On the sunniest Saturday of the year, my colleague Aiesha and I opened the doors for two Coming of Age groups visiting UUSC. The energy and compassion of these young people always astounds us. But before their arrival today, with Boston looking like a picture-book and its tourist sites beckoning, I wondered if talking about human rights in a conference room could hold the attention of 13- and 14-year-olds. Well, it certainly did.

We enjoyed a far-reaching discussion with 23 youth and 10 adult leaders from Central Unitarian Church in Paramus, N.J., and the BuxMont UU Fellowship in Warrington, Pa. It was the first time we've hosted two groups at once, and it was a pleasure seeing them meet each other.

We talked about human rights in theory and in practice and how it's up to all of us to stand up for them. We enjoyed playing a game that helps the youth understand the scope (and limitations) of these rights. Next, we studied the origins of and the hope advanced in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

To get more concrete about human rights and what happens when they are overrun, we turned to Darfur, watching some of UUSC's documentary, "Heroes of the Spirit: Genocide Then, Genocide Now."

The youth were invited to write letters urging President Bush to implement the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act. The letters were unscripted and simply amazing, providing a boost of morale on Monday for all of us here working on the issue.

One letter read:

"Dear President Bush, As you are undoubtedly well aware, the crisis in Darfur has escalated beyond the point of the realm of human imagination. It has grown out of control with the merciless slaughtering of thousands of innocents. . . . Please hear not just my voice, but the thousands that want you to take action and help right the wrongs currently being ignored in one of the world's bloodiest places, Darfur. Thank you."

These letters from 13- and 14-year-olds will go to the White House in order to make a difference. Aiesha and I left on Saturday exhilarated by the brainy and caring youth from these two great congregations. We have a good feeling about the generation coming up behind us.

If you would like to bring your youth group to UUSC for human rights education and an action, please contact us.

What do a struggling street vendor in Bombay and an underpaid domestic servant in Beijing have in common?

At a gathering last week at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, sponsored by Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), researchers shared reports on the marginalized millions who toil in what's called the informal economy.

"Informality, Poverty, and Growth: Labor Markets in China and India" brought together economists, policy makers, and development specialists to analyze a growing body of data on the struggles of those who eke out a living outside the relative comforts of the formal economy. China and India, two economic powerhouses comprising 37.5 percent of the world's population, represented the focus countries for the research.

More women than men work in the informal economy. More women than men labor invisibly and undervalued, below the radar, without a safety net.

Shalini Sinha from the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), a trade association in India representing 1 million Indian women who work in the informal economy, presented on successes she's witnessed with small farmers and street vendors. Research on the problems these workers face has led to novel solutions to expand their power.

Others at the conference presented creative methods by which to measure the work of and reach out to people whose work by definition is dynamic, not static, who may be reachable one day but gone the next. Researchers are more than an outside, measuring presence -- their best work is context specific and results in extensive collaboration with the groups they study.

The increasing understanding of the conditions of informal workers opens the door for improved policy to recognize, value, and protect their economic contributions and human rights.

It's no exaggeration to say that everyone in this poor mountain town of Rabinal bears the pain of the massacres -- the government-sponsored massacres -- of the early 1980s. An estimated 4,400 people were killed in the surrounding region, leaving behind a large population of widows and orphans.

My colleague Wayne Smith and I are here to meet with the brave organizers who eke out victories in the struggle for justice and reconciliation against a backdrop of death threats and continuing governmental intimidation.

On Saturday night, we meet with Teresa Alvarado, board president of UUSC partner Maya Achi Association for the Integral Development of Victims of Violence (ADIVIMA), and walk the dusty streets, looking for a bite.

We enter the only open restaurant in town and stumble upon a birthday celebration.

Juanita is turning 30. She and her friend Rosario are in animated discussion at a small table crowded with empty bottles of Gallo, the national beer, when they rise up at the sight of us -- they have not seen Teresa in a long time. Introductions are made with glee and we join them. "Feliz cumpleaños!" we shout and call the waiter over.

Almost immediately the celebration turns somber as Juanita recounts the loss of her father in the massacres. She was seven. She does not remember him. Her mother fled to the capital and to this day is tormented by a fear that keeps her from returning. Juanita's grandparents helped her escape and raised her to be the proud, successful mother of three smart children that she is today.

Teresa, who was married with two children at the time of the massacres, shares grim details of the deaths of her own family members.

After some quiet moments as a group, Juanita and Rosario run over to meet some friends in another part of the almost vacant restaurant. Wayne and I begin to discuss with Teresa her proposal for a women's chicken and cattle cooperative. But we're quickly interrupted -- bang!

Juanita is back. She bangs the metal table to change the music -- she wants to dance, it's her birthday. She bangs it again -- she wants a ballad.

A slow song with a simple 1-2 rhythm comes on -- a farmer's lamentation of a difficult life. That will do.

All eyes are on Juanita as she thrusts her arms out and declares, "Bones."

"They dug him up and told me, 'This is your father -- bones.'"

We're not therapists. We're just here. We do what we can. Wayne doesn't speak the language, which simply doesn't matter, because his eyes convey tremendous sympathy and understanding.

For not the last time tonight, we huddle close, all of us, taking hands, and grieve.

At the end of the night we drive Teresa home.

We climb a serpentine mountain road, steep and craggy, that nearly shakes off our car like a flea. Teresa walks this every day.

After an emotional parting, our attempt to turn around pitches the car dramatically, affording a view I've only seen from the window of a plane. We look out upon the town, the few lights dwarfed by darkness, like the dead outnumbering the living, and descend.

Lying awake later, I think of what the organizers and even the non-organizers we've met on this visit have repeated almost like a slogan -- that in the past they suffered, that in the present they suffer, but that their suffering will bear a future their children will inhabit with peace and dignity. I try to concentrate on that future.

According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the world's only imprisoned Nobel peace laureate is about to be given her freedom.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been under detention, usually house arrest, for most of her days since 1990. After winning the democratic election in Burma in 1990 with 82 percent of the vote, the losing side -- the military regime -- consolidated power and tried to marginalize her.

A year later, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Her fame and courage quickly won her many supporters outside of Burma.

For years, UUSC has supported Suu Kyi and the work for democracy in Burma through advocacy work in Congress and with constituents. In 2005, more than 15 youth groups who visited UUSC prepared special birthday cards honoring Suu Kyi's 60th birthday that were presented to the Burmese embassy in Washington, D.C.

Shalini Nataraj, UUSC's former interim director of programs, visited Suu Kyi in Rangoon in 2000. At that time, Suu Kyi expressed her appreciation for the work of activists here in the United States. UUSC also supports the work of EarthRights International, a colleague organization that is documenting and seeking redress for human rights and environmental abuses in Burma.

The possible release of Suu Kyi comes shortly after a November decision by the Burmese government to extend her house arrest six months. Many immediately criticized the decision, including the United Nations, the European Union, and the United States.

Meanwhile, the military regime is solidifying its power with a new constitution. Aung San Suu Kyi's release will be great news, but only if her safety is guaranteed and travel and speech restrictions are not imposed. A generation has passed since her initial imprisonment, a generation of tyranny, with closed schools and repercussions for political activity. How Suu Kyi is allowed to continue her work will be the next test for the military regime.

The living wage movement gained momentum and even greater legitimacy on November 30 when the New Mexico Court of Appeals unanimously upheld Santa Fe's 2003 living wage ordinance ($8.50 per hour for workers in businesses of more than 25 people).

The Santa Fe Living Wage Network, a UUSC partner, is celebrating.

Living wage opponents have been banking on overturning local living wage ordinances in state courts, claiming there is no authority to make these laws at the local level.

In one of the first cases of its kind, the Court of Appeals ruled otherwise.

The city of Santa Fe is a "home rule municipality," meaning it is free to legislate on local matters so long as the state has not expressly ruled to the contrary.

The Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce and other plaintiffs argued that New Mexico's general Minimum Wage Act ($5.15 an hour) forbids creating any higher wage laws. But the court ruled that the state act simply creates a floor. Nor was it intended to be the final word on minimum wages. For one thing, it was passed at a time when other cities in New Mexico already had higher minimum wages, yet it did not nullify those laws.

This court victory sets a positive precendent for other innovative living wage movements currently underway, including Let Justice Roll, the nation's only coalition of interfaith activists and community groups (including UUSC) working specifically on living and minimum wage work.

Living wage initiatives and ordinances are achieving victories and resisting attacks through sustained efforts by faith-labor-community coalitions. "La Marcha," a film about the Santa Fe living wage campaign, highlights this strategy, and will be available from UUSC in early spring.

Last Saturday night, Cindy Sheehan and the Bring Them Home Now Tour addressed a packed audience at Boston University's School of Law.

Members of military families took turns giving gut-wrenching testimony of the anguish they have experienced over their sons' and daughters' (and, in one case, grandmother's) undoing in Iraq. Some of the families, like Cindy's, will have an empty seat at the holiday table, now and forever. Others have a family member suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. One Vietnam War veteran tells us, "When you 'break' a soldier, you can't fix 'em. They're like fine crystal. If you drop 'em, there's no putting 'em back together. Not ever."

One mother and father huddled together at the microphone and told the story of their son's safe return from Iraq. He moved home. Something about him was different, they knew, but they felt helpless, daunted by the enormity of his psychological damage. While they were out running errands one afternoon, he hanged himself from the garden hose.

I honestly don't know how they can address these crowds of strangers, day after day, on this month-long bearing of witness. But they have a mission. The parents close with a bang: "This war not only entered our home, it stole from our family. We should never, ever let this happen to another parent again."

Brushed aside in a nation that goes on largely as if there is no war, these families suffer these emotional tolls mostly alone.

A Marine veteran recently returned from Iraq tells us what his commanding officer drilled into his unit's heads their first day there. "Don't think you're going to be heroes. You're not here to find weapons of mass destruction. You're not here to find Saddam. You're here for one reason and one reason only: oil. And don't even think you're getting out of this because of two things. First, you signed a contract that said you'd follow the orders you were given. Second, your friends are going to be out there with you. You cannot -- I repeat, cannot -- abandon your friends."

Cindy explained how she felt when she saw her son off to Iraq, how she wished he would renege on his contract, how he said he could do no such thing. "On January 5, 2004, I said goodbye to Casey for the last time. I think I knew in my heart that day that I would never see him again." Three months later, Casey died from a gun wound to the back of his head. He was wearing his standard-issue helmet. Cindy explained that the riot gear worn by the Boston Police Department the night the Boston Red Sox won the World Series is better than that worn by our troops in Iraq.

Like a lot of the military families on the tour, Cindy was fed up not only with the poor equipment but also with the rationale for the war. She investigated the original claims and found that the framework of assumptions, promises, and dangers had blown away like a house of cards. After Casey's death, she began her quixotic campaign to shed light on these issues. In August 2005, a stroke of genius brought her to set up the now-famous Camp Casey outside the then-vacationing Pres. George Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. She asked for a meeting with the president. He declined. She said she'd wait. She sat outside his vacation home until Hurricane Katrina brought an early end to his vacation.

Cindy Sheehan and other military families decided to take their plea to their people by starting the Bring Them Home Now Tour. They find no justification for the continued U.S. military presence in Iraq. They want to stem the tide of human suffering, a suffering they know better than anyone, and which they never wish to share.

If you ever have the time to visit only one civil rights site, go directly to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Part museum, part "living institution," it sits like a small college across from Kelly Ingram Park, where more than 1,000 children were arrested in protests against local segregation in May 1963.

The idea to have the children protest, a stroke of genius by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), flooded the jails and brought national criticism of the police, and local and state governments. President John F. Kennedy dispatched 3,000 soldiers to stave off riots and enforce a desegregation agreement. Statues in the park today represent the German shepherds and high-pressure firehoses that terrorized peaceful protesters and shocked millions watching the nightly news.

The institute's museum captures the entirety of the civil rights struggle with an encyclopedic flair. We pace through the exhibit halls, giving ourselves over to the sights, sounds, and videos. The museum's strong sense of narrative helps us sort the many stories we have absorbed this week into one overriding story whose themes are struggle and triumph. We will no doubt draw on the memories of this week in later years when we need to summon a source of inspiration or a jolt of encouragement as we go on to face new struggles.

We have come this week in many roles -- as allies, activists, and friends, but also as historians.