Human Rights School

Introduction by Gerald Horne (Human Rights in the United States: 2023 Report)

By Gerald Horne, historian and scholar of African American Studies On 17 December 1951, Black Communist attorney and activist, William L. Patterson, delivered the “We Charge Genocide” petition to the United Nations in Paris. Ten days later, the U.S. government moved to invalidate his passport.   This searing document, still worth reading and birthed in no…

The color of Covid: racial inequities in the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic 

“When white folks catch a cold, Black folks get pneumonia.” (My grandfather, George Robinson, Sr.) By Camille Landry (Program Coordinator) What color is Covid? Many people would say red and blue, citing the familiar graphic of a fuzzy red globe with blue spikes. Others might say that Covid has no color. But the Covid pandemic…

Security, Empire and life in the USA

By James Patrick Jordan (Program Coordinator) Republished from Covert Action Magazine The word “security” conjures a couple of distinctly different and conflicting images. One is of human beings living in safe, viable, and sustainable communities, where individuals can freely develop their full potential, not hindered by threat or assault or exclusion from the daily necessities…

Healthcare for human rights, not profits: what the U.S. can learn from Cuba’s Coronavirus response

Cuba’s remarkable response to the Coronavirus pandemic highlights the need for a healthcare system that puts people before profits By Natalia Burdyńska Schuurman (Program Coordinator) For two years now, the Coronavirus pandemic has done irreversible harm to millions in the United States. To date, over 78 million confirmed cases of infection and over 940,000 deaths…

Crueler but still not unusual: the U.S. death penalty

By Camille Landry (Program Coordinator) Volumes have been written about it. Hundreds of thousands of people have protested it, written to their legislators and congress members, prayed about it, sung about it, and hoped that it would end. It has been condemned as inhumane, ineffective, racist, cruel, antiquated, vengeful and just plain wrong by individuals…

Human Rights Week 2021: a time for reflection and re-dedication to justice

We celebrate Human Rights Day across the world on December 10. Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, sexuality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status. Human rights include the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to…

Cruel but not unusual: the economics and inherent racism of mass incarceration

By Camille Landry (Program Coordinator) Mass incarceration in the United States is a crime against humanity. It disproportionately ruins the lives of Black, Brown and Indigenous peoples. It wastes human potential. It destabilizes neighborhoods and destroys communities. We all pay dearly for it, in human as well as economic terms. Both at its roots and…

ACTION TOOLKIT: Indigenous Peoples Day 2021

SCROLL DOWN TO TAKE ACTION Alliance for Global Justice acknowledges that we stand on land that is stolen, land that is exploited. We occupy the land that is the rightful home of Indigenous people. We condemn the theft, the exploitation and the oppression that arose from settler colonialism by Europeans. We recognize the ancient and…

Black America and white supremacy: race as fundamental to human rights violations

By Camille Landry (Program Coordinator) Introduction The United States is a contradiction. From the stirring words of the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution to the Statue of Liberty beckoning the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” the U.S. trumpets to the world – and does not hesitate to export at gunpoint…

A Year in Review: Racism, Repression and Fightback in the U.S. [EBOOK]

One year ago, George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police. What followed was the eruption of the largest uprising against racism and state violence in modern U.S. history. Against the backdrop of a devastating pandemic, economic recession and climate crisis disproportionately impacting Black, Indigenous and Latine people of color in the United States, an eruption…