The Best Class Ever!

#004

Yes, I know that I wrote somewhere earlier that the students in my two Fall classes, Soc 131 and Soc 273 were the best ever, so now (hmm) it is a wee bit awkward to write that the students in my Spring class, Soc. 290 are the best ever. Never mind; what is remarkable is that the Spring students took what they inherited from the Fall students and launched an amazing project -- the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Human Rights Initiative (CH-CHRI)!!

In the Fall students studied international human rights law and the human rights provisions in other countries’ constitutions. They were shocked to learn that the US  lags behind the world and the majority of countries by about fifty years. They decided to hold a mock Constitutional Convention, which is documented in a blog  maintained by then-undergraduate student, Cynthia Trinh, and in an article written by graduate student, Beth Latshaw. The Convention was a smashing success, attended by NAACP representatives, community activists , labor representatives, and the mayors of both cities.

Americans can protest that their government fails to ratify human rights treaties. It will take, however, great public support as well as broad-based coalitions of lawyers, determined scientists, civic leaders, church leaders, and representatives of major nonprofits to lobby and persuade Congress and the president to make this a reality. No US president, with the exception of Carter (and he failed), has been supportive of the US ratifying international human rights treaties (or for that matter, the human rights treaties of the Organization of American States.

What do we do in the meantime?

Why Not Cities?

Locales are where people engage one another -- ethically, responsibly, while recognizing others’ dignity, cultures, and identities. It is in locales where residents find solutions for universal housing and health care, gender equity, nondiscrimination, quality education, green power, migrants’ rights, the rights of gays and lesbians, local farms, and (even) redistribution of wealth. And, its in locales where inclusion and pluralism are nurtured and celebrated.

Soc 290 picked up where Soc 131 and Soc 273 left off. Only the scale is different – a shift from the international/national to the local. The students were encouraged by both mayors’ saying that they would support Chapel Hill and Carrboro becoming Human Rights Cities.They were also empowered by the knowledge that there is one other HR City in North America –  Edmonton - with others in the making, and quite a few around the world. This is the background for why we decided to launch the CH-CHRI. (For a background, with links to other cities, see my article; Excellent sources of information on Human Rights Cities are PDHRE and the John Humphrey Center of Edmonton. 

A Citizens’ Steering Committee was formed at the beginning of the semester, and will continue to grow in size and diversity. At their meetings (about monthly), the students presented their work and updates. As things move forward, the Steering Committee will propose projects for the students to tackle.

To make a long story short – the 19 students in Soc 290 did amazing work. In a sense, we were “all over the map.” We went to town hearings (taking our message about the priority of human rights with us), met with university researchers, met with people in the nonprofit sector, went to a Law School conference, proposed changes in the police department’s work with minority kids, attended sessions in a black church on environmental racism, went to meetings for developers and “gave them a piece of our minds,” went to health care meetings, worked on a clean-water initiative, consolidated connections with an end-the-homelessness coalition and met with some homeless people. We felt we wanted and needed this "all-over-the-map" approach in order to better understand how human rights are situated in the two cities and where the weak and strong spots are. (None will be surprised that the challenges will be building solidarity across racial, ethnic and citizenship lines, and overcoming the divides of wealth, ownership, and privilege.)

I will not say more here, but let the 19 students describe their projects. See two blogs, one by Bernard Worthy, which captures the core theme of our course, and another by Meredith Austin, which includes entries by students and is an excellent summary of our semester.

Let me end by saying that it takes courage for a college student to speak at a public hearing, telling developers that their classy projects are an assault on the well being of near-by African Americans because they will be forced out of the community that their families had lived in for generations. That’s just one reason this was the Best Class Ever. (There are 18 other reasons)

Spring Term

Comments

[Tomas Eric Nordlander]

Human Rights Defence has now announced the results our essay competition. At third place Shoma A. Chatterji’s “Eunuchs of India - Deprived of Human Rights” is placed. Here is a snippet from its introduction...

"The International Human Rights Day comes and goes every year. Human Rights activists talk of torture of under trials in police custody. They talk about human beings being subjected to medical experimentation without their conscious knowledge. They discuss socially relevant subjects like violence against women, child abuse, trafficking or exploitation of child labour in TW countries. But the lot of the community of eunuchs is largely ignored even by their own. It is also true that at every stage of their existence, their rights to live and work like normal human beings are violated with impunity."

If you like to read more, you will find it on our site: www.humanrightsdefence.org

Yours sincerely,

Tomas Eric Nordlander
HumanRightsDefence