2011

We’re up against some big forces in our struggle against the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA): major corporations, the Chamber of Commerce, stubborn Republicans, free trade-loving Democrats, and even the President. They have money, power, and connections. But we have conviction.

We have hardworking partners in the United States. We have incredibly brave community leaders and human rights defenders on the ground in Colombia telling us every day about why this trade deal will be so devastating for those already hit hardest by Colombia’s conflict. And we have something better than a slingshot to fight this Goliath—YOU.

Will you chip in $50 or more today to make sure we can do everything in our power to stop this harmful trade agreement?

“And the worst of all is when the things happen to you and you can’t do anything,” said María, a displaced woman in Colombia who has endured abuses by guerrillas, paramilitaries and the army.  “And you have to just watch and simply be silent. If you say something, it will happen all the same. That’s when I saw that the only real right we have as people is to be silent. Maybe that’s the real right I’ve exercised here, in Colombia.  It’s watch and be silent, if you want to survive.”

LAWGEF is pleased to publish this selection from a book coming out in 2012 from McSweeney’s Voice of Witness, by editors Max Schoening and Sibylla Brodzinsky.  This will be a powerful collection of oral histories, compiling the life stories of a selection of Colombia’s over 5 million internally displaced people. In their own words, narrators recount their lives before displacement, the reasons for their flight, their personal tragedies and struggles to rebuild their lives. By amplifying these unheard voices through the intimacy of first person narrative, this Voice of Witness book aims to increase awareness of Colombia’s human rights catastrophe and illuminate the human impact of the country’s ongoing war.

Greetings from post-earthquake and post-hurricane Washington, DC. The next (un)natural disaster due to hit our nation’s capitol is the return of the Congress to Washington after Labor Day (shout-out to Rep. Jeff Flake, see below).