Twenty years ago one of the world’s most recognized symbols of government repression, The Berlin Wall, came down. November 9th, 1989, is remembered as the day that East Berliners took back their right to freedom of movement by storming the barricade (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13). What has changed in the last two decades- do other similar walls exist today? Do you have a story about the Berlin Wall or a memory of defending your right to free movement?

While many of us are enjoying the Columbus Day holiday, it is perhaps appropriate to use such free time to consider the differing perspectives of what this day signifies both to the history of the United States and the world. Consider this passage from Christopher Columbus’s log book: “[The natives] do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance…They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” While Columbus’s ‘discovery’ marked the beginning of contact between Europe and the Americas, it also signified the foundations of imperialism that spawned the global slave trade and the genocide (the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, any national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such) of indigenous peoples in the Americas that has continued for more than 500 years. In Costa Rica, October 12th is celebrated as Día de las Culturas (Day of the Cultures). In Venezuela, it is recognized as Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Day of Indigenous Resistance). For a man who never set foot on what is now U.S. soil, what is at stake in the United States maintaining a day of honor for Christopher Columbus? Whose history does this holiday represent?

Here is a (rather long) excerpt from the first chapter of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” entitled Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress. A Youtube video entitled “Reconsider Columbus Day” has also been circulating in the human rights/indigenous justice blogosphere.

October 11th is Coming Out Day, an internationally-recognized awareness day meant to recognize gay identities and open community dialogue on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer issues. In the largest demonstration for gay rights this decade, thousands of gay activists and their allies took to the streets in Washington in the National Equality March, which was covered in this New York Times article. Meanwhile, here in Atlanta, I read a very powerfully written student op-ed in the Emory Wheel entitled Gay Consciousness Beyond Politics which highlights the importance of developing a consciousness that embraces the inherent dignity of gay individuals, in addition to the fight to gain equality in legislation and the larger political arena. I was moved when author Daniel Turton made the big-picture connection across movements and referenced South African anti-apartheid leader, Stephen Biko, whose phrase “Black is Beautiful” signified that in order for oppressed people to achieve liberation in society, they must first achieve liberation in their minds- which requires a transformation in consciousness in which they must first see themselves as human beings above all else.

In light of “World Day Against the Death Penalty” on October 10th, leaders of the European Union have called on all countries of the world to abolish the death penalty. Rights organizations in the United States, such as the American Civil Liberties Union have joined the call in urging the United States to abolish the death penalty. Amnesty International has a very informative fact sheet on death penalty statistics around the world, reminding those of us in the United States that we live in one of the only industrialized democracies that continues to administer death as a form of punishment. How has the Troy Davis case here in Georgia shaped public discourse on the death penalty? Has the Obama Administration’s increased international engagement shifted the political opportunity for nation-wide abolition?

Photo: Scott Langley

Mahatma Gandhi (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi), was born 140 years ago today. Gandhi’s birthday is commemorated as a national holiday in India as Gandhi Jayanti, and is celebrated around the world as the International Day of Non-Violence. Gandhi first employed non-violent civil disobedience to achieve equal rights for the Indian community in South Africa, and was later utilized in the fight for land rights for peasants and farmers, women’s rights, and India’s struggle for independence from the British. The use of non-violent civil disobedience has diffused across borders and has been an influential tactic in hundreds of movements worldwide, including the Black Freedom Movement in the United States. Gandhi was assassinated in January 1948, less than a year before the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. How have Gandhi’s principles of non-violence, as well as simplicity and economic self-sufficiency, influenced the ideal of human rights? Are they connected, for example, to Martin Luther King Jr.’s caution against the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism?

In Dharamshala and around the world, Tibetans and their supporters take to the streets to protest China’s 60th anniversary. Meanwhile, in Tibet, travel restrictions are in place that ban foreigners and journalists from entry between September 22 and October 8th. What human rights issues are at stake for the Tibetan exiles? Should the Chinese government violate the right to free movement to foreign travelers, even for the purpose of maintaining ’social order?’

September 11 is a precarious date indeed. Since 2001, this date has entered into the realm of memory, both within the minds of individuals and in the construction of a collective U.S. narrative. I say this date is precarious because, in my own experience, my memory from that day- hidden within the sanctuary of my individual being- has come to signify something that is increasingly fractured from the narrative shaped in the mainstream media. I thus find myself almost dreading this anniversary, not only because of the pain I feel for those who suffered, but also because I must confront a dominant memory being forged that claims that this pain is uniquely ‘ours’ and exclusively ‘American.’

However, looking back, the memory of September 11th is also the day I felt the most human- by this I mean that I felt infinitely small, and on equal footing with the rest of the world to the raw vulnerability of human life. These feelings are not uniquely mine, nor are they monopolized by North Americans on September 11. Rather, they are genuine feelings of sorrow, humility, and empathy that human beings feel in the face of tragedy. Yet somehow, it seems that these individual memories are often silenced by the official collective memory, which makes claim to exceptional suffering as a justification for exceptionalism in foreign policy. Ariel Dorfman, the renowned Chilean playwright, captures in his essay “The Last September 11” the universality of pain and the lessons we must learn from the world’s many September 11s, including the U.S.-backed military coup in Chile on September 11, 1973. Dorfman’s argument for the fundamental respect for the equal dignity and value of human life, regardless of the borders in which one lives, is the foundation of universal human rights, and I hope that by rediscovering our individual and deeply personal memories of September 11, 2001, we as a nation of people will begin to remember that feeling of vulnerability and recognize our citizenship in the global community.

The Bombing of La Moneda in Chile; September 11, 1973