NEWSBYJESSIE TORRISI

In some ways, it all started for Indianapolis DJ Jeff Popka when he noticed who was listening to his internet broadcasts. “I’m reaching people in South Korea, in Turkey, places you wouldn’t think. And I realized, I need to start doing something good, spreading good around.”

That’s when he came up with Music in Action, where he convinced local artists to donate their talent to all kinds of causes. He got some blues artists to do cancer benefit shows. Then he was approached by Christopher Brant, a singer who works with Not For Sale, a group devoted to stopping labor and sex trafficking in the US.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day has always been my favorite holiday.

People sometimes look at me funny when I say that. Maybe because I’m not black, or because most people prefer Christmas, birthdays, picnicking and beer-guzzling holidays.

But there’s something about MLK Day that fills me with hope and reminds me what truly matters at the start of a new year. Every year, I watch his "I Have A Dream" speech and am inspired in knowing what it means to fight and win — and that all victories only come with time and sacrifice.

How will you celebrate MLK Day? In my hometown of Austin, there’s a crew gathering at a LBJ High School to landscape the once-lush grounds and create an organic vegetable garden. It’s not the picket line… but it is very Austin, which is all about eating homegrown food, going organic, riding bikes, and keeping it local. If you’re in Austin, please join in along with Keep Austin Beautiful Green Teens and high school environmental groups.

All around the country, Organizing for America is organizing a day of service to honor the memory of MLK. Hopefully, each will be as reflective of the city or town they’re striving to improve. Find them here by entering your hometown.

I was six when I went to see my first show: Annie. Those orphans had me at the broom-twirling floor-scrubbing number, “It’s a hard knock life.” As the orphans bemoaned working the clock for the evil Ms. Hannigan, I realized how good I had it.

Today, however, Annie might be singing a different tune.

This week, New York enacted the first law in the US granting domestic workers – nannies, housekeepers, elderly care workers – basic labor protections.

People tend to get very agitated when new workers’ rights are proposed, so let’s be clear. This guarantees very basic rights – minimum wage, overtime, a day off each week, three paid vacation days a year. Check this FAQ on the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

Earlier this month in New Orleans, at Amnesty International’s All Rights for All People conference, the ongoing imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi weighed heavy on the agenda.

This year, after all, marks two big anniversaries for Burma. It marks 20 years since Suu Kyi was voted Prime Minister in the last elections held. Rather than hand over power, the military junta nullified the results, rewrote the Constitution, and put Suu Kyi under house arrest, where one Nobel Peace Prize and two decades later, she remains.

This April also marked the military’s 65th birthday — no small feat for a military that’s bit by bit become synonymous with the government itself. To celebrate, the Army marched past lavish, newly constructed buildings in the country’s capital, where a Senior General stopped to salute a hand-picked crowd, and promised the coming elections would be free and fair.

At the celebration, the military made no bones about saying, "God is good. We have a lot to be grateful for." Their “disciplined democracy” resembles a well-oiled machine these days. Even with elections planned for a yet-to-be-named date later this year, it’s unlikely much will change. There’s little threat to the junta’s monopoly on political, economic, and military power, or its Orwellian control over Burma’s 58 million citizens.

(Many refer to the country as Myanmar, the name put forth by its current rul

Blame it on the bank bailout. Blame it on a black president. Blame it on healthcare reform, or the sheer desperation of people who are angling backwards as the country moves forward.

Whatever the cause, the stats are unmistakable. A report released from the Southern Poverty Law Center last month shows hate groups are on the rise.

Last year, the radical right caught fire as 363 new anti-government militias formed. The number of “nativist” groups — who go beyond advocating for anti-immigration policies to confronting and harassing immigrants — nearly doubled, jumping from 173 to more than 300. And a new poll from Harris interactive shows some very interesting (read: deluded) ideas about President Obama.

About 25% of those interviewed agreed that Obama was not really born here, 20% say he’s Obama doing many of the things Hitler did, and 14% say he may be the anti-Christ. The report’s called Rage on the Right: The Year in Hate and Extremism. You can read it here.

The number of hate groups in the U.S. now hovers around 1,000, with half springing up in the last decade. The evidence is everywhere — in the growing popularity of New Saxon, Facebook for Nazis. In ugly scenes from the Ohio campaign trail in 2008 like this. In the noose that was delivered to a high-ranking black Congressman last month.

This week, I followed the 2010 Equality Ride — a bus of LGBT activists traveling to Christian college campuses across the Bible Belt to start conversations about discrimination — to Waco, Texas. Their target was Baylor University, a school where students can be punished for "the appearance of homosexuality." Gone are the days when you have to be caught in a locker room getting a blow job to be kicked out of school. In 2010, Baylor students were threatened with expulsion for even speaking out in favor of LGBT rights at Equality Ride events.

Monday night, the visit started off at a potluck and panel on transgender issues at the Central Texas Metropolitan Community Church. As five gender queer activists fielded questions, a common theme came up: discontent with the media and how it portrays transgender people.

I couldn't help but corner a few of them after. "Tell me," I said. "What are we doing wrong?" Lord knows we reporters try to know everything ... but we don't. So here's quick 'n dirty media guide to getting it right when covering trans issues.

A victory came for the social action group ZimRights last week when a court ruled that police had no authority to seize 65 photos and shut down a human rights exhibit the day before it opened.

One photo showed now Prime Minister, former opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, with a swollen and bruised face after being beaten by police. (Things have presumably gotten a little easier for Tsvangirai since he joined a power-sharing coalition with President Robert Mugabe last year.) Other photos showed the scars and wounds of opposition party members attacked by Mugabe’s loyalists.

Police loyal to Mugabe, offended at seeing his dirty laundry brought into the light, tried to shut down the exhibit. They claimed images including nudity, ghastly bruises, and unidentified bodies were unfit to be seen. They oh-so-helpfully suggested the exhibit feature a singular photo of Mugabe praying instead. And they detained and threatened the ZimRights member organizing the show.

Thanks to the judge in Harare, the photos were returned to the Gallery Delta minutes before the exhibit was to open. At the reception, Tsvangirai (quoted in the AP), said to the 300-some guests in attendance, “Anyone who believes they can deny the truth of our past is deluded. Covering old wounds can only make them fester. We must face them so we don't perpetuate the wrongs of the past.”

When Indira Gandhi was assassinated, she was there, camera rolling amid rioters. When a medical team defied Israeli tanks and marched into Yasser Arafat's West Bank compound, she jumped in the middle, followed them, and got an exclusive interview. When conflict erupted in Sarajevo, while others slept, she filmed, using a night scope and aiming the lens through holes left in hotel walls from artillery.

Last week, Margaret Moth died. She was one of the great ones. Human rights reporters and photojournalists should take a moment to honor the mark she made, the legacy she left us, and what a disarmingly cool woman she was.

Originally from New Zealand, Moth came to the U.S. and worked for KHOU in Houston, before joining CNN in 1990, which kept her busy the rest of her days. In 1992, while reporting from Sarajevo, she was shot in the face and had to endure numerous reconstructive surgeries. But she was back on the job the first chance she got.

In the next two weeks, Maine will vote on a bill to impose a limit on how long a prisoner can be kept in solitary confinement.

The legislation would limit stints in solitary to 45 days. That seems like a long time without access to exercise, outside light, or other human beings to me. But it’s nothing compared to what some prisoners have endured. Robert King from Louisiana spent the greater part of his 30-year sentence at Angola (famous for being a class A hellhole) in isolation for 23 hours a day. Last week, debate in Maine revolved around seven prisoners confined to a year in solitary since July.

There’re three major problems with solitary confinement.

1. It drives people insane. “The research demonstrates that solitary confinement creates mental illness where none previously existed,” Shenna Bellows, Executive Direction of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, explained. Not surprisingly, intense isolation can push people over the edge. It also reduces their chances of being able to reintegrate into society.

2. It’s too often used on prisoners with mental illness. Maine’s Department of Corrections reported last month that 63% of people in solitary had a class 1 diagnosis in the DSM, the Bible of mental disorders; 48% were on psychotropic medication. Not only is it cruel to punish people for problems beyond their control, but it also creates a doctrine of discipline first, treatment later. Other states, notably Mississippi, have come up with alternatives to solitary and how to better accommodate prisoners with mental illness. Their model has led to less incidents of violence among prisoners and between inmates and prison staff. Maine, the whole U.S., should follow Mississippi’s lead.

3. It’s far from fair what lands someone in solitary. Many of the offenses are not that serious, and it’s easy for guards to threaten prisoners with solitary as a way to exercise and abuse their power.

The bill would guarantee prisoners a hearing before a special commission aft

Last week, I heard Seymour Hersh speak at the New School’s Limiting Knowledge in a Democracy conference in New York City.

Hersh is the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who broke the story of the My Lai massacre during Vietnam, and has since gone on to expose many horrors perpetrated by the U.S. military.

How much has changed since Obama took office in terms of how we wage war? How far have we come from Bush’s policies of permitting torture and doing an end-run around the Constitution in our crusade on terror?

Here’s Obama’s scorecard on military abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq.