Rob Robinson, a long-time UUSC supporter and environmental activist, recently organized a special delegation to Guatemala to investigate environmental damage that may be connected to a new gold-mining venture. He filed this report from his home in Colorado.

First it was Fidelity, now it’s Berkshire Hathaway. Two of the world’s largest financial investment firms have sold off huge chunks of stock in a major Chinese oil company, although neither is admitting that it took these actions in order to help end the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. However, the financial media is abuzz this week with news of multibillionaire Warren Buffett’s decision to sell $140 million worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock in PetroChina Co.

Both the new Congress and the Bush administration are busy these days wrangling over things like the mass firings of federal prosecutors and the leaking of the names of CIA operatives. In the midst of all the media frenzy, it’s reassuring to know that Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) have introduced bills to roll back many of the immoral and perhaps unconstitutional provisions of the new Military Commissions Act.

UUSC and colleague organizations vigorously opposed the new law adopted in the waning months of the last Congress. Among its more outrageous provisions, the Military Commissions Act allows certain interrogation techniques for terror suspects that are widely regarded as torture, continues the secret CIA role in interrogating terrorism suspects, and denies prisoners – many of whom have not been charged with anything – the habeas corpus right to challenge their detentions in federal court.

The legislation to undo some of these outrages has just been introduced, but it’s not too early to tell your senators and representative how you feel on the issue. UUSC is a founding member of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, which is urging its colleague organizations and other human rights groups to join a Call-Into-Congress initiative this week.

When the new law was signed by President Bush last fall, thousands of activists sent him their own “Citizens’ Signing Statement” on how they would interpret the legislation. You can add your voice by visiting our Legislative Action Center.

Cynthia White of San Francisco recently spent a week in New Orleans as part of a UUSC JustWorks Katrina Relief camp. She wrote the following account.

Our van stops in the Lower Ninth Ward. We exit in awe as we take in our surroundings. This is the first destination of our New Orleans tour. I can assure you we are not in the French Quarter.

Hundreds of shiny plastic signs are nailed to dilapidated homes and stressed electric poles. They read: “We Buy Homes,” “Prudential Real Estate,” “We Demolish,” “Concrete Slab Removal,” “Mold Inspection.” Official spray-painted graffiti marks water-stained facades where the Feds came and went, leaving notice of their search for stranded people, bodies, and animals. Yards are littered with debris. Broken windows reveal cluttered rooms with heaps of furniture, strollers, and clothes. I feel like an intruder and I wonder if I am really in North America.

Perhaps one in every 10 to 15 houses is undergoing reconstruction. Each home is a small beacon of hope for the thousands of people who were displaced after Hurricane Katrina. We are invited into Miss Mary’s (Mary Fontenot, director of UUSC partner ACT) house, who is also leading our tour. This is one of the promising ones on the vacant block. She is living in a FEMA trailer park several miles from here. Her friends and family came together to help rebuild her house that sat for weeks under 10 feet of water. Aside from the frame, nothing was salvageable. But that was the past and Miss Mary only exudes hope and energy for a new future.

Mary, like many other community organizers, is devoted to bringing back the neighborhoods of New Orleans. She speaks openly and passionately about the challenges they are up against and the endless battles they have fought to regain the homes that they own. The stories she relays are tragic and truly unbelievable. She reiterates again and again how they have “fought tooth and nail” for the little progress that has been made. She tells us that the first health clinic since Katrina is about to reopen down the block. The delays have come from insignificant details concerning governmental building codes. The small building sat for months unoccupied because the handicap ramp was an inch off.

It is difficult to even begin to understand the hurdles these communities face. There are no churches, no hospitals, no schools, and no businesses left to offer the basic communal necessities. Even if families come home and manage to fork out the necessary money to gut and rebuild their homes, where do they find work? Where do their children go to school? Many of these communities still don’t have potable water or electricity.

The government continues to turn a blind eye to its people as plans for industrial expansion and an airport are in the works for the Upper Ninth Ward where most homes were totally obliterated or demolished. In this case, developers, contractors, and surveyors were allowed into the ward even before the original homeowners.

Mary’s voice is taxed as it is probably the most important tool she has. She apologizes for her hoarse throat, smiles, and hugs her friend with whom she shares a “temporary” trailer. Despite their odds they are reaching out and moving forward. They are organizing community meetings, disseminating information, listening to the needs of their neighbors, taking action, and most importantly keeping their faith knowing that the situation can only get better.

We turn to get back on the bus. We have two more hours of driving through New Orleans. Twenty more miles of another half dozen neighborhoods that are in better or worse shape than the Lower 9th. A mockingbird calls as a bulldozer speeds through the empty streets. We turn the corner and Mary points out the freshly painted health clinic. I, too, feel a sense of hope and an overwhelming admiration for the people of these communities.

The latest honors have just been announced, and for the second year in a row, President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan has been proclaimed by Parade Magazine as the World’s Worst Dictator. This is no small feat, as he had to beat out strong competition from North Korea’s Kim Jong-Ill and Iran’s Sayyid Ali Khamenei, and many other worthy candidates.

It is interesting to note that both North Korea and Iran, second and third respectively in the Parade report, have been singled out by President Bush as members of his “Axis of Evil,” but Sudan has not yet reached that level of notoriety with our president.

Bashir earned his distinction in Parade for “his ongoing deadly human rights abuses in the Darfur region of Sudan.” He also outclassed his competitors by just recently agreeing to a ceasefire, then allegedly “ordering his troops to continue their attacks.”

Parade Magazine is distributed to more than 34 million readers, mostly as Sunday supplements in major newspapers across the country. Their Annual Report of the World’s Worst Dictators is taken largely from reports from several respected international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The magazine is inviting readers to participate in a survey, which you can do via their Interactive Poll.

Better yet. I’m guessing neither President Bashir nor President Bush read Parade Magazine –- or check their website -- very often. So send a message directly to President Bush through our Drumbeat for Darfur campaign. And send a message to Congress through our Legislative Action Center.

Legislation to enact the first increase in nearly 10 years in the federal minimum wage passed the House of Representatives overwhelmingly this week as the new Congress got down to business. But the celebration over this major victory for human rights advocates may be short-lived. Now, the action turns to the Senate, where there already is a movement afoot to offer amendments that would have the effect of killing the long-overdue hike in the minimum wage.

By the end of the week, Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, reportedly was ready to amend the measure to provide tax cuts for small businesses. This is what President Bush said he would need for him to approve the increase. Last year, a federal minimum wage increase died in Congress because it was linked in the same bill with unrelated tax cuts for the wealthy.

The president’s latest tax-cutting scheme comes in the wake of the clear Election Day messages delivered in six states where voters overwhelmingly approved minimum wage increases. A broad-based coalition of labor, faith, and community organizations – with support from business interests – carried the day with persuasive analysis that a modest minimum wage increase would not harm small businesses. In Colorado, a Unitarian Universalist minister coauthored an op-ed in the Denver Post that argued forcefully that a minimum wage increase was the right thing to do, economically as well as morally.

With a Senate vote possible as early as next week, let your senators know that you expect them to approve a “clean” minimum wage increase. Keep the momentum for progressive change alive!

After the dust had settled on election night, it was especially satisfying to learn that ballot referendums to increase the minimum wage had been approved easily in all six states where they appeared. I was especially pleased to see it had won in Colorado, where it faced stiff opposition in a traditionally conservative-voting state.

The successful campaign in Colorado was helped immeasurably by the advocacy work of UU congregations and individuals in mobilizing support, as well as in using the media to promote the cause. One especially effective tool was an op-ed in the Denver Post, one of the two largest newspapers in Colorado. The op-ed, titled “Colorado minimum wage – Hike is the right thing morally, economically,” was co-authored by the Rev. Jann Halloran, minister of the Prairie UU Church in Aurora, Colo., and argues persuasively that the ballot initiative helps to reduce poverty while at the same time benefiting the state’s overall economy.

UUSC is working hard through Wage Justice, our living wage initiative, to promote increases in state minimum wages and ultimately in the federal minimum wage. As a member of the Let Justice Roll coalition of more than 70 faith-based organizations, we worked with our UU colleagues in Colorado to help organize support for the referendum among Colorado businesses.

The hard-fought campaign in Colorado also produced some of the more unusual – some would say offensive – political advertisements. One TV ad used images of a cheese grater and a toilet paper roll to show how “painful” a higher minimum wage would be. Another invoked an image of Moses, shown holding stone tablets on a mountain, complaining to God that the ballot question would chisel the minimum wage into Colorado’s constitution.