Lately on breaks at UUSC's office, we've been discussing the Hunger Games novels, especially with the recent release of the first movie. Suzanne Collins's understanding and descriptions of the tools of oppression have struck us as profound — and there are interesting parallels between the protagonist Katniss's story and those of our partner organizations. (Minor spoilers follow!)

The portrayal of District 12, the coal-mining town where Katniss grows up in, brings to mind the struggle for short-term survival versus long-term, sustainable change. For any organization working to better the world, this is a fundamental question. Katniss has been presented with the choice of taking on tessera — extra entries in the Hunger Games lottery — in exchange for more food for her mother and sister. Additionally, she hunts in the woods outside district 12 to bring home meat and gathered plants to trade or sell. Going into the woods is technically illegal, but Katniss puts herself in danger to provide food for her family. Her only goal is her sister Prim's survival. 

For many in the Global South, such choices are commonplace. Eldest children often go to work in factories or businesses far away from home, sending home as much money as they can earn to support the family. These concerns take precedence over longer-term change. It's hard to take to the streets to advocate for democracy when you don't have enough food at home.

When any of us look to improve the world, we have similar questions. Is it better to provide a meal at a soup kitchen or advocate for housing reform? Both are important, but very different, ways of approaching the problem. At UUSC, we make a specific point of focusing on long-term, sustainable change. We work with small grassroots organizations to find projects that specifically address long-term needs.

The eco-village at the Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP) is a great example. After the catastrophic earthquake that hit Haiti in January 2010, millions were without homes or sustenance. MPP, which had long worked on community organizing and sustainable agriculture, saw a chance for change amid the rebuilding. With funding and skilled support from UUSC, including hands-on construction from JustWorks volunteers, MPP has constructed homes for 10 families and trained them in sustainable farming techniques. The eco-village model has proven so compelling that MPP has secured funding for homes for an additional 40 families.

The Hunger Games themselves also illustrate a common technique used by groups in power to maintain control. By pitting the 12 districts against each other in the games, the Capitol divides and manipulates the districts against each other. Even though they are natural allies, the 12 districts have built grudges against one another over the killings of tributes - which makes an organized resistance to the Capitol that much harder.

The Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), one of our civil-liberties partners, works to counter a similar effect here in the United States. BORDC builds diverse coalitions to put enforceable limits on local police authority to implement federal policies governing surveillance and immigration enforcement. Katniss and the people of District 12 have a good relationship with their local "peacekeepers." While the Capitol's presence is felt, the more draconian policies aren't enforced. Similarly, BORDC encourages changes on the local political level to prevent immigration status papers from being demanded during routine traffic stops and to track arrest and traffic-stop data to monitor possible profiling. 

BORDC accomplishes this through building local coalitions among Latino groups concerned about immigration policies, African American groups organized around racial profiling, Muslim groups taking action against surveillance and police infiltration, and Libertarian groups organized around individual rights and privacy. While all these groups have different primary concerns, they have a similar focus: the behavior of local police and the ability of peaceful groups to organize without being infiltrated by police.

Peeta tells Katniss before the games begin that he wants to find a way to prove that he's still himself, despite the Capitol's game. This is the challenge before every one of us — to stand for justice in the world and remain true to our principles, whether by uniting people to take action against injustice or by giving people the tools to create a just recovery.

The human right to water has scored yet another victory, this time in Kenya where a district court has determined that everyone in Kenya has a right to safe and clean water in adequate quantities.

A judge of the High Court at Embu, Kenya, said this while delivering judgment in a case brought by 1,123 people who were evicted from their lands by government officials to make way for road construction. The petitioners — among them women, children, and elderly persons — have occupied the lands since the 1940s. In spite of this, they were not given a notice of eviction or consulted by the government. They were rendered homeless when the government came with armed policemen and bulldozers, and evicted them. The police used tear gas on the petitioners and resorted to physical violence when they tried to resist the demolition of their homes. As a result, some of the petitioners were forced to live in the open, others in makeshift structures — all exposed to the elements of nature and health risks, and without access to basic necessities like food, water, and sanitation. Several children dropped out of school. In addition, 26 of the evicted individuals were over 60 years of age and forced to endure unbearable conditions.

In the decision, the court concluded that this style of eviction violated the dignity of the petitioners and their human rights. According to the court, the petitioners are entitled to the rights to adequate housing, reasonable standards of health care, and to clean and safe water in adequate quantities under the constitution of Kenya. In addition, it also ruled that the government violated the rights of the children to education.

The court also mentioned that Kenya has ratified the U.N. Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which means that the government is bound to respect, protect, and enforce the rights recognized in the covenant, including the rights to water and sanitation. In conclusion, the court awarded each person the sum of 200,000 Kenya shillings in damages and ruled that the petitioners should be allowed to return to their land.

Although the government may decide to appeal, this is a landmark decision and a victory for economic and social rights in Kenya. Kenya enacted a new constitution in 2010 that guarantees several economic and social rights, including the rights to water and sanitation. This decision represents the beginning of efforts by civil society in Kenya to ensure these rights are not just in the books but are implemented and respected by the government. Hopefully, the government of Kenya will comply with the court's decision and make sure the people affected are returned to their homes and adequately compensated.

UUSC President William F. Schulz (Photo by David Vita)

The following post, "Why the Left Is Often Late to Tea," by UUSC President William F. Schulz, was published in the Huffington Post on October 14, 2011.

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) phenomenon, as nascent as it is long overdue, represents an opportunity unparalleled in recent American history for a grassroots movement motivated by progressive sentiments to change American political culture. But in order to do so, it must learn some lessons from the Left's own history, from the Arab Spring and, ironically enough, from the Tea Party with which it is so often compared.

I went to Oberlin College at the height of the anti-Vietnam War movement. At Oberlin the principal focus of that movement was the military recruiters who came to campus to seek candidates for ROTC. One morning as the recruiter drove into town his car was surrounded by a group of 40 to 50 students. For more than four hours the recruiter sat in his car in his crisp uniform; the students chanted anti-war slogans; the recruiter would occasionally inch his car forward; the students would re-position themselves frantically to stop his movement; and the cries of "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?" would echo across the campus.

And then, after four hours, something very human happened. The recruiter said that he had to go to the bathroom. This was not something the students had planned on. It threw them into a quandary. Finally, this being the era of "participatory democracy," the students took a vote. By a close margin it was decided that they would allow the officer to get out of the car and go to the bathroom provided that he promised to return to captivity immediately after he had flushed. The recruiter readily agreed; the students set him free; and ten minutes later the devastating news was transmitted by word of mouth to the students surrounding the now-empty car: "The recruiter has broken his word!" He had gone straight from the bathroom to the administration building and had set up his recruiting table just as he'd planned to do four hours earlier.

I have always found this one of the most telling examples of why the left wing often fails at political change. In the first place, the students had no plan--not only no plan for a full bladder but no coordinated plan for what to do with the recruiter and the car other than hold them both indefinitely. This small incident of theater was not integrated into a larger strategy. And in the second place, the students had no adequate understanding of power. Here was a military officer trained in the ways of war who represented what the students regarded as a morally bankrupt government that would stop at nothing, including killing children, to achieve its ends. And yet a majority of students thought that this officer would for some reason feel himself morally compelled to keep a promise! The students had obviously never learned or had forgotten Frederick Douglas's famous words, "Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will."

CNN's Don Lemon recently said to the media spokesperson for Occupy Wall Street: "The Tea Party's message is 'No new taxes' and 'Smaller government.' What's yours?" The answer: "Active democracy and every voice counts." But those are instrumental messages. What OWS and its potential allies need is a demand--"Tax the 1%," perhaps. The Tea Party knows that demands can be rejected but they cannot be ignored. Vague stirrings of discontent, even rage, can be dismissed unless they are either channeled into political change within the system or grow so massive that they threaten to bring down the whole political infrastructure.

The latter is what happened in Tunis and Cairo. So many people took to the streets that they brought down the rulers themselves. But note two things. First, that they had very concrete demands: "Mubarak out!" and "Yes to human rights!" And second, that they succeeded because the police and military ultimately turned, at least temporarily, against the ruling elite. That is hardly a possibility in this country so it leaves the option of political transformation.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has gotten hold of profound truths: that after nearly destroying the economic underpinnings of the society, for example, corporations have managed largely to avoid meaningful new regulations and are now holding onto more than $2 trillion in cash and liquid assets--assets that could be used to put people back to work but are instead being hoarded by the already wealthy.

It ought to be a slam dunk to exploit such a situation for political change. And it will be if the Left learns what the Tea Party already knows. As one of its chief financiers, Charles Koch, put it: "To bring about social change [requires] a strategy that is vertically and horizontally integrated, [spanning everything] from idea creation to policy development to education to grassroots organizations to lobbying to litigation to political action." Or, as an old Zen saying has it, "After ecstasy, the laundry." Occupy Wall Street has tapped into the hope and the energy. Now it needs to channel that enthusiasm into strategies that can change the country.

William F. Schulz is president of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and former executive director of Amnesty International USA.

The Habitat International Coalition (HIC-AL), a UUSC partner in Mexico, has won partial victory in one of the cases they brought to hold the government of Mexico accountable for violations of the human right to water. As a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Mexico has human-right-to-water obligations. However, many communities in Mexico lack access to safe drinking water and sanitation. HIC-AL brought three cases on behalf of residents - represented by three courageous women - of Ampliacion Tres de Mayo, a community that was cut off a water network by the local water authority. Because of this, residents of Ampliacion Tres de Mayo relied on bottled water for drinking and cooking, and spent a significant portion of their income on water.

In the decision, the first in the history of Mexico on the human right to water, the court agreed with HIC-AL that access to safe drinking water is a human right to which Mexico has obligations. However, the court tied the right to water to ownership of property, when it concluded that the applicant, Maria Carlota Guzman, does not have a legal interest in the property for which she sought a water connection. HIC-AL has described this as a very strange interpretation of the human right to water.

On our part, we believe that the court made the conclusion in error because every individual has a right to water whether they own property or not. Nonetheless, this is a partial victory for UUSC, HIC-AL, and the community, because we have obtained the first judicial recognition of the human right to water in Mexico. This comes ahead of a bill presently before local congresses in Mexico that seeks to make access to water and sanitation a human right. In addition, because of the pressure these cases brought on the local water authority, the municipality recently installed a water line in Ampliacion Tres de Mayo, and residents of the community now receive water twice a week. This is less than what HIC-AL and the community asked for, and it certainly does not fulfill the human right to water, but they are mindful of the fact that the community had no access to water when HIC-AL and UUSC intervened. Therefore, they are very proud of the progress they have made. HIC-AL is now working hard to make sure a decision that connects the human right to water to property ownership is not repeated as another case comes up for hearing this October. 

Meanwhile, HIC-AL is a member of the Coalition of Mexican Organizations for the Right to Water (COMDA), which is working on the bill that will guarantee everyone in Mexico the right to water and sanitation. The bill recently passed the Mexican Senate and is now up for approval by local congresses. According to CODMA, more than 10 million Mexicans are not connected to a public water supply.

This past weekend's Ecumenical Advocacy Days Conference — "Development, Security, and Economic Justice:  What's Gender Got to Do with It?" — ended on Monday with a lobby day on Capitol Hill. Seven hundred progressive faith-based advocates fanned out across the Hill to lobby for the issues that we care about. 

I visited with staffers from the offices of my representatives in the Senate, Senators John Kerry and Scott Brown, and the House, Representative Mike Capuano. The purpose of my visit was to ask them to support the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) that is going to be reintroduced this summer and to make sure that programs for women and children are not slashed in the process of balancing a budget. These are two issues that are near and dear to me and to UUSC. 

I understand the need to balance a budget — heck, I have to balance my checking account. But what I do not understand is the myth that we need to cut nutrition programs, poverty-reduction programs, education, and international aid (only half of 1 percent of our budget) in order to balance the budget. As I was contemplating what to report to you about my experience on the Hill and how to ask you to help me speak out, I kept coming back to the same idea:

We cannot balance a budget on the backs of low-income people, the most vulnerable people, and people most in need.

Even if we did slash every single cent of social spending, both nationally and internationally, we will not balance the budget; we would, however, cause extraordinary suffering both at home and abroad.

As members, supporters, and staff of UUSC, we understand that our calling is to support those who are most marginalized and most vulnerable. We seek to support and empower grassroots organizations that are struggling for their rights every day. We also seek to use our collective power to lift up the voices of those who are not heard, those for whom decisions are made without those same people ever having the right to speak for themselves. 

I am not an economist nor a trained lobbyist, and I understand how complicated our political and national budget situation is. Therefore, I cannot give you a perfect set of talking points on this issue. But I also know that those who seek to maintain their power and their purse depend on those of us who strive for justice to be confused and stumped for words. 

I ask you to find your voice and speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves — and if you feel the same way that I do, let our policy makers know that the balance of justice and equality is just as important as a balanced budget.    

Take action

If you feel the same, call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 (or you can search an online directory). Not sure what to say?

1. Introduce yourself: "I am a constituent and a member of [your congregation] in [city]."
2. Know their stand: If they are supportive, thank them and ask them to stay strong. If they are not supportive, ask them to reconsider their position.
3. Tell them about what you value: "I am calling to let [Rep/Sen. name] that the balance of justice and equality is just as important as a balanced budget. It is morally wrong to balance the budget on the backs of low-income people, the most vulnerable people, and people most in need."
4. Thank them!
5. Keep an eye on what action they take and follow up if necessary. 

What would you say about a U.S. law that leads to an incarceration rate that tips so heavily against one minority group that that single group comes to represent 85 percent of the total incarcerated under that law? What would you say if that minority group, African Americans, represents only 12 percent of the total population? What if you discovered that a shocking 96 percent of those prosecuted under that law were either black or Latino?

That law would be called draconian. It would be called racist. And those targeted by the law would be called people whose rights were violated.

Under federal sentencing laws passed in the mid-1980s, crack-cocaine offenders – mostly African American and Latino – have received harsher sentences than individuals convicted of powder-cocaine offenses. Under these same laws, standards for penalizing crack-cocaine offenses are 100 times more severe than they are for powder-cocaine offenses, and federal judges have no leeway to impose lighter sentences.

In a tremendous victory for racial justice, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Watson v. United States on December 10, 2007, that judges can ignore unjust sentencing guidelines that recommend harsher sentences for crack-cocaine offenses. Quickly following that decision, the United States Sentencing Commission voted unanimously to lighten punishments retroactively for crimes related to crack cocaine – calling the disparities “unwarranted.” These decisions should affect some 19,500 federal inmates.

Especially interesting for those in the human rights community, the Supreme Court issued its decision on International Human Rights Day. Dovetailing on my earlier blog post ("Human Rights Day As a Reminder"), I invite you to see this decision as a step towards resolving a pressing human rights issue in the United States – violations of racial antidiscrimination standards and equal rights.

Written by Nancy Nienhuis, a participant in the fourth annual Civil Rights Journey.

Imagine walking into your polling station and before someone hands you the ballot, they tell you you have to answer a couple of questions. "Okay," you say. And then they ask you, "How many bubbles in a bar of soap?" and "How many feathers on a chicken?" You can't answer, so they tell you that you can't vote.

Those questions were actually on the test they used to give blacks in the south in order to remove them from the voting lists. Whites didn't have to pass the tests. This is just one of the many things I learned this week during the Civil Rights Journey.

These days have been packed with information -- did you know that during the Montgomery Bus Boycott many bus drivers were laid off and became police officers?!? We've walked where Dr. King walked, we've talked to people who knew him. We've even heard from Mr. Nelson, the man who used to cut his hair.

On this trip, history not only comes alive, it talks to you. I'll never think about civil rights in the same way. Some things we've encountered made us shake our heads with wonder at how inhumanely people can treat each other -- Birmingham police turning dogs on children, for example. And other things give us hope. The heroes of the movement aren't the ones who made the changes we know now. The changes were made by everyday people, by people like me and people like you who, when the time came, chose to do something instead of walk away.

More than anything else, this trip and the history I've been introduced to in such a personal way remind me that I keep the fight alive and keep us all moving forward when I choose in every small moment of a regular day to do the right thing. No matter how tired, I must do this. If 500 people can March from Selma to Montgomery under threat of death, I can do this.

ENS reported today that the U.S. Department of Commerce has issued a gag order on government scientists. Federal government climate, weather, and marine scientists will be able to "give out only their name, rank, serial number, and the temperature," according to Jeff Ruch, director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. A response to Monday's Supreme Court decision on EPA regulating global green house gases?

According to ENS, "The new administrative order on 'Public Communications' covers the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, which includes the National Weather Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Ocean Service, and the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service. It forbids NOAA scientists from communicating any relevant information, even if prepared and delivered on their own time as private citizens, which has not been approved by the official chain-of-command."

This regressive policy not only gags their work environment, but also their private lives. ENS reports, ". . . these federal scientists must obtain agency pre-approval to speak or write, whether on or off-duty, concerning any scientific topic deemed 'of official interest'."

First Amendment challenge, anyone?

As announced yesterday by the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA, the EPA has to reconsider its regulation of green house gases. Why? Because Massachusetts and other states are likely to be harmed by climate change.

Justice Stephens wrote the majority opinion, which concluded that "given EPA’s failure to dispute the existence of a causal connection between man-made greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, its refusal to regulate such emissions, at a minimum, 'contributes' to Massachusetts’ injuries. "

According to the Environmental News Service, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said: "EPA can no longer hide behind the fiction that it lacks any regulatory authority to address the problem of global warming. . . .The agency cannot refuse to use its existing authority to regulate dangerous substances simply because it disagrees that such regulation would be a good idea."

The decision will undoubtedly have significant implications on related cases. Sheila Watt-Cloutier and 62 other Inuit petitioners were heard earlier in March in the hearings before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on their petition against the United States on climate change impacts to the Arctic peoples. The Center for International Environmental Law, one of the NGOs supporting the Inuits in their human rights litigation, has links to the case documents and interviews with the petitioners.

A temporary injunction against California's regulation of greenhouse gas emissions may be reviewed in light of the decision. For an interesting, if controversial, documentary on the California controversy, see "Who killed the Electric Car?"

This decision brings us a step closer to ensuring the rights of Inuits to life, livelihood, and a healthy environment -- including access to water -- and our human right to a healthy environment.

The beginning of the new year is, of course, a time to reflect on the one that has come before it, and inevitably with the turn of the calendar comes an avalanche of top ten lists. Movies, songs, news events — it’s in our nature to organize life so that we can make better sense of it.

Instead of compiling a list of year-in-review entertainment, Dahlia Lithwick at Slate has compiled a list of last year’s ten most outrageous civil liberties violations. The article, entitled “The Bill of Wrongs” is a sobering one — from the abuses at Guantanamo Bay to the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 — they’re all here.

And perhaps it’s when you see an entire list of civil liberties abuses compiled in one place that you realize how dangerous it is to relinquish these rights one by one over time.