December, 29 2017, 11:00am EDT
Honduras: Solidarity With Teachers and Others Fighting for Democracy
WASHINGTON
We all know we are under assault on a million fronts here in Chicago and in the U.S.. Sometimes that makes it hard to also keep an eye on what is going on around the world, but we want to encourage CTU members and supporters to take a moment and learn about the struggle in Honduras against electoral fraud, the brutal repression people are facing, and the visionary resistance the people are waging.
Why should we pay attention?
- Because we are fighting the same enemies. The same financial interests behind closing schools and privatizing education in Chicago are also supporting the Honduran dictatorship. There they don't just have charter schools, they have corporate-run charter cities! The powerful behind these policies work together, and we also need to work together if we are going to win.
- Because our tax dollars are funding their death. 34 people have been killed in Honduras just for peacefully protesting against electoral fraud. The Honduran military and police have received over $100 million from U.S. taxpayers since the 2009 coup d'etat, during which many teachers were killed for protesting. They are using that money to carry out a brutal wave of repression.
- Because we have important lessons to learn from Honduran teachers' resistance. As authoritarian rule begins to creep up on us here at home, we need to learn lessons from those resisting outright dictatorships around the world. Few places have social movements as bold and visionary as in Honduras right now, where in the last month they have been able to shut down over 200 roads around the country, convene marches of millions, and force a major crisis for a dictator who has yet to be recognized by most of the world or fully install himself into power despite using overwhelming force to try to crush the protests against him. This repressive regime has yet to fully take power because people have not given up. Teachers have played a major role in opposing repression and are often described as the backbone of the resistance.
- Because this crisis will provoke a mass wave of refugees. After the 2009 coup d'etat, migration from Honduras to the U.S. skyrocketed, leading to tens of thousands losing their lives while passing through Mexico and thousands of children ending up at the border as refugees. This current crisis is only exacerbating those pressures in what is already the world's most violent country.
- Because Honduran teacher leaders are specifically asking Chicago teachers and their supporters to help.
Here's some background on what's going on, followed by a call to action:
As you may have heard, Honduras is in flames. There were elections on November 26th where the two leading contenders were Salvador Nasralla of the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship and Juan Orlando Hernandez, who flagrantly violated the Honduran constitution, which prohibits a sitting president from running re-election. Hernandez has been consolidating his grip on power since his last electoral fraud in 2013. His administration was found to have stolen millions from the public hospital system in Honduras to help finance his previous campaign, officials in his government have been directly implicated in the assassination of indigenous leader Berta Caceres, and he has militarized Honduran society like never before seen, especially through his creation of a military police force that responds directly to him without any accountability. He has given away hundreds of concessions to mining and dam companies, deepened privatization, attacked teachers and other unionized workers, had close family members implicated in ties to narco-traffickers, and relentlessly criminalized and attacked human rights defenders.
Hondurans rejected him overwhelmingly at the polls. The head of the electoral tribunal, a close friend of Hernandez and a member of his party, refused to release results that showed the opposition alliance having an "irreversible lead" with most votes counted and the opposition up by 5%. A rebellion by one of the magistrates and pressure from international observers forced the release of these results and Hondurans began to celebrate for several days, despite the system "going down" and no further results released for days. When the system came back up, all the remaining votes broke for Juan Orlando Hernandez overwhelmingly, the hard drive had been re-formatted and ballot boxes were found opened -- all of which is documented in the Organization of American States' report. The final "results" showed Juan Orlando Hernandez with a razor-thin margin.
Hondurans cried foul and took to the streets in numbers not seen since at least the 2009 coup d'etat, and surpassing that resistance in many ways. They have shut down all of the major roads in hundreds of blockades around the country and held marches of millions denouncing the fraud.
The response has been the use of live ammunition by the military police, leaving 34 people killed, hundreds wounded, and thousands detained. The regime is desperately clinging to power through the use of force alone, and people are not giving up, leading to a quickly spiraling human rights crisis. Tear gas is being shot indiscriminately into densely populated areas, leaving numerous children hospitalized. Even the main public hospital was tear gassed.
But Hondurans have not given up, and are stepping up their struggle. The least we can do as a starting point is to pay attention. Here are some resources to learn more, followed by a call to action. Make sure to watch the video specifically directed to Chicago teachers from a Honduran teacher leader as a starting point.
Background articles and videos :
- Honduras in Flames, a brief video overviewing the crisis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emy0sUCGox0
- NY Times: "America's Blind Eye to Honduras' Tyrant"
- Honduran journalist Sandra Maribel Sanchez: This is an insurrection
- The Economist: Analyzing Juan Orlando Hernandez's Disputed Election "Victory" in Honduras
- The Guardian: Crisis of Honduran Democracy has its roots in US tacit support for 2009 coup d'etat
- Letter from 27 members of congress to White House + State Department calling to cut off security aid, stop repression
- Response to the U.S. recognition of Juan Orlando by the Honduras Solidarity Network
People can follow the crisis on the La Voz de los de Abajo blog: HondurasResists.blogspot.com
Call to action:
- January 27th at 10am we will participate along with other Chicago unions and organizations in a citywide teach-in and action downtown (location TBA) in solidarity. Please mark your calendars and begin to spread the word.
- Call your representatives. You can call (202) 224-3121 and give your zip code and be connected with your representative. Tell them "My name is ________, I am a constituent and live at _____________ and a member of _____________. I am outraged about the human rights violations and electoral fraud in Honduras. I want to know what my representative is doing and ask that you 1) call for an end to all U.S. military and police aid to Honduras until the human rights violations cease and 2) call on the State Department to take back its recognition of Juan Orlando Hernandez, whose candidacy was illegal under the Honduran constitution and whose electoral victory the OAS and European Union have both said was mired in irregularities and whose results both have refused to certify as a result."
- Call Senators Durbin - (202) 224-2152 - and Duckworth - (202) 224-2854 - and deliver this same message. Also ask Senator Durbin to stand with Senator Leahy and use his vote in the Appropriations Committee to hold up funding to Honduras through the Alliance for Prosperity until the human rights violations end and there is a transparent process to ensure the Honduran people's will is respected.
- Spread the word! Forward this email to your friends, neighbors and co-workers and re-post the above videos and articles to your social media.
An affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT), CTU is the third largest teachers local in the country and the largest local union in Illinois.
LATEST NEWS
US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
slammed the bill as a "xenophobic attack" meant to silence "Black voices, brown voices, LBGTQIA+ voices, [and] young voices."
Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
toldNola.com earlier this week.
"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
ordered county election offices to stop registering voters with past felony convictions who have not received official pardons. The move came after the state's unicameral Legislature passed a bill granting voting eligibility to felons immediately after they have completed their sentences instead of waiting two years.
"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that campaigners linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
"And it mandates oil and gas extraction in our oceans," he continued. "The insignificant crumbs thrown at renewable energy do nothing to address the climate emergency."
"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else," she continued. "It would unleash more drilling on federal lands and waters, unnecessarily rush the review of proposed oil and gas export projects, and lift the Biden administration's pause on new LNG exports."
"We urge Congress to reject this proposal and commit to action that protects frontline communities from the impacts of fossil fuel development and the climate crisis," Rosenbluth added.
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
"We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry," she stressed. "We need new solutions for permitting if we are going to meet our clean energy potential and address the climate challenge. But this is not it."
"This bill would altogether be a leap backward on climate, health, and justice if passed into law," Adams added. "The Senate should reject it and look toward alternative solutions already being considered."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular