The organization Equality Now “advocates for the human rights of women and girls around the world by raising international visibility of individual cases of abuse, mobilizing public support…and wielding strategic political pressure to ensure that governments enact or enforce laws and policies that uphold the rights of women and girls.” Human trafficking is a central focus for the group, which emphasizes the need for survivors themselves to take leadership roles in the anti-trafficking movement.

“Society’s understanding of human trafficking and prostitution needs to change. In my country, people believe that prostitutes are criminals and buyers are the victims. This is wrong… Women are human beings, not commodities to be bought and sold.”                                                                                                                                                  —  Alma, Philippines

Survivor Stories, a new yearlong campaign on the organization’s website, will offer – in their own words – the stories of survivors of sexual exploitation. In the first narrative on the site, Alma, then a young single mother in the Philippines, tells of taking a job as a waitress in a bar near a U.S. Military base, where she was gradually pressured – and ultimately forced – by her boss into prostitution. She’s now the director of a group that helps other women escape from sexual servitude. Watch for additional stories to be added on this page. (Alma on right in photo.)

Women Under Siege

“Good news! We were wrong! Women are not being raped in terrible numbers around the world in conflict!…I wish I could really say that.” That’s the lead that grabbed my attention when I stumbled across Lauren Wolfe’s thoughtful October, 2012, blog post, Rape in war: Are we getting it wrong?
.           Wolfe is the Director of Women Under Siege, a Women’s Media Center initiative on sexualized violence in conflict. Her post was a response to questions raised in  “Sexual Violence, Education, and War: Beyond the Mainstream Narrative,” a report from a research center at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University. Mainstream media at the time (those that covered it at all) interpreted the report’s findings as suggesting that the issue of wartime rape has been overblown. Based on her own analysis — confirmed by the Simon Frazer researchers themselves — Wolfe uncovered a much more disturbing reality.
.           I’d also recommend Wolfe’s December, 2012, piece in The Atlantic, Are Women Being Targeted in Syria?

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People who work with survivors of torture, whether healthcare and social service professionals or citizen volunteers, may themselves be susceptible to what’s variously referred to as indirect, secondary, or vicarious trauma. As one of the therapists we interviewed for our film, Refuge: Caring for Survivors of Torture, describes it: “When clients were telling me what had been done to them, I got pictures in my head, and I couldn’t get the pictures to go away.”
            The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims has launched a peer support project for some of its member organizations in Austria, Bulgaria, France, Ireland, Romania, and United Kingdom. IRCT hopes to expand the program in the future. For information, contact the project coordinators for more information: Helene de Rengervé (hdr@irct.eu) or Marnix de Witte (mdw@irct.eu). Also available from IRCT is the 2011 Manual for Good Practice and Management in Trauma Centers, by Christian Pross.
           The IRCT website is an outstanding source for ongoing information about torture and torture treatment throughout the world, as is its blog, World Without Torture.
(IRCT Photo)

Preventing Torture Through Forensic Documentation

Getting the Evidence, a report just released by the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, cites specific cases in a number of countries to focus on the crucial role of forensic examination and documentation in proving that torture has occurred and preventing its recurrence. Forensics may involve not only physicians, but psychologists, psychiatrists, physical anthropologists and other professionals.
            As the report notes, “International law obliges states to properly investigate all allegations of torture and to punish those responsible…Yet torture often takes place in secret, and many torture methods are designed to be as painful as possible without leaving physical marks.” (Though not the focus of this report, forensic evidence may be tremendously important in supporting claims by survivors for political asylum.)

“Unfortunately, torturers know of the difficulty of proving torture and therefore find ways of avoiding accountability.”
             — Juan Mendez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture

“It’s very important to bring survivors of torture to speak out…What they say is not only incredibly powerful, but is what the torturers would never like to hear.”
             — Mostafa Hussein, El Nadim Center for Psychological Treatment
                  and Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, Egypt

Condition Reports on Countries that Torture

The Florida Center for Survivors of Torture & Refugee Services has released a series of brief reports on the conditions – with regard to torture – in several countries of concern. Country Condition Reports, accessible online, are currently available for Afghanistan, Burma, Bhutan, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Iraq, Somalia, and Syria. The reports “provide historical timelines, brief descriptions of common methods of torture, and synopses of current conditions and pertinent issues related to each country.” The Florida Center is a project of Gulf Coast Jewish Family & Community Services.

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“There are, at the base of society as it is now, two different kinds of human beings. One is a member of that class which acts against the interests, against the potential, of the great majority…The other kind of human being is us – those who resist.”

Uruguayan/American woodcut artist Antonio Frasconi died on January 8, 2013, at the age of 93. One of the sad yet sometimes uplifting aspects of getting old is watching the heroes of younger days pass from the scene. Frasconi’s work inspired me, for a brief period, to try to become a graphic artist. Not a good plan – but the attempt was one of many factors that helped me find my way into another visual medium.
            Frasconi was born in 1919, in Argentina but his parents, immigrants from Italy, moved to Uruguay within weeks of his birth. He came to the U.S. at the end of World War II, initially working as a gardener and museum guard, but he quickly established his reputation as an artist. According to the New York Times obituary, by Douglas Martin, in 1953 Time magazine called him “America’s foremost practitioner of the ancient art of the woodcut. Four decades later, Art Journal called him the best of his generation.” (Illustration above left, 1943.)
            Look at the grain of the wood underlying his 1972 Woody Guthrie tribute, at the bottom of this post. In a 1963 Time Magazine piece quoted by Martin, he said “Sometimes the wood gives you a break, and matches your conception of the way it is grained. But often you must surrender to the grain, find the movement of the scene, the mood of the work, in the way the grain runs.”
            His medium may have been ancient, but his message, though rooted in printmaking tradition, was anything but. Again from the  Times obituary:“He decried art education, saying the average student does not learn the pertinent questions, much less the answers. He abhorred art that dwelt on aesthetics at the expense of social problems. He repeatedly addressed war, racism and poverty, and devoted a decade to completing a series of woodcut portraits of people who were tortured and killed under a rightist military dictatorship in his home country, Uruguay, from 1973 to 1985.”             
            Frasconi illustrated children’s books, music albums and other media, but returned again and again to political themes. The 1971 illustration above right (showing half of the original print) is from his “Law and Order” series, and represents the National Guard killings of Students at Kent State University. “A sort of anger builds in you, so you try to spill it back in your work.” he said. In his introduction to the 1974 collection, Frasconi: Against the Grain, historian and music critic Nat Hentoff quotes the artist:

“There are, at the base of society as it is now, two different kinds of human beings. One is a member of that class which acts against the interests, against the potential, of the great majority of men. He is always harming the rest of us in one way or another. The other kind of human being is us – those who resist. Those who do not, as in Brecht’s “Song of a Stormtrooper,” eventually, mindlessly, become shaped into instruments of death. I want that class of men to be identified. This is probably the basic theme of my work, along with the wonder of life itself.”

A good introduction to the artist, and to his work up to the 1970′s,  Frasconi: Against the Grain is out of print, but copies are available online from Alibris, Amazon, and other sources.

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In a recent column responding to the shootings in Newtown Connecticut, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof asks, “Why can’t we regulate guns as seriously as we do cars?” Kristof doesn’t follow up on that question, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.
            I don’t hate guns, and I don’t hate most of the folks who own and use guns. I was a Kansas City Boy Scout in the mid 1950’s, and for a couple of those teenage years, I was also a National Rifle Association junior member and a fairly competitive shooter; I loved the discipline and precision of the sport. I was never first string, but I got taken along to a couple of interstate matches to fill out the team, and I still have some medals in a box in the closet somewhere. Though I didn’t hunt, I had many friends and relatives who did. Those were very different times (and, I’d like to think, a different NRA.)
            Coincidentally, it turns out that the 50’s were also the time when most states were beginning to adopt laws requiring automobile drivers to be licensed, and to purchase liability insurance protecting people and property that might be injured or damaged in accidents. Mandatory liability coverage is now a long-established fact in all but three states, and those three – Virginia, New Hampshire, and Mississippi – have alternative methods of enforcing driver responsibility. (Until the late ‘40’s, many states didn’t even require a driving test to get a license – South Dakota became the last to do so in 1959.)
            As we struggle with how we might come to grips with the issue of guns in our society, we could have recourse to a model that’s time-tested, and that we have become comfortable with over the years. Why can’t we treat gun use and ownership the way we treat automobile use and ownership?
            Nobody likes having to take a driving test (until we’re parents of teenagers, at which point we think it’s a great idea). Nobody likes having to deal with license renewals and, for sure, nobody likes having to pay the ever-increasing cost of auto insurance. But we accept that it’s necessary, and when our cars are damaged by another driver – or if we or someone we love is injured in an accident – we’re happy that we don’t have to go to court to get compensation for medical expenses and repairs.
            It would be awfully hard to show that our system of training, licensing, and requiring insurance coverage for automobile users has had a negative impact on the availability and accessibility of cars. In fact, the insurance industry has a vested interest in developing regulations and price points that will not unduly discourage car ownership and use. There’s no reason the same logic would not apply to firearm insurance. 
            Let me answer one obvious question before going any further: do I think there’s any possibility that what I’m suggesting could actually happen? In the United States of today, not a snowball’s chance in hell. But I would  like to get people thinking about what we could do about this dreadful reality. It seems to me useful to  recognize that, without too much acrimony, we have succeeded in coming up with a reasonable way to manage another potentially harmful technology – one that’s even more central to the daily lives of most of us — our cars. Let’s talk about it.

So, what might an insurance model
of firearms management look like?

• Operators would be trained and licensed. Firearms safety courses would be widely available – in high schools, from arms dealers, and from other private vendors. Formal training would not be required, but applicants would have to pass a firearms safety test before getting a license to “operate” one. We could require additional training and licensing for people wishing to own firearms thought to pose particular dangers or require particular skills – just as we do for motorcyclists and truck drivers. Assault-type weapons, as opposed to traditional hunting rifles, might be an example. 
• Firearms would be licensed and registered, and owners would be responsible for them and their use, unless they were reported lost or stolen. This would apply to guns sold or acquired privately or at gun shows as well as through registered dealers, and it would include presently owned guns.* The cost of user and firearm licenses could be kept modest, and perhaps could even be free during the first few years the system goes into effect – or for guns currently owned by individuals. Given the vast number of unregistered firearms, owners should be given a reasonable time frame in which to comply with registration requirements. 
• Possession and use of firearms would require liability insurance. This possibility was also raised in a recent tweet from economist Nouriel Roubini. Just as for motor vehicles, the cost of insurance should reflect the skill and “driving” record of the user, as well as the type of firearm (handgun vs. shotgun vs. rifle vs. assault weapon, for example.) As with policies for multiple autos, owners of multiple firearms would pay less for additional guns after their “primary” weapon. Black powder weapons and other historic guns could be treated similarly to classic cars.
• Insurance rates should reflect the behavior of the gun owner. Owners would be rewarded with lower premiums for safe and responsible practices: using trigger locks, for example, or keeping their weapons in locked, childproof cases(as police officers in many jurisdictions are required to do). Owners involved in gun-related accidents or injuries would be penalized with higher premiums.

DIGRESSION: One frequent (and correct) criticism from early readers of this post was that, while a liability insurance model might work for firearms owned and used by well-meaning gun owners – who could cause unintended injury to others – it would be inadequate in the case of owners who deliberately use guns in a manner that’s reckless or criminal. For them, it would have the effect of protecting against the consequences of their behavior, thus making it more, not less, likely. One reader suggested the following:

• Liability insurance could be replaced with or supplemented by a surety bond. The surety company would be responsible for paying any injured parties, but would have the right to demand reimbursement from the owner.While even this would not deter career criminals, it would at least address some types of irresponsible behavior, for example, gun deaths or injuries resulting from barroom fights, or from incidents (not as rare as you might think) where hunters fire at a sound or movement that turns out to be one of their companions. 
• Carrying a gun while intoxicated should be treated the same way we treat driving while intoxicated. This is one change that would almost certainly result in immediate and substantial reductions in gun injuries and deaths. Violators should face immediate restraint and detention and, when necessary, suspension of “carrying” privileges. They should also face the likelihood of increased insurance premiums.
• As an added benefit, firearm policies could also include coverage for injuries suffered by innocent policy holders. Policies could, for example, cover injuries from firearm malfunctions and shooting range accidents (both rare, I am told) and hunting accidents (which, unfortunately, are not so rare). 

None of this is intended to, or could, replace legal penalties for criminal use of firearms. However, it would offer law enforcement some new tools for prevention, since individuals could be prosecuted for having unlicensed firearms in their possession, for not having a gun user’s license, and so on. If all legal guns are licensed and traceable, it will be substantially easier to prove that a gun is stolen and – a small side benefit – to eventually return it to its legitimate owner.
            The most significant impact of these changes, however, would be a dramatic reduction in the availability of guns for illegal uses. Gun owners would be more likely to store their guns in a safe manner, and stolen guns would be reported. All legal firearms would be traceable, along with their ownership, from the point of manufacture or importation to the end user. Any which are not, would be subject to seizure.

Just for the record, I do not now nor have I ever had any connection to the insurance industry other than as a customer – nor does anyone in my immediate family. I am by no means an expert on the Second Amendment and its judicial history – or on the many arguments about it – but it seems to me that an insurance-based approach to firearms management would no more represent an “infringement” of the right to bear arms under the United States Constitution than current requirements that gun importers and dealers pay excise taxes, or that buyers pay sales taxes on the guns they purchase. And, as one advance reader of this post said, “While I’m not a constitutional scholar, the phrase “well regulated” in the Second Amendment has to mean something.”
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* NOTE: Many current proposals for regulation of firearms exclude those presently owned. Given the enormous number of firearms currently out there in the U.S., this would make a mockery of any regulatory scheme. When Australia banned certain types of guns following the Port Arthur massacre (see the Goodman/Moynihan article mentioned below), it instituted a buy-back program, paying market price plus 10%. Assuming that a licensing and registration system in the United States would impose a financial burden on some owners, such a program could enable them to dispose of their excess weapons without taking a severe financial hit.
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• Nicholas D. Kristof, Do We Have the Courage to Stop This? “Why can’t we regulate guns as seriously as we do cars?…Let’s treat firearms rationally as the center of a public health crisis that claims one life every 20 minutes…American schoolchildren are protected by building codes that govern stairways and windows. School buses must meet safety standards, and the bus drivers have to pass tests. Cafeteria food is regulated for safety…As one of my Facebook followers wrote after I posted about the shooting, ‘It is more difficult to adopt a pet than it is to buy a gun.’” (See also Kristof’s column: Looking for Lessons in Newtown.)  
• Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan, Lessons from New Town Australia, for Newtown, USA: Will New Thinking Lead to New Laws? “Martin Bryant, a troubled 28 year-old from New Town, Tasmania, took a Colt AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to the nearby tourist destination of Port Arthur. By the time he was arrested early the next day, he had killed 35 people and wounded 23. The reaction in Australia was profound, especially since it was a nation of gun lovers, target shooters and hunters…The massacre provoked an immediate national debate over gun control. Strict laws were quickly put in place, banning semiautomatic weapons and placing serious controls on gun ownership. Since that time, there has not been one mass shooting in Australia.” 
• Derrick Z. Jackson, Obama Needs to Channel an Inner John Howard: “It will take the strongest Oval Office leadership this side of war. In my mind, it is war when annual firearm deaths are 10 times more than the 3,000 Americans killed in 9/11, and nearly five times the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistancombined.” Commenting on Australia’s buyback program, Jackson also notes: “A 2010 study done by researchers at the AustralianNationalUniversity and WilfridLaurierUniversity found that firearm homicides dropped by 59 percent and firearm suicides dropped 65 percent between 1995 and 2006. Australia’s homicide rate today is one quarter of that in the United States.”
• Yvonne Abraham, What Do I Tell You , My Son? “Not long ago you were sitting in the bathtub, eyes welling. You kept asking me, and when I couldn’t avoid it any longer, I told you, yes, people die, but only when they are very, very old. And you believed me…I don’t want to have to explain this one to you, to lie and tell you it could never happen here…I want you to keep believing I can protect you. Even though I don’t believe it myself.” 
• Maureen Dowd, From Apocalypse to Dystopia:  “For decades, when the public has grown more sympathetic to gun control after an attempted assassination or a spike in gun murders or a harrowing school shooting, Wayne LaPierre and his fellow N.R.A. officials have hunkered down to wait for the ‘emotional period’ or ‘hysteria,’ as they call it, to pass.” 
• James Alan Fox, Top Ten Myths About Mass Shootings: “Some talked about the role of guns, others about mental-health services, and still more about the need for better security in schools and other public places. Whatever their agenda and the passion behind it, those advocates made certain explicit or implied assumptions about patterns in mass murder and the profile of the assailants. Unfortunately, those assumptions do not always align with the facts.” 
• Michael D. Shear: After Shootings, a Flood of Ideas and Proposals for Curbing Gun Violence: “Specifics are hard to come by…taken together, the suggestions for legislative and executive action foreshadow a broad political debate about assault weapons, ammunition, violent video games, shoot-em-up movies, gun shows, mental health services, and permits for concealed firearms. Much of the national discussion this week has focused on a comprehensive approach, rather than just new gun controls.” 
• Stephanie Clifford, Shop Owners Report Rise in Firearms Sales as Buyers Fear Possible New Laws:  “With gun-control legislation getting more serious discussion than it has in years, gun sales are spiking as enthusiasts stock up in advance of possible restrictions.” 
• Ray Rivera & Alison Leigh Cowan, Gun Makers Use Home Leverage in Connecticut: “Gun owners packed a hearing room in the Connecticut capital, vowing to oppose a bill that would require new markers on guns so that they are easier to trace…A representative of one of Connecticut’s major employers: the Colt Manufacturing Company… said the company would seriously consider leaving the state if the bill became law.” 
• Joe Nocera, Guns and Mental Illness: “There is no lack of sensible ideas: background checks for all gun purchasers, a national registry that would allow guns to be traced, an assault weapons ban, controls on ammunition, and so on. Nouriel Roubini, the economist, wrote in a Twitter message that gun owners should be required to have liability insurance, an intriguing idea. Some legislators who once blindly followed the bidding of the National Rifle Association are now saying they are reconsidering in the wake of Newtown.”
• The Economist/Democracy in America (unsigned), Insurance Policy: “Nouriel Roubini, a guy who knows a lot about risk, tweets in favour of mandatory liability insurance for gun owners: ‘If we had liability insurance on guns, as we do 4 cars, we will see which insurance company would insure at which price folks with arsenals.’ It’s an idea that seems to be gathering a bit of steam.”

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Imagine a million human bones spread out
across Washington, DC’s National Mall

That’s right, imagine it. Mukweso Mwenene, from the Democratic Republic of Congo has no trouble visualizing stacks of bones. “But in my country,” he says, “the skeletons are all in the closet. Those people have been killed…Nobody buried them. Nobody knows they died.” On Saturday, June 8th, 2013, Mwenene and other volunteers with the One Million Bones Project will create an installation evocative of a colossal mass grave on the National Mall – our nation’s front yard. (View an extended video interview with survivor Mukweso Mwenene.)
            Mwenene is looking forward to seeing the symbolic “evidence” of what has happened in his country, and in hundreds of other places around the world, on display for visitors of our Nation’s Capital to see. He hopes that this installation in Washington, along with other major ones in Albuquerque, New Orleans, Tallahassee, and elsewhere – will create pressure on politicians to take action against torture, genocide and mass violence. “Our leaders can only react when each and every one of us forces them to,” he says. 
            The Washington event in June will represent the culmination of the vision of Naomi Natale, the founding artist behind One Million Bones. “Hopefully,” Natale says, “this is something that will burn in people’s memories – something that never should have had to be made.” (View One Million Bones’ founder Naomi Natale’s address to the Oslo Forum.)
            One Million Bones is a growing, national art-activism project based in Natale’s home city of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The initial installation there has sparked offshoot projects in eleven countries and 48 states, including Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, and Massachusetts, with many others coming soon. Currently, Pennsylvania is hosting a three-month event at GoggleworksCenter for the Arts in Reading, while Colorado and Florida are both planning events in conjunction with local galleries in the coming year.
            Each project begins with the creation of a single, simple handmade bone.  One Million Bones invites all of us to participate by putting our hands in clay and taking another imaginative leap by making a bone—and making it specific by imagining it as the bone of a mother or a child, of a father or a son – the bone of a victim of violence. 
            Local bone-making events at universities, senior centers, elementary schools, yoga studios and ice cream parlors create personal connections between U.S. citizens and suffering people far away. The large-scale installations generate awareness about genocide and other forms of mass violence, and mobilize viewers to take action against persistent violence in places like the DRC and Myanmar.  One Million Bones also collaborates with the Enough Project and United to End Genocide. Information about genocide and mass violence can be found at those sites and – unfortunately – in the daily news.
            Through a partnership with the organization Students Rebuild, One Million Bones is also raising money to assist survivors. Each bone created raises $1 for CARE International’s work with survivors. As of December 15th, One Million Bones volunteers have created over 450,000 bones – generating almost a half-million dollars for survivors of violence. (Visit the Students Rebuild home page for an updated bone count.)
            Join us as we look towards June, 2013. We need volunteers to get involved: to make bones, and to organize events. Students Rebuild has just launched a new campaign urging folks to make bones for peace this holiday season. Please contact them to find out how your family and your community can become engaged in this project.
            We will also need at least 4,000 volunteers to partici-pate in the One Million Bones installation at the National Mall in June. You can sign up here to participate in D.C. You too can become “one in a million.”

The Dreaded HTBF (Hard to Buy For)

Finding gifts for the picky or have-it-alls is stressful

That’s the headline (and sub-head) of the cover story in yesterday’s Boston Globe “Living” Section. If this is a problem for you, let me offer to help relieve some of that stress. If you’ve got have-it-alls on your list, let them experience the holiday joy of helping out somebody who’ll be happy to have just about anything. And you can do it from the comfort of your own home. Make a donation in their name to a group that’s working to make the world a safer and more just place.
            My personal favorite is Fotokids in  Guatemala (officially the Fundación de Niños Artistas), founded and run by former Reuters photographer Nancy McGirr. Burned out by run-and-gun war photography throughout Latin America, McGirr moved to Guatemala City and began working with children whose families lived in the city’s sprawling dump. Over more than twenty years, this extraordinary project has used photography (and later video) to engage and motivate several generations of kids, many of whom now have careers in photography, design, education and other areas. In these excerpts from the most recent Fotokids newsletter McGirr writes about her first encounters with some of the children whose stories define the project’s success. (I’ve edited for brevity.)

There are two little sisters, Rosario, age 8, and Marta, who says she is six and everyone jumps on her saying no, she’s still five. Their family fled the Quiche during the civil war. Several neighbors had been assassinated, and one afternoon when the family returned from working in their cornfield they found the door to their adobe house open. The place had been ransacked. Her parents left that same day and found refuge in the dump.
            There is another little seven-year-old named Mirian who is as smart as a whip, with wiry springy hair that haloes her face, a button nose and an engaging smile. She’s a collector and searches out Barbie’s extremities in amongst the trash, sometimes a head or an arm, and has a bucket of parts. She puts them together to create little Barbie Frankensteins.
            I see the big problem with this wild group will be getting the kids to share the cameras. Each time I look Mirian has one. I take the camera out of her hands and say, “let’s let one of the other kids have a turn, okay?” Then I look five minutes later and she has it again. I discover her technique: she looks the kid who has the camera up and down and says something like, “You know, you look good today, let me take your picture.”
            Now 21 years later, Mirian, Rosario and Marta, these little girls from the original group, have been selected to exhibit their photographs in Guatemala’s National Museum…a lovely way to reflect on their lives and how far they have come. Marta is a university graduate in education, working for a prestigious international foundation, Rosa a mother of four teaching younger, at-risk students in Fotokids, and Mirian, a struggling writer with a powerful story to tell.

…and if you really want to give someone a physical gift, I can’t think of a better one than a copy of Fotokids’ beautiful self-published book To Capture Dreams: 20 Years, or their earlier compilation, now republished, Out of the Dump, which are both available through Blurb.com.

Here are a few other groups 
from my personal list:

TASSC: I’m sure that every organization working with survivors of torture is in constant need of support, and if there’s one in your community, that’s where you should direct your contributions. On a national level, the Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition is, so far as I know, unique in being run by survivors themselves, rather than professionals. Take a look at all they do, and consider making a donation:  

The Transitions Foundation of Guatemala: I first came across this group when I was producing Not on the Sidelines, a film about handicapped athletes involved in the sport of Sled Hockey. Transitions works with people to design and customize adaptive equipment for one of the most handicapped-unfriendly environments possible, amidst the dirt roads, hills, and cobblestone streets of Guatemala.

Resist: “Funding Social Change Since 1967” is the motto of one of the most enduring institutions that arose from the social movements of the 60’s. Resist remains one of the most reliable supporters of grassroots groups organizing for peace, and for economic, social, and environmental justice.  

Gaza Community Mental Health Program: Whatever you may think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there’s really no argument over the fact that the residents of the Gaza strip – and its children in particular – have suffered severely. Much of the work of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program is directed at helping traumatized children, women who are victims of violence, and the victims of torture. For more information and to consider contributing, visit the site of its U.S. support group, the Gaza Mental Health Foundation.

Other Suggestions: If none of the above fit your interests, check out suggestions from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof or Nation Magazine blogger Peter Rothberg.

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The report below comes from the Ma’an News Service, based in the West Bank and Gaza, and is passed on by the Middle East Children’s Alliance, a U.S. group that works with and supports humanitarian aid to children in Palestine and other areas in the Middle East.

Gaza boy killed by Israel dreamed of becoming soccer player

GAZA CITY – Hamid Younis Abu Daqqa, 13, always wore his Real Madrid shirt when he played soccer with his friends. He died wearing the same shirt, killed by Israeli forces before the second half of a game with friends could be finished. His father said Hamid would imitate Real Madrid star Ronaldo while playing in front of his Gaza home.
            “My house is located in an area away from clashes, nearly one and a half kilometers away from the nearest point of the borders with Israel, therefore I didn’t have a problem with my son playing in front of the house,” Hamid’s father told Ma’an. “I received a phone call. His friend was on the phone telling me that my son was shot in the chest. I rushed to the hospital and found him dying.”
            Hamid would never miss a Real Madrid game. “Despite me pushing him to focus on his schoolwork, he would be mesmerized in front of the TV screen watching games,” his father said. Hamid used to play soccer every day for 30 minutes before sundown, his attention focused on the ball, blocking out the sound of Israeli helicopters.
            It was during a game he loved that Hamid was killed, his white Real Madrid shirt stained red as the bullets hit him. Medics said Hamid was hit by machine gun fire, either from Israeli helicopters or tanks, during an incursion into the Gaza Strip on Thursday. An Israeli army spokeswoman said at the time that reports of injuries were being checked.
            Hamid’s funeral took place on Friday, a Palestinian flag draped over his body.

I will also pass on, without comment, some of what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to say regarding today’s Israeli air strike which killed a top Hamas commander, among others: “Today we sent a clear message to Hamas and other terrorist organizations and, if it becomes necessary, we are prepared to expand the operation…” And Defense Minister Ehud Barak was quoted as saying, “We are at the beginning, not the end of this action…It won’t be a quick fix, but we’ll reach the goals we set for this operation.”
            A piece on the Common Ground website reports that the Israel Defense Forces tweeted “All options are on the table. If necessary, the IDF is ready to initiate a ground operation in Gaza,” and Haaretz reports that the IDF has issued draft orders for Israeli Homefront Command reserve soldiers.

A Pillar of Cloud

Suggesting that Israel is planning for a sustained assault — and perhaps believes it has divine support — the campaign now has a name, Operation Pillar of Cloud, as in Exodus 13:21-22: “By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way…”
            For a visceral and incredibly persuasive understanding of what life in Gaza may again be under Israeli bombardment, try to find a way to see the film The War Around Us, by the only two Western journalists in Gaza during the war of 2008-9 (the one Israel calls “Operation Cast Lead.”) It’s only getting limited showings to date — mostly in festivals — but maybe will be in (some) theaters before long. There is a poor quality trailer that can be viewed on YouTube. You could also contact the producers via their Facebook page to ask what’s up and encourage them to release the film more widely.

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Alleged Salvadoran War Criminal

A senior Salvadoran military officer involved in plotting the murder of six Jesuit faculty members at the University of Central America has pled guilty to immigration fraud. The trial concluded in mid-November. Prosecutors are asking for a 15-24 month sentence, but human rights organizations demand that Inocente Orlando Montano be deported to Spain, which wants to try him for the killing of the priests, five of whom were Spaniards. Since it is highly unlikely that El Salvador will ever prosecute Montano, or others accused of war crimes during the country’s bloody civil war, trial in Spain might be the only opportunity to challenge the impunity they have enjoyed to date.
            Sentencing on the immigration charge (and presumably any decision about deportation) will happen in December. As the Boston Globe’s article suggested, the former Colonel (at center in photo below) appeared to be playing up his age and alleged infirmity during the hearing: “Montano stood hunched over before US District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock as he entered his pleas through a Spanish interpreter to charges of immigration fraud and perjury. The 70-year-old man’s cane fell as he answered, ‘Guilty,’ to six charges.”
            Montano had been living under his own name in the Boston suburb of Everett for years before being located and identified by the human rights groups last year. In addition to the six Jesuits, Salvadoran troops – many of them trained at the infamous U.S. School of the Americas – also killed the men’s housekeeper and her daughter.
            As I reported a year ago, Montano repeatedly lied in his annual applications for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the United States, denying that he had ever been in the military, received military or weapons training, or been “part of any unit that had used or threatened to use weapons against other people.”

NOTE: See Wednesday’s post regarding the alleged ties between Mitt Romney’s firm, Bain Capital, and  the backers of Salvadoran death squads.

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Romney’s Bain Capital Reportedly

A recent article on Huffington Post reports that the founding investors in Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital (principle source of his current wealth) included families and individuals tied to the death squads responsible for murdering tens of thousands – most of them indigenous reformers and activists – during El Salvador’s bloody civil war. The piece is based on original reporting by the Los Angeles Times, and several other sources including former Ambassador to El Salvador Robert White. Amy Goodman interviewed the article’s author, Ryan Grim, Huffington Post’s DC bureau chief, on Democracy Now. According to Grim, “There’s no possible way that anybody in 1984 could check out these families — which is the term that they (Romney’s campaign) use, ‘these families’ — and come away convinced that this money was clean.” It’s just six days till the election, folks…

“Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is facing new scrutiny over revelations he founded the private equity firm Bain Capital with investments from Central American elites linked to death squads in El Salvador. After initially struggling to find investors, Romney traveled to Miami in 1983 to win pledges of $9 million, 40 percent of Bain’s start-up money. Some investors had extensive ties to the death squads responsible for the vast majority of the tens of thousands of deaths in El Salvador during the 1980s.”
                                                      — Democracy Now

The first image (above left) is by Mark Vallen. See his discussion of its background on the Refuge Media Project website.

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“It’s been reported…that most Latinos who seek mental health services never return after that first visit.” That disturbing comment was part of Neal Conan’s introduction to a National Public Radio broadcast of several months ago. Conan and guests explored some of the problems mental health professionals may face in working with immigrant clients who don’t speak English, or speak it as a second language, and who have different cultural traditions and expectations.
            The interviewees were Stacey Lambert, Director of the Latino Mental Health program at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology in Boston, and Karen Hanscom, Director of Advocates for Survivors of Torture and Trauma (ASTT), which serves the Baltimore and Washington, DC, areas. ASTT is an Outreach Partner of the Refuge Media Project, and is one of the founders of the Voices of Love project which trains interpreters to work with torture survivors. I won’t try to summarize their fairly free-flowing discussion, but some of the themes touched upon were: 

• The crucial importance of both cultural competence and linguistic competence – beyond classroom level – for therapists;
• The differing weights given to family ties vs. individual autonomy in many immigrant cultures;
• Differing understandings of the origins and meanings of the states we refer to as mental illness, and of appropriate treatments;
• The frequent necessity of using family members as interpreters, which can create a number of issues: for example, clients may be unwilling to speak openly, and those interpreting may not translate things they think are inappropriate. Hanscom pointed out that “most of the individuals that we see have never told another family member or anyone else about the experiences that they’ve had. This is sometimes the very first time that they’ve spoken about these things.”

The discussion ranged from the somewhat theoretical to the very down-to-earth. For example, the lack of linguistically-competent therapists may not only lead to serious misunderstandings, but it also means that a great many non-English-speaking clients wait longer to get an appointment.
            With regard to differing world views – often expressed through religion, Hanscom points out that immigrants may have different views of “why bad things happen to good people. For example, we have some people who believe that their trauma is related to karma. Others believe that they’re being tested by God…In the United States we’re taught, as psychologists, that we really don’t get into one’s religion. Yet with the torture survivors that we see, to not do so would be quite an error.”

A caller, Mark, who described himself as a
substance abuse counselor, related this story… 

We had an incident where a translator was called to an emergency room because the ER people had this Mexican guy who was reporting hearing voices, so they thought he was schizophrenic. She sits down with him and says, “I understand you’re hearing voices when no one is there.” And he says, “Yes, that’s right.” And she says, “Well, what are the voices saying?” He says, “I don’t know.”
            She says, “Can’t you hear them?” And he says, “Oh, I can hear them just fine, but they’re speaking in English.” So he’s having oratory hallucinations in a language he doesn’t speak, which is unusual, to say the least. And at that point, the page clicks in and says, “Dr. Jones to the emergency room.” The patient looks at the translator and says, “You see? There it is again.”

Both photos above are from the website of Advocates for Survivors of Torture & Trauma. The first one was taken by a survivor as part of ASTT’s Healing Images project. Its caption reads: “Look at these girls! Their lives are beautiful and without worry. They reflect the joy of life. Will my life one day resemble that of these little ones?”

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