Stand by Colombia's Victims of Violence

• California: Statewide organizing. To get involved contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• California: Mingas Network. To get involved contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• California: Marin Interfaith Taskforce on the Americas. To email them, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
• Colorado: Denver Justice and Peace Committee organizing. To get involved contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• DC Metro Area: To get involved contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Illinois: Chicago organizing. To get involved contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Indiana: To get involved contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Massachusetts: In the Boston area get in touch with This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Or if you're closer to Worchester This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
• Maryland: Baltimore. To contact other involved activists This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
• Maine: Statewide. To get involved contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Michigan: Detroit. To get involved contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Minnesota: Minneapolis. To get involved contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Nationwide: Presbyterian Peace Fellowship organizing faith-based action! To get involved contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• New Mexico: To contact other involved activists This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
• New York: Statewide. To get involved contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. To get involved contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• New York: Buffalo. To get involved contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Ohio: Statewide. To get involved contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Oregon: Eugene. To get involved contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Oregon: Portland. To get involved contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Oregon: Salem. To get involved contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Pennsylvania: Statewide. To get involved contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Texas: Statewide. To get involved contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Washington: Seattle. To get involved contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Wisconsin and Upper Midwest: To get involved contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

• Click here to send an email to your elected officials today.
   
• Catch your legislators on facebook and twitter! Click here to read our social media strategy and get posting.
   

• Click here to send a letter to the editor of your local paper.

• Share our two-minute video about the negative effects of the U.S.-Colombia FTA on email, facebook, twitter... just help us get it out!
   
• Like our new "Stop the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement" facebook page.
   

Congress will be on recess August 8th through September 6th, meaning your Representative will be back in their hometown office for an entire month. Together, we have the opportunity to make sure our members of Congress don’t just vacation during their time away from Capitol Hill, but instead hear from all of us, urging them to oppose the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. So we have to get organized now.

Join our August Recess Get-Active Campaign Conference Call on Thursday, August 11th to learn how you can turn up the heat in your district!

On Monday, July 11, activists from the United States and Colombia organized an emergency demonstration against the pending Colombia Free Trade Agreement across from the White House.

This could be it.

The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) could come up for a vote any day now unless our legislators really see some resistance. So please participate in our National Call-in Day to Congress TODAY Monday, July 11th!

"We write to express our deep concern for the rights of Colombia's Afro descendents and indigenous populations, and to affirm that the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) should not be considered as drafted. We believe that the United States and the Colombian Government should take the immediate steps to strenghthen Afro-Colombians' territorial rights and prevent further displacement of Afro-Colombians." Read the full letter here (PDF).

List of Members who signed letter:

• Hank Johnson (D-GA-4)
• John Conyers (D-MI-14)
• Gwen Moore (D-WI-4)
• Bobby Rush (D-IL-1)
• Barbara Lee (D-CA-9)
• Donals Payne (D-NJ-10)
• Raul Grijalva (D-AZ-7)
• Michael Michaud (D-ME-2)
• Keith Ellison (D-MN-5)
• Maurice Hinchey (D-NY-22)
• Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL-2)
• Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX-18)
• Lynn Woolsey (D-CA-6)
• James McGovern (D-MA-3)
• Bob Filner (D-CA-51)
• Dennis Kucinish (D-OH-10)
• Maxine Waters (D-CA-35)
• Jan Schakowsky (D-IL-9)
• Marcy Kaptur (D-OH-9)
• Bennie Thompson (D-MS-2)
• Chellie Pingree (D-ME-1)
• Emanuel Cleaver (DD-MO-5)
• Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC-At large)
• Danny Davis (D-IL-7)

The steps up to the conference room were plastered with faces. Faces of the missing fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, mothers and wives. They looked out at us, some faded, torn photographs, others as real as if they could be ready to pick up their child, eat dinner with their family, head off to work, today.  Gathered in this hotel conference room in Bogotá were the women and men who had lost a part of themselves when their loved one was taken away in “the perfect crime”: forced disappearance.

Yesterday, June 23, 2011, the Latin America Working Group (LAWG), the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), and more than 400 other organizations, academics, and individuals from both the United States and Colombia, sent a letter to the U.S. Congress asking representatives to vote no on the pending U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Human rights violations in Colombia–abuses against labor activists, Afro-Colombians, human rights activists and others–continue to take place at alarmingly high levels. In this climate, it would be a mistake to approve the FTA.

With the debate over the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) intensifying, we’re pulling out all the stops to make our message heard. This week we’re taking over the internet and we need your help!

Watch our new two minute video opposing the U.S.-Colombia FTA and then spread the word about it: