Did you know that IRTF’s fair trade program raises approximately $25,000 each year, providing vital income for fair trade artisans and farmers in Latin America? They depend on groups like IRTF to find markets for their fair trade goods.
And IRTF, with only two paid staff, depends on volunteers to generate this income for the artisans and farmers.
Can you help out IRTF for a couple of hours?
Click here to see the schedule of dates and hours, and sign up for a shift.
IRTF will have an Fair Trade Open House at our office this Saturday. Stop by and give your friends and family gifts that support fair trade cooperative business that ensure living wages, community investment, and environmental sustainability. These fair trade products are grown and hand-crafted by families who depend on this vital income.
You have the chance to purchase Equal Exchange products like coffee, tea, chocolate bars, hot cocoa, baking cocoa and olive oil from a Palestinian-Israeli cooperative. But also silver bracelets and earrings with mother of pearl inlay from Nahua Indigenous people of Taxco, beaded ornaments, earrings, necklaces, headbands, and handbags from women artisans around Lake Atitlán, Mexico, jewelry and ornaments from Colombia and El Salvador and much more.
We hope to see you there!
This Thursday, December 12 at 3 pm ET CISPES will be hosting an important conversation about political persecution in El Salvador today, including political imprisonment, a repressive tactic not seen in El Salvador since the days of the civil war.
Bukele has made persecution of his political opponents, the grassroots opposition, and the independent press a hallmark of his regime. Just this week, police raided the homes of several journalists and artists, taking computers, hard drives, USB drives and other personal property - without even giving them a reason why.
The raids confirm that Bukele’s widespread violation of due process and human rights is not limited to a supposed war on corruption or on gangs but is used to attack critics.
We are fortunate to hear from two leaders in the struggle to free political prisoners: Lourdes Palacios, coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of Political Prisoners and the Politically Persecuted (COFAPPES), and Ivania Cruz, attorney with the Human and Community Rights Defense Unit (UNIDEHC).
They will share information about several high-profile cases of political prisoners - including recent victories and ongoing challenges - and the important role that international solidarity campaigns have and will continue to play in the struggle for their freedom.
The webinar will be in Spanish (available via streaming on YouTube and Facebook). For interpretation to English and/or to join the Q&A, please register to join on Zoom here.
Given that Trump has promised to persecute his political enemies and threats are on the rise against domestic dissent, we hope this conversation will offer timely, useful insights on effective organizing and solidarity. In the face of threats of mass deportations, it’s also critical that we understand the cruel realities of policing and prisons in El Salvador for asylum seekers and other immigrants who may be targeted.
NACLA editorial committee members Jorge Cuéllar and Hilary Goodfriend recently wrapped a marathon, three-episode podcast series on Central America with The Dig, a podcast hosted by Daniel Denvir through Jacobin Radio. This sweeping conversation on the region’s history, political economy, and present conjuncture is intended to serve as an accessible yet comprehensive tool for scholars and activists, beginning with Central American state formation and the imperialist interventions of the late 19th century and concluding with reflections on the far-right demonization of migration in the United States today.
It’s been an election like no other: polarizing, ugly, passionately contested. The results suggest a realignment of U.S. politics and a rightward shift in national policies and priorities. Yet most our greatest concerns were invisible during the campaigns.
Join Cleveland Peace Action for a panel and audience discussion, in-person and on Zoom, of the election and its implications for our work. They will address Palestine, the growing risk of nuclear war, the iron grip of the military-industrial complex, climate change, Latin America and immigration, and party politics.
register here for the online version: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMscO2pqTMvGdLzi1Afgi0RwdSyNiHeQb5y#/registration
In 2013 a young woman, Beatriz had been denied an abortion, even though she was seriously ill and the foetus would not have survived outside the uterus. Beatriz died after being involved in a traffic accident in 2017, but her case is before judges at the inter-American court of human rights and could open the way for El Salvador to decriminalise abortion, which could also set an important precedent in across the Caribbean, South and Central America, abortion is not permitted in seven countries.
In El Salvador, abortion can be punished by up to eight years in prison, and women can even be charged with aggravated homicide, which carries a sentence of up to 50 years in prison. Women have been jailed for miscarriages. And women who advocate for safe access to abortion facing hate and threats online as well as offline.
The Global Center for Human Rights, a US-based anti-abortion organisation linked to conservative evangelical groups and the Heritage Foundation opposes what it calls “ideological colonisation [of] countries rooted in Christian values”. They create websites, petitions and videos where to spread fake news like that Beatriz case was made up by the inter-American court to legalize abortion but also to spread hate against abortion activists by for example calling them “enemy of the state”, a “colleague of terrorists” and a “feminazi”.
This has serious consequences. An activist telles the Guardian: “I have received a lot of threats and hate speech on social networks, especially on X,” she says. “A post can lead to a wave of comments where I’m called a murderer; people accuse me of promoting a crime and there are requests that the attorney general investigate me.” Anti-abortion groups often gather outside her office to pray, which she sees as an act of intimidation. Her organisation’s website was the target of 13,000 cyber-attacks during the hearing of the landmark case of Manuela v El Salvador at the IACHR in 2021.
