Human Rights

In my previous post I contrasted the U.S. election night coverage of the cable networks with the much more substantive conversation aired throughout the evening on Democracy Now!.  On DN!, Amy Goodman and her impressive series of guest commentators held a spirited discussion of what the election results would (and should) mean for progressives.  As a follow-up to that post, I’d like to identify five key issues that arguably need to be at the center of a post-election social justice agenda.  In keeping with the core mission of the Weave, I’m going to prioritize issues that are particularly underreported in the mainstream news media.  This is hardly an exhaustive list, and I hope readers will chime in with their own thoughts by leaving comments below.

This past week, I had the pleasure of watching the documentary “Fatal Promises.” This movie of course, is about human trafficking. The director, Kat Rohrer focuses her film on the trafficking issue in Eastern Europe.

As neuroscience colonizes and merges with academic disciplines we are seeing a revisitation of many former bodies of knowledge clothed in scientific language  "New" and "progressive" research rediscovers information that has already been produced, and its apparatuses of verification (spectacular technology, medico-scientific jargon) "permit" the older knowledge to be revitalized. In its "original form" the former knowledge remains repressed, yet finds a way to surface in a new cultural milieu: in the case of neuroscience (and the other psy-disciplines) maintaining the illusion of progress and science as a politically loaded entity. 

"I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name–modern slavery.”

On September 25th, 2012, President Barack Obama announced at the Clinton Global Initiative the United States’ plan to draw more attention to the crime of human trafficking.  Watch the video on the CNN Freedom Project.