Honduras Action Alert and Media Suggestions!
Latin America Solidarity Coalition
Urgent Action Alert
July 1, 2009
US Corporate Media Reporting Badly on Honduras Coup
Write Letter-to-the-Editor to Correct Media Inaccuracies
Your Elected Representatives are Coming Home for the Long Weekend
Tell Them By Law the US Has to Cut Off Aid to the Coup Government!
The corporate media in the US is consistently using language that misinforms US residents about the continuing coup. We encourage you to write letters-to-the editor, call in to radio talk shows, send emails and make calls to the television stations and networks
Secondly, Congress is breaking for the July 4 recess which means Senators and Representatives will be in their home districts and states over the long week-end. Contact district offices and talk to your elected officials at picnics and other holiday events. Tell them that, by violating US law to cut off all aid to governments that come to power through a military coup, the US is undermining the united demand of the rest of the world that elected President Manuel Zelaya be returned to office without conditions.
For an excellent letter from Massachusetts Representative James McGovern to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that you can use with your Representative, go here: rep-mcgovern-letter-honduras.pdf
As we were writing this alert, the Honduran Congress suspended all civil liberties for 24 hours, banned demonstrations and free speech, and allow homes to be entered without a warrant. With President Zelaya declaring that he will return to Honduras on Saturday, time is of the essence to prevent serious bloodshed. The US government, and President Obama specifically, must act now.
Read more…
Coup in Honduras: Update and Action Alert
Join Demand for Return of President Zelaya!
Stand in Solidarity with the People of Honduras!
June 29, 2009
[This action alert comes to you from the Alliance for Global Justice and its member projects, the Nicaragua Network, the Campaign for Labor Rights, the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, and the Respect for Democracy Campaign.]
OAS, Obama Administration, ALBA, United Nations, international popular movements all call for restoration of Manuel Zelaya to the presidency of Honduras!
The Alliance for Global Justice joins the Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC)—of which we are an active member—in condemning the military coup against the democratically elected Honduran President Zelaya. The Honduran social movements, who are courageously resisting the military take-over through protests, occupations and strikes, are calling on the international community to speak up in defense of real and direct democracy, for life, justice, liberty, dignity and peace.
As this action alert is being written, more and more Hondurans are protesting in Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, Progreso and other cities where they are being attacked by police with tear gas, water cannon and clubs. A number have been seriously injured. But two infantry battalions are reported to have risen against the coup government and said that they would not obey orders from the illegal president!
Call the State Department and the White House and ask for actions, not merely words, including:
1. A cut off of all US aid (as required by US law) until Zelaya is safely returned to office. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today the US is delaying a decision on aid cut-off, exactly the wrong message to send to the Honduran coup leaders.
2. Financial sanctions against the coup plotters;
3. An investigation into what signals U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens gave to coup plotters before the coup.
Call the State Department comment line at: 202-647-4000 or 1-800-877-8339; and call the White House: Comment Line: 202-456-1111; or to write a message to President Barack Obama go here.
Read more…
June 2009 Issue of the Nicaragua Monitor!
Jobs for rural road improvement were among those lost when Millennium Challenge Grant funds were cut off.
Puede ver la nueva edición del periódico de la Red de Solidaridad con Nicaragua aqui. Está lista para imprimir. Para ver cada artículo en estilo web, vea abajo.
To see the new issue of the Nicaragua Monitor ready to print out, click here.
To read the articles laid out for the web, click on each article below.
US Millennium Challenge Funds Canceled; European Budget Support on Hold
Boycott Flor de Caña: Sugar Workers Turn up the Heat
Bad smell in L.A. Nemagon Ruling
Suspend CAFTA; Stop Panama and Colombia Accords!
Month In Review: The News from Nicaragua
For Monitor archives, click here.
Something smells bad in Los Angeles Nemagon ruling!
Banana workers camp in Managua near the National Assembly.
An interview with writer Vicent Boix
By Giorgio Trucchi [Translated by Katherine Hoyt]
Introduction
More than 15 years have gone by since former banana workers affected by DBCP—Nemagon or Fumazone—began to take their first steps to get the transnational corporations that have produced, sold and applied this mortal agrochemical to take responsibility for tens of thousands of resulting sicknesses and deaths.
It has been a long history of struggle and hope, one that was a symbol of resistance in the face of transnational power and its exploitative economic model. But it was also a history of divisions, fights, and insults among the groups of affected workers, lawyers, and politicians which, in the end, weakened the process of achieving worker demands.
In 2007, a jury of the Superior Court of Los Angeles, CA, found two U.S. transnational corporations, Dow Chemical Company and Dole Fruit Company, Inc., responsible for causing sterility of Nicaraguan workers because of direct exposure to Nemagon and awarded US$3.3 million to six of 12 claimants.
Then, in a second historic decision, Dole was asked to pay an additional US$2.5 million to five of the six in punitive damages. However, this second damage award was thrown out by Judge Victoria Gerrard Chaney. U.S. attorney Juan Jose Dominguez and his collaborator in Nicaragua Antonio Hernandez have appealed that decision.
Because of these historic decisions, the lawyers decided to present other cases in Los Angeles, but what happened was catastrophic.
Read more…
Boycott Flor de Caña in Support of Sugar Workers!
The Flor de Caña Boycott Group Extends its Protest with a Campaign of Letters to Importers around the World
In April 2009 a youth group launched a boycott against Flor de Caña, the famous Nicaraguan rum. The boycott is in solidarity with former sugar cane workers who are members of the Nicaraguan Association of Those Affected by Chronic Renal Insufficiency (ANAIRC). The youth have decided to extend their campaign by sending protest letters to the Compañía Licorera de Nicaragua SA, which together with the Nicaragua Sugar Estates Ltd. and the San Antonio Sugar Mill belong to the economically powerful Pellas Group. The protest letter campaign is also aimed at all the companies that import and distribute Flor de Caña rum around the world.
Read more…
View videos of LASC-NACLA teach-ins!
Plenary panel at LASC-NACLA Teach-In at Univ. of CA, Berkeley.
Between February and May 2009, the Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC) and the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) held a series of three teach-ins in Washington, DC, in Chicago, IL, and in the San Francisco Bay Area in CA. The title of the teach-ins was: “Not Just Change, But Justice” and each had a separate focus. The focus of the Washington, DC, teach-in was on U.S. militarization in Latin America, the second in Chicago was on issues of sovereignty and democracy manipulation and the third in California was on U.S. Trade Policy and its Impacts on Food, Land, and Immigration in the Americas.
You can view videos of presentations at the Washington, DC, teach-in by clicking here.
Sign petition asking Nicaragua to withdraw from the School of the Americas!
The US grassroots movement to close the Army School of the Americas (now called Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) is mobilizing for victory this summer under a new administration and a new Congress. Last year the vote to close the SOA would have succeeded had we changed only six votes. Five Latin American countries have already announced their withdrawal from the SOA. Please sign the petition, co-sponsored by the Nicaragua Network and SOA Watch, asking Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to withdraw Nicaragua from the SOA.
Click here to read the petition in English and Spanish and sign on!
Click here to watch a video of Fr. Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch, speak at a recent teach-in!
Announcing the film “The Living Documents: One Land, One Voice, One Struggle”
[Attorney Maria Luisa Acosta in her Bluefields office before the murder of her husband.]
A documentary by Mallory Sohmer
The documentary was filmed in Bluefields, Monkey Point, Pearl Lagoon, the Pearl Cays, Leon and Managua, Nicaragua. It tells the story of the murder of Francisco Garcia, a Bluefields businessman and science professor, who was killed in an attempt to silence his wife, indigenous rights lawyer Maria Luisa Acosta. The film includes testimony of lawyers involved in the case and of indigenous leaders of the communities which were represented by Attorney Acosta in their struggles to preserve their traditional lands.
To see scenes from the documentary, go here.
To download the film in its entirety, go here.
Write to Nicaraguan authorities demanding that they bring to justice those responsible for the murder of Francisco Garcia. Contact information and sample message below.
Read more…
Watch New Video on Banana Workers! (April 8, 2009)
A group of students at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania calling themselves “Hear Out Yellow,” or HOY for short, traveled to Nicaragua, and with a grant from Projects for Peace Davis Foundation, produced a moving short documentary on the issue of the Nicaraguan banana workers who have been make ill by the pesticide Nemagon. The film is now posted on YouTube divided into two parts. To learn more about the students’ project visit here.
To learn more about the issues surrounding the Nicaraguan banana workers, visit here.
Interesting English Language Articles on Nicaragua
In this space the Nicaragua Network will post links to recent important and/or interesting English language articles on Nicaragua in the publications of other organizations.
From Tortilla con Sal:
Obituary : Alexis Argüello Bohórquez (1952 - 2009)By Karla Jacobs, 1st July 2009
Alexis Argüello, the legendary Nicaraguan boxing world champion who has served as Mayor of Managua since his electoral triumph in November 2008, tragically died this morning. The cause of death has not yet been confirmed, but by all accounts Argüello, who has struggled with depression most of his life, committed suicide. In honour of one of Nicaragua’s most loved personalities, Tortilla con Sal has put together this short obituary.
From the monthly journal envio May 2009
The Constant Potter
By María López Vigil
Having known Ron Rivera, I’m sure he would have felt deeply upset by an article about him, but would have been thrilled by an article about his “Filtron.” Since Ron is no longer with us and we can’t argue this point, I’m writing about the legacy of this exemplary gringo-Nicaraguan, perhaps the person who has worked most passionately to ensure that all human beings on the planet have clean water to drink.
The auditorium of Managua’s Central American University (UCA) was beyond standing room that September 6th Saturday. The smell of wet earth, drenched by a particularly heavy rainy season, was the celebration’s first evocation of water, but certainly not the last. Placed inside a clay pot filter just like the one he had taught thousands of people to make, Ron Rivera’s ashes entered the auditorium embraced by his wife. Behind her, their two sons and two daughters. He was met with an ovation. And we began to weep and to remember him, singing.
It was a farewell to one of Nicaragua’s best sons.
Four Star Rating from Charity Evaluator!
Alliance for Global Justice (of which the Nicaragua Network is a member project) has for the second year in a row received a 4-star rating from Charity Navigator, America’s largest independent evaluator of charities.
Here is what Charity Navigator wrote to the AGJ the first year: “Charity Navigator salutes your charitable efforts. Receiving four out of a possible four stars indicates that your organization excels, as compared to other charities in America, in successfully managing the finances of your organization in an efficient and effective manner. This rise in your rating is an exceptional feat, especially given the economic challenges many charities have had to face in the last year.”
