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Event
2025 Liberation Lab: Chaos or Community
March 22, 2025

IRTF initiated our annual Social Justice Teach-In (aka Liberation Lab) in 1999. This spring, in particular, we feel a great need to call together justice-minded folks who are committed to human rights, liberation, and respect and dignity for all people.

Every year for the past 25 years, this event has been an informative and inter-generational day of community building and education for high school and college students and other community members seeking ways to take positive action for social justice. 

This year we will have panels on:
- Choosing Liberation over Nationalism
- Embodied Sanctuary
- Wisdom from the Future: Lessons from Student Organizers
 
The ticket price also includes a delicious lunch! 
 
 
 
 
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News Article
Fair Trade: IRTF needs volunteers to help raise vital income for artisans and farmers
November 16, 2024

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.

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Event
Community Conversation: Advancing a Humanizing Narrative Around Immigration
February 20, 2025

Ohio Immigrant Alliance is helping to host a community conversation for the grassroots, advocates, and policymakers on February 20 from 12-1:30pm ET, to share how we can advance a more humanizing immigration narrative in Ohio, during a difficult time for everyone.

Hear from Houleye Thiam of the Mauritanian Network for Human Rights; Viles Dorsainvil of the Haitian Community Help & Support Center; Jona Hilario of OPAWL - Building AAPI Feminist Leadership; and Lynn Tramonte of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance about what we know from public opinion research; how immigrants say they want to be seen in the media; and how content creators can help ensure a broader picture comes into focus. The discussion will be moderated by Ohio Voice.

You will leave this webinar with a better understanding about public opinion on immigration, how the current narrative often dehumanizes immigrants, and how it should change — from the perspective of immigrant leaders. You will also be take away key points you can raise in media interviews and letters to the editor, social media posts, and conversations with elected officials — and around the dinner table. 

 

Register to receive the Zoom information here.

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Event
Free Screening of “Light”
February 20, 2025

Join us on Thursday, February 20 for the free screening of "Light" at the Parma-Powers Branch Library. The film will take you on a journey through Hebron under apartheid, and in this place “where all other elements are controlled and rationed, perhaps our light is the one thing that cannot be taken.” IRTF is one of the sponsors of the production.

Watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk0W3nqFZjI

This event does not require pre sign up.

 

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Event
2024-2025 BorderLinks Pláticas Series: Conversations with Activists, Artists & Authors
February 6, 2025

The Trump administration’s designs to carry out mass deportations and close the border will inevitably result in yet more taxpayer money being poured into an already massive and hugely invasive surveillance infrastructure. Join BorderLinks on February 6 to learn more about the “smart border” technologies that divide up our world and exacerbate its inequalities, and to hear inspiring stories of resistance. 

Click here to register for this virtual event.

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News Article
ICE raids, deportation flights, Petro pushes back, Rubio visits Central America, femicide in Argentina, and more
February 1, 2025
As a result of a new federal policy that lifted a ban on immigration raids in “sensitive places” like schools, churches, and hospitals, school attendance has dropped and more families are attending church services through Zoom.
Widespread ICE raids were carried out in Chicago on Sunday and New York City on Tuesday, in addition to smaller raids in Phoenix, Atlanta, San Diego, Miami, and other cities across the country.
 
Local governments have in many cases been successful in refusing to cooperate with federal immigration officials, and local communities have held “know-your-rights” trainings, which makes the work of the federal officials much more difficult.
ICE raids in Aurora and Colorado were called off due to media leaks and the ongoing organizing of activists.
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News Article
Honduras: Will there be justice for the military killing of Isy Obed Murillo? That was aided and abetted by impunity and corruption of U.S. and Canada
January 15, 2025
The so-called “democratic allies” of the U.S. and the Canadian government in Honduras are involved in drug-smuggling operations, importing cocaine in the U.S., the killing of Isy Obed Murillo during a protest and more.
 
Several key leaders of the military-backed Narco-Regimes that ruled Honduras for 23 years had to face trials because of their crimes.
 
It is impossible to overstate how much violence, destruction and harm the U.S. and Canadian-backed Narco-Regimes did to the Honduran people and society and all of its government and State institutions from 2009-2022, yet the U.S. and canadian government had no problem cooperating with them for their own profit.
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News Article
Honduras Will Reconsider u.s. Military Bases in the Country
January 3, 2025
 
Since 1982 the U.S. has maintained a Military Air Base, known as Palmerola. They have and still are using hounduran ground without ever paying for it.  
 
Now, on January 1, Honduran President Xiomara Castro critically addressed, among other things, the continued existence of the u.s. military bases in her New Year's message. She warned that these facilities would lose their justification if measures were implemented that harm Honduran citizens. Castro also expressed her desire to maintain a “constructive and friendly” dialogue with the new Trump administration; however, she made it clear that any attempt at mass deportation of Honduran migrants would be considered a hostile action.
 
 
 
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Event
IRTF Fair Trade Open House
December 21, 2024

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!

 

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News Article
The Salvadoran trail of Ronald Johnson, Trump’s man for Mexico
December 12, 2024
Ronald Douglas Johnson served as the United States ambassador to El Salvador from 2019 to 2021. He was appointed by President Donald Trump.
 
Johnson quickly became a key ally of Bukele’s administration, making frequent appearances at press conferences, work meetings, and even private events. While Bukele ignored the criticism of  international organizations who raised concerns about the human rights violations, caused also through the detention of tens of thousands El Salvadorans without evidence or trial, Johnson downplayed the controversy, asserting that the priority was reducing crime. The US ambassador also ignored the criticism of Bukeles authoritarian tendencies. He never took a position on the fact that Bukele used heavily armed military personnel to take over Congress.
 
Sixteen months into Johnson’s tenure, Joe Biden assumed the U.S. presidency, reinstated Jean Manes as ambassador in El Salvador, and reversed many of Bukele’s concessions. But with the reelection of Donald Trump Johnson will, if the Senate confirms, become the new ambassador to Mexico.
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