Strength & Solidarity

It is now three months since the October 7 brutal attack by Hamas on targets in Israel which triggered the Israeli bombardment of Gaza in which a reported 21,000 people have so far been killed. In the US, as much as widespread condemnation was expressed after the Hamas attack, the subsequent death toll in Gaza and suffering of surviving civilians have shattered whatever remained of a consensus on Israel. Polls show rising public criticism of Israel’s actions, and of the Biden Administration for continuing to supply Israel with arms. Week after week there are protests, and present in large numbers among the diverse crowds are Jews carrying signs that say, “Not in my name.” One of several organisations mobilising those protests is Jewish Voice for Peace. JVP’s Executive Director Stefanie Fox explains how they have built their movement against the grain of mainstream US politics.

And in the Coda, a human rights lawyer talks about her artistic practice and how it connects with her work supporting communities to seek justice.

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Human rights lawyer Carmen Cheung Ka-Man helps communities around the world secure accountability for crimes committed against them. But she is also an artist, for whom making is a metaphor – an effort to find solutions within the constraints of her craft and skills. She sees printmaking is a restorative practice, reconnecting beauty with the struggle for truth and justice.

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Uganda has become one of Africa’s frontlines in the battle for LGBT rights. In 2014 a law was passed criminalizing same-sex conduct but it was nullified by the courts on a technicality. This year that same legislation was revived, passed again in parliament and signed into law by President Museveni. The penalties it prescribes include the death penalty and the queer community is vulnerable and anxious. Uganda lawyer Nicholas Opiyo talks about a litigation effort underway to nullify the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 and shines a light on the role of actors behind the scenes, including US Pentecostal activists.

And in the Coda, a young Mexican disability leader finds inspiration and joy in a film about a brilliant generation of activists.

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In the early 1970s, a group of disabled American teens found themselves at a summer camp with new freedom to think for themselves. The selfhood, courage and joy they tapped into was to power a revolution in US culture and policy towards disability. The story of those activists is told in the documentary film, Crip Camp, and Mexican disability activist Maryangel Garcia-Ramos explains how much it means to her.

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Strength & Solidarity Season 5 will start in November. Meanwhile we’re repeating some of our favourite shows, continuing with episode 27,  first released,  December 8, 2022.

Palestinian activist Issa Amro grew up studious and apolitical – until his university was permanently shuttered in 2003 by the Israeli military in response to the second intifada. The campaign he and others launched to get it reopened was successful but as the full reality of the Israeli Occupation struck home, he decided to commit to non-violent activism and has been organizing in his community ever since. Almost two decades on, a senior UN official has called 2022 the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005. In this episode, Amro explains how he and others have, over the past two decades, built a resilient movement, focused especially on young people, to resist the violent seizure of Palestinian property by illegal settlers and harassment by Israeli security forces.

And in the Coda, a Colombian human rights worker tells us how dancing Salsa lifts her spirits. 

For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, visit https://strengthandsolidarity.org/podcasts/

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Strength & Solidarity is taking a break until Season Five starts in October 2023. Meanwhile we’re repeating some of our favourite shows, continuing with episode 3,  first released,  January 5, 2021.

South African human rights lawyer Kayum Ahmed’s entire career has been spent defending and extending the rights of excluded and oppressed people, at home and abroad.  But this former CEO of the South African Human Rights Commission harbors considerable doubt about whether the human rights framework rooted in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights can meet the demands of radical black and brown activists.

In this episode: 

• Host Akwe Amosu and her colleague Chris Stone talk about why police reform in Nigeria –and elsewhere –is so hard to achieve
• Interview with human rights lawyer Kayum Ahmed about radical activist critiques of the human rights framework
• The Coda: A song that commemorates the day that US civil rights activists met an African anti-colonial fighter in 1963

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Strength & Solidarity is taking a break until Season Five starts in October 2023. Meanwhile we’re repeating some of our favourite shows, continuing with episode 9,  first released,  June 3, 2021.

In this first episode of Season two, host Akwe Amosu looks back to late 2020 and Nigeria’s massive #EndSARS protests against police brutality and impunity and asks youth organizer Samson Itodo to assess their impact. What is the role of leadership and organizing in a spontaneous upswell of citizen rage and who has to deliver it? And in the Coda, veteran human rights defender Suliman Baldo recalls the way poetry powered the revolution in his country, Sudan.

In this episode:

● Converting protest into respect for right in Nigeria

● The Coda:  How poetry fuelled Sudan’s revolution

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Strength & Solidarity is taking a break until Season Five starts in October 2023. Meanwhile we’re repeating some of our favourite shows, starting with episode 6,  first released,  March 10, 2021.

In 2005, a small group of women began a campaign to make abortion legal in Argentina. While rich women might be able to find safe means to terminate their pregnancies, the poor were forced to seek backstreet abortions at grave risk of imprisonment, injury and death. As much as those building the movement believed in their cause, even they were stunned, a mere 13 years later, to see a million people in the streets of Buenos Aires supporting their demands. At the end of 2020, a vote in Senate brought final victory. In this episode, one of the organisers at the heart of the campaign shares the strategies that won the day. And, in this episode’s Coda, the Brazilian samba that seemed to be a lovers’ tiff but was a veiled attack on military rule.

In this episode: 

• Feminist Victoria Tesoriero breaks down the brilliant, dogged campaign to legalise abortion in Argentina
• The Coda:  How a 1970 samba promised Brazilians a better future beyond dictatorship

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How does an organization weather hostile times? When a state repeatedly unleashes violence on whole communities, when activists get brutalized and locked up, is it inevitable that an organization aiming to defend rights and justice must weaken and lose power? If not, how does it find the resilience to survive the pressure and keep working towards its goals? Zimbabwe has been independent and free of racial tyranny for over forty years yet there has rarely been a time when rights and justice were not under attack by government and security forces. In this episode we ask Dzikamai Bere, National Director of ZimRights - the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association - how they have survived three decades of repression with a quarter of a million active members across the country.

And in the Coda, US racial justice leader Vince Warren talks about the central role of music in his life and shares his “pandemic project” – an EP of songs he’s recently released.

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Vince Warren is a renowned human rights lawyer and leader in racial justice who leads the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. Like so many others, he found himself locked down during the pandemic. Disruptive and destabilizing though that period was, Vince was grateful to be able to take refuge in his lifelong passion for music. A drummer and performer over many years, he took the chance to write some new songs and has recently released them on an EP. He reflected on the connections between his human rights and musical identities.

And in the Coda, US racial justice leader Vince Warren talks about the central role of music in his life and shares his “pandemic project” – an EP of songs he’s recently released.

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The death in March 2023 of US disability rights activist Judy Heumann provoked grief but also joyful celebration of a leader whose strategic instincts and sheer grit helped secure victories that improved peoples’ lives. Heumann never lost her faith in activism - building power at street level. She led persons with disabilities and their allies in blocking traffic, occupying buildings and often literally putting their bodies on the line for the cause. Three disability rights advocates – Catalina Devandas, Alberto Vasquez and Peter Torres Fremlin reflect on that history and ask whether activism is still a central tool for their community. They discuss factors like inclusion and identity as sources of both strength and division, and the pros and cons of integrating disability rights work in the wider human rights movement.

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The election in 2010, of Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orban and his Fidesz party triggered a lurch to the right and authoritarian rule. It brought legal restriction, bureaucratic harassment and public vilification to the country’s civil society and human rights community. Official hostility made it difficult for NGOs to survive and made individual rights workers’ lives hell. The most marginalized and vulnerable groups – migrants, queer community members, Roma and others – have come under particularly sustained attack. It would not have been surprising if the net outcome of such targeting were a weakened human rights movement and a profound loss of confidence. And yet, says Stefánia Kapronczay, co-director of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, the outcome has been very different.

And in the Coda, a poem by beloved Iranian poet Simin Behbahani and the story of her meeting with a young Tehran activist.

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In recent months, a sustained uprising in Iran led by women, has inspired admiration and across the world. It is by no means the first time in over 40 years of fundamentalist Islamic rule – there have been repeated waves of courageous protest since 1979. The poem in this episode’s Coda is by beloved Iranian poet Simin Behbahani, and was written during a moment of rebellion in 2009 when citizens came out to reject election results they believed had been rigged. Human rights activists Farnoosh Hashemian reflects on what the poem – and its author – mean to her.

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Some people love change but, in most cases, the words, “we need to revise our strategy,” do not elicit cheers from a team. Whether it’s the upheaval and uncertainty, or the prospect of long, often fractious meetings to choose between alternative paths, most of us would like to get on with the job and stop tinkering. This episode is about a UK organization, Freedom From Torture, that faced up to the truth about their waning impact and made a major pivot, from their long-standing model to one in which they had little experience. Chief executive, Sonya Sceats, reflects on some tough debates and decisions and tells us how it all worked out.

And in the Coda: Dilrabo Samadova reminds us that human rights were being advocated in Persian poems more than a thousand years ago, and delights in the way poetry shows up everywhere in the life of her country, Tajikistan.

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Human rights advocate Dilrabo Samadova marvels at the way poetry get into absolutely every aspect of life in her country, Tajikistan, and notes that solidarity, justice, and equality feature in Persian verse as far back as the sixth and seventh centuries, proving these are not “western values.”

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Standing in solidarity with those whose rights are being abused sounds like an easy choice. But when you get up close, it can look more complicated. What seems an obvious strategy to those in the frontline bearing the brunt of abusive treatment, might look aggressive and risky to someone in a support organization. So who gets to decide? Should it be up to each organization to decide how to support those who need their help? Or should those at the sharp end be able to set the strategy and expect others to follow? Two allies in South Africa’s human rights movement - S’bu Zikode, President of shack-dwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, and Nomzamo Zondo, Executive Director of the Socio-Economic Rights Institute – sit down with host Akwe Amosu to explain how they work, and who gets the last word when they disagree.

And in the Coda, exiled human rights lawyer Tutu Alicante expresses his excitement about the young musicians of his country Equatorial Guinea, who are using their art to fight dictatorship and corruption.

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For Tutu Alicante, human rights lawyer and long time activist against dictatorship and corruption in Equatorial Guinea, it has sometimes felt like an uphill struggle. But there are some new kids on the block – young artistes who are using their music to condemn the illegitimate wealth of the president and the shocking poverty of the country’s people. And it’s giving Tutu hope.

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How should we describe the state of the global struggle for women’s rights? It is surely impossible to make a single overarching assessment– even as battles are won on one front, major challenges remain – or emerge - on another. Yet if it is hard to generalize about progress, we can at least note that conditions are scarcely favourable. To pick only three global trends - authoritarian rule, identity-based exclusion and economic instability - none of these help advance women’s freedoms. As International Women’s Day 2023 approaches, we invite three feminist leaders to assess this moment in their respective fields.

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On January 21, 2023, human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko was murdered in Swaziland. He was a remarkable advocate for rights and democracy, a commitment that brought him into direct confrontation with his country’s absolute ruler, King Mswati III over decades. His family, friends and fellow citizens are grief-stricken and the international human rights and justice community is outraged. Maseko had been due to spend a week with a group of human rights activists and leaders in our Symposium on Strength and Solidarity for Human Rights. We met to celebrate his work and decided to share this audio recording of the event.

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It is now more than a decade since Egypt’s January 25th Revolution, otherwise known simply as “Tahrir Square.” All over the world in 2011, people watched the footage from Cairo in amazement at the scale of the mobilization, the creation of community and a remarkable range of services in the square, and the eventual ejection of the Mubarak regime which opened a path to elections. But it was all over in less than three years when General Al-Sisi’s counter-coup restored military dictatorship. What has life been like for activists and rights defenders in the years since, and what is left of the passionate activism that powered the revolution? In 2011 Mohammed Lotfy had been working abroad for Amnesty International but he came home to help build a new society. Now the executive director of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, he sees, at first hand, the daily reality of those who made the revolution and, in his own family, the cost of defending rights in Egypt today. And in our Coda, a Nigerian activist tells us how Audre Lorde has transformed his approach.

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Two years ago, Nigerian environmental rights campaigner, Ken Henshaw, had never heard of black lesbian feminist, Audre Lorde or her lecture, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. But when someone gave him a copy of Lorde’s fiery take-down of white feminist academics for avoiding discomfort and hanging on to their privileged connection with the white patriarchy, Ken was transfixed. Could he apply the ‘Master’s Tools’ metaphor to his own activism? Had he really been challenging the oil companies and the government, or was he working within limits they prescribed?

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The United Nations, sponsor of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights stands as the most important protector of rights in the world today. Under the authority of its councils, its agencies and its convenings, standards are set, treaties are ratified and complaints are heard. But as much as we have seen vital progress in the definition and assertion of rights, that is only one side of the story. The other, darker truth is that, time and again, people in desperate need of protection are abandoned to the cruel bullying and violence of powerful actors -most often states that are members of the UN. Akila Radhakrishnan, is the director of the Global Justice Center which does a lot of work in the UN’s corridors, fighting for gender equality and justice. She spoke late last year with host Akwe Amosu about why civilians in places like Syria and Myanmar don’t get the same kind of attention as those in Ukraine. And in the Coda, a moving reflection on Seamus Heaney’s poem, Casualty, born of the troubles in Northern Ireland.

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This famous poem of the Northern Ireland Troubles tells the story of an event that followed Bloody Sunday, the day in 1972 when British soldiers shot dead 13 unarmed civilians in Derry as they were protesting internment without trial. Criminal defense lawyer Chris Stone reads the poem and reflects on its brilliance, and the profound impact it had on him.

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Building a protest movement massive enough to topple a president used to take years, even decades. The internet changed that, as we discovered over in the Arab Spring. In this episode someone who was at the heart of a mass mobilisation in his home country, Guatemala, explains how an almost accidental series of choices and connections in 2015 put him and a small group of others at the head of a movement that - under the slogan, Justicia Ya! - Justice Now! - forced the country’s president to resign. Gabriel Wer tells host Akwe Amosu of his initial bewilderment at what he and fellow organisers had unleashed, his determination to achieve its goals, and then the growing recognition that long-term change was going to need a different approach. 

And in the Coda, a social justice activist in Hong Kong explains how rock climbing gives him a powerful metaphor for weathering defeat and nurturing resilience.

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When human rights and social justice activist Johnson Yeung wants a break, he exchanges Hong Kong’s forest of skyscrapers for the real thing, a nearby forest of trees and a rockface that he and fellow climbers can scale, finding trust in mutual reliance, the resilience to fall and recover, and - on reaching the top - a breathtaking view.

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Palestinian activist Issa Amro grew up studious and apolitical – until his university was permanently shuttered in 2003 by the Israeli military in response to the second intifada. The campaign he and others launched to get it reopened was successful but as the full reality of the Israeli Occupation struck home, he decided to commit to non-violent activism and has been organizing in his community ever since. Almost two decades on, a senior UN official has called 2022 the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005. In this episode, Amro explains how he and others have, over the past two decades, built a resilient movement, focused especially on young people, to resist the violent seizure of Palestinian property by illegal settlers and harassment by Israeli security forces.

And in the Coda, a Colombian human rights worker tells us how dancing Salsa lifts her spirits. 

For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, visit https://strengthandsolidarity.org/podcasts/

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Vivian Newman Pont is a human rights advocate and researcher at Dejusticia in Colombia. The work exposes her and her colleagues to the impact of war and impunity and inevitably takes a toll. When things get too much, Vivian fires up some music and gets out on the dance floor.

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Strength & Solidarity returns December 8 with a fourth season of insightful interviews with human rights advocates and defenders. As always we’re hearing about the tools and tactics activists are choosing and using in these challenging times and asking what works, and why? 

First up, Palestinian organizer and activist Issa Amro tells us how non-violence and the video camera are putting power in the hands of Palestinian communities and how young activists are being prepared to succeed as leaders in the resistance. From Guatemala, the story of how a massive social movement emerged almost by accident. And three women leaders from the US, Sudan and  the Philippines come into our studio to talk about the global backlash against women’s rights. And later in the season, we have episodes on rights and justice work in Colombia, Egypt, Nigeria and Israel - with more to come. Not to mention “The Coda” – a pause for reflection by human rights people about  how they find respite, solace and energy to do their work.  Join host Akwe Amosu and her guests on Thursday December 8.

Relative to other marginalised people, the disability community had to wait a long time for their rights to be globally asserted. But the adoption, 15 years ago, of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) marked a major step forward, from the language of charity and medical strategies to the language of rights. Now widely ratified, the Convention has had a remarkable effect: expanding protections and bringing together people from different corners of the disability movement to shift deeply entrenched assumptions about agency and capability. In a period when many have questioned whether investing in standard-setting is worthwhile -often arguing instead for a radical disruption of institutional approaches -the human rights framework seems successfully to have given agency to a community that badly needed it. Alberto Vasquez is a Peruvian lawyer with a history of activism around psychosocial disabilities in his own country and in the Latin American region. He reflects on both the solidarity and vibrant activism that emerged, and says even those under guardianship or coercion by mental health authorities are seeing the possibility of change.

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The spontaneous welcome given by Poland’s citizens to Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion drew applause all over the world. But there was another, less positive story –the open hostility shown to the black and brown, queer and Roma people also trying to cross to safety. Or worse, the brutal treatment being meted out by border guards to refugees from places like Syria and Afghanistan who were at that same moment trying to enter Poland from Belarus. Activists trying to support those who arrive are accustomed to expressions of xenophobia and racism and to politicians stigmatizing minorities to build their base. But could deeper empathy and more support be possible, with the right strategies? Reflections from Anna Alboth, of the Minority Rights Group on what does and doesn’t work to increase solidarity. 

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For minority communities it can be exhausting to sustain morale and self-confidence in the face of exclusion and stereotyping. Raheel Mohammed, director of Maslaha, a London-based organization dedicated to defending and supporting muslim communities, has been moved and inspired by the writings of Saidiya Hartman on waywardness –as a strategy to refuse oppression, even when you are a incarcerated.

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Eighteen months ago, Shaharzad Akbar was still leading Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission and gave this podcast an insight into what it meant to try and infuse rights into the laws, institutions and culture of a country that was a crossroads for conflict and competing foreign interests. She acknowledged that for many, the language of human rights felt like a foreign import but she believed citizens’ hopes and expectations of government had fundamentally changed in the past two decades. The US was planning to withdraw its forces and talks with the Taliban in Doha were under way. Akbar worried about their return to power might mean, especially for women’s rights. Fast forward to today, the Taliban is in charge and worst fears with regard to rights and freedoms have been confirmed. Shaharzad Akbar, now exiled, returns to reflect on whether the Taliban will be able to enforce its regressive authoritarian rule and what happens now to the struggle for rights. 

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Last month, Ferdinand Marcos Junior was elected president of the Philippines, thirty-six years after his father was chased from office by the People Power revolution in 1986.  For activists like Mary Jane Real, this is grim news, bringing back memories of brutal rule, torture and impunity. But an essay by Rebecca Solnit brings her a surprising insight.

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In this second part of our episode featuring Libyan human rights lawyer Elham Saudi, we get an up-close look at international mediation efforts to broker an agreement between rival political actors and establish a stable democratic government in Libya. As a civil society representative in the UN-convened Libya Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF), Elham has a ringside seat from which to observe the compromises being made to cobble together an agreement - and she’s not too impressed.

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With the fall of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 ,four decades of tyranny came to an end and Libya experienced an all too brief period of optimism–its own Arab Spring. But the hopes were overwritten by a lawless and violent competition for power and resources, egged on by foreign actorskeen to access the country’s mineral wealth.  If you were an advocate of justice and human rights in a democratic state of laws, where did that leave you? How could you advance your vision in such conditions? Human rights lawyer Elham Saudi was eventually forced into exile by hostile militias but she tells host Akwe Amosu how she and the rest of civil society are keeping the flame alive, albeit at great personal cost. And in the Coda, Guatemalan activist Gabriel Wer shares a haunting poem by Argentinian poet Juan Gelman on keeping faith with the country and culture that made you, even if you have to leave. 

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For the human rights defender forced to leave their home country to get away from threats of violence or detention, there is a strange life ahead –of dislocation and adaption to a new culture, while remaining umbilically connected to their place of origin. Guatemalan activist Gabriel Wer shares a poem by celebrated Argentinian poet Juan Gelman who lived much of his life in exile.