Subject: Happy International Women´s Day

Latin American Working Group
Being Better Neighbors Towards Latin America

Norma Cruz speaks out against femicide in Guatemala.

Dear Vic and Barby,

We wanted to drop you a note to say happy International Women´s Day!

Although we rarely remember to celebrate it in the United States, today many of our partners in countries like Colombia, Mexico, and Guatemala are participating in marches, teach-ins, and even parties. Why? Because there are so many strong and brave women to honor and there´s still so much more education to be done before we see equal rights and an end to violence against women in Latin America.

In Colombia, we´re proud to celebrate strong women like Martha Giraldo and the women leaders of MOVICE, the movement of the victims of state crimes, who are pursuing justice for the murders of their loved ones even though it endangers their lives. As our partner Witness for Peace reported, Martha was recently driven off the road and told at gunpoint to stop speaking out or she would be killed. But she will not be silenced and neither will the many other women pushing for accountability for the murderers of their sons, daughters, fathers, nephews, and uncles. Take a couple moments to watch Martha´s video of her story, then click here to send a message of solidarity to Martha and wish her a happy International Women´s Day.

In Mexico, we remember Esther Chávez Cano, a powerful champion for women´s rights who struggled to eradicate gender-based violence and whose efforts raised worldwide attention to the ever-growing toll of unresolved murders of women and girls in Ciudad Juárez. Among her many accomplishments, Esther founded Casa Amiga, the first rape crisis center in the region, a place of refuge for the many women who survive rape and domestic abuse and a center of advocacy for the cases of women who have lost their lives to violence. Click here to read more about Esther´s inspiring life and the current situation in Cuidad Juárez.

Meanwhile, in Guatemala, our partners at Guatemala Human Rights Commission USA (GHRC) are marching with Norma Cruz, the director of the Survivor´s Foundation, to show their support for her efforts to end femicide and attain justice for victims of violence against women in Guatemala. With over 4,700 women brutally murdered since 2000 and domestic violence at an unacceptably high rate, Guatemala is a dangerous place for women. Click here to read Norma's words about their ongoing struggle for rights. So today, while you celebrate the strength, beauty, and wisdom of the women in your life, please join us in standing with these courageous women and the many others across Latin America who work every day to create a world in which there is justice and rights for all.

Best,

The LAWG Team
(Lisa, Mavis, Jenny, Vanessa, Paulo, Brian, and Travis)

Latin America Working Group
424 C Street NE, Washington, DC 20002   Phone: (202) 546-7010   Email: lawg@lawg.org

Justice Albie Sachs

Judging the law

An article about Albie Sachs that was published in the California Bar Journal. By Howard B. Miller, President, State Bar of California

Click to read this article.

Family of Justice Albie Sachs

Learn more Justice Albie Sachs´s articles and events. Click to view the blog.

"The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law" is available from odw for $33 inc. postage.

Justice Albie Sachs and Barby

Dennis Brutus, anti–apartheid fighter

The following is excerpted from Patrick Bond′s obituary of his teacher and colleague Dennis Brutus, a South African poet, anti–apartheid fighter and internationalist known and admired by U.S. activists.

Dennis Brutus died at age 85 on Dec. 26, battling cancer, climate change and capitalism.

Trying to keep up with the octogenarian after his 2005 move to Durban dazed even the most Brutus–addicted staff at the University of KwaZulu–Natal Centre for Civil Society — where he was honorary professor and our visionary guru — and UKZN Centre for Creative Arts, for which he served as a fixture at their famous Time of the Writer and Poetry Africa festivals.

At least one overarching impression sings out from the cacophony of warm memories: the Brutus philosophy that genuine liberation — not the half–measures won in 1994, when class apartheid replaced racial domination in South Africa — represents a war to be waged on many fronts because as one battle is won and many more usually lost, there are still others on the horizon that make an engaged life fulfilling, that keep the fires of desire for social change burning long into the night.

The denial of opportunities to play sports across Port Elizabeth′s neighborhoods was Brutus′ youthful entry point into revolutionary politics, initially with the Teachers League and then the Congress movement centered on Nelson Mandela′s African National Congress.

In the process, Brutus received deep battlefield scars, suffering bannings (both personal in 1961 and affecting most of his poetry until 1990); a 1963 police kidnapping in Maputo, Mozambique, followed by a near–fatal shooting outside Anglo American′s central Johannesburg headquarters during an escape attempt; imprisonment and torture from 1963–66 at Johannesburg′s Fort Prison and on Cape Town′s Robben Island (he was next door to Mandela much of the time); and alienating times in exile from 1966–1991.

Those three decades in the U.S. spent teaching at leading universities gave Brutus opportunities for high–profile support to every crucial struggle: ending the unfair incarcerations of Philadelphia poet Mumia Abu–Jamal, American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier and Guantánamo Bay prisoners; halting sweatshops; imposing Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions on Israel; building Burmese solidarity; opposing Washington′s militarism by following Thoreau′s lead and refusing to pay a portion of his taxes; attempting to prosecute George Bush for war crimes; and supporting the successful Vieques protest against U.S. Navy weapons testing on the Puerto Rican island.

Upon returning to South Africa in 1998, he and Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane inaugurated Jubilee South Africa to demand rejection of inherited apartheid debt and to then launch the World Bank Bonds Boycott.

Other SA–based campaigning included leadership in protests numbering 10,000 against the U.N.′s World Conference Against Racism in 2001 — for failing to include Zionism and reparations for slavery, colonialism and apartheid on the agenda — and 30,000 against the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 because of the U.N. turn to water privatization, carbon trading and similar market–environmental strategies.

Brutus was subsequently the highest–profile plaintiff in the lawsuit filed by Jubilee and the Khulumani Support Group for apartheid reparations, fighting not only three dozen corporations which made profits and interest in SA prior to 1994, but also the Mbeki regime, which sided with the Bush regime and capital. Last October [after President Thabo Mbeki was pushed out of office], Pretoria finally reversed that position, to Brutus′ satisfaction.

For more information and a schedule of memorials for Brutus, see www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs.

Bill Sutherland

Bill Sutherland, when he was Southern Africa Representative for AFSC, American Friends Service Committee ( Quaker ) convinced Vic and Barby Ulmer, Co-founders and Co-directors of our developing world, to go to South Africa when they were on sabbatical in Africa in ′75–′76. Bill said he couldn′t get a visa because he was Black, but we could. This experience led to a strong tie to the country and the many South African friends we made over the years whom we've been able to introduce to the many who have gone on odw Reality tours with them, also to Tanzania, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

Bill Sutherland, Pan African Pacifist, 1918–2010

Bill Sutherland, unofficial ambassador between the peoples of Africa and the Americas for over fifty years, died peacefully on the evening of January 2, 2010. He was 91.

A life–long pacifist and liberation advocate, Sutherland became involved in civil rights and anti-war activities as a youthful member of the Student Christian Movement in the 1930s. Sutherland was raised in New Jersey, the son of a prominent dentist and youngest brother to Reiter Sutherland and to Muriel Sutherland Snowden of Boston, who founded Freedom House in 1949 and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship “genius”grant. He spent four years at Lewisburg Federal Correctional Facility in the 1940s as a conscientious objector to World War Two, striking up what became life-long friendships with fellow C.O.s Ralph DiGia, Bayard Rustin, George Houser, Dave Dellinger, and others. In 1951, in the early days of the Cold War, Sutherland, DiGia, Dellinger, and Quaker pacifist Art Emory constituted the Peacemaker bicycle project, which took the message of nuclear disarmament to both sides of the Iron Curtain.

In 1953, in coordination with the War Resisters International and with several activist groups and independence movement parties on the continent, he moved to what was then known as the Gold Coast. An active supporter of Kwame Nkrumah, he married playwright and Pan African cultural activist Efua Theodora, and became the headmaster of a rural secondary school. The call of Pan Africanist politics was very strong, and Sutherland was instrumental—along with a small group of African Americans living in Ghana at the time, including dentists Robert and Sara Lee–in hosting the visit of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King to the 1957 independence celebrations. In the early days of the first Ghanaian government, Sutherland also served on the organizing team of the All African Peoples Congress. He was appointed private secretary to Finance Minister Komla Gbedema. He was also central to the development of the Sahara Protest Team, which brought together African, European, and U.S. peace leaders to put their bodies in the way of nuclear testing in the Sahara Desert.

Sutherland left Ghana in 1961, working in both Lebanon and Israel for the founding of Peace Brigades International, and for the Israeli labor organization Histadrut. It was also in this period that he began a friendship with Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan of the Ismaili community, working in support of displaced persons as Sadruddin became United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He settled in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1963, as a civil servant. Sutherland′s chief work in Dar involved support for the burgeoning independent governments and liberation movements. A close friend and associate of Tanzania′s Julius Nyerere and Zambia′s Kenneth Kaunda, Sutherland helped develop the Pan African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa (PAFMECA). He served as hospitality officer for the Sixth Pan African Congress—held in Dar in 1974—working with C.L.R. James and other long-time colleagues to bridge the gap between Africans on the continent and in the Diaspora. He hosted countless individuals and delegations from the U.S. in these years, including assisting Malcolm X in what would be his last trip to Tanzania. His home in Dar became a camping ground for liberation leaders in exile from Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa and throughout the region. His love of music, especially jazz, his passion for tennis (which he played well into his 80s), and the pleasure he got from dancing, were hallmarks of his interactions, shared with political associates and personal friends the world over.

Despite Sutherland′s close association with those engaged in armed struggle, he maintained his connections with and commitment to revolutionary nonviolence, and joined the international staff of the Quaker–based American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in 1974. As the AFSC pushed for the Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded to South African anti-apartheid clergyman Bishop Desmond Tutu, Sutherland was working as the AFSC international representative. In 2003, the AFSC initiated an annual Bill Sutherland Institute, training Africa lobbyists and advocates in various policy issues and educational techniques. Sutherland was also the recipient of an honorary doctorate degree from Bates College, and served as a Fellow at Harvard University′s Institute of Politics. He was awarded a special citation from the Gandhi Peace Foundation in India, and, in 2009, received the War Resisters League′s Grace Paley Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 2000, Africa World Press published Sutherland′s Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan African Insights on Nonviolence, Armed Struggle, and Liberation, co–authored by Matt Meyer. Archbishop Tutu, who wrote the foreword for the book, commented that “Sutherland and Meyer have looked beyond the short–term strategies and tactics which too often divide progressive people… They have begun to develop a language which looks at the roots of our humanness.” On the occasion of Sutherland′s 90th birthday last year, Tutu called in a special message, noting that “the people of Africa owe Bill Sutherland a big thank you for his tireless support.”

Bill Sutherland is survived by three children—Esi Sutherland-Addy, Ralph Sutherland, and Amowi Sutherland Phillips—as well as grandchildren in Accra, Ghana; Spokane, Washington; Lewiston, Maine; New Haven, Connecticut; and Brooklyn, New York. In addition to scores of family members, friends, and loved ones, he will be missed by his niece, Gail Snowden, his loving partner Marilyn Meyer, and his “adopted” sons Matt Meyer and john powell. There will be a private funeral for family members this week, and memorial services will be organized for later this year.

The Man and The Eagle - AWESOME - AN ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL STORY

Not many people get a picture of this proud bird snuggled up next to them.

Freedom and Jeff

Freedom and I have been together 10 years this summer. She came in as a baby in 1998 with two broken wings. Her left wing doesn't open all the way even after surgery, it was broken in 4 places . She's my baby.

When Freedom came in she could not stand and both wings were broken... She was emaciated and covered in lice. We made the decision to give her a chance at life, so I took her to the vets office. From then on, I was always around her. We had her in a huge dog carrier with the top off, and it was loaded up with shredded newspaper for her to lay in. I used to sit and talk to her, urging her to live, to fight; and she would lay there looking at me with those big brown eyes. We also had to tube feed her for weeks.

This went on for 4–6 weeks, and by then she still couldn't stand. It got to the point where the decision was made to euthanize her if she couldn't stand in a week. You know you don't want to cross that line between torture and rehab, and it looked like death was winning. She was going to be put down that Friday, and I was supposed to come in on that Thursday afternoon. I didn't want to go to the center that Thursday, because I couldn't bear the thought of her being euthanized; but I went anyway, and when I walked in everyone was grinning from ear to ear. I went immediately back to her cage; and there she was, standing on her own, a big beautiful eagle. She was ready to live. I was just about in tears by then. That was a very good day.

We knew she could never fly, so the director asked me to glove train her. I got her used to the glove, and then to jesses, and we started doing education programs for schools in western Washington . We wound up in the newspapers, radio (believe it or not) and some TV . Miracle Pets even did a show about us.

In the spring of 2000, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. I had stage 3, which is not good (one major organ plus everywhere), so I wound up doing 8 months of chemo. Lost the hair - the whole bit. I missed a lot of work. When I felt good enough, I would go to Sarvey and take Freedom out for walks. Freedom would also come to me in my dreams and help me fight the cancer. This happened time and time again.

Fast forward to November 2000, the day after Thanksgiving, I went in for my last checkup. I was told that if the cancer was not all gone after 8 rounds of chemo, then my last option was a stem cell transplant. Anyway, they did the tests; and I had to come back Monday for the results. I went in Monday, and I was told that all the cancer was gone.

So the first thing I did was get up to Sarvey and take the big girl out for a walk. It was misty and cold. I went to her flight and dressed her up, and we went out front to the top of the hill. I hadn't said a word to Freedom, but somehow she knew. She looked at me and wrapped both her wings around me to where I could feel them pressing in on my back (I was engulfed in eagle wings), and she touched my nose with her beak and stared into my eyes, and we just stood there like that for I don't know how long. That was a magic moment. We have been soul mates ever since she came in. This is a very special bird.

On a side note: I have had people who were sick come up to us when we are out, and Freedom has some kind of hold on them. I once had a guy who was terminal come up to us and I let him hold her. His knees just about buckled and he swore he could feel her power course through his body. I have so many stories like that.

I never forget the honor I have of being so close to such a magnificent spirit as Freedom. Hope you enjoy this.

Roger E. Mundinger
US . Army Retired
Houston , TX .