It is available on the St. Paul City Council Website at:
http://stpaul.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?publish_id=217

Cheri Honkala's presentation is about 1hr 9mins into the video with Glass Bead Collective's Video at the conclusion of Cheri's introduction.

Transcript of Cheri's comments:
[Start]
My name is Cheri Honkala and I am the National Organizer for the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign. We organized the March for Our Lives on September 2nd to address the worst form of violence - poverty.

We have had documented peaceful marches for the last twenty years, including the last two Democratic and Republican Conventions.

Efforts to silence the poor began early with surveillance at my home beginning in July, calls from the Federal Justice Department telling me that they feared for my life and the other members of the organization. They told me that the St. Paul Police Department had purchased 300 tasers and had concerns about their inexperience.

Having nowhere to house the poor from around the country, we set up Bushvilles after the Hoovervilles of the 1930’s. Here we were surrounded between 11:00 and 12:00 at night by over 200 police officers with riot gear, sharpshooters, the lights were turned off in the park as they turned on the sprinklers system on our children as they lay asleep at night.

The goal of all police activity was to instill fear in our members and the general public to stop the march from happening all together. On September 2nd, after receiving hundreds of calls and letters saying sorry we wish we could be there with you but we are afraid for our children. We step out first to be met by the CIA at the place where our children were located across the street from Mears Park, after being met by the CIA we were met by the FBI. They told us that we were going to have serious problems first on Grove Street and then in front of the Capitol. I then stated to the representatives of the Federal Justice Department that if they thought there was going to be serious danger then they had a responsibility to protect me and the other marchers.

As I stood next to my six year old son, we tried to begin the March for Our Lives. And on September 2nd, and as you will see in this clip, our first amendment rights were violated. First you’ll see me talking about the “most American thing is the right to protest for rights.” Next, you’ll see our demonstration being taken over by the police department during our speeches, they sent countless numbers of police and reporters to divert attention from to one individual being tased violently by the police. The focus was no longer about poverty, hunger and homelessness in United States of America in was on forty officers on one individual.

You will also see large number of undercover police officers in our march in this video I am about to show you. You will also see us carrying photography of Dr. Martin Luther King and Gandhi, marching with nuns and a priest and children in strollers, and this gentleman in a wheelchair and along with others in wheelchairs, seniors in their 80’s, veterans, people of all colors committed to non-violence and ending poverty in this country.

Lastly, you will see all of us running for our lives. You will see the militarization of the police – gas everywhere, pepper spray, and police opening fire with rubber bullets on peaceful women and children.

On September 2nd, we didn’t have freedom to assemble or freedom of speech.

We are not terrorists, we are Americans.

A humane and free society doesn’t open fire on its people with tear gas and rubber bullets. Fear of serious injury only can not justify suppression of freedom of speech or assembly.

Men feared witches and then burned them

The only thing the poor have is their voice. We will not be silenced.

Here’s the video.
[End]

[London]--Amnesty International is concerned by allegations of excessive use of force and mass arrests by police at demonstrations in St. Paul, Minnesota during the Republican National Convention (RNC) from September 1-4, 2008. The human rights organization is calling on the city and county authorities to ensure that all allegations of ill-treatment and other abuses are impartially investigated, with a review of police tactics and weapons in the policing of demonstrations.

The organization’s concerns arise from media reports, video and photographic images which appear to show police officers deploying unnecessary and disproportionate use of non-lethal weapons on non-violent protestors marching through the streets or congregating outside the arena where the Convention was being held.

Amnesty International urges that an inquiry be carried out promptly, that its findings and recommendations be made public in a timely manner. If the force used is found to have been excessive and to have contravened the principles of necessity and proportionality, then those involved should be disciplined, measures put in place and training given to ensure future policing operations conform to international standards.

Police are reported to have fired rubber bullets and used batons, pepper spray, tear gas canisters and concussion grenades on peaceful demonstrators and journalists. Amnesty International has also received unconfirmed reports that some of those arrested during the demonstrations may have been ill-treated while held at Ramsey county jail.

Amnesty International is also concerned at reports that several journalists who were covering the RNC were arbitrarily arrested while filming and reporting on the demonstrations. They include host of independent news program Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman, and two of the program’s producers, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, who were both allegedly subjected to violence during their arrest. A photographer for the Associated Press (AP) and other journalists were also arrested while covering the demonstrations.

Kouddous described his arrest to media, “…two or three police officers tackled me. They threw me violently against a wall. Then they threw me to the ground. I was kicked in the chest several times. A police officer ground his knee into my back…I was also, the entire time, telling them, ‘I’m media. I’m press….,’ but…that didn’t seem to matter at all.”

Amnesty International recognizes the challenges involved in policing large scale demonstrations and that some protestors may have been involved in acts of violence or obstruction. However, some of the police actions appear to have breached United Nations (U.N.) standards on the use of force by law enforcement officials. These stipulate, among other things, that force should be used only as a last resort, in proportion to the threat posed, and should be designed to minimize damage or injury. Some of the treatment also appears to have contravened U.S. laws and guidelines on the use of force. The U.N. standards also stress that everyone is allowed to participate in lawful and peaceful assemblies, in accordance with the principles embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

For more information, please contact the AIUSA media office at 202-544-0200 x302 or visit our website at www.amnestyusa.org.

Labels: Arrests, March for Our Lives 2008, Police, RNC

In Minneapolis on October 1st at 9:30AM, PPEHRC members Cheri Honkala, Natasha Euler and Deeq Abdi will go to court for demonstrating at the Minneapolis Office Housing And Urban Development (a public building) regarding the housing crisis in America prior to the RNC.

On the afternoon of October 1st at 1:00PM in St. Paul, PPEHRC Members Cheri Honkala and Tim Dowlin will go to court for setting up Bushville, a tent city for poor and homeless people to gather, at Harriet Island Regional Park (a public park) prior to the RNC.

At a time when millions of people are losing their homes to foreclosure and banks are crashing, let's stand by the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign in
order to create another kind of world.

Please call the Mayors of Minneapolis and St Paul today and demand that all
charges be dropped!

Mayor R.T. Rybak
City of Minneapolis
(612) 673-2100

Mayor Chris Coleman
City of St. Paul
(651) 266-8510

Please also send this to as many other people as you can.

Labels: Arrests, Bushville, HUD Sit-in, March for Our Lives 2008, Police, Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, PPEHRC

http://chattanoogan.com/articles/article_135939.asp
Posted September 26, 2008

A "March for Our Lives" will be held next Friday beginning at 5 p.m.

The march will begin at UTC's Hunter Hall on McCallie Avenue and proceed to Miller Park where there will be music and local, fresh food served by Food Not Bombs, followed by speakers from across the nation.

The march will then proceed to City Hall, where the Poor People's Manifesto for Economic Human Rights will be posted to the doors.

The march will then conclude with a Tent-Inn, its location to be announced at a later date.

At sunrise on Saturday, Oct. 5, an ecumenical prayer service will conclude the march.
Officials said, "Every day in our community, working families are forced to choose between paying the electric bill or buying groceries, between paying the landlord or filling prescriptions.

"Every night in our community approximately 300 people are sleeping in cars, abandoned buildings, under bridges or in the woods.

"Every day, hundreds of children begin the school-day hungry or cold from sleeping in their cars, or on the couch, or in a church basement.

"Twenty five percent of homeless people are employed. Forty percent of homeless men are veterans.

"We have program shelters that are filled to capacity, not one of them city-run or funded.

"On Oct. 3, we invite you to take a stand as poor people march on Chattanooga.

"Why is this march being held?

"Believing that all humans are equal and that all humans have the right to shelter, health care, water, food and all other economic, social and political rights, the Poor People's March was created in response to the growing inequalities and economic injustices occurring in our city and across our nation.

"All people are invited to the march and the park and to spend the night at the Tent-Inn, especially poor People, homeless people, working people, students, teachers, old people, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children, city and county leaders, doctors, lawyers, rabbis, farmers, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, religious people, agnostics, atheists, writers, readers, cowboys, policemen, priests, preachers, sinners, saints, social workers, activists, students, anyone with a heart who cares about the poor. Animals are welcome, as well.

"The goal of the march is to move from service to solidarity, and to make basic economic human rights a reality for all in Chattanooga. The March is being organized by the North Georgia and Chattanooga chapter of the Poor People's Human Rights Campaign."

Labels: CHANGER, Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, PPEHRC

During a hearing entitled "The US socio-economic model: the right direction for the EU?", organised by the European United Left/Nordic Green Left Group (GUE/NGL) in the European Parliament this morning, Eva-Britt Svensson (GUE/NGL, Sweden) said the group was working hard to inform people where current EU economic policy is taking us.


"It is very useful for us to learn first hand where this neo-liberal economic wave will lead us and what effects privatisation can have on peoples' lives."

Members of the "Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign" (PPEHRC), a North American organization engaged in the civil rights struggle, participated in the hearing. Addressing them, GUE/NGL President Francis Wurtz expressed his solidarity with their campaign saying that "the socio-economic model that you follow is the one that we seem to be adopting, although we fight against it." He continued by saying that across Europe people were living in increasingly precarious situations due to low wages, increasing privatisation, competition and social dumping. "We are sacrificing our society on the altar of a casino-like economy", he said.

Italian GUE/NGL MEP Umberto Guidoni thanked the PPEHRC for telling the hearing about the situation in the USA, a situation that ignores the lives of millions who suffer, hoping that in doing so they will remain invisible or disappear.

"The Left in Europe needs to put forward another model for society not just sit back and wring its hands and let the US model become the global one. This is not just a battle of and for civilization; it is a battle for health, social welfare, education, homes and jobs. These are integral to life and the market should not dictate how these provisions are provided; the market places no value on such essentials."

Labels: EU Parliament, International

One day after the historic Poor People’s March in St. Paul, we speak to the group’s national organizer, Cheri Honkala. She’s a longtime organizer and director of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union in Philadelphia. [includes rush transcript]

AMY GOODMAN: I am joined right now here in St. Paul on Democracy Now! by the national organizer of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, Cheri Honkala, longtime organizer and director of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union in Philadelphia, now living in Minneapolis here in the Twin Cities.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Cheri.

CHERI HONKALA: I’m very happy and very thankful for shows like yours.

AMY GOODMAN: Your thoughts on the Republican convention and what you feel needs to be the policy, the way to deal with the poor in this country?

CHERI HONKALA: Well, we’ve been trying to organize a poor people’s movement for over a decade now. And we’ve just been fighting to, I think, do the most important thing, which is to make poor people visible.

I think that the majority of the people in this country don’t know the conditions in which people live in, and only if they saw with their own eyes seniors having to share medication, farmers being thrown off their land, homeless people living under bridges—and I think that if they saw those daily images, that the American people are good people, and I think that they would be moved to do something about the situation.

But with the combination of the lack of civil liberties and the ability to march and to speak about what’s happening in this country, as well as the takeover of corporate media in this country, it’s one of the hardest struggles that I’ve been a part of, to show the faces of poverty in this country.



AMY GOODMAN: Your group was also at the Democratic convention in Denver.

CHERI HONKALA: Yes, members of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign were also at the Democratic
National Convention. Things were also difficult for folks there to put a face on what’s happening to the majority of the people in this country.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about your own story, Cheri Honkala. How did you get involved with this?

CHERI HONKALA: I’m a formerly homeless mother from here, from the Twin Cities, and I have an older son who’s twenty-eight now, but at the time, he was nine years old. And—

AMY GOODMAN: He’s Mark Webber, the actor?

CHERI HONKALA: Mark Webber, the actor now. And the both of us almost froze to death on the streets of Minnesota, because we couldn’t get into the homeless shelters here. And so, I decided one day to move into a government-owned, abandoned HUD property, because they had the heat on in the wintertime. And I made that decision—I had never broken any laws before in my life—because I wanted to stay alive and not die. And it’s been, ever since that time, some twenty-eight years ago, that I’ve been doing this kind of work, because I knew that if I could have died and nobody cared about what was happening to me, that that had to have been happening to thousands of other people across the country.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s the fortieth anniversary of King’s Poor People’s March that he started, and then was assassinated, but continued. What is the relevance of that to today? Were you inspired at all by that?

CHERI HONKALA: Our movement is very much trying to take up the baton where Dr. Martin Luther King left off. We now have the largest multiracial movement of poor people in this country. The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign can be found on—it has over 200 affiliates. We have members like the Immokalee farm workers, to the Coalition to Protect Public Housing, to trailer park residents in Minnesota, to some of the largest Indian reservations, you name it. And we have one message, which is, we’re calling for the elimination of poverty in this country, not the reduction, no more band-aids, not a bigger and better welfare system, but an elimination to the kind of conditions that we’re faced with.

AMY GOODMAN: The message to end poverty in this country, will you talk about the corporate media and how it deals with these issues, or doesn’t?

CHERI HONKALA: Yeah, I mean, I’ve been involved in large demonstrations for like the last twenty years, and I’m very ashamed of my home state. I’ve never seen so many reporters like yourself being detained. A Channel 5 reporter was trying to cover a story of us; he was thrown into an elevator. A couple other folks that we know that were trying to cover some of our events were also detained and then later released on two different occasions. We were inside the Capitol trying to have a peaceful demonstration during regular open hours of the Capitol, and the reporters were literally locked out of the Capitol and unable to come in, even though they showed their credentials. And so, I don’t quite get what is so horrible about covering a story of women and children and the elderly and people of all colors trying to come together to talk about the day-to-day reality of their lives.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, I was astounded when I talked to the St. Paul police chief yesterday, and, you know, with the arrest, how is he instructing the press to—the police to deal with the press, and how are we supposed to operate when we are trying to cover this and the police arrest us. And he said you can embed yourselves with the police department. And you saw Rick Rowley, Big Noise filmmaker in this piece, he’s covering the riot police, and he sees there the Fox News reporter. As they’re pushing him away, she’s in the midst of them. And he yells to her, “Are you embedded with the police?” She comes in and out with the police.

CHERI HONKALA: Yeah. I mean, for us, that’s no surprise, when it comes to Fox News. But we’re just absolutely outraged. And, you know, like my son said, “Mom, when you get up this morning, don’t read any of the papers. You know, don’t even turn on the television,” because regardless of the fact that poor people came together from all walks of life, every color, every age, yesterday, regardless of being terrorized for actually the last month—we had two Bushvilles that were knocked down, encampments. When we came—

AMY GOODMAN: Bushvilles?

CHERI HONKALA: Yeah, we set up encampments, particularly during the Republican National Convention, for some place for people to sleep, because we can’t afford the W or the Hilton. And so, people were staying at the Bushville, and our first Bushville that we set up on Harriet Island, the first night we were surrounded by 200 police officers in riot gear. They turned on the sprinklers on our children while they were sleeping, turned off all the park lights and drove their police vehicles up onto the lawn with their brights on. And myself and a couple of our other leaders were then arrested, and our Bushville was torn down. Later through the week, they brought dogs to our Bushville, while the kids were sleeping, let the dogs bark and scare the kids, and then periodically would just go by and drive up and run their sirens at 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, just to make people afraid.

AMY GOODMAN: Cheri Honkala, can you describe the conditions of the poor, the daily challenges faced?

CHERI HONKALA: Yeah. Actually, later this afternoon, I leave to go to a funeral in Philadelphia, where a woman, a good friend of mine, Esther, struggled her whole life, because she was right on the borderline in terms of not being able to qualify for medical assistance. And I think she spent each and every day trying to figure out how to pay for the many different medications that she had. So her whole life was about how does she get up every morning and figure out how to pull together, you know, that $80, $90, or whatever, for one individual prescription after another. And these were in the last dying days of her life. People shouldn’t have to live like this.

I have a six-year-old son who needs serious eye treatment. I, as well, don’t qualify for medical assistance, and I’m right on the borderline. And he’s supposed to have regular eye checks, because —

AMY GOODMAN: Glaucoma?

CHERI HONKALA: Glaucoma runs in my family, and he’s stopped seeing out of his right eye. So I have no idea how I’m going to cover those costs.

My older son, who has now become a movie star, has spent every waking moment of his life using his power and his financial resources to fund and give us resources. And, you know, as this movement continues to get larger, there’s never enough money, but he’s committed to helping to fund a movement that wants to eliminate poverty and homelessness. He’s not interested in giving money to a charity. He knows, as a formerly homeless boy in this country, that he has a responsibility to do whatever he possibly can to help make this movement grow and give it visibility.

AMY GOODMAN: Cheri Honkala, your website?

CHERI HONKALA: Our website is www.economichumanrights.org. And people can see lots of the footage that they never will see on any television program on that website.

AMY GOODMAN: Cheri Honkala, thanks so much for joining us, of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, and we’ll link to it at democracynow.org.

Labels: Amy Goodman, Cheri Honkala, Democracy NOW, M4OL Coverage, March for Our Lives 2008

by Kashish Das Shrestha | September 2008 | Courtesy of http://samudaya.org/

Photography by Kashish; Produced by Anup Kaphle

Labels: M4OL Coverage, March for Our Lives 2008, Police

Those of us who were there know that there were hundreds of people - media, cops, organizers, citizen journalists and others - with cameras, video, audio and recording devices galore at the March for Our Lives.

We will keep trying to post what we find. Here a flickr slideshow of pix tagged with
"poorpeopleseconomichumanrightscampaign":

Labels: M4OL Coverage, March for Our Lives 2008, Photos

Marching For Our Lives

By Mike & James (NYC Indymedia)

Here, find a photo essay in two parts from the Poor People's Economic
Human Rights Campaign March on the RNC.

Part 1: Rally, Repression, March Begins.
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/09/99688.html

Part 2: Marching On the XCel Center
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/09/99712.html

Labels: M4OL Coverage, March for Our Lives

More footage and news to come...Here a couple videos that documented the March:


With over 200 people still in jail after Monday's arrests, and with a massive police presence in the street, the Poor People's March prepared to set out and braced for the police response. Footage from Rick Rowley, Elizabeth Press, Fatimah Mojaddidy, Rebecca McNeice and Jordan Hansen of Big Noise Tactical Films.

---

March for our Lives, PPEHRC in St Paul Minnesota during RNC. The march was followed by an enormous amount of police, though it was very peaceful. Footage courtesy of Lennart Kjorling.

Labels: M4OL Coverage, March for Our Lives 2008

Commissioners’ Joint Statement Regarding the National Truth Commission

This Commission was at the Christ Lutheran Church in St. Paul, Minnesota on Monday, September 1, 2008.

During their consideration of the testimonies heard and received at the hearings, the Commissioners focused on three questions:
1) do the testimonies and documents received during this hearing describe human rights violations?
2) if so, could these human rights violations have been prevented? and

3) if so, who is responsible?

The Commission’s answers to these questions is as follows:

1. Yes, the testimonies and documents received do describe violations of human rights. The basic nature of human rights as recognized worldwide in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is that they are inherent. People are born with them. They do not arise only when a government recognizes them or confers them to people. Therefore, for example, the rights to housing, medical care, employment, freedom from racial discrimination, and an adequate standard of living in all respects (including heat) are human rights of all people everywhere. The testimonies and documents received spoke to inadequacies in the provision and availability of these basic human rights.

2. Yes, these human rights violations could have been prevented. As the most affluent nation on earth, the United States has had unequalled opportunity and financial capacity to honor these human rights. If the country’s leaders at all levels had committed themselves to shape the country’s agenda and societal expectations to honor these rights from the time they were first articulated nearly 40 years ago when the United States signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, these human rights would be honored today rather than being largely ignored and violated for so many people in this country as they are today.

3. Responsibility for these violations: responsibility for the failure to develop an economy that promotes and achieves the human rights to housing, healthcare, education, employment, etcetera. lies in all who have had an opportunity to bring about the changes necessary to achieve that goal. Some of us have had greater opportunity to pursue these goals and therefore bear greater responsibility. The greatest responsibility, therefore, lies with the framers and maintainers of the structure, goals, and operation of the current economy: 1) governments at all levels, since it is the government at all levels that has the greatest capacity to promote those human rights through its administrative agencies and its economic and social policies; 2) both major political parties; and 3) corporate, professional, religious, and civic leadership.

At the same time, to the extent that we as individuals and grass roots organizations have the energy, capacity, and vision to promote these human rights, we also bear responsibility to promote observance of these human rights by, for example, holding those with even greater capacity and responsibility accountable to their responsibility under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the universally recognized Bill of Human Rights*, and the ratified human rights treaties** to promote and achieve those rights.
We urge careful consideration of these findings and observation by all concerned.

Respectfully submitted as the Joint Statement of the Commissioners,

Ajamu Baraka, Executive Director, US Human Rights Network - Atlanta, Gerrgia
Bill Means, American Indian Movement and International Indian Treaty Council - Minneapolis, Minnesota
Sister Dorothy Pagosa, Sisters of St. Joseph - Chicago, Illinios
Professor Edward Oyugi, Social Development Network and African Social Forum - Kenya
Rosa Clemente, Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate
Michael Kane, Habitat International Coalition and National Alliance of HUD Tenants - Boston, Massachusetts
Lennart Kjorling, Journalist - Sweden
Rev. Bruce Wright, Refuge of St. Petersburg, Florida
Shamako Noble, Hip Hop Congress - California
Pastor Gary Dreier - Christ Lutheran Church on Capitol Hill - St. Paul, Minnesota
Imam Sheikh Saad Musse Roble - Minneapolis, Minnesota
Michael Crenshaw - Hip Hop Congress - Portland, Oregon
Rev. Nancy Anderson - Minneapolis, Minnesota
Mary Brandl - Union Steward of AFSCME Clerical Workers Local #3800 - Minneapolis, Minnesota
Peter W. Brown - National Lawyers Guild - Minneapolis, Minnesota


* The Bill of Human Rights consists of the two treaties: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, ratified by the US Congress in 1992) and the International Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, signed by President Carter in 1976 but not yet ratified by the US Congress.)
** The human rights treaties that the United States has ratified are: 1) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, ratified by the US Congress in 1992); 2) Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT, ratified by the US Congress in 1994); and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD ratified by US Congress 1994).

Labels: 2008 National Truth Commission, M4OL Coverage, March for Our Lives

Yesterday, the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign joined the March on the RNC as a part of the Poor People's Contingent. PPEHRC National Organizer Cheri Honkala spoke from the stage.



We marched the entire route and headed back to Bushville to prepare for the National Truth Commission.

Labels: Bushville, March for Our Lives, March on the RNC

Press conference from the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign where they speak out about issues largely ignored by the US government. The Stimulator dispatch from St. Paul about protests, Amy Goodman's arrest, and independent media journalists being held by police. Amy Gojavascript:void(0)
Publish Postodman also speaks about her arrest.

Labels: M4OL Coverage, March for Our Lives

During their consideration of the testimonies heard and received at the hearing, the Commissioners focused on three questions:
1) do the testimonies and documents received during this hearing describe human rights violations?
2) if so, could these human rights violations have been prevented? and

3) if so, who is responsible?

The Commission’s answers to these questions is as follows:

1. Yes, the testimonies and documents received do describe violations of human rights. The basic nature of human rights as recognized worldwide in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is that they are inherent. People are born with them. They do not arise only when a government recognizes them or confers them to people. Therefore, for example, the rights to housing, medical care, employment, freedom from racial discrimination, and an adequate standard of living in all respects (including heat) are human rights of all people everywhere. The testimonies and documents received spoke to inadequacies in the provision and availability of these basic human rights.

2. Yes, these human rights violations could have been prevented. As the most affluent nation on earth, the United States has had unequalled opportunity and financial capacity to honor these human rights. If the country’s leaders at all levels had committed themselves to shape the country’s agenda and societal expectations to honor these rights from the time they were first articulated nearly 40 years ago when the United States signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, these human rights would be honored today rather than being largely ignored and violated for so many people in this country as they are today.

3. Responsibility for these violations: responsibility for the failure to develop an economy that promotes and achieves the human rights to housing, healthcare, education, employment, etcetera. lies in all who have had an opportunity to bring about the changes necessary to achieve that goal. Some of us have had greater opportunity to pursue these goals and therefore bear greater responsibility. The greatest responsibility, therefore, lies with governments at all levels, since it is the government (our elected representatives) that adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and it is the government that has the greatest capacity to promote those human rights through its administrative agencies and its economic and social policies.

At the same time, to the extent that we as individuals and grass roots organizations have the energy, capacity, and vision to promote these human rights, we also bear responsibility to promote observance of these human rights by, for example, holding those with even greater capacity and responsibility (government officials) accountable to their responsibility under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the universally recognized Bill of Human Rights*, and the ratified human rights treaties** to promote and achieve those rights.

We urge careful consideration of these findings and observation by all concerned.

Respectfully submitted as the Joint Statement of the Commissioners,

Imam Sheikh Saad Musse Roble
Peter W. Brown - National Lawyers Guild
Michael Crenshaw - Hip Hop Congress
Pastor Nancy Anderson
Mary Brandl - Union Steward of AFSCME Clerical Workers Local #3800


* The Bill of Human Rights consists of the two treaties: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, ratified by the US Congress in 1992) and the International Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, signed by President Carter in 1976 but not yet ratified by the US Congress.)

** The human rights treaties that the United States has ratified are: 1) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, ratified by the US Congress in 1992); 2) Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT, ratified by the US Congress in 1994); and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD ratified by US Congress 1994).

Labels: 2008 National Truth Commission, March for Our Lives