truth and reconciliation

COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era Prisoners On The Agenda Of A UN Panel

May 4, 2023 Efia Nwangaza, Black Agenda Report. Educate! COINTELPRO, Criminal Justice and Prisons, political prisoners, truth and reconciliation, United Nations

Greenville, SC - Atlanta's April 26th UN Delegation session, bearing the 2010 human rights campaign theme, “Putting COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era Political Prisoners, Prisoners of War, and Exiles on the Global Agenda,” featured PP/POWs/Exiles in person, their relatives, and former co-defendants, has generated a buzz that will hopefully become a storm of sustained substantive activity for their release and relief. It seems to have had the humanizing effect our interned comrades, their relatives, and we longtime advocates could only conjure in our dreams. Since 2010, with the visionary support of the U.S. Human Rights Network's founding director, Ajamu Baraka and his successor, Kali Akuno, I've been boarding planes to Geneva, Switzerland, to talk to UN Human Rights Council members, Commission staffers, treaty body reviewer mechanism experts, and others.

Tsleil-Waututh Nation Lead Powerful Pilgrimage Walk In North Vancouver

October 1, 2021 Elisia Seeber, North Shore News. Create! Canada, Indigenous Rights, Residential Schools, truth and reconciliation

A sea of orange flowed down Dollarton Highway on Sept. 30 as members of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation community, and family members from Musqueam and Squamish nations, took part in a pilgrimage walk to commemorate the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The rain did not dampen the spirits of community members who gathered at the Tsleil-Waututh Reserve administration building at 9 a.m. on Thursday, to walk 8.5 kilometres to the site of the former St. Paul’s Residential School, now home to St. Thomas Aquinas Regional Secondary School. The morning began with drumming and song and an uplifting, positive feeling grew amongst the crowd as more than 100 members began the journey. It was also a sombre time for many members, as they retraced the steps their relatives took every day to “school.”

Discovery Of Mass Graves Reinforces Need For Truth And Reconciliation

June 14, 2021 Equal Justice Initiative. Create! Indigenous Rights, Racism, truth and reconciliation, Tulsa Massacre

One hundred years after the Tulsa Massacre, a team of scientists has discovered the remains of 27 people believed to be murdered by the white mob that destroyed the prosperous Black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921. The victims were uncovered just two weeks after the discovery of a mass grave on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, a boarding school where Indigenous children were forcibly sent until the late 1970s. The bodies of 215 children—some as young as three years old—have been uncovered so far. In both Tulsa and British Columbia, the discoveries came after decades of effort by descendants of survivors and family members of victims urging local and federal officials to acknowledge this history.

France Vows ‘Symbolic Actions,’ No Apologies For Colonisation Of Algeria

January 28, 2021 By Adlène Meddi, Middle East Eye. Educate! Algeria, colonization, France, truth and reconciliation

On Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron received a much anticipated report on France’s 132-year colonial rule of Algeria and the war that led to Algeria’s independence in 1962, as part of an effort towards reconciliation of historical memory between the two countries. A specialist of contemporary Algerian history, French historian Benjamin Stora, was tasked by Macron in July with “making a precise and just inventory of the progress done in France of colonisation and the Algerian war”, which remain painful subjects for millions of Algerian and French citizens nearly 60 years later. Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune had also tasked his advisor and director of national archives, Abdelmajid Chikhi, to coordinate with Stora on the issue of memorialisation.

California Truth, Healing Council Begins Historic Work

January 18, 2021 KolKickingWoman, Indian Country Today. Create! American genocide, California, Indigenous Sovereignty, truth and reconciliation

Two years ago, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a formal apology to tribes in the state for atrocities committed against them and for the history of genocide and oppression they endured. He also decided to put action, and money, behind his words. Through an executive order, the governor established the California Truth and Healing Council to provide an avenue for Native Americans “to clarify the record – and provide their historical perspective – on the troubled relationship between tribes and the state.” This first-of-its-kind panel recently held its initial meeting to discuss what it hopes to accomplish. “Telling the truth is only one small part of this whole healing cycle,” said Caleen Sisk, a council member and chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. “It’s taking action and doing things so tribal ways can continue to exist.”

Book Review: “On The Judgment Of History”

October 3, 2020 Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed. Educate! Human Rights, Nuremberg Trials, Reparations, truth and reconciliation

The scene in Charlottesville, Va., three years ago -- the Confederate flags, the tiki-torch Nazis, the lethal use of a car against counterdemonstrators -- left Joan Wallach Scott feeling perplexity and horror, as she recounts in On the Judgment of History (Columbia University Press). It was not just the thuggish hatred on display, which was nothing new. Beyond that there was a kind of menacing shamelessness about all of it, even before the president gave his wink of approval: a defiance of the idea that slavery, white supremacy and fascism had been consigned to the dustbin of history.

Truth & Reconciliation Coming To America From The Grassroots

March 1, 2015 Fania E. Davis, www.theguardian.com Organize! Racism, truth and reconciliation

All over the US, we are witnessing the dawn of a truth and reconciliation movement. There is a rising chorus of voices that is helping us to collectively face an epidemic of racial violence, expose its deep historical roots, and stop it. At this stage, there’s no centralized national truth and reconciliation body of the sort we saw in South Africa after the fall of apartheid. Instead, these expressions emanate from local, community-based and grassroots groups that are self-organizing rather than following the directives of a high-level governmental entity. For now, letting bottom-up, organic initiatives lead the way is a good thing. To move toward a reconciled America, we have to do the work ourselves.

Is Truth And Reconciliation Helping First Nations In Canada?

March 26, 2014 Connie Walker www.cbc.ca Educate! Solidarity, truth and reconciliation

My mother being a survivor and through the hardship that she’s encountered, I definitely carry a pain that she carries without the action being [done to] me … but in saying that she has also given me a strength to overcome things in my life. Because she survived, I feel like I can survive. Have you participated in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission? The Walk for Reconciliation was held in Vancouver in September 2013. (Lisa Johnson/CBC) Yes, in Vancouver last year they had that amazing walk. It surprised me. I felt overwhelmed that so many people had come out and heard about the TRC that were non-aboriginal. There were so many mixed cultures that were part of that walk and it was so welcomed. Because when you’ve gone through something that you feel ashamed for, even though you don’t need to feel ashamed… to be so celebrated by the community was incredible to see.

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