Amnesty International Group 22 Pasadena/Caltech News
Volume XVII Number 10, October 2009
UPCOMING EVENTS
Thursday, October 22, 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. Help us plan future
actions on Sudan, the 'War on Terror', death
penalty and more.
Tuesday, November 10, 7:30 PM. Note we're
back at Caltech! 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.
Sunday, November 15, 6:30 PM. Rights
Readers Human Rights Book Discussion Group.
Vroman's Book Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado
Blvd., Pasadena. This month we read "The
House at Sugar Beach" by Helene Cooper.
COORDINATOR'S CORNER
Hi everyone,
Summer's back! I for one am glad. This is my
favorite time of year, what they used to call
Indian Summer. Hope you are enjoying the
relaxing breezes and sunshine.
This year the Western Regional Conference is
from Nov 6 to 8 in San Francisco. This year's
theme is "Free and Equal in Dignity and Rights".
It's not too late to sign up but hurry as the
deadline is October 23. See
http://www.amnestyusa.org/page.do?n=788 for
more info or contact the Regional Office at 415-
288-1800. Hope to see you there!
Another event that members may be interested in
is Sunday October 25 from 3-5 pm at St. John's
Cathedral, 514 W. Adams in LA. "The Intersection
of Islamophobia and Torture" is sponsored by
several ecumenical organizations, including the
Episcopal Diocese of LA.
The new Demand Dignity Campaign: "While we
in the U.S. are focusing much of our energy
around maternal health and the national
healthcare debate, Amnesty International as a
whole will soon be campaigning on a variety of
issues related to poverty and human rights
including human rights abuses associated with
slums and corporate accountability especially
around the extractive industries." (from the
AIUSA website)
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, November 15, 6:30 PM
Vroman's Bookstore
695 E. Colorado Boulevard
in Pasadena
The House at Sugar Beach
By Helene Cooper
New York Times Book Review
By CAROLINE ELKINS
Published: September 5, 2008
The skeletal remains of Africa's numerous
civil wars litter the continent, from the
easternmost reaches of Somalia to the western
shores of Liberia. It is there, overlooking the
picturesque beaches of the Atlantic Ocean, that
unknown numbers of human remains - victims
of Samuel Doe's reign of terror - haunt the earth.
One building that serves as their communal
headstone, itself a virtual skeleton is physical
testimony to the civil war that racked Liberia for
nearly 25 years. This macabre marker is the house
at Sugar Beach.
In her masterly memoir, Helene Cooper
brings us back to the halcyon years when Sugar
Beach, her family's home, embodied the elite
privilege and disco-age chic to which Liberia's
upper class aspired. The Coopers' mansion, 22
rooms in all, rose in solitude out of the plum trees
and vines that thicketed Liberia's undeveloped
coastline. Inside was a living homage to the 1970s,
complete with velvet couches in a sunken living
room, marble floors and a special nook for storing
the plastic Christmas tree. Outside, where a
carpet of grass stretched to the thunderous
Atlantic, multiple servants made their home, and
the latest-model American cars - from a Lincoln
Continental to a two-tone green Pontiac Grand
Prix - awaited their next 11-mile journey into
downtown Monrovia.
Fate, so it seemed, handed Helene Cooper a
"one-in-a-million lottery ticket" when she was
born into "what passed for the landed gentry
upper class of Africa's first independent country."
Both sides of Cooper's family traced their roots to
Li_beria's founding fathers - freed slaves from
the United States who fought disease and the
recalcitrant local population to forge a new
nation. Their bravery and ingenuity were
legendary, and their descendants soon formed
Liberia's upper caste.
At its heart, "The House at Sugar Beach" is a
coming-of-age story told with unremitting
honesty. With her pedigree and her freedom from
internalized racism, Cooper is liberated to enjoy a
social universe that is a fluid mix of all things
American and African. "None of that American
post-Civil War/civil rights movement baggage to
bog me down with any inferiority complex about
whether I was as good as white people," she
declares triumphantly. "No European garbage to
have me wondering whether some British
colonial master was somehow better than me.
Who needs to struggle for equality? Let
everybody else try to be equal to me."
The young Helene Cooper oozes the awkward
confidence of a privileged adolescent, and it is
through her bespectacled eyes that we see the
carefree decadence of Liberia in the years just
before it descended into chaos. They are also the
lenses through which we are introduced to
Cooper's distinctly female world. Atop the
matriarchy is her maternal grandmother, the
unforgettable Mama Grand. Cooper's side-
splitting portrayal of this hard-nosed, self-made
landowner is nothing short of brilliant. With her
gold-capped tooth glistening, Mama Grand is
equally capable of dressing down a Lebanese
merchant who "thought he was going to cheat me
out of my rent" and berating the entire American
government on camera for "60 Minutes." The
women are the backbone of Liberia in its heyday,
but they show their true strength when the
country collapses.
A subtle, nostalgic ache for a childhood
foreshortened is the watermark imprinted on
every page of Cooper's story. The idyll at Sugar
Beach, with its Michael Jackson LPs and Nancy
Drew mysteries, was shattered when a ragtag
group of soldiers - part of the rebel force that
brought down the Tolbert government in 1980,
and with it over 150 years of old-guard, one-party
rule - arrived on the scene. The stench of their
inebriation, of their lust for violence,
overpowered the tranquility that still lingered in
the bucolic air of Cooper's sheltered world. Her
mother would try in vain to exorcise the odor -
and the memories - the rebel intruders inscribed
on her body and mind after they gang-raped her.
Mommee sacrificed herself to protect the
innocence of Helene and her other daughters,
Marlene and Eunice, locking them in an upstairs
room before the soldiers forced her down into the
basement.
Cooper soon went into exile, joining
thousands of other members of the Liberian elite
who managed to escape the rebels' murderous
pillaging. Mommee and Marlene were also
among them. Eunice was not. The daughter of a
poor upcountry mother, she had been taken into
the household at Sugar Beach when Helene was a
lonely 8-year-old in need of companionship. She
quickly became "Mrs. Cooper's daughter" and
was treated as one of Mommee's own. Yet over
the years there were subtle reminders of Eunice's
different status. And when it was time to flee,
painful choices were made. Eunice was not a
blood relation, and so she was left behind.
While Cooper's memoir is mesmerizing in its
portrayal of a Liberia rarely witnessed, its
description of the psychological devastation -
and coping mechanisms - brought on by
profound loss is equally captivating. The second
half of the book tells the story of Helene's
reinvention. Her aristocratic Liberian pedigree
meant nothing in the hallways of her new school.
She became the suspicious immigrant, spending
lunchtime hiding in bathroom stalls and the
recesses of the library rather than face the scrutiny
and ridicule of her American classmates.
Cooper's perseverance and immense talent
with language eventually catapulted her into a
career as a journalist. Her success at The Wall
Street Journal and later The New York Times is
nearly as noteworthy as her ability to
compartmentalize - or, some might say,
dissociate. This mental sleight of hand is what
affords her the psychological space to create a
new life and cultivate her writer's craft. It would
be a mistake to see her ruminations over race and
class in America as the hypocritical ranting of a
once-privileged African. They are, instead, a
reflection of her internalized journey, part of the
process of becoming whole.
The walls holding back the guilt of her early
entitlement, the destruction of her childhood, the
murder of family and friends, and the
abandonment of her foster sister would finally
come crushing down under the literal weight of
an American tank in Iraq. When the tank
destroyed the Humvee in which she was riding,
Cooper narrowly escaped death. But once she was
extricated from the wreck, her mind traveled to a
different war. "At that moment," she writes, "as I
lay in the sand in the desert, my chemsuit soaked
with what turned out to be oil, not blood, I
thought of Liberia."
For the first time in over 20 years, she soon
returned to her former homeland. There, in the
ravaged streets, in the overgrown jungles of
yesteryear's plantations, she confronted the
ghosts of the dead - and encountered the living
survivors. With much suffering and loss, Eunice
had miraculously endured the hell of the Doe era,
as well as the civil wars and deep poverty that
accompanied the ascent of Charles Taylor to
Liberia's presidency. Eventually, the two sisters
were reunited and returned to the house at Sugar
Beach. In the defiled shadow of onetime
grandeur, Cooper embraced the enormity of her
past, and finally came of age.
Caroline Elkins is an associate professor of
history at Harvard and the author of "Imperial
Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in
Kenya," which won the Pulitzer Prize for general
nonfiction in 2006.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Helene Cooper is the diplomatic correspondent
for the New York Times. Prior to that assignment,
she was the assistant editorial page editor of the
New York Times, after twelve years as a reporter
and foreign correspondent at the Wall Street
Journal. She was born in Monrovia, Liberia, and
lives in the Washington, D.C., area.
ACTION ON HEALTH CARE BILL
PLEASE SEND TO SENATOR MAX BAUCUS, CHRISTOPHER DODD,
OR HARRY REID
Senator Max Baucus
511 Hart Senate Office Bldg.,
Washington, DC 20510
202 224-2651
baucus.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
Senator Christopher Dodd
448 Russell Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-2823
dodd.senate.gov/webmail/
Senator Harry Reid
528 Hart Senate Office Bldg.
Washington DC 20510
(202) 224-3542
reid.senate.gov/contact/
Dear Senator _______________
I am writing to urge you to ensure that the
final Senate health reform bill provides a
Medicare-like public health care plan that
everyone can use.
Health care is a human right, not a
commodity. A key step toward fulfilling this right
and recognizing it as a public good would be for
the Senate to provide a Medicare-like public plan
that guarantees access for all, offers
comprehensive benefits, and is publicly funded,
without using private companies as middlemen.
I thank you for your efforts in leading the
Senate's work on health care reform, which offers
a historic opportunity to take important strides
toward making the U.S. health care system more
universal, equitable and accountable.
The American people need a Medicare-like
public plan for all as a critical step toward
fulfilling our human right to health care. I urge
you to seize this opportunity.
Thank you in advance for your action on this
matter.
Sincerely,
your name and address
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
ON PUBLIC HEALTH CARE PLAN
A human rights assessment demonstrates that
when private companies stand between us and
our rights, too many people are unable to get the
care they need. Publicly financed and
administered health care is the strongest vehicle
for creating a system that is truly universal,
equitable and accountable.
If we recognize health care as a right and a
public good, shared fairly by all, we can create a
health care system that works for everyone. To do
so, the Senate must show leadership now and
provide a Medicare-like public health care plan
that guarantees access for all and has
comprehensive benefits, without using private
companies as middlemen.
The Senate's legislation is crucial in
determining the fate of publicly funded health
care for all. The Senate Finance Committee,
chaired by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), is currently
finalizing its bill, which must then be marked up
and voted on. That committee - and the Senate as
a whole - faces huge pressure from the insurance
industry and other forces committed to keeping
health care a commodity, not a public good.
Once the Finance Committee finalizes its
legislation, that bill will be reconciled with that of
the Senate health committee, led by Sen. Chris
Dodd (D-CT) in the absence of the committee
chair, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), who is ill. [Note:
Kennedy passed away after this was written.] The
full Senate, led by Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), will
then revise and vote on final legislation.
Baucus, Dodd and Reid are key players who
will decide whether the Senate's legislation
creates a Medicare-like public plan for all. This
would be a key step towards treating health care
as a public good and one day ensuring that the
human right to health care becomes a reality for
everyone in the United States. Write them today!
DEMAND DIGNITY CAMPAIGN
"Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not
natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome
and eradicated by the actions of human beings.
And overcoming poverty is not a gesture of
charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of
a fundamental human right, the right to dignity
and a decent life." - Nelson Mandela
Everyone everywhere has the human right to
essential health care and housing, as well as clean
water, food, education and decent work.
Everyone has the right to security, both physical
and economic; to freedom from discrimination;
and to participate in the decisions that affect their
lives.
The fact that violations of the right to health
care or the right to clean water are common does
not make those rights violations acceptable.
Governments have the duty to respect, protect
and fulfill the full range of human rights, at home
and abroad. Private sector actors and
international financial institutions also have an
obligation to adhere to human rights standards.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
guarantees these rights and more - both freedom
from oppression and the right to live a life with
dignity. But more than sixty years after its
adoption in the aftermath of the horrors of World
War II and the Great Depression, the aspiration of
a world free from want and fear is still unrealized
for millions of people living in poverty.
At its core, poverty is not merely a question of
lack of income. It is a question of one's right to
housing, adequate food, clean water, and a decent
standard of health care being at risk. Thousands
die every day from preventable disease,
contaminated water and hunger-related diseases,
and those who live in poverty often lack the
power to do much about that insecurity. These are
human rights violations.
Amnesty International, as the world's largest
grassroots human rights movement, is committed
to addressing all human rights violations,
including those of poverty. Given the size and
breadth of our movement, we have a unique role
to play in changing the terms of the debate
around poverty and human rights. Our brand
new Demand Dignity Campaign will be rolling
out in 2009 and we will contribute to the work of
defending everyone's right to live with dignity.
We will do so by helping to empower
communities and human rights defenders to win
equal access to human rights and accountability
for human rights abuses from their own
governments and from international actors in the
state, private and multilateral sectors. The first
area of human rights violations we will be
looking into are those related to the right to
health, and specifically a woman's right to
maternal health, in the context of an ongoing
human rights scandal: maternal mortality at home
and abroad.
MATERNAL MORTALITY AND THE HUMAN RIGHT TO HEALTH CARE
Around the world, one woman dies every
minute -- half a million women every year - and
many more face long-term debilitating health
problems, due to complications during pregnancy
and childbirth. Almost all of these deaths are
preventable. That the world allows them to
continue in 2009, when we know how to stop
them, is a human rights crisis. The Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) - an international
framework to cut world poverty in half by 2015 -
includes cutting the rate of maternal deaths by
three-quarters. But that goal has seen the least
progress out of all the MDGs.
Amnesty International's work on maternal
health continues our efforts to advance women's
human rights, most recently in our Stop Violence
Against Women Campaign. Complacency in the
face of maternal mortality reflects discrimination
against women, and it perpetuates that
discrimination. As Mahmoud Fathalla, past
president of the International Federation of
Gynecology and Obstetrics, said:
"Women are not dying because of diseases we
cannot treat. They are dying because societies
have yet to make the decision that their lives are
worth saving."
Maternal mortality is a crucial issue all over
the world: Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America,
and even here at home. This year will see the
release of reports on Peru, Sierra Leone, Burkina
Faso, and the United States. In every case,
maternal mortality is an entry point for looking at
the health care system as a whole.
In this country, we now have a once-in-a-
generation chance to reform the health care
system to truly fulfill the human right to health.
As we see in the news every day, too often the
debate assumes that health care is a commodity. It
is not - it is a human right, and a public good. It is
up to us, as human rights advocates, to ensure
that point of view is represented.
MONTHLY LETTER COUNT
DP 4
UAs 20
Total 24
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