.S. military and intelligence community has been capable of halting terrorist actions like these.

To make matters worse, the social media campaign has only drawn international attention to what was a local terrorist group, which analysts fear could further embolden the group and increase its ability to recruit. That would help the group grow in size and stature to the point where it could be capable of conducting international operations, possibly against the United States. It is essential to nip groups like Boko Haram in the bud before they become a threat to the United States, which, by the way, is now one of the group’s long-term, stated goals.

To be fair, the White House also announced that it was sending a team of military and law enforcement specialists to advise the Nigerians, and manned U.S. spy planes have joined the hunt. However, you can count the number of people that make up this team on two hands. Clearly this is not sufficient to deal with the situation. The longer the situation drags on and the more media attention the situation receives, the harder it will be to clandestinely prosecute this local terror group with prejudice until it is gone. The first lady’s social media campaign and the subsequent media frenzy have now made this task more difficult and time-sensitive.

Mr. President, for the sake of our nation’s energy security, our national security, and yes, those school girls too, please log off of Facebook and Twitter and pick up the phone, call the Pentagon, and sign the order to quietly end this situation. If you don’t, it will almost certainly escalate, and Boko Haram becomes too big to fail — rising from a local movement to an international terrorist actor. The later are much harder to kill.

Joseph Miller is the pen name for a senior Department of Defense official with a background in U.S. special operations and combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has worked in strategic planning.

More than 200 Nigeria girls abducted to be enslaved and sold

2014-05-06T16:51:00.001+02:00

Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram has threatened to "sell" the hundreds of schoolgirls it abducted and enslaved three weeks ago.

Militant leader Abubakar Shekau sent a video obtained by the AFP news agency, in which he said for the first time that his group had taken the girls.

About 230 girls are still believed to be missing, prompting widespread criticism of the Nigerian government.

The Boko Haram insurgency has left thousands dead since 2009.

The girls were taken from their boarding school in Chibok, in the northern state of Borno, on the night of 14 April.

Boko Haram, which means "Western education is forbidden", has attacked numerous educational institutions in northern Nigeria.

Nigerian missing girls: Mothers' 'agony' for daughters

SYP’s 2014 Solidarity March throughout Spain: against Unemployment and Child Slavery

2014-05-05T14:21:00.000+02:00

Marching as a sign of protest has served to empower those who are victims of injustice.

Solidarity YouthPath’s 2014 SOLIDARITY MARCH throughout Spain in the second fortnight of July 2014 means to side with the over 400 million children who are victims of slavery, with the over 1,600 million adults who are unemployed, with those millions of people worldwide who suffer exploitation…

We challenge every person aiming for a just society to take part in this initiative. If you cannot march with us, during those days you can support our march by carrying out local actions to raise awareness of the CAUSES of Child Slavery and Unemployment.

HOW CAN I HELP?

-Discover Iqbal Masih’s life

- Support a motion against Child Slavery

- Join our actions against Child Slavery on 16^th April.

- Get in touch with us to collaborate with 2014 Solidarity March.

- Count on us to make this initiative known to your friends, groups of people…

marcha2014solidaridad@gmail.com

or call Pili: +34 617 806 563

Join this March!

http://marchaporlasolidaridad2014.blogspot.com.es/

Elysium (2013)

2014-05-05T13:45:00.001+02:00

Elysium is a 2013 American dystopian science fiction action thriller film written, directed, and co-produced by Neill Blomkamp, and starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster. It was released on August 9, 2013.

The film takes place on both a ravaged Earth, and a luxurious space habitat called Elysium. It explores political and sociological themes such as immigration, health care, exploitation, the justice system, and class issues.

In the year 2154, the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of the population resides on a ruined Earth. A man takes on a mission that could bring equality to the polarized worlds.

Director: Neill Blomkamp
Writer: Neill Blomkamp
Stars: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley

Follow this link to see Lesson Plan

SEE THE TRAILER

Lesson Plan for the Documentary Film: The Corporation

2014-04-18T19:45:00.000+02:00

ACTIVITIES:

The following: Material for the Teacher also includes additional questionnaires to be used with the students to practise vocabulary and ensure their better understanding of the documentary.

A. BEFORE WATCHING THE FILM

1. Ask students if they know what a corporation is. Providing examples can help them with their reply. (Brief talk with the class)

What is a Corporation?

It is a very large usually diversified firm that meets certain legal requirements to be recognized as having a legal existence, as an entity, it is separate and distinct from its owners. Corporations are owned by their stockholders (shareholders) who share in profits and losses generated through the firm's operations, and have three distinct characteristics

(1) Legal existence: a firm can (like a person) buy, sell, own, enter into a contract, and sue other persons and firms, and be sued by them. It can do good and be rewarded, and can commit offence and be punished.

(2) Limited liability: a firm and its owners are limited in their liability to the creditors and other obligors only up to the resources of the firm.

(3) Continuity of existence: a firm can live beyond the life spans and capacity of its owners, because its ownership can be transferred through a sale or gift of shares.

2. Divide the students into six teams. Allocate one questionnaire to each group. There are six questionnaires:

1.THE NATURE OF THE CORPORATION
2.BRANDING AND MARKETING TO KIDS
3.ETHICS AND VALUES & SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
4.CORPORATIONS AND GOVERNMENT. REGULATION & DEMOCRACY
5.LABOUR
6.SELLING THE COMMONS

CLICK HERE to see questionnaires

3. Tell students to read the questions and write useful notes in order to be able to answer them while they are watching the film.

B. WATCH THE FILM

1. Give each group some copies of the file “Who is Who” for them to know who the speakers in the documentary are.

CLICK HERE to see "Who is Who"

CLICK HERE to see the Documentary Film

2. Make pauses to check understanding and to let students write down some notes after each section of the film.

C. AFTER WATCHING THE FILM

1. Tell students that there are different positions regarding what should be done to solve the grave problems corporations pose for humankind.

Strategies for Change:

a. The REWRITERS: Change the actual legal constitution of every corporation. Eradicate corporate “personhood’. Change the entire DNA of the corporate animal. Self-managed political systems & implement real democracy.

b. The REGULATERS: More democratic governmental controls. Hold corporations accountable. Make corporations really pay for their planetary misdeeds. Workers’ control. Bigger bars on the corporate cage.

c. The REFORMERS: Make corporations run better. Reward good management. Hold corporate “heroic” leaders up as a testament that better people can run better companies. Make better business practices “good business.”

2. Allow enough time for students to answer the questionnaires. All the teams should also answer the following question:

What are your thoughts on what should be done with the corporation: should we REFORM, REGULATE, or REWRITE the corporation?

3. Give them the sheets: “The Corporation-Analysis and Debate” to organise their ideas and present them to the rest of the students for further debate.

CLICK HERE to see "Analysis and Debate Sheets"

4. Each team presents their conclusions to the rest of the class. Students can write down notes about the other groups and they can open a debate.

* These activities are based on the Teaching Resources from:

http://www.thecorporation.com/

"The Corporation" Documentary Film

2014-04-15T12:52:00.000+02:00

The Corporation is a 2003 Canadian documentary film written by University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan, and directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. The documentary examines the modern-day corporation. Bakan wrote the book: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, during the filming of the documentary.

The film was nominated for over 26 international awards, and won the World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, 2004, along with a Special Jury Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2003 and 2004.

Provoking, witty, stylish and sweepingly informative, THE CORPORATION explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Part film and part movement, The Corporation is transforming audiences and dazzling critics with its insightful and compelling analysis. Taking its status as a legal "person" to the logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask "What kind of person is it?" The Corporation includes interviews with 40 corporate insiders and critics - including Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Milton Friedman, Howard Zinn, Vandana Shiva and Michael Moore - plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change.

Teaching Resources: CLICK HERE to see Lesson Plan on the Documentary Film

No to a World of Enslaved and Unemployed People

2014-04-09T00:19:00.000+02:00

Iqbal Masih: a Pakistani child murdered on 16 April for fighting against child slavery.

What are the ILO, UNICEF or trade unions doing to put an end to this crime?

Permanent campaign for Justice in North-South Relations, against the causes of hunger, unemployment and child slavery

16 April: International Day against Child Slavery

400 million child slaves:

a Political and Trade Union Crime
Communiqué

Every day we can find products made by enslaved children in our homes, in our streets, in shopping malls, in our consumption. At present, millions of children breath the smoke of rubbish landfills, they risk their lives as pearl divers, they work in the mines to get the minerals for our cosmetics, for new technologies, they are kidnapped to become child soldiers, they live amidst bullets and rapes in the streets, they are used for the trade in human organs, in brothels, in sweatshop,... Children who have been deprived of their childhood and education. Children who are subjugated, enslaved, humiliated.

There are more slaves at present than at any other time in history. Children are forced to participate in the international planning of work, resulting from a perverse economic system. This world crime, far from disappearing, is on the rise in number and cruelty. Let us not be carried away by a manipulated language: they are child slaves, they are not child workers!

When we talk about an economic crisis in international forums and in the media, no one says that this crisis will be paid by the poor, and especially by the children who will be aborted or subjected to more bondage.

The causes of this crime have a clear economic dimension: a radically unfair international economic system, tailored to the requirements of large multinational companies (including the Spanish ZARA and El Corte Ingles, and of a global financial system seeking to maximize profits at all costs and having no qualms about using child slave labor.

Yet, child slavery is primarily a political and trade union crime. The political system, which is supported by large international organizations (UN, UNICEF, ILO...) and by all the parties represented in Parliament, has legitimized this situation and has done nothing to put an end to this crime. All the reforms being carried out by Europe are causing more slavery and a greater growth of the informal economy, which drives millions of children out of school and into sweatshops, agricultural fields, mines and warehouses.

Child slavery is the first problem facing the world of work, and as well as unemployment, it is the result of a savage economic system.

Unemployment and Child Slavery have the same causes and therefore common solutions.

We must defend children’s right to have a school, an education, a family, to be able to play and become Persons.

For this reason we propose the immediate and urgent abolition of child slavery, which is possible today as well as in the past if we fight together, if we promote collective solidarity awareness that can transform the lack of political and Trade Union will. Let's raise public opinion of solidarity that can make it possible to eradicate child slavery!

On 16 April 1995, a child slave, Iqbal Masih, was murdered in Pakistan because he had fought against child slavery. For this reason, we call on young people and adults to come out to the street to fight against child slavery. It is now 19 years of rallies and solidarity marches against child slavery in Spain and Latin America.

April 16 is a day for solidarity, the International Day against Child Slavery

On the 19th anniversary of Iqbal Masih’s murder,

we want to raise our voices together:

Justice for child slaves! Long live the poor of the world!

More than 30 rallies against child slavery will take place in different places in Spain and Latin America. You can get further information in your closest Solidarity and Culture House (Casa de Cultura y Solidaridad) or on the web:

www.solidaridad.net and www.solidaridad.net/Iqbal

Organized by:

Movimiento Cultural Cristiano (MCC) - Christian Cultural Movement

Camino Juvenil Solidario (CJS) - Solidarity Youth Path

Partido Solidaridad y Autogestión Internacionalista (SAIn)

Internationalist Self-management and Solidarity Political Party

Extracted from: www.solidaridad.net

They Call it “Child Labour” but it is Child Slavery

2014-04-08T23:47:00.000+02:00

NO to a World of Enslaved and
Unemployed People. Solidarity!
Justice in North-South Relations Campaign
by Christian Cultural Movement,
Solidarity Youth Path and SAIn Party

The Bolivian President Evo Morales, supposed champion of “21st Century Socialism”, has declared himself partly supportive of “child labour”. This debate is not new. Associations of “child labourers” demand “fair” conditions for jobs that have “always existed” and that are considered necessary to help to end the poverty of their families.

By saying that work helps to form a “social conscience”, the President defends a current that, instead of favouring the abolition and total eradication of child labour, proposes its regulation

Confusion is born from the very moment in which we accept the term “child labour” instead of calling it what it actually is: exploitation and child slavery. In Bolivia, there are over 850,000 children between the ages of 5 and 14 who are exploited in this way. A large part of the blame for this confusion lies with international organisations, like the ILO, which itself doesn’t stop talking about “child labour” and the “worst forms of child labour”. It is part of the bureaucratic and materialist vision that oozes from each speech given by organisations that have always served to defend the ruthlessness and criminality of capitalist imperialism that is always behind their decisions. Morales’ comments about “child labour” represent this contradiction.

Work in itself is not reprehensible. We have always believed that children should “work” on what they ought to: playing and developing themselves. But each child forced to work to satisfy their most basic needs, and those of their families, is condemned to forced labour. And this is often the result of the lack of job opportunities for their parents, or the lack of a dignified wage in the jobs they have that would allow them to escape poverty. Over sixty percent of the world’s adult workers live in such a situation, and in Bolivia it represents seventy percent of adult workers. While this situation persists, so will the exploitation of children in the labour market – perpetuating in this way the disgusting and criminal economic system of capitalism.

Publishing house of Self-management magazine

Extracted from: www.solidaridad.net

Philadelpian Mill Children March Against Child Exploitation

2014-03-12T11:57:00.000+01:00

According to the 1900 U.S. Census, at the turn of the century in states like Alabama, the official percentage of male child slavery was close to 60%. Moreover, a contemporary New York Times article reported that due to deliberate employer underestimation, the number of child “workers” was most likely between 2 and 3 million. As the children of the wealthy were receiving ever more education, with many, consequently, taking until twenty-six and twenty-eight to enter into their professions, the children of the working class were increasingly being sought as cheap labor for sweatshops.

In 1903, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, a prominent socialist and labor organizer, traveled to Kensington, a neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the time, between 75,000 and 125,000 textile workers were striking for better pay and a fifty-five-hour workweek. According to Mother Jones, at least ten thousand of the strikers were children.

Mother Jones was distraught by the condition of the children she met. Some were missing fingers and thumbs, others were missing entire hands, and many looked malnourished. Though state law prohibited children from working before the age of twelve, the law was poorly enforced and mothers routinely lied about the ages of their children because they were in desperate need of income and many had husbands who had been killed or maimed in the mines. According to these mothers, “it was a question of starvation or perjury.”

With more than 120,000 officially reported child slaves, most of whom were employed in coal mining or manufacturing, Pennsylvania employed the most children of any state in the nation. What’s more, at that time 1,161,524 children were officially enrolled in Pennsylvania schools, but average daily attendance was only 847,445, leaving 314,079 children unaccounted for. But Mother Jones knew where these children were, slaving at the mines and factories. Furthermore, one investigation reported that the average hours of labor for children in Pennsylvania was approximately eleven hours a day and sixty hours a week for compensation of about $2.50 a week (equivalent to the purchasing power of about $60 in 2010). Many children worked sixty-five hours a week, and in some towns, children were required to work as much as fifteen hours a day, from 6 am to 9 pm, with just a half hour for lunch and a half hour for dinner.

When Mother Jones inquired as to why the newspapers neglected to report the facts about child labor in Pennsylvania, she was informed that the employers of those children had stock in the newspapers. Her response: “Well, I’ve got stock in these little children and I’ll arrange a little publicity.”

On 7 July, the 65-year-old Mother Jones organized a group of nearly two hundred laborers, including dozens of juvenile mill workers, to march to New York in order to raise funds in support of the striking textile workers and bring attention to the injustices of child slavery.

Beginning with a rally at the City Hall in Philadelphia, she held up the mutilated hands of multiple children, declaring that “Philadelphia’s mansions were built on the broken bones, the quivering ears and drooping heads of these children… Some day the workers will take possession of you city hall, and, when we do, no child will be sacrificed on the altar of profit.” The rally, widely reported throughout the East, soon made child slavery a national topic of discussion.

Carrying signs such as “We Only Ask For Justice,” “We Want to Go to School,” “More Schools, Less Hospitals” (a reference to hospital visits caused by unsafe working conditions), “We Want Time To Play,” the group then left Philadelphia for the ninety-two mile (149 kilometers) march to New York. Along the route, Mother Jones frequently stopped to visit union meetings, make speeches, and collect donations. On 9 July, she gave a speech at the Plumbers’ Union in Morrisville, Pennsylvania that was met with enthusiastic applause. The next day, the marchers crossed over the Delaware River and Mother Jones addressed 5,000 supporters in Trenton, New Jersey, raising $100.

On 23 July, Mother Jones’ “army” reached New York and announced her intention to march to Oyster Bay, the summer residence of then-President Theodore Roosevelt, to request an audience for her and three child slaves from Kensington. In a public letter that would receive no response, Mother Jones respectfully beseeched the President to advise her and her supporters on the best course to end child exploitation and realize the children’s right to attend school.

On 29 July, Mother Jones and three young boys traveled to Oyster Bay to speak with the President, but his secretary informed her that the President would only meet with those who had scheduled appointments and advised her to write to the President. She proceeded to write to the President, but was informed that, while he was supportive of efforts to prevent child slavery, “under the constitution it is not at present seen how congress has power to act in such a matter. It would seem that the states alone at present have the power to deal with the subject.” Mother Jones replied, “It is very sad commentary on the President of our nation that the plea of suffering little children who walked 100 miles…should be turned down.”

Despite their failure to meet with the President and pass national legislation, Mother Jones would later acknowledge that the crusade had been successful in drawing the nation’s attention to the plight of child slaves and launching a nationwide movement against child slavery.

Las Patronas: Mexican Women's Group Aiding Migrants

2014-03-11T00:25:00.001+01:00

Norma Romero Vázquez, director of Las Patronas,
receives National Human Rights Award from
President Enrique Peña Nieto

Norma Romero Vázquez, member of Las Patronas—a group of women who work in support of migrants who cross Mexico on their way to the United States—regrets how “Mexico has become fractured,” marked “by violence, impunity, apathy, discrimination, and by the lack of real opportunity.”

Upon receiving the National Prize for Human Rights from the hands of President Enrique Peña Nieto, the activist maintained that “rather than advancing, we have deteriorated, because the idea of progress sustained by taking advantage of those who have less is nothing more than a violation of human rights.”

On Thursday afternoon Romero Vázquez received a medal, acknowledgment, and a cash prize for her work helping undocumented migrants.

Day in and day out, a group of 14 people, including her, give food and water to foreign migrants who travel hanging on to The Beast—the cargo train—when they pass through Amatián, Veracruz. She also deplored how, in reality, migrants are not considered as people, “but as merchandise that can be exchanged, negotiated, and eliminated without thought.”

In the event at Los Pinos, which also awarded honorable mention to Manuel Estrada Juárez for his commitment to the search for disappeared infants, Norma Romero urged authorities to afford better opportunities to its citizens and work together with civil society.

Additionally, the activist spoke of the kidnappings suffered by migrants, and the insecurity that dominates life in the region where she lives.

On his behalf, Peña Nieto emphasized that his security and justice policies have the protection of human rights at their core; he also mentioned that this year the complaints against the Army for human rights violations have been cut in half.

Raúl Plascencia, president of the National Commission on Human Rights, stated that migration should be a personal decision rather than one motivated by scarcity and violence. He also condemned the attitude that criminalizes undocumented migrants.

Lastly, Peña Nieto highlighted the case of South Africa’s ex-president Nelson Mandela and his transformation of the life of his country, long before becoming president, which demonstrates that one can fight for human rights from any and all levels.

Mandela was a leader, Peña Nieto continued, who defended the fundamental rights of his people and worked for a just nation.

“For this work Mandela received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, one year before becoming president of his country. This teaches us an important lesson, as does the case of Norma Romero, that people need not occupy a public position to help others, but need only possess firm convictions and values.”

“My wife and children didn’t pass away. They were murdered by Europe”

2014-03-06T11:23:00.000+01:00

By Boštjan Videmšek, Athens

Wasim Abu Nahi, 36, a Syrian refugee of Palestinian descent, recently underwent an almost indescribable personal tragedy.

It came to pass on July 21, as Turkish traffickers dropped him off on the cliffs in front of the Greek island Samos, accompanied by his thirty-year-old wife Lamise, his four-year-old son Oday and his tiny daughter Layan, who was nine months old.

Since the Greek coast guard refused to provide assistance, and since his wife was injured and both his children were exhausted and dehydrated, Wasim left them behind to search for water, food and any help he could get. He was soon arrested and imprisoned by the local police, who refused to even listen to his pleas. As he sat helplessly in his cell, a forest fire broke out on the island, eventually claiming the lives of Lamise, Oday and Layan. The police’s reaction to this unspeakable tragedy was to arrest Wasim’s two Syrian companions who had sailed with him to Greece and charge them with causing the fire, even though there wasn’t a shred of evidence to support the charges.

After keeping Wasim imprisoned for five more weeks, they eventually let him go. With the help of friends and local activists, he immediately travelled to Athens, where he met with his nephew from Sweden. Together, they then returned to Samos and, after a few gut-wrenching hours, found the remains of Wasim’s family. Utterly broken, Wasim travelled back to Athens, where he is now stranded. Since he hasn’t been awarded refugee status, he cannot even file for an asylum. He is living with one of his Syrian acquaintances in the anarchist quarter called Excarhia, which was where I met him. What follows is his story.

“My family and I, we used to live in Dubai, but in the spring I lost my job. I come from Latakia by the Mediterranean sea. We decided we would head to Turkey and try to worm our way into the European Union. Our ultimate goal was to reach Sweden, because I have some relatives there. I wanted to go to Sweden, where my nephew could help me find some work. Everything had already been arranged, you know. My wife and children would have probably been awarded refugee status, since they had Syrian citizenship. It would have been a bit harder for me, since I only have Palestinian papers, but I know I would have gotten by somehow."

As he was telling me how his entire life was burnt to cinders in a single day, he kept weeping and shuddering and hugging himself for what pitiful semblance of comfort he could get. He reached into his pocket and produced a grimy grey cellphone.“This was my daugher,” he clicked through the pictures: “This was my son. This was my wife. My family…” Tears were flowing down his cheeks. He looked up into the darkening sky. In a small quiet voice, he started to pray. Then he pressed the button that brought up one final image. “This is what we found after the fire.” The picture, like a heavy blow to the ribs, showed me a heap of charred bones and some family jewelry.

“I came to Europe and immediately lost everything. I had come here to live, not to die. My wife and children didn’t pass away. They were killed. They were murdered by the Greek police. By Europe.”

Betrayal

“On the boat, one trafficker and two male refugees from Syria, Jihad and Mohaned, were also present. We sailed from the Turkish town of Cukhuhazi at half past seven in the morning. It took us around four hours to get to Samos. We met no one on our journey. The trafficker unloaded us beneath a huge cliff and told us we were in Greece. In Europe. He told us to climb to the top of the cliff. We shouldn’t have any problem with that, he smiled. Up there, we were supposed to find a trail with someone waiting for us, a person who would arrange our further passage to Athens. There were six of us, and we only had a liter and a half of water between us. We were also running very short on food. We believed the trafficker that everything was in order. So we reached dry land and started to climb. It was awfully, awfully hot. Both my children were exhausted. My wife felt very ill. But after five hours of torture, we somehow made it to the top. Up there, we found nothing, only thorns and rocks. There was no trail, no path, no nothing. We were very high up, and all we could see was the ocean. But I still felt quite optimistic. It felt like we were so wonderfully close to our salvation!”

But salvation, for this fate-whipped band of migrants, was very far away.

The Turkish trafficker had chosen to dump Wasim’s family on one of the most remote parts of the otherwise beautiful island of Samos. Once Wasim grasped what had been done to him, he fell into a rage. Night was descending upon the travellers, and the family had already run out of food and water. Jihad, the 44-year-old fellow refugee from Syria, somehow managed to get the Turkish coast guard on his cellphone. They informed him that they were powerless to act, since the band of migrants was officially on Greek territory. They sent him an SMS with the number of their Greek counterparts, which Jihad immediately dialled. A woman answered and promptly told him they would all get arrested for illegally entering the country. After being informed about the exhausted and dehydrated children, the woman promised she would immediately send help. It was agreed that, once the coast guard ship was near, the migrants would send it light signals to indicate their location.

After two hours of miserable huddling on the rocks, the band of travellers indeed glimpsed a ship headed in their general direction. They immediately started a small fire. Wasim told me that the ship eventually stopped close to the coastline and flooded them with heavy, powerful light beams. “We thought we were saved. But the ship simply turned and sailed away. We didn’t know what to do! We waited, and after twenty minutes the ship returned. Around five in the morning, we set off in a pretty much random direction. Mohaned, the younger of the two Syrians, went off ahead while Jihad kept pace with us. My wife could barely walk. I was carrying both children and most of our luggage. At a certain point, my wife fell down on the ground and couldn’t get up. She told me to press on and get help, while she would stay there and keep watch over the children… Those are the last memories I have of them.”

On that fateful night, Jihad, too, had been too exhausted to keep walking. He gave Wasim a sacred promise he would remain with his wife and children and keep watch. Faced with an extremely difficult decision, Wasim chose to go on and seek help.

“So I forged ahead. It had to be done, there was no getting around it. I kept walking for a while, then, on the other side of the island, I descended down toward the sea again. My aim was to reach the first available village or beach and alert the people to our plight. The only way I could get to the beach on the other side of the bay was by swimming. There were many sharp rocks in the water. I swam up to one of them, and then a small fishing boat came floating by. I called out for help, but the man in the boat looked away, he was probably afraid of me. People on dry land could not hear my cries. I had drunk a lot of seawater, and I felt very sick. Then I saw the first helicopter, swooping down to collect some water from the sea. After that, many more helicopters came to put out what I later learned was a huge forest fire, and planes as well. Smoke was rising up into the air in the distance. I got so scared I almost lost control of my sanity. I started to scream and jump up and down on that rock jutting from the sea… I would have done anything to draw attention to myself. And then I glimpsed a house.” Wasim threw himself into the water and started swimming for his life. When he reached the shore, he was still screaming at the top of his voice. A Greek man stepped out of the house and informed him about the forest fire. He gave him water and some clothes, then he called the police. It was in the early morning of July 23.

The policemen arrived very quickly.

“They immediately arrested and handcuffed me. They wouldn’t listen to anything I had to say. They took me to the local police station and threw me in a cell. Only later they called for an interpreter. Crying uncontrollably, I told him my family was dying. I begged for his help. He went away, and after some more time passed, a policeman came to collect me. He took me by boat to the vicinity of the place where I parted from my wife and children. That particular patch was still unconsumed by the fire, but the fire was raging all around. I asked the policeman to take me up there to dry land. But he refused. I was hand-cuffed, there was nothing I could do. He immediately turned the boat and took us back toward the harbour. Why did we even set off in the first place?!, I kept wondering hysterically. But this time, the policeman took me to another police station.”

As they arrived there, Wasim saw his family’s luggage lying on the ground. For a blessed instant, he was convinced that his loved ones were safe. It was all he cared about, but in the station’s prison he pnly found Jihad and Mohaned. Jihad informed him that his wife had been unable to walk, so he had chosen to proceed by himself.

Murder

“Jihad was arrested 44 hours after I left my wife and children. He and Mohaned were charged with starting the forest fire. Without so much as a shred of evidence! Today, they are still imprisoned on Samos, waiting for the trail which is some five or six months away. They threw me in jail again as well. During the first nine days, they only took my handcuffs away when I needed to urinate. One evening, one of the policemen dragged me to his office and forced me to watch pornographic movies to break my will as a devout Muslim.”

When, after a good long while, they started interrogating him in earnest, Wasim told his story in its entirety to the prosecutor. “I cried all the time. I was absolutely desperate. Even then I somehow knew the worst had already happened. None of the policemen went to search for my family. Finally, a representative of the United Nations came to visit my cell and promised to take care of everything. Four more days passed, maybe five. The policemen assured me they had searched the area and found nothing. I spent fourteen more days in that prison. And then – without so much as a word – they transfered me to a local detention centre for the immigrants.

From there, Wasim was able to call his nephew in Sweden, who immediately made the trip to Greece. But since he was an immigrant himself, he should have obtained a special permit from the authorities, and immediately upon his return to Sweden his passport was confiscated. In the detention centre, Wasim was also helped by a lawyer named Marianna and a Syrian activist named Aziz who invited him to come live with him for a while in Athens. Almost a month after that horrible, fateful night, Marianne officially filed three missing persons claims for Lamise, Oday and Layan. Only then the policemen on Samos set themselves in motion. Yet they still claimed there was nothing to be found. Wasim himself was forbidden from moving around the island. The detention centre was really just a prison with a politically correct name. The crime committed by the poor souls locked within its walls was to have been born in the wrong part of the world. In the promised land called EU, such a crime often merits the death penalty.

After his long wait in prison, Wasim’s lawyer and activist friends helped him to finally obtain a set of papers which entitled him to a six-month stay in Greece. In official bureaucratspeak: since he came from Syria, a country consumed by war, his deportation had been ‘delayed for six months’. After he got the papers, he went to Athens and then quickly returned to Samos. Accompanied by his nephew and by Aziz, he started searching the area where he had last seen his loved ones. It didn’t take long before he found their remains. “Their bones and jewelry…” he said and showed me the nauseating picture on his cellphone again. “This is all that was left of them. They murdered them by refusing to help them. They had more than enough time. They knew all they needed to know. We could have easily been saved by the coast guard. We found the bones a mere two hundred meters away from where that policemen took me with his boat. We are now having a DNA analysis made. Once the results are in, I am going to file a suit against those who are responsible. Against the murderers of my wife and children. Apart from legally leaving Greece, this is now the only goal I have left. I am a dead man. I don’t have any reason to go on living. They took everything from me, and there was nothing I could do. I still feel like I am drowning.”

For the last time during our meeting, Wasim Abu Nehi dissolved in a spasm of uncontrollable sobs. Then he repeated: “My wife and children did not pass away. They were murdered by Europe.”

05.03.2014 periodismohumano

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