OneWorld Application 2010

Send your completed application to oneworldmagazine@gmail.com.

As an organization that support awareness and global justice, OneWorld encourages the SLU community to attend as many events as you can. With so many events and topics, it is sure to be a difficult decision on which ones to attend. Women’s Rights? Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Fighting HIV? We can’t decide for you, but be sure to watch out for events run in conjunction with SLU’s Haiti Task Force. As one of the major supporters of the task force, OneWorld members would love to see you out to learn and support the rebuilding of Haiti. All of these events can be found under our Events page.

IDP Man by Tro Kilinochchi licensed by Creative Commons

As students we often take many things for granted. For instance, a mindless swipe of your ID at ABP or Salsie’s can get you more delicious Calories than some people have had in weeks. Often the concept of hunger is one that we fail to discuss or even recognize in a society of super-sizing and obesity, but for 1.02 billion people around the world, feeding oneself and one’s family is a day to day struggle. As part of the upcoming ATLAS week here at SLU, The Doerr Center for Social Justice and Campus Ministry are co-sponsoring an Oxfam Hunger Banquet. There you can learn more about the role food plays worldwide and how people around the world are affected by hunger. To RSVP for the banquet please email emcmill2@slu.edu.

Make sure to check back for more ATLAS week highlights and reflection!

Right now I am reading a book about President Truman (Truman by David McCullough) and I have just read the section about the bombing of Japan. I am left feeling very angry. Again. I have felt this way about the bombing of Japan since history lessons in 5th Grade. Every single teacher I have every had has taught us that “it was necessary” to end the war. That “the war would have gone on for years if America had not bombed Japan.” I don’t buy it. It was a display of power that looked at a massive loss of human life as necessary collateral damage. Japanese people, both foreign and American, were disposable, second class, solidly un-American people.  In Truman’s inaugural speech he talked about how the developed world should use its technology to help those in developing countries bring those living in poor out of poverty. But months later all he had to say about the human toll of the bombing was “I myself certainly regret the necessity of wiping out whole populations because of the pigheadedness of the leaders of a nation.” The necessity.  I suppose that is one way to look at killing 90,000 people in an instant. The political decisions he made had horrifying effects. But, he has not been the first men to view huge number of civilians as “enemies” rather than people. It is happening today in the Middle East. I react strongly to these particular incidents of  non arbitrary violence against human beings because I am a third generation, Japanese American. My family and hundreds of thousands of other people have dealt with the effects of America’s xenophobia. Internment, racist statements, vandalism, the list goes on.  We are only one of many groups of people throughout history who have been marginalized  by the policies of governments and the xenophobia of civilians; compared to most other victimized populations, people of Japanese decent have not suffered near the level of brutality that countless other groups have suffered because of hatred and ignorance. The frenzy of war, the inundation of news footage of suffering people, the relativity of numbers…all of these things allow us to view people as masses. Americans celebrated the destruction of Japan’s might. The bombs were used to, in Truman’s words, “shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.” It is not wrong to want to preserve American lives, but 90,000 Japanese people died instantly, and 60,000 died in months to come from burns, shock and radioactive poisoning. Of those, only 10,000 were Japanese soldiers. Ultimately over 200,000 people died. Yes, the atomic bombs were a catalyst that ended WWII. But at what cost? To end a war, it was decided that it was justified to kill over 200,000 foreigners. Truman later said that “my object is to save as many American lives as possible but I also do have a human feeling for the woman and children of Japan.” But he also said, after learning that the bombs had great success, that it was “the greatest thing in history.” That is one way of looking at it. Our world leaders cannot  continue to look at their neighbors as the US did in 1945.  Iran threatens Israel with nuclear destruction while genocide and femocide occur around the world. To be a world leader imposes the burden of balancing the infinite value of the human person against the interests of national security and economic stability. They need to remember that  countries, buildings, cities, and the rest are inhabited with precious human life. These aren’t just numbers. It’s not that simple, and it unjust to deny it in order to further the needs of one nation.

Jesse Sullivan, OneWorld founder, camps out in the snow of DC to show solidarity with the people of Haiti.

Hundreds of miles away from Haiti, one of our own is attempting to understand some of the suffering of the Haitian people. Jesse Sullivan, founder of OneWorld and current aid to the ambassador of Haiti is spending an entire month in a tent on the streets of Washington, D.C. In doing so he intends to show his solidarity with the Haitian people and raise money to bring them emergency shelter. In the first half of the month he has pledged to stay outside he has faced record snowfalls, clothes and blankets soaked with ice cold water, as well as interviews from CNN and the like. Through his acts we are reminded that though the images of Haiti have faded from most of the front pages, the damage is still devastating and suffering of the people has not yet ceased.To follow Jesse’s experience follow his blog or subscribe to his YouTube channel.

Photo courtesy of Lauren Hashiguchi

This past summer, I spent time working in laboratories and communities around Haiti. I was on Twitter and noticed that Haiti had a spike in tweets so I clicked on a link. I found out that two hours ago Port-au-Prince had been hit by a 7.0 earthquake. I spent a lot of time in Port-au-Prince, and am now left in my apartment thousands of miles away, imagining the utter disaster that even a small earthquake could render in a country with such little infrastructure. In Port there are hardly any road or traffic signs, shacks line the ocean and scale up the mountains, and I am sure the large buildings have ever been evaluated for structural integrity. As I write this, there still aren’t pictures or a lot of information online because its too recent, but I heard the national palace collapsed, and if the government-funded palace didn’t withstand the shock, I hardly want to venture towards thinking about how the people living in the smaller, poor buildings fared.  A world away, I am trying to hope for the best, all while imagining the worst.

I remember spending hours sitting at a pick up point in Port, waiting for our ride to pick our team up to go to another work site. Of course, our communication was nonexistant, so our driver never came. We sat sweating in the sun, trying to talk with some of the Haitians who were lingering nearby, interested in why our group had chosen such a strange place to rest. Eventually, an American couple offered to take us to the orphanage they ran. They were already in the area picking up a women who was adopting three of their children, and it was no problem for six more people. So, we piled in the back of a dilapidated delivery truck among bushels of medical supplies and food.  Together we bounced around in the darkness, listening to the sounds and smelling the city, imaging what we were driving past. After a while the truck stopped and we ventured out of the back of the truck to find ourselves in an orphanage with hundreds of children, all living under the care of an American couple. Among those children were over twenty disabled children, who the couple rescued from around the city. (In Haiti people are wary of disability because of vodoo, so many disabled children are abandoned in pits shortly after birth.) We spent the entire day there playing with the children. I met a twelve year old who was going to be adopted to my hometown, Portland, so I spent most of my afternoon telling her about all the places she could go with her new family. The children there were so loving of one other and of us, foreigners who came to them lost and weary.

Thousands of miles from a country filled with a resilient people and international aid workers, all I can do is remember the people who came into my life while I was in Haiti and pray for them.

As someone planning to enter a career of international health aid, I suppose this feeling now is something I should learn to anticipate. As college students, many of us are entering developing nations to serve the poor and along the way, we make human connections around the world. Now we begin to understand how strongly our friendships bind us to the lives of those living in poverty thousands of miles away.

www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/12/haiti.earthquake/index.html

Photo by HDPT Central African Republic

She had begun to miscarry the day prior, but her family did not realize something was wrong until much later. She arrived to the clinic by motorcycle at dawn but could not get an appointment, so she waited five more hours until getting emergency care. By that time her garments were soaked in sweat and blood. She grasped my hand for over two hours as Dr. Jim performed an emergency curettage. Later I cleared the aftermath from the floor and table in a daze, horrified at the suffering this women had endured because she had not gotten care soon enough. While this young Haitian women survived, countless women around the world die each day from similar complications. Currently the majority of maternal deaths occur from direct causes relating to labor[i] with women in poor nations and rural areas suffering a disproportionate maternal burden.

The factors contributing to maternal mortality are structural and cultural. The direct causes of maternal mortality are hemorrhage, infection, eclampsia, and obstructed labor[ii]. Deaths from direct causes are preventable with the proper medical care and the risks of occurrence are reduced with prenatal care. With one third of all births occurring in the absence of a skilled birth attendant[iii], many families do not understand the process of pregnancy and therefore fail to recognize when a complication occurs. The gap between the time when treatment is needed and when it is sought (if it is sought at all) is often too great. Even when a family has decided to seek care, those living in areas with low health worker density do not have means of transportation or time to reach the nearest facility. Additionally, many people cannot afford to pay for treatment. Furthermore, the treatment is often inadequate or untimely due to limited resources or poorly trained health workers.

Who do these barriers inflict the most suffering upon? Women living in rural area and women living in the poorest countries in the world. In fact, in 2005 only eleven countries accounted for 65% of maternal deaths![iv] Sociocultural factors that contribute to direct causes of maternal mortality are entry into early marriages, short intervals between pregnancies, female genital mutilation, and gender barriers to health care. Gender-based cultural barriers in Afghanistan contribute to the country’s staggering maternal mortality rate of 1,800 maternal deaths per 100,000 births[v]. In Afghanistan women are not allowed to travel without a male companion and women are discouraged to seek treatment from male physicians[vi]. Caste systems also bar women from prenatal care. Women living in rural areas have less access to trained medical professionals and facilities, are less likely to identify medical crisis, are less able to afford treatment, and cannot easily reach clinics. These barriers inflict the most damage upon the world’s impoverished and oppressed women. A good place to start addressing the problem is to train female community birth attendants in rural areas, but in order to meet the MDGs evaluations of cultural practices and education programs are needed, which will be more difficult.

The “fatal intersection of inequities[vii],” victimizes mothers as well as their families. The mortality rates of surviving children and of other community members increases with the loss of a mother, with maternal deaths contributing to stillbirths and countless deaths of newborns[viii]. Rampant maternal mortality rates stem back to health worker density shortages. It demands increased access to education and care for women and for accessible family planning resources. Gender discriminatory practices like FGM, early marriage, and restricted access to care must be addressed. Women have irreplaceable reproductive and productive roles in their community. It is an injustice for women of limited resources to suffer so disproportionately from this natural process of human life.

[ii] Skolnik, R. (2008). Essentials of global health. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

[iii] World Health Organization, Initials. (2009, November 27). Skilled birth attendants. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/making_pregnancy_safer/topics/skilled_birth/en/index.html

[iv] House of Commons International Development Committee. (2008) Maternal Health: Fifth Report of Session 2007-2008, Vol. 1. (Incorporating HV 1075-i) London: Stationary Office Limited. Retrieved from http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmintdev/66/66i.pdf.

[v] World Health Organization, Initials. (2009, January 13). Midwife training programme aims to reduce maternal mortality in Afghanistan. Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/afghanistan_47120.html

[vi] World Health Organization, Initials. (2007, October 12). Maternal mortality ratio falling too slowly to meet goal. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2007/pr56/en/index.html

[vii] Boama, V., & Arulkumaran, S. (2009). Safer childbirth: a rights-based approach. International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, 106(2), Retrieved from http://www.ijgo.org/article/PIIS002072920900143X/fulltext

[viii] Boama, V., & Arulkumaran, S. (2009). Safer childbirth: a rights-based approach. International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, 106(2), Retrieved from http://www.ijgo.org/article/PIIS002072920900143X/fulltext

Photo by John Rawlinson

People with AIDS live every day battling their disease. From getting the proper medication to facing the stigmas some associate with the disease, their daily lives are no walk in the park. On this day, the 21st Annual World AIDS Day, uninfected and infected citizens alike in this nation and others focus their attention to the progress that can made on scales of all sizes.

Today, South African President Jacob Zuma announced that their nation, with financial aid of the US, will offer free treatment to HIV positive infants as well as expand their testing program and treatments for patients infected with HIV. In the past South Africa has encouraged garlic treatments instead of the more expensive and reliable AIDS treatments which may have led to as many as 300,000 deaths and has likely contributed to a staggering amount (5.7 million cases out of 10 million) of South Africa’s citizens living with AIDS. To support this mission the US has pledged $120 million to the program.

While this news is exciting, the question remains, “What can I do to help eliminate the world AIDS crisis?”. Luckily, the answers are simple and should cost significantly less than $120 million if anything. The National AIDS Trust out of Britain has created a list of 5 simple things you can do to Respect and Protect in order to fight AIDS.

1. Find out the facts about HIV and talk to your friends, family and colleagues about HIV – make sure they know the reality, not the myths.
2. Know your HIV status: get tested if you have put yourself at risk
3. Talk to all new sexual partners about using condoms. Using a condom during sex (especially vaginal or anal sex) is the best way to protect yourself and your partner from HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
4. If someone tells you they are HIV positive, treat them with respect and don’t tell others without their agreement.
5. Wear a red ribbon as a symbol of your support for everyone affected by HIV, and to raise awareness.

Sources and other links:

• CBS News: South Africa Steps Up AIDS Fight
• Wall Street Journal: Zuma, Reversing Course, Expands HIV Treatment
• Britain’s National AIDS Trust: World AIDS Day Website
• A video from Annie Lennox’s program SING documenting the life of an African woman and her child living with HIV

Photo by Ben Brown

This year, SLU’s Multicultural Competency Vision Team created a powerful initiative called “I OWN: Cultural Marketplace” for diversity month. This marketplace acted as an interactive exhibit to explore the dimensions of oppression and commodification of bodies by institutional, structural, and individual forces of our society. The dimensions consisted of bodies as entertainment, bodies as property, N/A bodies, disposable bodies, invisible bodies, dangerous bodies, and hardest-working bodies. For a week of November, the room in the BSC became a marketplace. The stations had different multi-media elements with information about how bodies have been oppressed and used as social commodities. The marketplace also featured life size visual displays of faculty, staff, and college students whose tangible and intangible body parts will be priced and tagged by the marketplace attendees according to their societal values.

As a person who worked at the marketplace for the week and as an observer, I noticed that overall, the SLU community was overwhelmed by this exhibit. There was also some resistance to price the life size display bodies. Comments usually consisted of how they did not feel right pricing someone because people are priceless. However, the various stations in the marketplace showed that society has not treated all bodies as if they were priceless.

The marketplace reminded me that there is still change yet to be made in America. The exhibit served as a reminder to help reclaim bodies who are being oppressed and commodified. It also made me wonder if I realize when I am personally being used as entertainment, used as property, non-applicable, disposable, invisible, seen as dangerous, and hardest-working.

We encourage everyone to continue to think critically about the different forms and levels of oppression beyond this one week in November. To the Multicultural Competency Vision Team: a sincere thank you for giving the SLU community a chance to explore and educate ourselves.

Painting by Zac Parsons

• We need your help to stop a gruesome cycle of murders, kidnappings and torture of SINALTRAINAL(National Union of  Food Industry Workers) union leaders and organizers involved in daily life-and-death struggles at Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia.
• Coca-Cola bottlers “contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces that utilize extreme violence and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained or otherwise silenced trade union leaders,” the lawsuit states.
• It also notes that Colombian troops connected with the paramilitaries have trained at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Ga., where trainees were encouraged to torture and murder those who do “union organizing and recruiting;” pass out “propaganda in favor of workers;” and “sympathize with demonstrators or strikes.” This was made public when the Pentagon was forced to reveal the contents of training manuals used at the school. (For more information, see www.soaw.org, the website of SOA Watch.)
• The year that the lawsuit was filed, The Coca-Cola Co. made $4 billion in profits and paid its CEO, Douglas Daft, more than $105 million. Coca-Cola continues to rake in billions each year, yet the frightening conditions at the Coke plants remain unchanged.
  

Labor unions and human rights advocates in the US can stop these atrocities at Coca-Cola’s bottling plants by ceasing to purchase Coca-Cola Products, spreading the word of the campaign, holding vigils, protests and rallies at your local factory, sending emails or writing letters to the leaders of Coca-Cola company, donating to  KillerCokeCampaign, and standing in solidarity with those living in the conditions of Coca-Cola factories.

A LIST OF COCA-COLA PRODUCTS:

A&W

Bicardi

Boco

Anything Coke

Crush

Dasani

Canada Dry

Fanta

Nestea

Schweppes

Dr. Pepper

Fresca

Full Throttle

FUZE

Smartwater

Vitaminwater

Hi-C

Mello Yello

Anything Minute Maid

Mr. Pibb

POWERADE

SURGE

Sprite

TaB

A LIST OF PEPSI PRODUCTS AS ALTERNATIVES:

Pepsi

Aquafina

Mountain Dew

Sierra Mist

Sobe

AMP Energy

Lipton

IZZE

Mug Root Beer/Cream Sodas

Tropicana

7up

Additional Resources:

• PBS “Frontline” episode entitled “Colombia: The Coca-Cola Controversy”. Includes video of entire episode
• Trailer for upcoming documentary by the National Film Board of Canada entitled “The Coke Case”