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Let's Not Make the Same Mistakes

The horrific disaster in the Philippines has rocked political boats around the world. This kind of devastation is predicted to become more frequent as the Earth's climate continues changing. Even if the Conference on Climate Change takes drastic action (which no reasonable observers expect), the train has left the station on emissions levels, and many scientists now argue that we are barreling past tipping points in climate change.

Haiti Digest: Food Aid Reform Edition

The Food Aid Reform is moving and shaking! Here at the Quixote Center we have been meeting and collaborating with other lobbyists to follow Congress’ movements as Food Aid Reform negotiations start. Representative Eliot Engel (D-NY), the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote an on food aid reform, and even specifies Haiti. Here are our two favorite points:

Stolen Wages in Haiti

Last week the Workers Rights Consortium issued a report on garment factories in Haiti that sew for major U.S. brands. The report found:

…garment factory owners in Haiti routinely, and illegally, cheat workers of substantial portions of their pay, depriving them of any chance to free their families from lives of grueling poverty and frequent hunger.

Haiti Digest: October 11

This week a lawsuit on behalf of victims of the reintroduction of cholera to Haiti was filed in New York against the United Nations. The source of the infections has been traced to Nepalese peacekeepers whose camp sanitation facilities were inadequate. The camp bordered a tributary of the Arbonite river, Haiti's largest, and waste from infected peacekeepers spread the disease downstream.

Ecology of Liberation: Naomi Klein on Overcoming Overburden

Naomi Klein was the keynote speaker at the convention launching a new union coalition in Canada. In her speech, Overcoming Overburden: The Climate Crisis and a Unified Left Agenda, she laid out some compelling arguments for climate activism becoming the glue that binds social and economic justice movements into a broad coalition demanding transformation. You can read the entire speech . A few highlights

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