U.S. Must Expand, Not Suppress, Voting Rights

Compartido por Rainbow/PUSH Coalition  By : Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. Source: Weekly Column | Chicago Sun-Times  In Selma, Ala., on Sunday, I joined thousands of citizens marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, marking the 47th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the 1965 march and police riot that helped spark the passage of the Voting Rights Act. The march was not a memory to the past, but a protest of the present. In Alabama, conservatives are moving once more to suppress the vote, part of a concerted effort across the country to make it harder for the poor, the elderly and minorities to vote. Alabama’s voter ID law will require citizens to present photo identification at the polls. An Alabama immigration law requires police to determine citizenship status during traffic stops, essentially exposing Latino citizens and non-citizens to constant harassment. Photo ID laws have been introduced or passed in at least 15 states. They discriminate against those who don’t have driver’s licenses — disproportionately poor, elderly and minorities. Nationally they could disenfranchise about 5 million voters. Several states are also pushing legislation to restrict voter registration and to limit early voting. The current drive is the greatest insult to the Voting Rights Act since it was passed 47 years ago. Republicans argue that the voting laws are needed to counter fraudulent voting. But they have produced zero evidence of organized efforts to tip elections with fraudulent voters. The laws, as noted by the Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the march organizers, are a “solution looking for a problem.” On Bloody Sunday 47 years ago, Americans saw nonviolent African-American protesters brutalized in a police riot. The nation’s conscience was touched and Washington responded, as President Johnson pushed through the Voting Rights Act. Protests against current efforts to suppress the vote have only just begun. But they will build — and they will once more pose a moral challenge to America. Will Americans reward a party that is systematically seeking to make it harder to vote? Will they accept routine harassment of minorities because of their fears about immigration? Will the politics of division once more be effective? In the old South, whites feared that they would suffer with the end of segregation. Their privileges would be reduced; their economy would be upended. In fact, the civil rights movement’s victories opened the South to a new prosperity. Investment flowed in. Companies that would have not gone into a segregated South moved to Atlanta and other cities. It turned out that to hold African Americans in a ditch, whites had to stay down there with them. The end of segregation, the passage of voting rights, created new opportunity for all. But the old South did not die. The modern Republican Party was built on its infamous Southern strategy, appealing to whites in reaction to the passage of the civil rights laws. Now that strategy, which alienated African-American voters, seems to be replaying itself in the party’s harsh rhetoric and actions about the new wave of immigrants. The result may well alienate Latino and Asian-American voters. Worse, it means that one of America’s two major parties is increasingly devoted to finding ways to limit the vote rather than expand it. In fact, what we ought to have is a competition on how to ensure that every citizen can cast his or her vote easily. Automatic registration on birth, early voting, extended voting days, polls that are open on weekends and before and after work days — we should be having a competition on how to increase the vote, not on how to suppress it.

IACHR PUBLISHES REPORT ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLES' RIGHTS OVER THEIR ANCESTRAL LANDS

Washington, D.C., February 17, 2011—The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) today published its report Indigenous and Tribal Peoples' Rights over their Ancestral Lands and Natural Resources.

The protection of indigenous peoples' right to property over their ancestral lands is an issue of particular importance to the IACHR because the effective enjoyment of that right involves not only protection of an economic unit but also protection of the human rights of a collectivity whose economic, social, and cultural development is based on its relationship with the land, which is the basis for its worldview. As a result, the Commission has long paid particular attention to indigenous and tribal peoples’ right to communal property over their lands and natural resources, as a right in itself, and as a guarantee of the effective enjoyment of other basic rights.

The right to property pursuant to Article 21 of the American Convention on Human Rights thus has singular importance for indigenous and tribal peoples, because the guarantee of the right to territorial property is a fundamental basis for the development of indigenous communities’ culture, spiritual life, integrity and economic survival. It is a right to territory that encompasses the use and enjoyment of its natural resources. It is directly related, even a pre-requisite, to enjoyment of the rights to an existence under conditions of dignity, to food, water, health, life, honor, dignity, freedom of conscience and religion, freedom of association, the rights of the family, and freedom of movement and residence.

The report the IACHR is publishing today compiles and discusses the scope of indigenous and tribal peoples’ rights over their territories, lands, and natural resources. In this regard, it analyses the obligation of the States to consult with indigenous peoples and guarantee their participation in decisions regarding any measure that affects their territories. The State has to consult them on any matters that might affect them, the purpose of such consultations should be to obtain their free and informed consent, and they must be carried out in accordance with their customs and traditions, through culturally adequate procedures and taking into account their traditional decision-making methods.

The report is based on the legal instruments of the Inter-American system, as interpreted by the Commission and the Inter-American Court in the light of developments in general international human rights law. It also aims to point out specific problems, guidelines, and best practices to enhance the enjoyment of human rights by indigenous and tribal peoples across the hemisphere.

A principal, autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS), the IACHR derives its mandate from the OAS Charter and the American Convention on Human Rights. The Inter-American Commission has a mandate to promote respect for human rights in the region and acts as a consultative body to the OAS in this matter. The Commission is composed of seven independent members who are elected in a personal capacity by the OAS General Assembly and who do not represent their countries of origin or residence.

Support to Bradley Manning/Apoyo a Bradley Manning

Tomado de http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=4219

(Bradley Manning es un oficial del ejército de Estados Unidos acusado de filtrar información a Wikileaks, arrestado desde mayo del 2010 y en espera de corte marcial, el comunicado es de la organización pacifista norteamericana United for Peace and Justice y está en su versión original en inglés).

Call-in Day to Support Bradley Manning, Thursday February 3rd

Whitehouse switchboard: 202-456-1414

(or Whitehouse comments: 202-456-1111)

Call the White House Thursday to voice your support for accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower US Army PFC Bradley Manning, specifically that his human rights be respected by the Quantico, Virginia, brig authorities. Bradley has been held in solitary confinement-like conditions for over eight months, and his trial is still months away. This American citizen-soldier has been convicted of no crime, yet continues to endure inhumane conditions of pre-trial confinement like no other inmate at the Quantico brig. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs recently stated that the White House was not paying attention to Bradley Manning's extreme confinement conditions, or the fact that recent pre-approved visitors of Bradley's have been detained and interrogated by military police in order to block their scheduled visit. It is critical that we educate the White House of this ongoing injustice!

Recommended points to make:

- US Army PFC Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower being held at the Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia, is an American citizen who is innocent until proven otherwise. Yet, he has been subjected to continuous illegal pre-trial punishment since his arrest in May 2010. Based on these abuses alone, Manning should be freed pending court martial.

- Military pre-trial confinement is supposed to be about ensuring a soldier's presence at court martial, yet for eight months now Manning has been subjected to extreme pre-trial punishment through the arbitrary use of rarely applied regulations--specifically the "maximum security classification" and the "prevention of injury" order. If he is not freed pending court martial, then at the very least, Manning's human rights need to be respected, and the illegal pre-trial punishment must end.

- The arbitrary restrictions placed on Manning, and no other inmates at Quantico, mean that: Manning is allowed no meaningful physical exercise, he is allowed no social interaction with other inmates, he is kept in his cell at least 23 hours per day, and he is not allowed out of his cell without restraints.

- If the charges against him are true, they actually show that Manning is a patriot acting to advance an informed democracy. There is no allegation that Manning did anything but share truthful information with the American public regarding the realities of our nation's ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with absolutely no benefit to himself, in order to spark public debate regarding foreign policy.

The Bradley Manning Support Network: www.bradleymanning.org

Sign-up and join us: www.standwithbrad.org