Wednesday September 2, 2009, 8:21 pm
An ousted President. A disenfranchised population. An overthrown democracy.
Urge Secretary Clinton to ensure resolution to the political crisis and prevent further human rights abuses in Honduras!

Right now, we are witnessing the biggest political crisis to rock Central America in years1, but the U.S. has moved at, what amounts to politically as, a glacial pace.

Two months ago, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was removed from his home at gunpoint by 300 troops. He was forcibly put on a plane and has only managed to step foot in his home country for roughly two hours since.

In the meantime, a de facto government has assumed power, violently punishing all those who courageously speak out -- dealing a powerful blow to democracy and human rights.

Yesterday, President Zelaya arrived in Washington, DC to meet with Organization of American States (OAS) and U.S. State Department officials to discuss plans for resolution. Tomorrow he is scheduled to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

While the U.S. is finally poised to cut off nearly $150 million in military assistance to Honduras2 and strengthen its restrictions on the country, there is still a major factor that has not yet been addressed.

The people of Honduras voted for a democratic government, but in the most undemocratic fashion possible, they are in danger of losing that right, among many others. The de facto government has used its unchecked power to conduct mass arrests and police and military-sanctioned beatings against any vocal oppositional figures. The U.S. must use President Zelaya's trip to Washington to send a clear message to coup leaders that abuse of human rights and democracy in Honduras will not be tolerated.

Tell Secretary Clinton to push for accountability for the human rights violations that have been committed by the de facto government.

Extreme instability and political unrest have forced the people of Honduras to take to the streets in protest. Amnesty International researchers have been on the ground since the coup took place and have documented widespread police beatings of students, reporters, political leaders and other activists. Women and media workers have been particularly vulnerable to the violence. We can only expect that the excessive use of police and military force will intensify unless order in soon restored.

In this instance where political implications are huge and the human rights impact is tremendous, there is no time to waste. While President Obama's words have added much-needed pressure to the debate -- labeling the overthrow as illegal and recognizing the "terrible precedent" it would set if unchallenged -- they have not been enough to end the ongoing crackdown on human rights.

Right now, the Obama administration must take decisive action in order to seek a negotiated solution and counter the damage that has already been done.

Tell Secretary Clinton that you want to see human rights returned to the people of Honduras.

The coup has already taken over political powers and human rights in Honduras -- if the U.S. hasn't taken bold action to push for urgent negotiations and a peaceful resolution of the crisis by now, then what more will it take?

Sincerely,
Daniel, Kate, Zahir and the rest of the Central America Team
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1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8124154.stm
2. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gnMGFpZDNYTDgJVPOpdveATHoZTg

Wednesday September 2, 2009, 8:26 pm
Done!

Wednesday September 2, 2009, 9:21 pm
Count me in

Wednesday September 2, 2009, 9:40 pm
Done!

Wednesday September 2, 2009, 11:32 pm
tis done...*S*
Here are some quotes on injustice from some very compassionate people who say better than most....*S*
I hope you don't mind Jelica...Thank you
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Quotes on Injustice....From Around the World...............

No one will dare maintain that it is better to do injustice than to bear it. Aristotle
2 Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden. Ballou Hosea
3 A book might be written on the injustice of the just. Hope Anthony
4 If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. Richelieu
5 Since I wronged you , I have never liked you. Spanish Proverb
6 Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. Thoreau Henry David
7 In the little world in which children have thier existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. Dickens Charles
8 Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day. It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment at the chief actors therein setting at defiance so compl Dickens Charles
9 In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its wo Dickens Charles
10 Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. King Martin
Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane. King Martin
12 Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. King Martin
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Abigail Adams:
If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

Albert Einstein:
I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force.

Aung San Suu Kyi:
Fear is not the natural state of civilized people.

Barbara Ehrenreich:
That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing -- the truly democratic thing about it -- is that you don't even have to be a player to lose.

Cesar Chavez:
The first principal of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.

Dennis Wholey:
Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian.

Edmund Burke (attributed):
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real only proves their apathy and deeper degradation.

Eugene V. Debs:
Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man's business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ''Am I my brother's keeper?'' That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.
Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death. 1908 speech

Frederick Douglass:
Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

Gunnar Myrdal:
The big majority of Americans, who are comparatively well off, have developed an ability to have enclaves of people living in the greatest misery without almost noticing them.

Henry David Thoreau:
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Henry David Thoreau:
If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC:
Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.

Isabel Allende:
We live in an era where masses of people come and go across a hostile planet, desolate and violent. Refugees, emigrants, exiles, deportees. We are a tragic contingent.

John L. Lewis:
Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America.

Justice William O. Douglas:
As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.

Lillian Hellman:
Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?

Lillian Hellman:
Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?

Marian Wright Edelman:
You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation.

Martin Luther King, jr.:
An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

Martin Luther King, jr.:
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Maya Angelou:
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

Maya Angelou:
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

Paulo Freire:
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

Pearl S. Buck:
Hunger makes a thief of any man.
Pearl S. Buck:
We send missionaries to China so the Chinese can get to heaven, but we won't let them into our country.

Plato:
An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.

Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn:
The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
[from "Through the Needle's Eye," 1916]

Saul Alinsky:
Last guys don't finish nice.

Sharon Welch:
Resistance to oppression is often based on a love that leads us to value ourselves, and leads us to hope for more
than the established cultural system is willing to grant ... such love is far more energizing than guilt, duty, or self-sacrifice. Love for others leads us to accept accountability (in contrast to feeling guilt) and motivates our search for ways to end our complicity with structures of oppression. Solidarity does not require self-sacrifice, but an enlargement of the self to include community with others. [The Feminist Ethic of Risk]

Sharon Welch:
Injustice can be eliminated, but human conflicts and natural limitations cannot be removed. The conflicts of social life and the limitations of nature cannot be controlled or transcended. They can, however, be endured and survived. It is possible for there to be a dance with life, a creative response to its intrinsic limits and challenges ... [A Feminist Ethic of Risk]

Simone Weil:
Obvious and inexorable oppression that cannot be overcome does not give rise to revolt but to submission.

Stephen Jay Gould:
I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

Studs Terkel:
Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell.

Thomas Jefferson:
The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few to ride them.

William E. Gladstone :
All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.

Thursday September 3, 2009, 2:05 am
Done. Thanks Jelica. Take a moment to browse through the quotes on injustice above. There are a few that really grabbed me. Thanks for that Wolfweeps

Thursday September 3, 2009, 9:29 am
Message sent. Thank you for taking action. Thank you for speaking out. We understand that you are busy, and we appreciate your time and effort.

Thanks Jelica!

Thursday September 3, 2009, 9:41 pm
Message sent. Thank you for taking action.
Thank you for speaking out.
ANYTIME ANYTHING TO STOP HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES ... KUDOS TO AI

Friday September 4, 2009, 11:06 am
Thannnx... these countries are known for their violence... it should be stopped as it is a violation against someones democratic rights

Saturday September 5, 2009, 9:04 am
Done Jelica (if a bit late..) thank you and thanks Wolfsweeps for the quotes!