Category Archives: International Affairs

An Historic Climate Agreement Signed

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The global community signed an historic agreement at the Paris climate talks to tackle the threat of climate change and accelerate the shift to clean energy around the world. This is a momentous breakthrough. 185 countries have pledged to reduce their climate change pollution, strengthen their climate commitments every five years, protect people living on the front lines of climate impacts, and help developing nations expand their clean energy economies.

Most important, this agreement sets ambitious goals. It calls for holding global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, with a first step of keeping us at no more than 2 degrees of warming.

Reaching the 2-degree target is essential to prevent catastrophic climate impacts, but scientists say it still leaves us open to dangerous levels of rising seas, food insecurity, and extreme drought. It would make the Marshall Islands and other island nations uninhabitable and expose countless vulnerable communities to deadly harm. Keeping the temperature rise at no more than 1.5 degrees will sustain these communities and create a brighter, more stable future for our children and grandchildren.

Seeing 185 countries commit to cutting carbon pollution, seeing some 2,400 mayors and city leaders devote their communities to clean energy, seeing thousands of business leaders and investors affirm that this is good for the economy—and furthermore, that we can’t afford the high cost of waiting—has left me with a real sense of hope about our collective future.

The climate talks also represent the moment when it became clear that our hope for the future has not been misplaced. Yes, this will be a long and difficult struggle. Yes, there’s still much more to be done. But so many moments in Paris helped demonstrate that victory is within our reach.

Carole Nagengast Speaks on Amnesty International

 

By Taffy Geith

Once again the Community Room of Habitat for Humanity, 2180 Iowa Ave., was the meeting place for the Riverside Branch of AAUW at     10:00 AM on Thursday, February 13.

    President, Barb Ryon, had warm greetings for all members and guests.  She noted the presence of a special guest, Dr. Larry Geraty, past president of La Sierra University and past president of the International Relations Council of Riverside.

     Continuing on with a short business agenda, President Ryon, asked that we read the minutes from the last meeting but delay our approval until corrections could be made.  Carlease Chandler, Membership VP, called attention to our yearly book donations to Moreno Valley Schools.  Where previously our donations were to K-1 teachers, this year a Special Education School, Alesandro K -12, requested a  long list of specific books.  This changed not only the scope of our  mission but the way that we implement it. Example: Should we donate books and/or money for books — or both? Carlease has asked that we take the time to  discuss the different options from which we have to choose, and then make determinations at a later date.  The book donations have become part of our mission.

     Jo Turner, Publications Chair, introduced Carole Nagengast,  Professor Emerita of Anthropology at University of New Mexico, author of numerous articles, and a member of Amnesty International for 32 years.

     As a UCR graduate student in 1977, Ms. Nagengast, went on a group tour to the concentration camp at Auschwitz in Poland, and had her first confrontation with a concrete example of the total annihilation of human rights.  While she knew a lot about the Holocaust, it was always in the abstract.  The Nazis documented everyone who passed through the gates, so that here she saw the  photographs as well as the real displays of baby shoes, human hair for mattresses, and other artifacts.  She also heard stories of the sexual assaults that took place and the heroic acts of heroism that inmates performed to avoid extermination.

     The contemporary idea of human rights is derived from the Philosopher, John Locke.  The Western legal definition came about as a direct result of the German Holocaust.  Eleanor Roosevelt was instrumental in 1948 in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  (Ms Nagengast gave each of us an abbreviated list.)  This lists the civil, political, cultural, and economic rights which the International Community has tried to protect.  We’ve made progress, but there’s more to be done.

     Amnesty International began in England in 196l, but by the 1970’s became prominent in the US.

Amnesty International is run by ordinary people – their goals: promote human dignity; stop torturing; do away with the death penalty; promote fair trials; and alleviate conditions that lead to inhuman rights.  Ms. Nagengast is an activist.  Being an activist means: organizing people on behalf of others: writing letters to draw attention to a wrong-doing; finding persons who have disappeared (50,000 people have been found by Amnesty International).  Recently, flash mobs were organized in Canada, concerts in Italy, and workshops in Morocco.  Amnesty gives hope to people who are oppressed.

     Returning to Poland in 1979 for 14 months,  Ms. Nagengast saw the Solidarity movement come into being.  This event convinced her to become involved in volunteering.  A military coup occurred in 1981 in Turkey, Amnesty International needed someone to coordinate groups in Istanbul.  She accompanied the Riverside Group, organizing protests, calling on Congressional Representatives, and  asking Political-Science students at UCR to help.  She continued working in Turkey, meeting relatives of prisoners, talking with the Ambassador to Turkey, and testifying before Congress.  She cautions that this work is NOT romantic – lots of ambiguity is involved.   One cannot be squeamish.  Now and then one meets government officials who do bad stuff.  For the last 15 years, Ms. Nagengast, has been on the Amnesty International Board of Directors, being its Chair for part of that time.  This was all administrative work and she retired in 2013.

     Ms. Nagengast believes that human rights are based on values that transcend politics and religion.  Amnesty International has a reputation for being fair—the US is held to the same values as Cuba or Russia would be.  She invited all present to be activists, to join Amnesty International, to donate money and to write letters protesting inhuman treatment.  She provided each of us with two hand-outs that gave details of two people in Russia – both held in Russia’s crackdown on free speech. These hand-outs included a sample protest letter  — to encourage our participation.

     Members of our Branch were inspired and enlightened by Ms. Nagengast’s experiences as an activist and by her clear definition of the roles that Amnesty International had played in the work for Human Rights around the world.  We are aware that we can expand our activism.  She quoted Eleanor Roosevelt, “Human Rights come from areas close to home.”

Human Trafficking Still Increasing

human-trafficking-girl-bars-200x300Ingrid Cruz dreamed of being a teacher. A graduate of a prestigious university in the Philippines, she believed Lourdes Navarro wanted to help her get a job in the United States. In fact, Navarro was working with school administrators in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, to secure visas for Cruz and many other teachers, but Navarro charged them each approximately $16,000 for the service. Once in America, Navarro forced the teachers to sign over 10 percent of their salaries.

“We were thinking we had no choice,” Cruz told the Boston Globe. The teachers lived together in an apartment complex and paid Navarro rents well over market value. They aren’t alone. According to the Globe, documented cases of teacher trafficking have occurred in Baltimore and El Paso, Texas, as well.

The stories of trafficking are so compelling often because they are so shocking, grim reminders of the horrors lurking behind the American dream. Indeed, although the United States proudly calls itself the home of the free, the Polaris Project estimates that at least 100,000 children are engaged in the sex trade here each year. That number doesn’t include adults, and it doesn’t include anyone, like Cruz, trapped in a forced or exploitative labor situation.

Cruz and her fellow teachers, with the help of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Federation of Teachers, sued Navarro and won a $4.5 million verdict on their claims of exploitative business practices. The trafficking claims against Navarro, however, were dismissed.

To read more about Human Trafficking today, click HERE.

Human Trafficking: The Global and Local Connection

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By Luisa Tassan

On July 18 AAUW Riverside Branch members attended a presentation sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Inland Southern California in collaboration with the Riverside County Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force (a collaborative partnership led by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department and Operation SafeHouse to develop resources in the county to educate, prevent, intervene and treat victims of human trafficking and exploitation). http://www.riversidesheriff.org/bureaus/anti-human-traffic.asp.  A strong turnout of at least 100 attendees was treated to an engaging presentation

The event began with a showing of the film “Not My Life”, directed by Robert Bilheimer, previous Oscar nominee for Cry of Reason, and narrated by Glenn Close. http://notmylife.org/ The documentary, which was filmed on five continents over four years, effectively makes the audience aware of how wide spread human trafficking is throughout the world with footage in Romania, Italy, Cambodia, Guatemala, United States, Senegal, Europe, and India. The film is thorough in its interviews of all “ the players” in the process of human trafficking from the adult pimps/exploiters, the exploited/children victims, law enforcement, the churches and social service agencies trying to rescue the trafficked humans to the customers/clientele who pay for the “trafficked.”  The main focus of this film is to raise public awareness to the fact that the majority of trafficking and slavery victims today are CHILDREN. Bilheimer leaves the audience with the question: “What kind of society cannibalizes its own children and how can we do these kinds of things on such a large scale and still call ourselves human in any meaningful sense of the term?”

The showing of the film was followed by a ten-person panel discussion with the Riverside County Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force and moderated by Dr. Yolanda Moses, Professor of Anthropology and Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Excellence and Equity at University of California, Riverside. The panel participants were made up of three representatives from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, John Sawyer, Aron Wolfe and Daniel Engels, Jennifer O’Farrell of Operation SafeHouse, Opal Singelton of MillionKids, FBI Agents-Kayla Hostmeyer and Jeff Stiff, US Attorney Ami Sheth and Riverside County District Attorney Jerry Fineman. With Dr. Moses leading the discussion each panelist was asked to discuss their part on the Task Force and the “state of human trafficking” in Riverside County.  Highlights of some of the key points made by each panelist were:

  • Human trafficking comes in two forms–labor trafficking and  sex trafficking;
  • The average age of entry into commercial sexual exploitation is 12-14 years;
  • The majority (60%) of the approximate 200,000 children at risk of commercial sexual   exploitation in America are runaways, throw-aways or homeless youth;
  • On average 500 children in Riverside County runaway each month often times from homes where they are experiencing physical, sexual, psychological abuse and/or neglect;
  • Of these 500 children many will sell themselves for food and shelter within the first 48 hours of running away if not found and returned to a safe shelter;
  • The legal definition of human trafficking is defined as the “exploitation of a person by force, fear or coercion; ” http://oag.ca.gov/human-trafficking/what-is
  • Proposition 35 passed in California in November, 2012 removed the requirement of showing force, violence or coercion in cases involving minors in recognition of the psychological force used to keep trafficking victims against their will.  Prop 35 changed the law so that the prosecutor need only show that the defendant made money off the traffickedperson; http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/35/analysis.html
  • The panel listed a number of obstacles to successful prosecution of human traffickers to include, victim’s fear of their pimps and view they have no safe place to turn, traffickers threat of harm to the victim, victim’s family and friends, juror’s lack of understanding of the power of      psychological fear/coercion and its affect on victims’ free-will, deportation fears, victim’s ability to wait out the long road to trial of their traffickers, cultural barriers, getting victims comfortable enough to talk about their traffickers and overcoming the manipulation by traffickers of the victim’s need to be loved, rewarded and cared-for;
  • Victims of exploitation who are in the US illegally will not necessarily be deported nor do they need to have a criminal case pending in order to qualify for a “T” or “U” Visa.  Victims who are in the US illegally will not be punished for coming forward; www.uscis.gov/humantrafficking
  • Project Safehouse will work with international victims through immigration lawyers if the victim does not want to go through the criminal legal process; www.operationsafehouse.org
  • Warning signs that a young person might be a victim: runs away and then returns with new expensive items like cell phone, clothes, jewelry, supply of condoms, frequent truancy, leaving school campus at lunch, large wads of cash;
  • Traffickers use “bottoms” (other girls) to recruit vulnerable girls in middle and high      school to the sex trade;

The panel left us empowered with the knowledge that as a community there are things we can do to help fight human trafficking:

Money Matters

NEW £10 NOTE POLANNEDEngland+10+Pounds+-+2000+-+P389a

 

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By Taffy Geith

Here is a quote from today’s LA Times:  “The Bank of England swallowed its pride and overcame its perceived prejudice Wednesday by designating Jane Austen as the new face of the 10-pound note, bowing to public outrage over the possibility that only male historical figures would be represented on British currency.”  “Austen will be only the third such woman to grace a bank note, following Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale.  Her image will replace Charles Darwin (in 2017).”  This year marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of “Pride and Prejudice.”

Perhaps the US will put a woman on a “bank note” here.