Changing the World Through Student Empowerment
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| PAC Action Network Changing the World Through Student Empowerment |
The PAC Action Network is a student organization aimed at helping students to learn about issues in which they have an interest and guiding them in grassroots efforts to make a difference in the areas of their interest.
The primary mode of action employed is letter-writing. Amnesty International, for instance, has saved 10,000 lives since 1979 by writing letters. Just communicating your concerns, especially when combined with others of like mind, can have a tremendous impact on the course of events. (Click here to read more.)
The PAC Action Network is an active member of the Palo Alto College Service Learning program which enables faculty to give students credit for social action and volunteer work. The coordinator of the Service Learning program is Professor Karen Marcotte.
| Who will rise up for me against the evil-doers? Who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity? (Psalms 94:6)
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| " You do things again and again, and nothing happens. You have to do things, do things, do things,. You have to light that match, light that match, light that match, not knowing how often it's going to sputter and go out and at what point it's going to take hold. Things take a long time. It requires patience, but not a passive patience -- the patience of activism." (Howard Zinn, historian & activist) |
| "Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest." (Martin Luther King, Jr.) |
| "Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable ... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals." (Martin Luther King, Jr.) |
| " When I visited Auschwitz I was horrified. And when I visited Iraq, I thought to myself, 'What will we tell our children in fifty years when they ask what we did when the people in Iraq were dying.'" (Mairead McGuire, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Northern Ireland) |
| "States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions." (Noam Chomsky) |
PLEASE, take a look at some of these sites which guide you in doing something:
| "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me." (Martin Niemoller, German anti-Nazi pastor during World War II) |
| "I am astonished each time I come to the U.S. by the ignorance of a high percentage of the population, which knows almost nothing about Latin America or about the world. It's quite blind and deaf to anything that may happen outside the frontiers of the U.S." (Eduardo Galeano, Latin American writer and historian - The Progressive, July 1999) |
| "We may not be strong enough to stop wars when the powers that be want them, but at least we are wise and humane enough to take political and moral stands as publicly as possible. This is, after all, the foundation we must build from." (Leslie Cagan, anti-war activist) |
| "Imagine a pool that is drying up and the fish are dying. We are like the fish and the only hope comes from the rain - and the rain comes from outside - from people like you." (Penan spokesman, Malaysia. Quoted in Survival International) |
| "History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people." (Martin Luther King, Jr.) |
Addresses & Phone Numbers of key people and organizations to contact.
Addresses, etc. for your gov't. officials, page of links
Amnesty International Act Now
Christian Aid Action Page
CorpWatch Action Resource Center
Global Trade Watch Action Page
Human Rights Watch Campaign
IGC Alerts (top right corner)
Legislative Action Center of American Friends Service Committee
Urgent Action Bulletins on tribal peoples
"These have proved to be the most effective campaigning tool for supporting tribal peoples. Abuses of human rights thrive on ignorance and the assumption that the world at large will turn a blind eye to invasion, theft, brutality and even mass-murder. By taking part in Survival's letter-writing campaigns, you will show those who ignore the rights of tribal peoples that they cannot act with impunity" (a href="http://www.survival.org.uk/index2.htm">Survival International.
"In the last 25 years the Urgent Action Network has contributed to the release of over 10,000 people... We send immediate appeals regarding impending or actual cases of torture, disappearance, extrajudicial executions, capital punishment, inadequate medical care, and detention without charge" (AI pamphlet).
Visit Amnesty International's Page of Victories resulting from letter writing.
"Radhia Nasraoui, a Tunisian human rights lawyer who for years has been harassed and intimidated by security forces because of her human rights work, writes about her long involvement with Amnesty International...
"While working on the cases of my clients, who were of various political convictions and backgrounds, I understood just how efficient Amnesty International's work was. For instance, a client who had "disappeared" was brought before the examining magistrate after an Urgent Action was issued on his behalf, and a client who was beaten and ill-treated in prison was given less harsh detention conditions. And when a client finds out that people who he doesn't know, in a country far away, are demanding his release or ask about his health... all these actions play a large part in easing the detainee's isolation. It gives him hope and helps him to bear his possibly inhuman detention conditions.
"The hundreds of postcards that my husband and I received are the living proof of this effective solidarity from Amnesty International members who are aware of our difficult situation.
"Letter-writing was to play a key part in this campaign. The groups wrote to many authorities in Cuba to push for Dr Del Pozo's release, to his relatives to offer support, and also to the Vatican...
"In the event, it turned out that over a dozen prisoners of conscience whose cases had been adopted by AI, including Dr Del Pozo, were among the 300 political and common-law prisoners released by the Cuban authorities in the wake of the Pope's visit.
Previously denied access to newspapers, radio and mail, Chris was allowed only occasional visits from local nuns – with security personnel in attendance, of course. During one of these visits, a nun managed to tell her about the sacks of mail which had accumulated during the first 20 months of her imprisonment and were swamping the post office in the small desert village where she was detained. Chris immediately contacted the prison authorities and, as she says, "harassed them so that they would lobby the government" to release the letters.
As the prison guards brought in sack after sack of letters and cards from all over the world, Chris Anyanwu sat on a carpet of mail, her spirit soaring. She carefully read each message and pasted them on to the walls of her tiny cell, cherishing the photographs of perfect strangers who had at that moment become such perfect friends. "It was so moving. I gained such strength from them. I knew I had committed no crime and now I knew the world also knew why I was in prison."
Chris Anyanwu is reluctant to talk in any detail about the severe physical conditions of her detention, but she echoes the sentiments of many prisoners of conscience in identifying the mental arena as the crucial battleground where the prison regime attempts to break the spirits of the detainee.
Hope is a precious weapon, and often the only weapon, for prisoners struggling to survive the intense psychological warfare waged by the authorities. Solidarity and support from the world outside is essential to sustain that hope. "Others have not been as lucky as me," she says. "I was lucky -- I had you."
There have been several stories on the news this week about efforts in Washington to tax the Internet, possibly even tax ACCESS to the Internet. Explore what's going on, if there are any bills pending, who to contact.
Please send comments to: Colby Glass, MLIS
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