This past March in the Rayburn Foyer Room, here on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, images and stories of Haitians were exhibited as a “commemorative piece that captures the ongoing plight of Haitians, their spirit of perseverance, and how grassroots and other civil society leaders are striving to create a more equitable Haiti."
By Ezra Millstein
As Church World Service reported, this exhibit was promoted in conjunction with “Haiti Advocacy Days” in which 50 civil society leaders from Haiti, the Haitian diaspora and U.S. humanitarian agencies came to DC to meet with officials in the U.S. State Department, Obama Administration and U.S. Congress.
By Ben Depp
This exhibit was sponsored by the Haiti Advocacy Working Group (HAWG) which was formed shortly after the devastating January 12th, 2010 earthquake to coordinate advocacy efforts for effective and just disaster relief, reconstruction and long term U.S. development policy toward Haiti.
By Elizabeth Whelan
View more photos and read stories from the catalogue here.
President Obama was elected with a campaign of hope, and change. Those
of us who care about Latin America hoped that U.S. foreign policy
towards the region, too often unilateral and focused on military
solutions, would also change.
A year ago, at a summit of Latin America’s leaders, President Obama hit a
note that resonated well with his counterparts: “I pledge to you that
we seek an equal partnership. There is no senior partner and junior
partner in our relations.”
After that hopeful moment, though, the new administration stumbled at
the starting gate. 2009 was a rough year for U.S. policy toward Latin
America and the Caribbean. Latin American governments and civil society
groups were disappointed by the Obama Administration’s inattention,
vacillation on democracy and human rights, and failure of imagination in
creating more humane policies, especially after it secretly negotiated a
defense agreement with Colombia and backed off from efforts to urge
resignation of the coup regime in Honduras despite an admirably united
Latin American and OAS response to protect the democratic order.
“It's important to talk about the terrible things that are
happening, but the media always covers the negative. It’s more
important to talk about what is rarely discussed—that the people are
organizing themselves. Not much has been said about how the country is
different now, or at least that there are new ideas now about what
policies should be like and how we can change things. I wanted to bring
that sense of hope and possibility here. The belief that a new America
is possible, a different order is possible.”
"With the Clinton Administration, Cuban artists were more able to come
to the US.... There was a wonderful event in Cuba in the
1999 when a large number of musical artists from the US came to Cuba
and met with Cuban artists. It produced songs, new working
relationships, wonderful paths and bridges—projects that were all
terminated with the Bush Administration. It was very telling that when
I was denied a visa in 2004 to do a tour in United States, and many
Cuban youth protested in Miami. How could it have been that they left
Cuba looking for the land of the free and they weren’t even allowed to
listen to their own musicians?”
The international community initially celebrated an agreement
negotiated in Honduras, on October 28th, between coup regime leader
Roberto Micheletti and deposed President Manuel Zelaya, which could
have put an end to the crisis. But, less than a week later, the accord
started crumbling apart.
On November 5th, 2009, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) sponsored a briefing of
civil society leaders and activists on Capitol Hill to talk about the
human rights violations that have been occurring in Honduras since the
coup and give their vision for the future. The leaders’ visits were
coordinated by the Quixote Center and Just Associates, and LAWGEF
pitched in to help. The following quotes were taken from that briefing.
We need democracy now, not later. And while all of us tell stories, time is going on, and it is the poor people who are suffering from torture and persecution. My last message is do not be silent during this time. To be silent is to be complicit. We need people speaking out; we need people like you to speak up for the Honduran people.
Becoming Better Neighbors: Tales from Organizing for a Just U.S. Policy toward Latin America captures 25 years of LAWG's history through interviews with the personalities who participated in creating the history. This publication follows the story of LAWG as an organization from its beginning in 1983 through 2008.
Becoming Better Neighbors: Tales from Organizing for a Just U.S. Policy toward Latin America captures 25 years of LAWG's history through interviews with staff, coalition partners and activists. Learn how we worked together to move U.S. policy from war to peace in Central America, lift the ban on the sale of food and medicine to Cuba, and increase attention to human rights and the needs of victims of war in Colombia—among many other successful campaigns.
September's Shadow examines how the U.S. response to 9/11 has affected U.S. - Latin American relations. Using polls, op-eds, aid trends, and case studies of Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, and Cuba, the report details the fallout from the Bush Administration's foreign policy, as well as Latin American governments' cooperation on practical counterterrorism measures.
We Will Be Known by the Company We Keep draws upon the experience of U.S. Cold War policy in Latin America to offer eight simple lessons for the United States in the war on terrorism.
