City Heights Human Rights Fest Draws 500 (tags)
The first annual City Heights Human Rights Festival drew over 500 people to the streets of San Diego’s most ethnically diverse neighborhood Saturday, December 11 for a march down El Cajon Boulevard and a fair in the parking lot of Hoover High School at El Cajon and 44th Street. Besides speeches by local elected officials who represent the area, including City Councilmember Todd Gloria and his former employer, Congressmember Susan Davis, the event also included musical performers, readings and a showing of a short film by the Media Arts Center, I Want My Parents … Back, dealing with immigrant rights and how border enforcement is breaking up families. The event was organized not only to commemorate the 62nd anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed by the United Nations in 1948, but to call attention to rights abuses all over the world and especially in Viet Nam. The impetus for organizing the event came from local representatives of the Viet Nam Reform Party, which exists clandestinely in Viet Nam and openly among Viet Namese immigrants in countries like ours that guarantee political freedoms. Among their demands is an end to one-party Communist rule in Viet Nam and an end to its ban on independent media.
“Rethink Afghanistan” Screens in San Diego (tags)
The Peace and Democracy Action Group of the First Unitarian-Universalist Church in Hillcrest recently screened Robert Greenwald’s hard-hitting 2009 documentary “Rethink Afghanistan,” which meticulously lists all the reasons given for the U.S.’s continuing and escalating military involvement in Afghanistan — from the alleged need to deny al-Qaeda “sanctuary” in the country to the supposed “liberation” of Afghan women — and demolishes them all. The March 18 screening was followed by a talk-back session with three members of the San Diego chapter of Veterans for Peace, who talked about their own experiences in Korea and Viet Nam and the similarities between how those wars were justified and sold to the American people and the current campaign to legitimize our Afghan campaign.
Dahr Jamail Celebrates U.S. Military’s “Will to Resist” in Iraq, Afghanistan (tags)
Dahr Jamail, the independent journalist who broke the monopoly on Iraq war coverage by “embedded reporters” and reported honestly on the war for his own blog, has tackled a subject equally taboo in the corporate media: the growing number of U.S. servicemembers who are resisting the wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The resistance takes many forms, from so-called “search and avoid” missions in the war zones to absences without leave (AWOL), conscientious objector filings and outright refusals to obey orders to deploy. While the movement hasn't reached the heights it did during the Viet Nam war — mainly because there isn't as large a mass civilian anti-war movement as there was then — it's significant for the courage and heroism of the resisters and as an index of the toll two long, grueling wars have taken on the U.S. military.
UN Official Says Only a Worldwide Mass Movement Will Stop Israel's Oppression of Palestine (tags)
UC Santa Barbara professor Richard Falk, elected by the UN Human Relations Commission as special rapporteur on Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories, spoke in San Diego June 5 and said only a worldwide mass movement, comparable to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, can end Israel's oppression against the Palestinians and enable a truly just solution. He called on his listeners to take on the pro-Israel monopoly of opinion in American politics and the mainstream media, and help make Americans more aware of the depths of the suffering Palestinians experience under U.S.-funded Israeli arms.
GROWING BRITISH RESISTANCE TO WAR (tags)
In England, the only major nation fully backing the war, resistance is now rapidly growing. In Viet Nam it was years before allied resistance reached this leval!