Human Rights
Please keep in your prayers those who are fasting and praying at the U.S. capitol between January 11 to 21, keeping vigil for the closing of the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo. As an opening to their prayer vigil Wednesday, they engaged in a little prophetic street theater in front of the Justice Department.
In August 2007, candidate Obama promised to close Guantanamo, saying, "As President, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act and adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists."
In January 2009, one of President Obama's first official acts was to sign an executive order promising to close Guantanamo within one year. "This is me following through on not just a commitment I made during the campaign, but I think an understanding that dates back to our founding fathers, that we are willing to observe core standards of conduct, not just when it's easy, but also when it's hard," he said.
To commemorate the anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the Haiti Partners youth choir, WOZO, sings about those who have pas
In the documentary Earth Made of Glass, director Deborah Scranton weaves together the stories of Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Jean Pierre Sagahutu, two men who struggled to seek the truth about what really happened in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. How could thousands of people die every day for three months while the Western world stood silent? At the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival, Becky Garrison, author of Jesus Died for This?, sat down with Deborah Scranton (director/producer), Reid Carolin (producer), and Jean Pierre Sagahutu to dicuss how this film can shed light on a story that has gone underreported in the United States.
Becky Garrison: Why do you feel the Rwandan genocide received so little attention in 1994?
Reid Carolin: We had just come off Mogadishu [the "Black Hawk down" incident in October 1993], and that was a colossal disaster for the U.S. Some responsibility should fall on the media for generally misreporting what was actually going on in Rwanda. The real tragedy is to go back there 15 years later and look through all the reports and see what isn't true. The coverage was so poor that this story has not been understood correctly.
Maria, 7, and Lupe, 3, are our next-door neighbors. For some reason, they have decided they like coming to our house. I'm not exactly sure why, we have nothing that I would consider appealing to a 3- and 7-year-old, but they come ... almost daily. Because of this, and our history with their family over the past few years, we have gotten to know their story quite intimately.