Amnesty International Group 22 Pasadena/Caltech News
Volume XVIII Number 6, June 2010
UPCOMING EVENTS
Thursday, June 24, 7:30 PM. Monthly
Meeting. Caltech Y is located off San Pasqual
between Hill and Holliston, south side. You will
see two curving walls forming a gate to a path--
our building is just beyond. This month we are
showing a 30-minute film, "The Response," a
courtroom drama based upon the actual
transcripts of the Guantanamo military
tribunals. A discussion will follow. Please join
us! Refreshments, Fair Trade included, will be
provided.
Tuesday, July 13, 7:30 PM. Letter writing
meeting at Caltech Athenaeum, corner of Hill
and California in Pasadena. This informal
gathering is a great way for newcomers to get
acquainted with Amnesty! During the summer
we are outside on the lawn next to the
Athenaeum.
Sunday, July 18, 6:30 PM. Rights Readers
Human Rights Book Discussion group. This
month we read "Strength in What Remains" by
Tracy Kidder.
COORDINATOR'S CORNER
Hi everyone
Happy Father's Day! Hope everyone has had a
good day. My family will have a joint mother's
birthday and Father's Day celebration next
weekend.
School is almost out and I look forward to
summer plans - working 17 days, driving to
Oregon to see Rob's family, and finding time for
fun and relaxation!
Here's some activities you may want to
participate in:
There will be a candlelight march and rally for
Troy Davis at the LA City Hall June 22. For
further information, see the Death Penalty section
of this newsletter.
Another event of interest is happening June 27 in
Pasadena. "First Do No Harm: the Role of
Medical Professionals in US-Sponsored Torture"
is from 7-8:30 pm at All Saints Church, 132 N.
Euclid, Pasadena, 91101. The keynote speaker is
John Bradshaw, J.D., Director of Policy
Physicians for Human Rights. There will be a
panel discussion. For more information, call 818-
225-0410 or email vclassick@aol.com.
Con carino,
Kathy
RIGHTS READERS
Human Rights Book Discussion Group
Keep up with Rights Readers at
http://rightsreaders@blogspot.com
Next Rights Readers meeting:
Sunday, July 18, 6:30 PM
Vroman's Bookstore
695 E. Colorado Boulevard
In Pasadena
Author Biography
Tracy Kidder graduated from Harvard and
studied at the University of Iowa. He has won the
Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the
Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other
literary prizes. The author of Strength in What
Remains, Mountains Beyond Mountains, My
Detachment, Home Town, Old Friends, Among
Schoolchildren, House, and The Soul of a New
Machine, Kidder lives in Massachusetts and
Maine.
BOOK REVIEW
STRENGTH IN WHAT REMAINS
By Tracy Kidder
Dwight Garner's Review of 'Strength in What
Remains' (September 2, 2009) New York Times
Of course, most writers, from daily reporters to
best-selling authors, get paid for something else:
knowing what they want early on, getting the
goods and then anxiously turning them into
something worth reading. The reason this model
tends to miss more than hit is that the most
precious gems gathered in any journalistic journey
are frequently those found around the edges of a
story.
Kidder has become a high priest of the narrative
arts by diving deep into an improbable subject or
character with little more than a hunch as to what
he might eventually find. Since 1981, when "The
Soul of a New Machine" - the story of a team
creating that era's cutting-edge computer - won
him a Pulitzer and commercial success, he has
worked relentlessly to carry on the tradition of
John McPhee, sublimating ego in a tireless search
for somewhere to hide, for a subject into which to
vanish and live, sometimes for years. Few have
been better at this than Kidder. He has followed a
team of home builders ("House," 1985), a fifth-
grade teacher ("Among School_children," 1989)
and nursing home residents ("Old Friends,"
1993), and in each case emerged - sooty,
battered, blinking in the sunlight - to write books
illuminated by a glowing humanism. This is a feat
of increasing difficulty as an author's fame grows.
The transaction between writer and subject can
easily be stage-managed for market_place effect
- moments overplayed to guide readers to tears
or elation or preordained insights - and prose
often takes on the weight of sentimentality, the
great enemy of good writing, as J. D. Salinger put
it, giving something "more tenderness than God
gives to it."
What happened in this case? While reporting his
2003 best seller, "Mountains Beyond Mountains,"
a fitfully earnest book about a character almost
impossible to love too much - Dr. Paul Farmer,
leader of a global campaign to eradicate
preventable disease - Kidder stumbled across a
spectral African refugee who had signed on with
the doctor's organization, Partners in Health, as a
bit player, a guy helping out, answering e-mail,
"performing any jobs that needed doing." His
name was Deogratias, or "thanks be to God" in
Latin.
"Strength in What Remains" is Deo's story. And
what a tale it is, opening from a passenger seat in
an airliner in war-torn Burundi, where Deo, then
24, is leaving behind what once seemed a
promising life in Africa as a third-year medical
student. It was 1994. Burundi and neighboring
Rwanda were exploding in civil wars, in which
Hutu and Tutsi were slaughtering one another in
one of the 20th century's most horrifying conflicts.
With the help of the privileged family of one of
his med-school friends, Deo is able to escape the
carnage, bound for America.
Soon, with only $200 and no English, Deo is
struggling to survive on the streets of New York.
With remarkable acuity, Kidder puts the reader in
the young man's place, as he sleeps in an
abandoned tenement in Harlem and gets a job for
$15 a day (yes, you read that right) delivering
groceries for Gristedes, the supermarket chain.
Kidder lets the story unfold, staying out of the
way, letting Deo's reactions and insights carry
each page. Though the reader is informed that
Deo witnessed horrors in Burundi, and is haunted
by them, snatches from his past are unearthed
solely to show what he relies on to survive -
backward glances that testify to his resilience.
With many thousands of Africans fleeing their
continent's widening nightmares for America,
Deo's experience can feel like this era's version of
the Ellis Island migration - a story, then and
now, of trauma and forward motion. The reader
is pulled along, feeling rage when the Gristedes
manager pokes at him with a stick "sometimes, it
seemed, just for fun"; shame when the young man
goes tipless, day after day, delivering groceries to
Park Avenue. "You had to get tips," explained a
friend at the store. "You lingered in doorways,
you cleared your throat, sometimes you asked for
a tip outright. But this was the same as begging,
Deo thought." A reader also feels a strange kind
of relief when Deo enters Central Park, sees it
through the eyes of someone who grew up in
forests, and finds an ideally concealed patch of
grass where he can sleep. He falls into a routine,
working days and living nights in the park, a
canopy of stars providing a link to the fields of
Africa and anything he once knew.
The story seems to tell itself, but that's never the
way it really happens. Strategic decisions have to
be made, and Kidder seems to make all the right
ones, first taking readers for a flashback to
Burundi, showing the rural landscape where
Deo's family farmed and tended cows, and the
grandfather who told him he would get his first
cow only "when you finish school" - all of it,
surely, a world that would be washed away.
Then it's the mid-'90s in New York, where a nun,
Sharon McKenna, takes an interest in the
homeless Deo. He is grateful, though he worries
that he's building up a debt to her - "borrowed
salt," he calls it - leaving him with a childlike
neediness. One day, when she points out the
birds and flowers in Central Park, he fumes, sotto
voce: "I'm not 5 years old. I know what a bird is.
Yes, I know that is a flower. And I know Central
Park better than you do. I sleep here." This is
Kidder's great feat, one that has eluded him in
some of his later work: trusting the reader enough
to present characters in the full splatter of
unsettling complexity. This is not about
presenting a holy man, a hero. His protagonist is
bold, insecure, foolish, inspiring and, as the young
man's memories race to catch him, there are hints
that even more shades of personality will soon be
revealed.
Ron Suskind is the author of "The Way of the
World" and "A Hope in the Unseen," among
other books.
PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE
GAO ZHISHENG
By Joyce Wolf
Group 22 is committed to working on the case of
Prisoner of Conscience Gao Zhisheng
(pronounced Gow Jir-sheng). He is a human-
rights lawyer who was detained by the Chinese
authorities in February 2009. His whereabouts
were unknown for over a year, causing great
anxiety among his family and friends and
provoking confusing, bizarre statements from
Chinese authorities. He reappeared on 28 March
2010 and stated sadly that he was giving up his
human rights work and wished only to be
reunited with his family. On April 20 (which
happens to be his birthday) he disappeared again.
In a May 31 editorial in the Wall Street Journal,
Jerome A. Cohen and Beth Schwanke wrote:
We have little doubt that the Chinese
government intended Mr. Gao's brief
reappearance this spring to relieve the
increasing international pressure surrounding
his mysterious detention. Now, however, it
appears that the government fears Mr. Gao,
even under house arrest, more than it fears the
international community's condemnation of
his renewed "disappearance." It is willing to
blatantly violate its own domestic law, not to
mention international law, to silence the man
known to many as "the conscience of China."
Mr. Gao's case is about far more than the
tragedy of one man and his family. It is about
the rule of law in China. If the government can
act with impunity toward a lawyer as
prominent as Gao Zhisheng, then...other
dissidents will continue to be "disappeared".
(http://www.cfr.org/publication/22261/silen
cing_of_gao_zhisheng.html)
Before we get to this month's action for Gao
Zhisheng, here's an update on Tan Zuoren, the
environmental activist who was the focus of
Group 22's Earth Day action in April. The good
news is that we picked up two more pages of
signatures on our Tan Zuoren petition at the
Visual Arts Guild's annual Tiananmen
commemorative dinner, but the bad news is that
Tan lost his appeal. The Sichuan Provincial High
People's Court announced on June 9 that it
upheld his sentence of five years in prison, with
an additional three years' deprivation of political
rights.
Amnesty suggests we write regularly to the
Director of the Beijing Municipal Justice Bureau
on behalf of Gao Zhisheng. Here's a sample letter
that you can use as a guide. Postage is 98 cents.
WU Yuhua Juzhang
Beijingshi Sifaju
12 Xinjiekouwaidajie
Xichengqu
Beijingshi 100088
PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
Dear Director,
I am writing about human rights lawyer Gao
Zhisheng. I call for all restrictions to his freedom
of movement to be lifted and for any continued
surveillance to be stopped.
I respectfully urge the authorities to guarantee
that he will be free from any kind of torture and
ill-treatment, and to order a full and impartial
investigation into allegations that Gao Zhisheng
has suffered ill treatment in detention, including
beatings and inadequate access to medical
treatment, and to bring those responsible to
justice.
I further urge that the authorities allow peaceful
work by human rights defenders, and also
exercise of rights to freedom of assembly and
expression, in line with their international
commitments.
Thank you for your attention to this urgent
matter.
DEATH PENALTY NEWS
By Stevi Carroll
The death penalty continues to execute people
here in the USA and around the world.
On June 18, Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by
firing squad in Utah. This is the third execution
by firing squad in Utah since 1976. One article I
read included, "Amnesty International, which has
long called for a worldwide repeal of the death
penalty, said shooting had also been used in
China, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Vietnam this past
year." The use of the firing squad in Utah has
roots in a Mormon practice of blood atonement;
although, the Church of Latter Day Saints no
longer endorses this form of execution. According
to an Amnesty International article, three of the
jurors from Mr. Gardner's 1985 trial no longer
supported his death sentence.
(http://blog.amnestyusa.org/deathpenalty/this-
week-in-pointless-executions/) To read more
about Mr. Gardner's execution written by an
Associated Press witness, to go
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.ph
p?storyId=127575036.
In support of Troy Davis' evidentiary hearing
scheduled for June 23, 2010, rallies for him will be
held around the world on June 22. I am planning
on going to the one in Los Angeles.
The following people have recently been executed
in the US:
In May
25 - John Alba - Texas
27 - Thomas Whisenhant - Alabama
In June
2 - George Jones - Texas
9 - Melbert Ford - Georgia
10 - John Forrest Parker - Alabama
15 - David Powell - Texas
18 - Ronnie Lee Gardner
"For centuries the death penalty, often
accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been
trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists."
Albert Camus,
Resistance, Rebellion and Death
-Stevi Carroll
INFO ON TROY DAVIS ACTION IN LOS ANGELES
Troy Davis Campaign: June 22 Global Day of Solidarity.
Troy Davis has a hearing date (June 23, 2010)
Candlelight March and Rally in support of Troy
Davis Tuesday, June 22, 2010 (6pm). (This is the
day before the hearing) at Los Angeles City Hall
(200 North Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA)
Troy Davis has been on death row for more than
18 years for the murder of police officer Mark
Allen MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia. His
compelling case of innocence raises critical
questions about the death penalty and the larger
criminal justice system.
If you would like to take show your solidarity at
the LA City Hall Rally on June 22nd please
contact Kalayaan (Kala) Mendoza, Field
Organizer for Southern California for more
information.
Kalayaan Mendoza:
Tel # 415.288.1862
Email: kmendoza@aiusa.org
To take action online please go to the Justice For
Troy page at:
http://justicefortroy.org/
To invite your friends and family on Facebook
please go to the Justice for Troy Facebook Event
Page:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=1192
58598098972
MONTHLY LETTER COUNT
UA's 11
Total 11
To add your letters to the total contact lwkamp@gmail.com.
Amnesty International Group 22
The Caltech Y
Mail Code 5-62
Pasadena, CA 91125
www.its.caltech.edu/~aigp22/
http://rightsreaders.blogspot.com