NEWSHUMAN RIGHTS & POP CULTURE

Thomas Jefferson once stated, “If there’s something wrong, those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action.” Unfortunately, most of us are not fully acquainted with our abilities and this state of amnesia forces us into the realms of fearfulness, complacency, unwillingness, and utter hopelessness. We are blind to our true, awesome potential because there is this constant sense of seclusion and divide instilled in us by our environment. And it’s true. When we’re alone, it’s naturally difficult … but when united, we can move mountains and earlier this month, we did!

If you're my age or older you may know her from her Academy Award winning performance in Children of a Lesser God? Maybe you know her from her feisty character in the West Wing, Joey Lucas?  Or for the younger ones out there for her roles in Desperate Housewives or the L-Word?

Marlee Matlin deserves some thanks from the Change.org human rights community.   Last week, Marlee wrote on her twitter account:

Dear Netflix. Nevermind about the price hike. When are you going to start captioning your streaming content? Fail, big time.

That's what we're saying!  Netflix , the internet's biggest provider of streaming online television and movies provides subtitling for only 30 percent of its online content.  Worse, while it is possible to see a list of all of the subtitled content on the site, but users cannot search within that content.

Internationally renowned Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei was released from a Beijing prison late Wednesday night.

The news comes after more than 140,000 people in 175 countries joined an unprecedented Change.org campaign by leading global art institutions - including the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, London’s Tate Modern and the Association of Art Museum Directors - calling for the artist’s immediate release.

“This campaign has been quite a ride: in less than three months leading global art institutions and artists from all over the world came together to recruit more than 140,000 supporters in 175 countries,” said Ben Rattray, the founder of Change.org. “Their remarkable success led foreign hackers to launch a highly sophisticated cyber-attack on Change.org designed to prevent people around the world from simply voicing their opinion. But despite the challenges, Change.org is about empowering anyone, anywhere to call for action on the issues that matter to them, and it has been an honor to provide a platform for this inspiring campaign.”

Nickelodeon is the most watched children's television network, reaching over 214 million homes in the US.

So folks were understandably upset when they heard that iCarly, one of its popular programs, was making fun of 'hobos'. Not only did they feel the jokes were inappropriate, they also felt that the jokes sent the wrong message to our children, teaching them it was okay to make fun of homeless people. More than 1,400 Change.org members signed our petition asking Viacom, Nickelodeon's parent company, to apologize for the insensitive jokes.

We have good news: it turns out Nickelodeon has done one better, agreeing to take references of hobos off their website, and stop making hobo jokes in future episodes of iCarly.

Conservatives are getting frugal up in this piece.

Last week the Republican Study Committee pledged to cut $2.5 trillion in spending through the Spending Reduction Act – a bill that would eliminate a slew of government-funded programs.

Among this list of "unnecessary spending" are the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting – all vital outlets for the livelihoods of workers in the art and media industries.

Killing the arts isn't new for Republicans. In fact, some measures from the new Republican Study Committee proposal date back to 1995.

As the frenetic excitement about southern Sudan's recent referendum wears off, the challenges of building up a new country from scratch loom. For some segments of southern Sudan’s society, the obstacles are even greater.

“The women of southern Sudan are ‘the marginalized of the marginalized,’ as Dr. John Garang used to say,” said Anyieth D’Awol, quoting the late rebel leader who saw many of the problems in Sudan originating from the Khartoum government’s negligence. As one stark example, literacy in southern Sudan stands at 24 percent, but only 12 percent of women can read and write.

Anyieth is southern Sudanese, but she first visited the South when she was 27. She studied human rights in the UK and has a law degree, fields she pursued because “I never thought I would stay in England. Always knew I wanted to come back to Sudan.”

“I don’t have a war story,” she said, in a tone that almost sounded like she was apologizing.

Looks like California's celebration of Martin Luther King Day took a turn for the... Arizonian. This month students and faculties from two California campuses are fighting the demolition of their ethnic studies programs: Asian American Studies and Cal State Los Angeles and American Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Late last year Dean James Henderson at CSULA offered students and faculty a grim holiday gift – notification that he had decided to suspend Asian American Studies, indefinitely. To date, the only explanation Henderson has offered is lack of faculty, student, and community support – which he announced at a November 29 meeting to a roomful of concerned faculty, students, and community members. Since then, a grassroots movement in support of retaining the program has been swelling both on and off campus (check out Immigrant Rights blogger Gabriel Garcia's post on it).

CSULA is located in the San Gabriel Valley, which holds one of the largest Chinese populations in the country. Asian American Studies – which was just established in 2005 – failed in the Dean's eyes to meet enrollment numbers. However, the decision of a Dean to dismantle the program without prior discussion with students and faculty is a threat to more than just one department on one campus.

"Cutting AAAS is an attack on the university’s diversity and threatens the already tenuous support of the campus’ Chicano, Latin American, and Pan African Studies programs as well," explains a grassroots website launched in opposition to the suspension. In light of Arizona's recent ethnic studies ban, CSULA's decision is another threat toward the demolition of valuable ethnic studies programs throughout the country – and this isn't just a theory.

Driving along South Carolina's Interstate 26 at this time of year, one is introduced to a number of wondrous scenes: trees slightly tinged with orange; a vast blue sky; generous 70-something degree weather.  Oh yeah, and hate propaganda that could make a Chairman blush.

A billboard donning the words "Islam Rising" in bold red letters – with the tagline "Be Warned" – is a beacon for fearmongerers promoting a documentary of the same name produced by the ultra-conservative Christian Action Network for those who can only swallow information in two-word doses about the 'threats' of Islamic culture.

Well, here's another two-worder for you: That's racist.

The "Islam Rising" headline is accompanied by the angry eyes of someone who looks like a cross between Scorpion from Mortal Combat and the chain belonging to Plies the rapper. The caricature peering at you through a ski mask is, supposedly, an Islamic terrorist.  Silly racists forgot that everyone knows it doesn't snow in Muslim Town.

Making my first roadtrip through the State of Smiling Faces and Beautiful Places, my first reaction to it was of course to immediately u-turn and snap photos (my parents love when I post travel pix). My next was to 'tap the Googles' and see what outrage has erupted around it. But coverage of the display is overwhelmingly in support of the billboard and its message, with only a couple of local networks acknowledging that some people might possibly kinda sorta have a problem with it.

Usually understood as a time to express gratitude for the people and things we sometimes take for granted, Thanksgiving and this year's holiday season can also have a different meaning.

George W. Bush, the now former president we still and should love to berate, is on tour to promote his new book, and one peace activist organization is making a point of un-thanking him for it wherever he goes.

CODEPINK: Women for Peace (men welcome, too) and their supporters are mobilizing around the country to protest against Bush's self-glorifications of torture and warmongering in his memoir Decision Points.

It's a must-read if you want to know how to get away with and justify horrifications such as waterboarding and starting the two longest wars in US history.

"With his book, media appearances and the opening of his library in Dallas, George Bush is being treated as a respected statesman instead of what he really is: a war criminal," said CODEPINK cofounder Medea Benjamin. "That's why we, the people, have to set the record straight."

CODEPINK's nonviolent actions have included the usual in-person protests, 'setting the record straight' in Milwaukee, Miami and elsewhere. Why not your hometown, too?

But CODEPINK has creatively gone well beyond protests, with a number of inventive and easy ways to un-thank Bush at a bookstores near you, such as printing out special bookmarks that read "Warning: This Book's Author is a War Criminal" and placing them in each copy of Decision Points, or gathering copies of the Bush memoir and moving them to the crime section of the bookstore. Check some visual examples here, and if you go ahead with some book-moving in your local bookstore, consider emailing a photo of your 'work' to the CODEPINK's "Where's W's Book Belong?" contest.

When we last checked in on the front lines of the international hummus wars, pro-Palestinian activists in Philadelphia were doing choreographed flash dances in a local supermarket selling hummus made by an Israeli corporation that proudly invests in the country's special forces.

"No Justice! No (Chick)Peas!" they shouted, calling for a boycott of the chickpea dip. That led pro-Israeli activists down the street to head to the same grocer and buy up tubs of hummus 'in support of Israel'.

One does wonder, where's the human rights in hummus?

Well, like duh, the first three letters are the same!

Beyond that incredibly meaningful little connection, the Philly activists took aim at The Strauss Group, Israel's second largest food and beverage company and part owners of Sabra Dipping, the largest hummus manufacturer in the world. They argue that Sabra's hummus products “subsidize Israeli human rights abuses through their support of the Israeli Defense Forces and infrastructure of the occupation.”