NYU Gallatin Global Fellowship in Human Rights Blog

2020 Fellows

The Status Quo: Boundaries, Limitations & Opportunities

by

Annissa Saleh /
UNHCR, Southern Latin America / 
Buenos Aires, Argentina / 

Much like my peers pursuing human rights work in this program, I too have found that COVID-19 has not only shifted my work entirely. It is also creating a whole new realm of conflicts previously not encountered. I have spent much of my time this summer conducting interviews with people who have experience working with refugees and migrants prior to now. In doing so, I am hoping to gain a better understanding of the current socioeconomic and political moment. 

During these interviews, certain themes have emerged. Many seem to be limitations and the new ways in which the field is approaching them. My conversations have revolved around the boundaries within which the human rights field used to operate, as well as ways that COVID-19 has been weaponized as a political moment, forcing the boundaries of opportunity to become smaller. I have also learned that, on the other side of the coin, as a new normal manifests within the field, groups are catalyzing their creativity to approach issues differently, with common goals.

As I consider what I have learned and unlearned throughout my internship, I recall an article I read earlier this spring by David Kennedy: “The International Human Rights Movement: Part of the Problem?” Kennedy discusses human rights as a system that operates within the status quo, meant to keep those who would have been busy creating new global political practices twiddling their thumbs, seeking answers, and holding those accountable in a system that would be unwilling to provide any assistance:

“We are up against some pretty daunting challenges on the global stage. Pandemics, global warming, financial instability, inequality–it is a long list. I worry that the human rights revolution might have been a delay and a diversion: a status quo project of legitimization and an establishment career option. […] The global economic crisis is more than a challenge for technocrats and financial regulators. It presses upon us the limitation of national politics in a global economy in a global society.” (Kennedy, 2001)

I wonder if these feelings of constraint working within the human rights system might be the same I have experienced this summer, nineteen years later.

Practicing Solidarity

by

Xandi McMahon (they/them) /
Domestic Workers United /
New York City, NY /

As summer begins its descent into fall and the start of classes comes into view, New York City remains in flux. The pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests have together reshaped the context of our day-to-day lives, and as we reach our sixth month of COVID-19 and our third of everyday protests, I am finally beginning to feel able to reflect on all that’s happening.

This time feels critical. The word applies in nearly all its definitions: precarious, explanatory, crucial–urgently demanding that we be present. In DWU meetings, we have discussed the possibility of attending BLM protests as a group, but we ultimately have not been able to.

Christine, DWU’s secretary and cultural outreach coordinator, spoke about the need for varying forms of justice work for DWU, as it is an organization that promotes solidarity, empowerment, and consciousness raising but has members who, for the most part, cannot get out on the street to protest. This could be due to their lack of time, exhaustion after long days at work, old age, or physical inability, which to some degree speaks to a broader reality of intersectional systems of oppression: it is nearly impossible to work against an oppressive system when it requires all one’s strength and energy to survive within it.

This week, Christine and I are carving out time to talk about the history of DWU and its current role during COVID-19, and how Christine envisions the future of domestic worker organizing. I am very much looking forward to this time with her so that I can hear her perspective. I plan to write a piece based on our conversation for DWU’s new website.

Dismantle, Change, Build: Grassroots Abolitionist Work with Critical Resistance

by

Dylan Brown (he/him/himself) /
Critical Resistance /
Oakland, CA /

Since the end of June, I have been working with Critical Resistance (CR), a national member-led organization that seeks to dismantle the prison industrial complex (PIC). When I think about the historical underpinnings of the sustained revolutionary moment we are all living through this summer, the first thing that comes to mind is “the wake.”

In scholar Christina Sharpe’s book, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, she explains:

“I use the wake in all of its meanings as a means of understanding how slavery’s violences emerge within the contemporary conditions of spatial, legal, psychic, material, and other dimensions of Black non/being as well as in Black modes of resistance” (14).

I am living in the wake. My people are rebelling against U.S. policing (a modern continuation of 1700s slave patrols that were tasked with dismantling rebellions and chasing down stolen African peoples who had escaped enslavement) and are demanding an end to police violence and state terror. We are not appealing to our oppressors but are rather exercising our agency and using a variety of organizing tactics to demand freedom.

This understanding informs my work with the Oakland Chapter of CR. I work most frequently with the Oakland Chapter organizer, and I work as well alongside volunteer CR members in various organizational working groups. Overall, my work so far has mainly focused on supporting the emerging campaign to defund the Oakland Police Department and political education workshop development.

A recent project I worked on was the creation of a workshop that highlights the shared points of struggle in the environmental justice and PIC abolition movements. Conducting research for this project has allowed me to deepen my understanding of how the term “environment” in mainstream EJ work often does not take into account that prisons are part of our environment and a threat to the health of our communities, despite the fact that many prison facilities throughout the U.S. are built on highly toxic superfund sites.

An unexpected aspect of my time with CR this summer has been spent doing editorial work for their publication, The Abolitionist Newspaper. This publication is circulated to more than 7,000 readers internationally, both inside and outside of jails and prisons. Moreover, working with CR has helped me to deepen my own understanding of how to navigate working in a member-based organization. In this moment of upheaval, it has been extremely empowering working alongside Black and indigenous people to ensure the health and well-being of folks in our community.

Immersing myself in CR has provided a renewed sense of purpose and guidance in my life as I attempt to determine what I want my role in the movement to look like after I graduate from NYU in 2021.

Responding to the Moment

by

Xandi McMahon (they/them) /
Domestic Workers United /
New York City, USA /

Over the last month, DWU has continued its “Know Your Rights” campaign remotely. This predominantly entails weekly Tele/Zoom town hall meetings, where DWU members get together, listen to a presentation on a particular topic relevant to us, and engage in a discussion and question/answer forum afterward. Overall, these meetings have been very productive, catalyzing important conversations and expanding DWU’s resources.

For our most recent meeting on Saturday, we invited Ravi Ragbir, the executive director of the New Sanctuary Coalition, to speak about his personal and organizational experience with the immigration system in the United States. Ravi delivered indispensable advice to DWU members about how to respond when ICE comes looking for you, all of which connected to the overall message that having community is imperative. He explained how to be an ally under these circumstances and how to create and find safe (sanctuary) spaces in the city.

This is just one example of the many meetings we’ve had during the summer. We’ve also notably had mental health specialists, economic advisors, and representatives from the city. Organizers come as well to speak about negotiating contracts with employers.

Many of the events and organizing DWU planned to do prior to the pandemic has since shifted, but we have all managed to find new ways to come together and connect with one another. We currently have two programs up and running that are helping with food security and financial stability for DWU members. The first is a weekly fresh food box from Maple Street Community Garden, provided for free to domestic workers through funding from DWU grants. The garden is run by members of the Flatbush/Crown Heights community.

The second program is called “Love Offerings.” Its goal is to provide emergency stipends to DWU members to help with bills, groceries, rent, and COVID-19-related loss of income. We’ve had some technical challenges with GoFundMe that have delayed the payouts, but this will hopefully be resolved this week!

Along with these programs, there are ongoing efforts to revamp DWU’s website as well.

Prison Abolition and Transformative Justice: Abolitionist Learning

by

Brian Ruiz (he/him/they/them) /
Radical Love Consciousness /
New York, USA /

It’s been awhile since I’ve last written a blog. I’ve been focusing on co-developing several workshops on topics related to prison abolition (PA) and transformative justice (TJ). I have been enjoying the development and have been gravitating most towards workshops involving the youth, specifically between the ages of 5 and 12.

One of the workshops looks at how childhood television shows allow children to envision and practice forms of abolition, whether that be through conflict resolution, resistance towards carcerality, community accountability, and centering impacted folx. I personally want to thank and give all the credit to folx at RLC, Abolitionist Learning Network, my little brother, and partner for these conversations and actions, as it has allowed for more understanding of the significance of communal learning for our youth. PA and TJ is an ongoing intergenerational movement and process; the work we do now will be refined, evolved, and expanded upon by the time it reaches the next generations of folx.

I have found childhood media such as Finding Nemo, Avatar, and The Last Airbender to be the focal point of the workshop, as certain scenes from the movies depict the practice of PA and TJ. The escape from the fish tank scene in Finding Nemo shows a dismantling of carceral structures, and Katara and Zuko’s accountability process shows a response to harm and is survivor/victim-centered.

In doing these workshops, I’ve thought about what it means to incorporate an abolitionist learning framework for the youth. Guiding questions have been helpful for providing a template for discussion topics and ideas for activities. In addition, accessibility is important; we are working on having sign language, transcriptions, and translations for these workshops. This all is nothing new, as many other figures and entities, such a Mariame Kaba, #8toabolition, and Survived and Punished, have done it throughout this movement. However, it is incredibly important for us to honor, highlight, expand upon, and further evolve this amazing work.

In my next blog, I’ll discuss the present and future of abolition, focusing on everything that has occurred this year between the pandemic, ongoing tragic forms of systemic and interpersonal violence towards folx, lack of community accountability, and survivor- and victim-centered initiatives.

Free Expression threatened by COVID-19

by

Erin O’Brien /
PEN America /
New York, NY /

In my continued work at PEN America and in working with and covering protests in NYC, one central theme has become increasingly clear: COVID-19 has provided governments and authorities around the world the perfect opportunity to limit free expression, to silence dissent, and to mistreat political prisoners (many of whom are jailed for their words and writing). 

In Iran, for example, Narges Mohammadi has contracted COVID-19 but has not been allowed access to medical care, and she has a range of pre-existing conditions that have been well documented. In Turkey, vast numbers of trials for “terrorist propaganda cases,” such as the one against Osman Kavala, or against Ahmet Altan in June, have been stayed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, and while many prisoners have been released due to pandemic risk, those arrested for “terrorist propaganda” (many of whom are elderly or frail) remain behind bars. In the United States, prison populations are being ravaged at a shocking rate; by the end of June, eight of the top ten coronavirus hotspots in the country were in prisons or jails, and at its highest point, around 10% of people in New York DOC custody had coronavirus.

In my work, this has revealed something I have known but which has rarely been so readily apparent: crises like the coronavirus pandemic impact the discriminatory and authoritarian systems already in place in society and exacerbate their effects. In this moment where free expression and dissent is being targeted, and with political figures like Trump, Erdogan, and Putin, COVID-19 has enabled certain governments to further crack down on and silence their opponents. COVID-19 has given authoritarian leaders around the world the opportunity to further expand and centralize their rule.

In the United States, where prisons are essential for maintaining centuries-old white supremacist systems and hierarchies, COVID-19 has disproportionately targeted incarcerated systems. And when a New York Times study indicated that Black and Latinx populations in the United States are more than three times likely to contract COVID-19, it becomes unavoidably clear that this virus, which should be “equal opportunity” in its spread and which has no scientific link to race, is acting on the racist systems and infrastructures that buttress this country.

Going forward, my work with PEN will primarily focus on identifying new cases to advocate for in the coming year. There is no doubt that much of these will involve writers who are at risk of contracting COVID-19 in prison or who have been imprisoned for reporting on the pandemic, such as in China. While the everyday work of writing about and advocating for these writers can be despairing, I am very glad I can be a part of it.

Human rights violations in ICE detention centers during COVID-19

by

Esther Choo
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)
USA (NYC)

During the past month, PHR’s Research and Investigation (R&I) interns and many others have jumped into PHR projects. For our team, the main focus has been human rights violations committed against immigrants, asylum seekers, and detainees held in ICE custody centers. Specifically, the goals for our main project are to identify retaliation efforts against detainees and general ill-treatment and grossly inadequate conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The team is nearly complete with Phase 1 of the investigation, where we’ve searched through U.S. government documents to identify human rights abuses. During this time, we’ve also had opportunities to listen to and speak with prominent PHR medical consultants, who gave us notable insight and advice on how to approach these types of projects. While combing through hundreds of pages the past few weeks, we’ve noticed that the overall language and documentation (or more so, lack of documentation) of human rights abuses is very vague, and it’s not surprising.

We’ve asked ourselves how we can best analyze these documents and how we can implement more effective investigative methods. Will it come down to using more primary sources, such as detainee narratives and/or documentation of medical specialists/physicians reporting these issues? Or, will we ultimately have to read between the lines and reinterpret the appallingly normalized ways that detention centers have acted in regards to these abuses?

Further, the number of immigrants under ICE custody who have COVID-19 has risen dramatically, with social distancing being nearly impossible. Detention centers have also been found to use a harmful disinfectant in facilities more than 50 times a day, causing detriments for detainees who are heavily exposed. And with recent budget cuts and this pandemic, detention centers may come to a standstill, furloughing workers and pausing any work done within the immigration system.

So, it’s been a busy month! The R&I team has grown close in a short amount of time through multiple meetings held by video calls, where we provide different though greatly valuable perspectives and emotional support for each other. There’s not a moment to rest in human rights research, and I am constantly inspired by the hard work done at PHR. And occasionally, there are days where we’ll receive some positive news or articles in our inboxes, and these seem to help us push through the more difficult ones. Hopefully, we’ll continue to see more good emails as we go forward this summer.

An ID Card for the Invisible

by

Akshara Anirjita
ActionAid
New Delhi, India 

When I set out to work in the arena of informal work and women, I knew I would be researching the precariousness of the economic landscape that women workers in India have to navigate. This “precariousness” owes itself to the “incalcubility” of tomorrow and whether it will bring with it a means of subsistence. COVID-19 has done away with this “precariousness” in the worst possible way; prospects of work have been rendered totally non-extant for the foreseeable future. Some concerns of informal workers have remained the same while others have been exacerbated.

In collaboration with academics, activists, and informal workers themselves, I have been helping ActionAid organize and host a series of webinars for the past month in an attempt to formalize a set of policy suggestions for public hearings. I have written policy notes on waste pickers, women farmers, MNREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee) workers, and garment and handicraft workers.

I have also been compiling information on the state of informal women workers in the “Quarantine Centres” set up by state and union territories in an effort to sequester the migrant workers returning to their rural villages. Those migrants forced to stay in such centers are currently being treated as inmates in a prison; they are not allowed to leave, and if they do escape because of lack of food and adverse conditions, the state police captures and re-quarantines them. Those who run these quarantine centers seem oblivious to gender concerns; special wards are not allocated to women, and SGBV continues to be an especial threat for women migrant workers and their children living in such facilities.

The biggest concern shared among all of the aforementioned sectors is a lack of guarantees in the form of employment contracts as well as social security benefits. The workers in aforesaid categories also lack government-issued IDs, crucial for making them identifiable and valid to be recipients of future benefit programs. Issuance of these IDs, such as Kisaan cards for farmers, has been carried out in a gender-blind manner, which has served to further propagate hierarchies.

In the purview of my research, I am examining the task that lies ahead for the Indian government–its issuing of ID cards to its billion-strong population–and looking at how this can be carried out in a gender-sensitive way. This is critical for the “visibilization” of millions of informal women workers.

screen shot of online webinars showing face shots
Some of the webinars I have helped ActionAid host.

More information on ActionAid’s webinars can be found on their Facebook page.

Disruptions

by

Xandi McMahon
Domestic Workers United (DWU)
USA (New York)

2020 has been full of disruptions of many faces: a pandemic, the violence of continuing police brutality against Black Americans, and the reinvigoration of Black Lives Matter protests in every corner of this country. These disruptions are both collective and deeply personal, and they present a chance to imagine something new—and then to demand it.

I am gratefully able to continue the project I’d originally planned with Domestic Workers United (DWU) here in New York City. In the past month, we have had weekly “Know Your Rights” meetings, have begun to distribute stipends to domestic workers in need of financial assistance during Covid-19, and have established a new program to provide fresh food boxes from the local Maple Street Garden to members of DWU. DWU, like the rest of us, has needed to shift its expectations, reworking its plans for this year to respond to the moment.

And perhaps this is part of the beauty of disruptions: they beg us to be present.

In addition to assisting DWU, I have been working with the Emergency Release Fund, a bail fund in NYC whose primary objective is to get all transgender people out of jail. Their work, too, has expanded in response to Covid-19. They are now trying to get all queer people and medically vulnerable people released.

I think this moment makes for a welcome shift in our human rights work, which, in its institutional manifestations, can be slow and bureaucratic. I have expanded my own project to respond to the disruptions, embracing the fact that domestic workers’ rights (and more broadly in the scope of human rights “topics,” womxn’s rights and workers’ rights) are in no way isolated from Black Lives Matter or from public health crises.

Further, I understand protesting to be an integral part of my work for this fellowship. Time and again, I have had the conviction that the concept of solidarity is not static. It is malleable and necessarily responsive to context.

Disruptions make room. They can be challenging and are almost always uncomfortable, but they have incredible potential. They allow us to open our imagination in ways not otherwise possible.

And for me right now, “solidarity” means taking an active part in disruption.

Transnational Solidarity for Black Lives: Dominican Republic

by

Stephanie Holguin
Reconoci.do & We Are All Dominican
Dominican Republic & USA (New York)

Finding the right words to bring consolation or relief during these troubling times has been extremely difficult lately. The work that I am doing remotely with both Reconoci.do and We Are All Dominican intersect closely with what’s happening currently around the needed shift in how justice is rendered and how rights are protected in Black and brown communities.

Reconoci.do is located in the Dominican Republic and operates as a movement rather than an official non-profit organization. We Are All Dominican was established in New York and is a collective of students, educators, scholars, artists, activists, and community members of Dominican and Haitian descent.

These two organizations have the complementary mission of advocating for a more inclusive, intercultural, and harmonious Dominican society that fundamentally recognizes the rights of all Dominicans, especially those of Haitian descent. The organizations collaborate in educating communities of Haitian descendants in the Dominican Republic about actively advocating for their rights and engaging with Dominicans in the country and in the diaspora to challenge anti-Haitian and anti-Black discourses.

What made this past week so difficult for attaining structure amidst the chaos was the arrest of one of the lead organizers in the movement, Ms. Ana Maria Belique. As she and other activists planned for a peaceful protest to honor the life of George Floyd and show solidarity with demonstrations for the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, she was detained by Dominican government officials.

people holding "black lives matter" sign
Activists Maribel Nunez (left) and Ana Belique (right) give a statement to the public following their release on June 9, 2020.

A counter-protest by an ultra-nationalist right-wing organization awaited the arrival of the activists. As tensions increased, officers decided to tear down the protest paraphernalia and detain Ms. Belique and two other community activists. When released later that afternoon without charges, Ms. Belique made a public statement quoted below in a Guardian article by Michael Deibert, addressing the arrest and injustice served that morning.

“What happened shows the levels of intolerance that exist [sic] here regarding the issue of race. Perhaps if George Floyd was not black and if we were not an anti-racist collective, it might be different. Because everything black in this country evokes Haiti, as if it were an affront to this nation that turns its back on its black identity.”

The demonstration of solidarity and the transnational amplification of Black Lives Matter posed a threat to some Dominicans. The resulting uproar further incentivizes collectives like Reconoci.do and We Are All Dominican to continue the work they do, and reiterates why the work is so important. To recognize such animosity within the Dominican society, one must begin to reckon with the deep-rooted issues surrounding race, Blackness, and healing between the two neighboring nations.

#AllBlackLivesMatter

#Reconoci.do

#WeAreAllDominican