The United Nations Human Rights Council has just finished at the end of June 2007 its first year as the new human rights framework. The Council replaced the UN Commission on Human Rights, which was a subsidiary body of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). When the UN Charter was being drafted in the early months of 1945, no one expected that human rights would come to play such a large role in the UN's work.
Five days before journalists converged in Detroit for the Allied Media Conference, another independent media publication fell. After thirteen years of producing cutting-edge content, Punk Planet announced that "the final issue is in the post." With so many additional independent outlets dipping their toes in financial mires, nervous journalists traveling to Detroit last weekend were looking to each other for answers.
Forty two Democrats voted to keep the world's foremost torture school, the School of the Americas (SOA), open during a House vote on June 21. The vote was 203 yes, 214 no, 1 voting "present" and 19 not voting. These Democrats voted no on the McGovern/Lewis Amendment that would have finally cut off funding to the SOA, now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).
The US Social Forum (USSF) will provide space to build relationships, learn from each other's experiences, share our analysis of the problems our communities face, and bring renewed insight and inspiration. It will help develop leadership and develop consciousness, vision, and strategy needed to realize another world. The USSF sends a message to other people's movements around the world that there is an active movement in the US opposing US Policies at home and abroad.
In the worn out meeting room of worker-run Cerámica de Cuyo, Manuel Rojas runs a rough hand over his face. The mechanic recalls forming the cooperative after the company boss fired the workers in 2000: "We didn't have any choice. If we didn't take over the factory we would all be in the streets. The need to work pushed us to action."
Why should you plan to head to Atlanta in the middle of the summer? Not for the cool breezes, that's for sure. But if you go between June 27 and July 1, you'll find a few thousand reasons all gathered - along with you, I hope - at the first ever U.S. Social Forum.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019