Human Rights in the U.S. Reports

Nobody’s child: victims of the U.S. child welfare system

How racism, classism and injustice intersect with poverty and lack of an adequate social safety net to violate children’s and families’ rights By Camille Landry (Program Coordinator) The U.S. child welfare system is broken. It violates human rights of the children it claims to serve. It intersects with racism, classism, patriarchy, the criminal justice system,…

Preface by Comité Cerezo México (Human Rights in the United States: 2023 Report)

By the Comité Cerezo México To all the compañeros and compañeras of the Alliance for Global Justice Sending you a fraternal salute from every one of us that belong to the Comité Cerezo México, an organization that for more than 20 years has protected and promoted the defense of human rights. Firstly, we would like…

Conclusion by Margaret Kimberley (Human Rights in the United States: 2022 Report)

By Margaret Kimberley (Executive Editor and Senior Columnist, Black Agenda Report) The words human rights are used quite frequently but conditions around the world prove that they are rarely taken seriously. The United States, which claims to be a protector of human rights, has more people imprisoned, some two million, than any other country on…

From “Black Lives Matter” to “housing is a human right”: a spotlight on structural genocide in the U.S.

By Nicole Chase (intern) and Natalia Burdyńska Schuurman (Program Coordinator) June of 2020 marked a defining moment in history when the police murder of George Floyd spurred a massive popular uprising for racial justice against the backdrop of a devastating public health and economic crisis. Millions mobilized in solidarity with Black and Brown communities losing…

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…

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…