Issue #3: Register for Our Inauguration Class Webinar Celebrating MLK!
Join us on Saturday, January 13th at 1 pm EST (12 CST, 11 MST, 10 PST) for a celebration of the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King and the opening session of the 2024 Lucy Parsons Popular Human Rights School Human Rights Defender/Observer class.
We will examine Dr. King’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail, which presents a clear analysis of human rights abuses in the U.S. and issues a clarion call to work for positive social change.
AFGJ’s virtual global Human Rights Defender Training Course is offering a special session on Saturday, January 13, 2024 in celebration of MLK. This session is open to all. Learn about Dr. King’s analysis of human rights in the US, and sample our 7-week training course.
Register Here
When we know better, we do better.
Dr. King’s Letter addressed his fellow clergymen who advised him to proceed slowly and gently in his quest for justice and avoid strong challenges to the status quo.
His response: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere…We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
And demand it he did, sparking a movement that changed the United States and encouraged liberation movements across the globe. Dr. King understood the connections between the oppression of Black people in the US and the oppression of others throughout the world.
The apartheid practices of the Jim Crow South provided a template for the apartheid regime perpetrated by the State of Israel upon the people of Palestine. The U.S. genocide and settler colonialist actions against the Indigenous people of Turtle Island provided a roadmap to the genocide happening before our eyes in Gaza. More than 20,000 people, most of them children, women, and the elderly, have already died in the relentless assault by Israel upon the people of Gaza, funded and encouraged by the U.S. government. Millions more are without shelter, food, water, or medical care in a heartless and vicious campaign to slaughter the people of Gaza. The repression is also being visited upon Palestinians in the West Bank. It is our duty and responsibility to do everything we can to put a stop to these atrocities.
AFGJ created its Lucy Parsons Popular Human Rights School to train human rights defenders to respond to this kind of injustice. Our 9-week Human Rights Defender/ Observer course features leading human rights activists and organizers sharing their knowledge and expertise in a training program that will increase your understanding of human rights and violations against them, and provide training in defending against human rights abuses in the U.S. and abroad. Upon completion of the course, participants will be certified Human Rights Observers, ready to witness and document oppression in all its forms. Participants will learn how to use the Human Rights Database to document abuses of human rights, and to utilize the data collected in crafting their own plans for activism.
The Human Rights School is open to anyone who is concerned about Human Rights abuses and is committed to organizing to overcome them. Classes are virtual and available to anyone with an internet connection. Spanish translation is provided; we will accommodate participants who require translation in other languages. Scholarships are available.
When we know better, we do better.
Become a certified Human Rights Observer: enroll in our next class!
The Lucy Parsons Popular Human Rights School is an initiative to build grassroots solidarity and capacity through the exchange of perspectives, training, skills and infrastructure based in alternative frameworks for understanding and promoting human rights. We’re studying the curricula, reporting, organizational strategies, and activist tools used by our sister organizations involved at the frontlines of popular movements in the U.S. and the Americas to train and certify a grassroots network of human rights monitors and defenders. Learn more
Our class will train you in identifying, documenting, denouncing and organizing around human rights violations as a certified Human Rights Observer. You’ll learn how you can help us build a grassroots-powered open-source human rights violations database used to research, mobilize and aid in human rights struggles in the U.S. Our next class launches in October – apply to enroll today!
Apply to enroll
Upon completing our course, students will receive their own Human Rights Observer packages. We need your support in covering the costs of these packages.
A $5 donation pays for one printed Human Rights Observer toolkit
A $10 donation pays for one Human Rights Observer vest
A $25 donation pays for one book of choice provided in each student package
A $52 donation covers the costs of printing, compiling & shipping one student package
An $83 donation covers the costs of printing & shipping 50 Human Rights Observer certificates
A $356 donation covers the costs of printing at least 50 Human Rights Observer toolkits
A $500 donation covers the costs of shipping 50 student packages
Will you join us in building grassroots solidarity and capacity with a tax-deductible donation to the Lucy Parsons Popular Human Rights School?
Donate to the Lucy Parsons Popular Human Rights School
The U.S. is the Biggest Violator of Human Rights:
“I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.” ~ Martin Luther King
These words resonate with people all over the world as we witness the atrocities committed by Israel in its genocidal campaign against Gaza and the Palestinian people. More than 20,000 people, nearly half of them children, lie dead in the rubble of their homes and shelters. Millions more displaced, wounded, and starving. The only way that the fascist apartheid state of Israel can get away with such heinous war crimes, despite strong opposition and condemnation by other nations and people, is due to the United States’ full-fledged material and political support of Israel and its actions. As the United States sends billions for weapons, it also continues to single-handedly block ceasefire resolutions from passing in the United Nations Security Council. The United States does not want peace. Not abroad nor at home.
As the Palestine solidarity movement grows across the country, the U.S. government is engaging in a heavy wave of state repression to silence and intimate anyone advocating for a ceasefire, humanitarian aid, or a free Palestine. Since the start of the pro-Palestine protests last October, police in many countries have made over two thousand arrests and continue to brutalize peaceful demonstrators with unnecessary force. Whatever happened to freedom of speech?
You and Alliance for Global Justice are well aware that this type of repression isn’t anything new. The U.S. has a long history of suppressing journalists, academics, and activists who support the liberation of Palestine. The difference now is that the movement is bigger than ever before and growing by the day as the entire world stands with Palestine. The U.S. and Israel are aware that they are rapidly losing control of the narrative surrounding the war.
FIle- Palestinian supporters gather for a protest at Columbia University, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023, in New York. As the death toll rises in the Israel-Hamas war, American colleges have become seats of anguish with many Jewish students calling for strong condemnation after civilian attacks by Hamas while some Muslim students are pressing for recognition of decades of suffering by Palestinians in Gaza. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)
Universities have seen a surge of student activism advocating against genocide and for Palestinian rights, and consequently have experienced widespread repression of students and faculty. Government officials push dangerous rhetoric to label pro-Palestine advocates for peace as terrorists and antisemites. Far right pro-Israel groups and individuals are organizing harassment campaigns, doxxing protestors and terrorizing them with violence. In Vermont, three students were shot at for the simple act of wearing keffiyehs.
These violations are inextricably connected to other human rights violations happening daily within “the Land of the Free.” Our analysis of these events must include the fact that we live in an unjust and oppressive society that does not actually care about people. Our government spends billions for wars of oppression while it fails to feed and house the poor within its own borders. It denies people access to affordable healthcare and education, criminalizes poverty, and brutalizes people for exercising their freedom of speech while protecting private property, and so much more.
Although the road to putting an end to the oppressive capitalist system that rules over us seems long and difficult, and although the ruling class appears to be using everything in its power to keep people from resisting and pushing for change, they have not been successful. The current wave of repression is a sign that our tactics are working. Protests, rallies, direct actions, teach-ins, marches, and cultural events in solidarity with Palestine continue. More people are joining the struggle and condemning the U.S. and Israel as the real terrorists. People will continue to agitate, educate, and organize until Palestine is liberated and there is an end to endless military spending, no matter the intimidation tactics used against them. As Biden passes the largest military bill in U.S. history at $866 billion, MLK’s words resonate loudly: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
The U.S. habit of painting itself as a defender of human rights as an excuse to intervene in other countries for its own imperialist interests is waning. Because most of us living in the belly of the beast fall victim to these violations as colonized and working-class people, we must develop our own methods to defend human rights from a political perspective that connects capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy as the root causes of these injustices. Only when we understand the nature of our oppression and oppressors, and only when we have an education tied to liberation, can we find justice for the Palestinian people and all oppressed and colonized people in the world, and begin the process of building a better world where everyone’s rights are protected and where everyone’s basic needs are met.
AFGJ receives multiple awards for its defense of human rights!
AFGJ selected as an Honoree of NLG’s 2023 Debra Evenson “Venceremos” Award!
The Debra Evenson “Venceremos” Award was presented to AFGJ by the National Lawyers Guild International Committee in recognition of brave work extending justice beyond borders. Former Guild President Debra Evenson (1942-2011) was one of the experts on Cuba’s legal system and a staunch defender of that country. Learn more about this year’s Debra Evenson “Venceremos” awardees and meet all of the 2023 #Law4ThePeople honorees.
Support the Honorees and Learn More
Lucy Parsons HRS Coordinator Nominated for Human Rights Award by Amnesty International
Our very own, Camille Laundry was recently recognized at the Oklahoma Universal Human Rights Alliance’s 10th Annual Human Rights Awards for her efforts toward human rights in Oklahoma as a longtime activist and social justice advocate. The ceremony coincided with the International Human Rights Day on December 10.
Learn more about this year’s award ceremony here
Take action in defense of Palestinian rights
There is a growing global movement for a free Palestine
Across the world, millions of people are engaging in demonstrations and organizing major marches in solidarity with Palestine. Our demands for an immediate ceasefire, cutting all aid to Israel, and lifting the siege on Gaza have broader support than ever.
We must keep building momentum and increase the pressure with more marches, walk-outs, sit-ins, and other forms of direct action directed at the political offices, businesses, and workplaces that fund, invest, and collaborate with Israeli genocide and occupation. Plan your action or find one in your city at Shutitdown4Palestine.org
Take Action
