Harm Reduction Project News Digest May 29, 2007

News & Opinion This Week 1. New Report on HIV/AIDS in Africa First to Link Discriminatory Beliefs Against Women With Vulnerability To AIDS 2. As Meth Trade Goes Global, South Africa Becomes A Hub 3. Excerpt from Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken 4. [US] Drug Agency Reaffirms Ban on Gay Men Giving Blood [Red Cross and two other blood groups criticized the ban as “medically and scientifically unwarranted.”] 5. Gay Activists Beaten Up At Moscow Demo 6. Public Injection Site Likely Reduces Drug Use: Study 7. What Is Bush's Dumbest Utterance? B Upcoming Conferences and Events C Quotes D How To Help E About HRP F Subscription Information ----- I. New Report on HIV/AIDS in Africa First to Link Discriminatory Beliefs Against Women With Vulnerability To AIDS May 25, 2007 A landmark study released today by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) connects widespread discriminatory views against women in Botswana and Swaziland to sexual risk-taking and, in turn, to extremely high HIV prevalence. Seventy-five percent of HIV-positive 15-25 year-olds in sub-Saharan Africa are female. Download in PDF format PHR's study, Epidemic of Inequality: Women's Rights and HIV/AIDS in Botswana & Swaziland: An Evidence-based Report on Gender Inequity, Stigma and Discrimination reports the results of a population-based study conducted in 2004 and 2005 with 1,268 respondents in Botswana and 788 participants in Swaziland, designed to assess factors contributing to HIV infection. In addition, 24 people living with HIV/AIDS in Botswana and 58 people living with HIV/AIDS in Swaziland were interviewed, along with key informants in both countries. The full report can be accessed here. Four key factors were found to contribute to women's vulnerability to HIV: women's lack of control over sexual decision-making, including the decision to use a condom, and multiple sexual partners by both women and men; the prevalence of HIV-related stigma and discrimination (which hinders testing and disclosure of status); gender-discriminatory beliefs, which were associated with sexual risk-taking; and a failure of traditional and government leadership to promote the equality, autonomy, and economic independence of women. "If we are to reduce the continuing, extraordinary HIV prevalence in Botswana and Swaziland, particularly among women, the countries' leaders need to enforce women's legal rights, and offer them sufficient food and economic opportunities to gain agency in their own lives. Men and women must be educated and supported to acknowledge women's equal status with men and abandon these prejudices and risky sexual practices. The impact of women's lack of power cannot be underestimated," said PHR's Senior Research Associate Karen Leiter, JD, MPH, lead investigator of the study. While anecdotal evidence has strongly suggested a link between gender inequity and HIV infection, PHR has conducted the first rigorous, large-scale field survey of gender discriminatory beliefs and analyzed their association with sexual behavior. The report suggests that women's rights must be made the top priority by the countries' leaders if HIV prevalence is to be reduced. In Botswana, for example, 95% of women and 90% of men surveyed held at least one gender discriminatory belief. Botswana community survey participants who held three or more such beliefs had 2.7 the odds of those who held fewer beliefs to report having had unprotected sex in the prior year with a non-primary partner. Discriminatory beliefs accept and reflect upon women's inferior legal cultural and socioeconomic status. For example, 19% of all community survey respondents in Botswana agreed with the statement that it is more important that a woman respect her spouse or partner than it is for a man to respect his spouse or partner. Interviews indicated that many HIV-positive women are forced to engage in risky sex with men in exchange for food for themselves and their children. As one interviewee put it, "Woman are having sex because they are hungry. If you give them food, they would not need to have sex to eat." According to PHR research, the very fear of being subject to HIV-related stigma (as opposed to the actual experience of it)—being abandoned by friends or shunned at work, for instance—was pervasive. For instance, in Botswana, 30% of women and men believed that testing positive and disclosure would lead to the break up of their marriage or relationship. Interviews conducted by PHR and its partners indicate that women in Botswana and Swaziland frequently do not have the option to make decisions about having sex due to their lesser legal status. "Here in Swaziland, the husband is the one that bosses you around so there is nothing you can do without him. My rights lie with my husband. He decides whether we use condoms. I don't have a choice about prevention."—an HIV-positive interviewee In interviews, people living with AIDS highlighted women's dependency on male partners as the most significant contribution to women's greater vulnerability to HIV when compared to men. Testimony also revealed that women's lesser status in Botswana fosters ongoing harm to women even after they become infected, and increases the precariousness of their ability to meet basic needs for food, shelter and transport. Participants in Swaziland repeatedly pointed to a lack of political leadership—from government officials and traditional leaders—in protecting and empowering vulnerable women and girls. "HIV/AIDS interventions focused solely on individual behavior will not address the factors creating vulnerability to HIV for women and men in Botswana and Swaziland, nor protect the rights and assure the wellbeing of those living with AIDS. National leaders, with the assistance of foreign donors and others, are obligated under international law to change the inequitable social, legal, and economic conditions of women's lives which facilitate HIV transmission and impede testing, care and treatment," said Leiter. PHR's study also examined the following: * Obligations of Botswana and Swaziland to fulfill international human rights legal standards, including the right to health and the right of women to live and have a healthy life * Prevalence of accurate beliefs regarding the prevention and transmission of HIV * Prevalence of HIV testing in the community survey sample and experiences with barriers and facilitators to testing * Prevalence of stigmatizing or discriminatory beliefs regarding PLWA * Projected experiences/responses should the participant or their partner test positive for HIV * Prevalence of sexual risk-taking: multiple sexual partnerships (serial or concurrent), unprotected sex with a non-primary partner, lack of control over sexual-decision making, condom non-use, opinions/practice of abstinence * Prevalence of beliefs in women's rights (and association with sexual risk-taking) * Perceptions of why women and men are (differentially) vulnerable to HIV/AIDS A background chapter on HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa, including discussion of the dimensions of the epidemic and its consequences, drivers of the epidemic including stigma and discrimination and gender inequality, and national and international responses is available. The study was designed and implemented by PHR and two local field partners: Members of the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Botswana in Gaborone, Botswana, and Women and Law in Southern Africa Research Trust (WLSA) in Mbabane, Swaziland. Physicians for Human Rights Recommends the following: To the Government of Botswana: I. Comprehensively Advance Women's Human Rights and Address Violations * Systematically end gender discrimination in marriage, inheritance, property and employment laws and harmonize laws with international human rights instruments. * Strengthen and enact pending Domestic Violence Bill to end impunity for gender-based violence and ensure women have recourse and protection from violence in all its forms. * Reform and strengthen the Women's Affairs Department by partnering with civil society organizations in the process of drafting the gender policy and the report to Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); support documentation of discrimination to inform policymaking and implementation of reforms. II. Mitigate Poverty and Meet Basic Needs * Expand existing aid programs to assist vulnerable populations, in particular PLWA and poor women, to meet basic needs for food sufficiency, potable water and irrigation, and shelter. * Provide skills training and sustainable programs, directed at creating economic opportunities particularly for women, PLWA and families affected by HIV/AIDS. III. Eradicate HIV/AIDS-Related Stigma and Discrimination and Assure PLWA Rights * Adopt comprehensive legislation and policy addressing HIV/AIDS and employment, and strengthen enforcement of prohibitions against discrimination. * Adapt a systematic and coordinated approach to public education, addressing key knowledge gaps in prevention, support and rights, including messages that address risk, vulnerability and fear of stigma directly and integrate gender concerns. * Support those seeking testing with resources to overcome barriers such as lack of food or transport and with protection from discrimination and partner violence through guidelines and training of personnel. To the US Government: * Mandate that the Government ensure that the "3 Cs" (confidentiality, counseling and informed consent) are implemented and monitored in all HIV testing programs; provide technical assistance as necessary. * In PEPFAR reauthorization legislation, clearly identify gender inequality as a key issue propelling the AIDS pandemic, and require that a gender focus be incorporated into PEPFAR-funded prevention, treatment and care programs. Increase PEPFAR's investment in programs that promote women's and girls' access to income and resources, support primary and secondary education for girls and strengthen women's legal rights. To All Donors: * Mobilize resources, including financial, informational and technical assistance to build skills and capacity in the Ministries, Attorney General's Office and Parliament to draft and implement gender reforms. * Provide training, technical assistance and financial resources to women's organizations and other civil society actors to undertake advocacy, civic education and mobilization, and popular campaigns relating to women's rights. * Support PLWA organizations and networks to increase their visibility and services by funding the expansion and coordination of national networks, training officers for NGOs and support capacity building for community mobilization efforts. Recommendations To the Government of Swaziland: I. Comprehensively Advance Women's Human Rights and Address Violations * Systematically end discrimination in marriage, inheritance, property and employment laws, and harmonize laws with international human rights instruments, to ensure that women and men enjoy equal status under civil law and to enable women to have equal access to economic resources, such as credit, land ownership and inherited property. * Enact domestic and sexual violence legislation to end impunity for gender-based violence and ensure women recourse and protection from violence in all its forms, including marital rape. * Build capacity in the Attorney General's Office and the Gender Desk at the Ministry of Home Affairs. II. Mitigate Poverty and Meet Basic Needs * Mobilize donors, local organizations and farmers to assist vulnerable populations, in particular PLWA and poor women, to meet basic needs for food sufficiency, potable water and irrigation, and shelter. * Undertake efforts to strengthen rural livelihoods, including providing land for communities and PLWA for both subsistence and commercial farming to improve nutrition and raise resources. * Provide skills training and sustainable programs directed at creating economic opportunities particularly for women, PLWA and families affected by HIV/AIDS. III. Eradicate HIV/AIDS-Related Stigma and Discrimination and Assure PLWA Rights * Create a coordinated media campaign, including television and radio messages on prevention and testing, including messages that address risk, vulnerability and stigma directly and integrate gender concerns. * Work with PLWA groups and other civil society organizations to create or adapt and widely disseminate information on prevention, testing and treatment. To the US Government: * Increase and sustain funding, including through USAID, for HIV/AIDS prevention, testing and treatment in Swaziland and assure that funded programs, including public education campaigns, promote women's rights and empowerment. * In the short-term, increase funding to the World Food Programme; in the longer term, adopt policies and legislation that promote the local population's capacity for self-sufficiency in food production. To All Donors: * Mobilize resources, including financial, informational and technical assistance to build skills and capacity in the Ministries, Attorney General's Office and Parliament to draft and implement gender reforms. * Provide training, technical assistance and financial resources to women's organizations, the PLWA network and organizations and other civil society actors to foster collaborations and undertake political advocacy, civic education and community mobilization. * Increase food aid and aid for other basic needs, particularly to poor women and PLWA, including supporting food and farming initiatives and economic empowerment programs to foster local capacity. * Assist the government to scale-up and monitor current HIV testing and ARV treatment programs. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) mobilizes the health professions to advance the health and dignity of all people by protecting human rights. As a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, PHR shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. --- 2. As Meth Trade Goes Global, South Africa Becomes A Hub By Kiriath Jearim Wall Street Journal CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- Welcoming a visitor to his apartment on the outskirts of this city, Igshaan "Sanie" Davids wore only silky maroon boxer shorts festooned with brightly colored ducks and the slogan "Totally Quackers," his ample belly sloping out far beyond the waistband. Tattoos of the Statue of Liberty, the American flag and the U.S. dollar adorned his arms and back. Knife and bullet scars pitted his body. Mr. Davids is a leader of a Cape Town street gang called the Americans, South African law-enforcement officials say. The gang initiates its members with rites that twist the meaning of U.S. symbols. Its motto is, "In God we trust, and die we must," members say. Their handshake ends by placing the right fist over the heart, in what they describe as a variation on U.S. citizens reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. "We're businessmen, always rolling," Mr. Davids said. These days, he said, about the best business going is tik, South African slang for methamphetamine. Gangs can obtain the drug or its ingredients from Chinese sources in exchange for abalone poached from South African waters, say South African officials and Mr. Davids. The China-South Africa connection is one example of the unlikely alliances some dealers are making as the methamphetamine trade expands globally. South Africa has become a significant market for methamphetamine, with government statistics showing an explosion in the drug's use centered in the Cape Town area. It is also an emerging smuggling hub as ingredients for the drug make their way from Asia and other places to wealthy countries such as the U.S., local and Western officials say. While cocaine and heroin may come to mind more readily as drugs smuggled across continents, methamphetamine and its ingredients also travel circuitous routes, in part because the U.S. and other countries have revved up methamphetamine control efforts. Since 2004, U.S. state and federal laws have restricted the sale of cold medicines that contain pseudoephedrine, a "precursor" chemical used to make methamphetamine. Mexico and Hong Kong have also cracked down on trade in precursors. "We now see precursor chemicals from India and China being rerouted through new places like Cairo and South Africa before going to Mexico," Karen Tandy, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said in a speech last year. Once in Mexico, the precursors feed the "super-labs" that make methamphetamine and supply American users, U.S. law-enforcement officials say. South African smugglers have sent precursors to Russia disguised as luxury bath salts and to Australia secreted in bottles of chardonnay, according to government communiqués and officials familiar with the intercepted shipments. Cargo sent to Mexico from China via the South African port of Durban contained about 1,200 boxes of electric fans -- which hid more than three metric tons of a methamphetamine ingredient, according to interviews with law-enforcement officials and a U.S. government statement. South Africa has several attractions both as a market and as a trade hub for drugs. Incomes are higher than in most of Africa. It enjoys the banking and transport systems of a developed nation, with direct flights around the world and efficient seaports. Telephone and Internet service is reliable. At the same time, the country suffers from an "overloaded criminal justice system, straining hard just to deal with 'street crime,'" the U.S. State Department said in its International Narcotics Control Strategy report this year. Its long borders are porous, and crime syndicates from Eastern Europe, Asia and elsewhere have gained a foothold since the fall of apartheid. Methamphetamine and its chemical cousins are used by 26 million people world-wide, more than heroin and cocaine combined, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. An estimated 1.3 million Americans reported using methamphetamine at least once in the previous 12 months, according to 2005 government data. Methamphetamine, a cheap and powerful stimulant that is usually smoked, gives users a surge of euphoria, confidence and libido. The U.S. government describes methamphetamine as an addictive drug that can cause mood changes, violent behavior and, with long-term use, permanent psychological damage. One corner of the trade can be found in the Cape Flats, a vast and crowded patchwork of townships, slums, and squatter camps just outside of Cape Town. This is where the apartheid government once forced "colored," or mixed-race, people and blacks to live, while the city itself, home to South Africa's Parliament, was reserved almost exclusively for whites. Law-enforcement officials describe the "Americans" as the largest of the Cape Flats street gangs and Mr. Davids, who is colored, as a powerful gang lord. He regularly appears in gang stories in the local tabloids, often on the cover. Headlines or photo captions frequently refer to him simply as "Sanie" or "Sanie American." In interviews, Mr. Davids at times declared he has abandoned all illegal activity and now earns his living through a construction business. But at other times he described in detail how he trafficked in methamphetamine, and when pressed on his largest current source of income, he said, "tik is bigger than everything." The Americans gang has its own interpretation of the American flag. According to Mr. Davids and other gang members, the red stripes on the flag stand for blood and killing, whereas the white stripes symbolize the clean work of making money. The stars stand for the gang's "senators," leaders in the Cape Flats' many neighborhoods. Recently, a man who gave his name as Nigel came to Mr. Davids's home, sat down on his living-room sofa, and handed a wad of cash to one of Mr. Davids's close associates. In return, while Mr. Davids sat across the room watching, Nigel received a clear plastic bag of a white crystalline substance, which he inspected carefully before putting it in an opaque plastic bag. An associate later identified the substance as methamphetamine. Valuable Resource The gangs have access to a valuable natural resource, the Haliotis midae species of abalone that teems along South Africa's coast. Considered a delicacy and an aphrodisiac in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the shellfish can fetch more than $200 a pound in Asian retail markets, according to South African law-enforcement officials. South Africa has declared the species protected and placed quotas on harvesting it. But poachers face little risk of getting caught and usually only small penalties if discovered. Law-enforcement officials say poachers even dive for abalone near Robben Island, about 7.5 miles from Cape Town, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for most of his 27 years of captivity. Cape Flats street gangs organize teams of divers, who can harvest a ton of abalone in as little as a day. That amount can fetch nearly $50,000 from Chinese syndicates known as triads. In the 1990s, the triads began supplying the gangs with methaqualone, a sedative once marketed in the U.S. as Quaalude and known in South Africa as mandrax. As Mr. Davids tells it, in 1997 he gave his Chinese contacts samples of mandrax, which they chemically analyzed and then procured. By the next year, he says, the Chinese were flooding the market with mandrax, often trading it directly for abalone. Today, triads based in Hong Kong are a major supplier of methamphetamine and its precursors, according to law-enforcement officials and some gang members. Along with South Africa's national police, an elite investigative unit called the Scorpions, which reports to the national director of public prosecutions, pursues organized drug rings. Mr. Davids says the triads sometimes barter methamphetamine directly for abalone. The transaction is convenient for both sides and hard to trace because no money is involved. Mr. Davids says if he has $43,000 worth of abalone and trades it for methamphetamine, he can turn around and sell the drug for $64,000. "For two days more work, I make an extra 150,000 rand," or about $21,000, he says. Mr. Davids's life has been marred by frequent violence. He says gunmen tried to assassinate him last year while he was driving his children to school, an account confirmed by law-enforcement officials. He almost never goes out to movies or other entertainment, says his longtime girlfriend, Razia Abdullah. "He's got a lot of enemies," she explains. During his own rise to power, Mr. Davids says, he killed "about seven" people. One of Mr. Davids's older brothers was murdered, and his younger brother faces charges in the murder of two men last year. Mr. Davids and his brother's attorney said a plea bargain was being negotiated, but the protracted legal trouble has not been cheap. Mr. Davids said he was funding his brother's top-drawer legal team at a weekly cost of the equivalent of about $7,000, due every Monday. Last year, South African police arrested a Chinese man, Ran Wei, who now faces trial for illegal possession of abalone. According to a person with detailed knowledge of the case, seized accounting records documented abalone purchases totaling about $35 million over less than three years. Mr. Wei's lawyer, Michael Sun, says his client has pleaded innocent and denies wrongdoing. "Abalone is quick money -- I like it more than anything else," says Mujahid Daniels. He and his brother-in-law, Raqeeb "Ricky" Oaker, are reputed leaders of Junior Mafia, another gang in the Cape Town area, but they couldn't be more different from Mr. Davids. Also in their mid-30s, Messrs. Daniels and Oaker dress like models. They operate a trendy nightclub, Barmooda, where they say they don't allow any illegal drugs. In an upstairs office, they monitor patrons on sleek computers hooked up to surveillance cameras. When they see someone suspicious -- or an attractive woman -- they click on the image to magnify it. The Junior Mafia doesn't have nearly as many members as the Americans, say law-enforcement officials, but its client base is wealthier. In interviews, Messrs. Daniels and Oaker denied being involved in illegal activity and said that, while they started the Junior Mafia, they aren't involved now. Later Mr. Daniels acknowledged trading in abalone, and Mr. Oaker said he smuggles diamonds. Both men come from the Cape Flats and now live in a middle-class suburb called Observatory. After two Taiwanese gangsters were murdered in 2002, Mr. Daniels was accused of ordering the crime, allegedly to avenge an attempt to kill Mr. Oaker. During the trial, two witnesses against Mr. Daniels were murdered. Mr. Daniels denied any involvement in the killing of the witnesses, and was acquitted of all serious charges in the Taiwanese-gangster case. Mr. Daniels says "making your own tik and selling it" is one way to profit, but dealing in precursors to methamphetamine is also lucrative. "Whoever controls ephedrine controls the market," he says. Speaking generally, law-enforcement officials say gangs may act as middlemen between foreign suppliers of precursors and South African labs that cook up the final drug. South Africa's pharmaceutical and chemical industries imported more than 17,000 kilograms of the precursors in 2005, the last year for which full figures are available, according to the South African Police Service. Some precursor chemicals get diverted to the illicit market, according to a report released this year by the Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board. Mr. Davids says he works with crooked managers at some South African pharmaceutical companies, which he didn't name, to obtain the precursors and supplies the chemicals at a profit to makers of methamphetamine. Officials play down the diversion issue. Deven Naicker, national head of antinarcotics for the South African Police Service, acknowledges diversion takes place, but says it is "not to a very large scale." Maureen Kirkman, head of scientific and regulatory affairs for the Pharmaceutical Industry Association of South Africa, says ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are "very tightly controlled." South Africa has mounted serious counternarcotics efforts. It has shut down large illicit methamphetamine laboratories, and it has operated a precursor chemical monitoring program since 1994. It is also the only country in southern Africa that participates in Project Prism, the international campaign to control specific methamphetamine precursors, according to Jonathan Lucas, who heads the southern Africa regional office of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Mr. Davids says some methamphetamine he's involved in trading doesn't stay in South Africa but gets exported to Europe and America. Some smugglers hide the drug in decorative doors featuring African carving, obscuring the scent from sniffer dogs with coats of primer and varnish, he says. However, the main shippers of drugs to other countries from South Africa are international syndicates, officials say. Three officials said a sophisticated ring is currently shipping precursors through South Africa to Mexico via other countries including the Congo. The shipments include chemicals diverted from a South African pharmaceuticals company and sent to the Congo's capital, Kinshasa, packaged as legitimate cold medicine, two of the officials said. In April 2006, a joint Russian-South African sting operation shut down a ring that allegedly sent more than 300 kilograms of ephedrine to Russia, often packaged with bath oils and soaps, officials in both countries say. South Africa wants to extradite an alleged ringleader, a Russian living in South Africa who is reportedly a member of the Hell's Angels biker gang, according to an official with knowledge of the case. The Russian denies wrongdoing, says his lawyer. Alarming Problem As traders use South Africa as a hub, the country is experiencing what officials call an alarming problem with methamphetamine abuse. A government survey in the first half of 2002 found that no one under 20 years old who was receiving drug-abuse treatment in Cape Town identified methamphetamine as their drug of choice. By the second half of 2006, 72% said it was their primary or secondary drug abuse. In the province that includes Cape Town, police cases involving methamphetamine soared to 2,628 cases in 2005 from 15 in 2001, according to a joint analysis by the U.N. drug office and South African police. On a recent afternoon at Silver Spring High School in the Cape Flats community of Manenberg, vice principal Carder Tregonning said four of the day's eight discipline cases were committed by students who admitted to smoking meth. One offender threatened to stab a classmate because he didn't like him, while a 17-year-old student squatted over a trash can and urinated in front of her class. Methamphetamine has also been linked to sexual behaviors, such as multiple partners and intercourse without condoms, that are especially perilous in South Africa, where an estimated one in five adults is infected with the AIDS virus. In his own family, Mr. Davids discourages drug use. He recently came home with an over-the-counter urine test for methamphetamine, which he said he occasionally administers to his teenage son. 3. Excerpt from Blessed Unrest May 10, 2007 This excerpt is taken from Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming by Paul Hawken. Blessed Unrest is about a worldwide movement to re-imagine and improve humanity's relationship with the environment and one another. Paul Hawken is an environmentalist and author who has spent more than a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. BLESSED UNREST The Beginning Over the past fifteen years I have given nearly one thousand talks about the environment, and every time I have done so I have felt like a tightrope performer struggling to maintain perfect balance. To be sure, people are curious to know what is happening to their world, but no speaker wants to leave an auditorium depressed, however dark and frightening a tomorrow is predicted by the science that studies the rate of environmental loss. To be sanguine about the future, however, requires a plausible basis for constructive action: you cannot describe possibilities for that future unless the present problem is accurately defined. Bridging the chasm between the two was always a challenge, but audiences kindly ignored my intellectual vertigo and over time provided a rare perspective instead. After every speech a smaller crowd would gather to talk, ask questions, and exchange business cards. These people were typically working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights. They came from the nonprofit and nongovernmental world, also known as civil society; they looked after rivers and bays, educated consumers about sustainable agriculture, retrofitted houses with solar panels, lobbied state legislatures about pollution, fought against corporate-weighted trade policies, worked to green inner cities, and taught children about the environment. Quite simply, they had dedicated themselves to trying to safeguard nature and ensure justice. Although this was the 1990s, and the media largely ignored them, in those small meetings I had a chance to listen to their concerns. They were students, grandmothers, teenagers, tribe members, businesspeople, architects, teachers, retired professors, and worried mothers and fathers. Because I was itinerant, and the organizations they represented were rooted in their communities, over the years I began to grasp the diversity of these groups and their cumulative number. My interlocutors had a lot to say. They were informed, imaginative, and vital, and offered ideas, information, and insight. To a great extent Blessed Unrest is their gift to me. My new friends would thrust articles and books into my hands, tuck small gifts into my knapsack, or pass along proposals for green companies. A Native American taught me that the division between ecology and human rights was an artificial one, that the environmental and social justice movements addressed two sides of a single larger dilemma. The way we harm the earth affects all people, and how we treat one another is reflected in how we treat the earth. As my talks began to mirror my deeper understanding, the hands offering business cards grew more diverse. I would get from five to thirty such cards per speech, and after being on the road for a week or two would return home with a few hundred of them stuffed into various pockets. I would lay them out on the table in my kitchen, read the names, look at the logos, envisage the missions, and marvel at the scope and diversity of what groups were doing on behalf of others. Later, I would store them in drawers or paper bags as keepsakes of the journey. Over the course of years the number of cards mounted into the thousands, and whenever I glanced at them, I came back to one question: Did anyone truly appreciate how many groups and organizations were engaged in progressive causes? At first, this was a matter of curiosity on my part, but it slowly grew into a hunch that something larger was afoot, a significant social movement that was eluding the radar of mainstream culture. So, curious, I began to count. I looked at government records for different countries and, using various methods to approximate the number of environmental and social justice groups from tax census data, I initially estimated a total of 30,000 environmental organizations around the globe; when I added social justice and indigenous peoples' rights organizations, the number exceeded 100,000. I then researched to see if there had ever been any equals to this movement in scale or scope, but I couldn't find anything, past or present. The more I probed, the more I unearthed, and the numbers continued to climb, as I discovered lists, indexes, and small databases specific to certain sectors or geographic areas. In trying to pick up a stone, I found the exposed tip of a much larger geological formation. I soon realized that my initial estimate of 100,000 organizations was off by at least a factor of ten, and I now believe there are over one--and maybe even two--million organizations working toward ecological sustainability and social justice. By any conventional definition, this vast collection of committed individuals does not constitute a movement. Movements have leaders and ideologies. People join movements, study their tracts, and identify themselves with a group. They read the biography of the founder(s) or listen to them perorate on tape or in person. Movements, in short, have followers. This movement, however, doesn't fit the standard model. It is dispersed, inchoate, and fiercely independent. It has no manifesto or doctrine, no overriding authority to check with. It is taking shape in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, companies, deserts, fisheries, slums--and yes, even fancy New York hotels. One of its distinctive features is that it is tentatively emerging as a global humanitarian movement arising from the bottom up. Historically social movements have arisen primarily in response to injustice, inequities, and corruption. Those woes still remain legion, joined by a new condition that has no precedent: the planet has a life-threatening disease, marked by massive ecological degradation and rapid climate change. As I counted the vast number of organizations it crossed my mind that perhaps I was witnessing the growth of something organic, if not biologic. Rather than a movement in the conventional sense, could it be an instinctive, collective response to threat? Is it atomized for reasons that are innate to its purpose? How does it function? How fast is it growing? How is it connected? Why is it largely ignored? Does it have a history? Can it successfully address the issues that governments are failing to do: energy, jobs, conservation, poverty, and global warming? Will it become centralized, or will it continue to be dispersed and cede its power to ideologies and fundamentalism? I sought a name for the movement, but none exists. I met people who wanted to structure or organize it--a difficult task, since it would easily be the most complex association of human beings ever assembled. Many outside the movement critique it as powerless, but that assessment does not stop its growth. When describing it to politicians, academics, and businesspeople, I found that many believe they are already familiar with this movement, how it works, what it consists of, and its approximate size. They base their conclusion on media reports about Amnesty International, the Sierra Club, Oxfam, or other venerable institutions. They may be directly acquainted with a few smaller organizations and may even sit on the board of a local group. For them and others the movement is small, known, and circumscribed, a new type of charity, with a sprinkling of ragtag activists who occasionally give it a bad name. People inside the movement can also underestimate it, basing their judgment on only the organizations they are linked to, even though their networks can only encompass a fraction of the whole. But after spending years researching this phenomenon, including creating with my colleagues a global database of its constituent organizations, I have come to these conclusions: this is the largest social movement in all of human history. No one knows its scope, and how it functions is more mysterious than what meets the eye. What does meet the eye is compelling: coherent, organic, self-organized congregations involving tens of millions of people dedicated to change. When asked at colleges if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren't pessimistic, you don't have the correct data. If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren't optimistic, you haven't got a heart. What I see are ordinary and some not-so-ordinary individuals willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in an attempt to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. In the not-so-ordinary category, contrast ex-president Bill Clinton and sitting president George W. Bush. As I write this, Bush is on TV snarled in a skein of untruths as he tries to keep the lid on a nightmarish war fed by inept and misguided ambition; simultaneously the Clinton Global Initiative (which is a nongovernmental organization) met in New York and raised $7.3 billion in three days to combat global warming, injustice, intolerance, and poverty. Of the two initiatives, war and peace, which addresses root causes? Which has momentum? Which does not offend the world? Which is open to new ideas? The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “My heart is moved by all I cannot save. So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.”1 There could be no better description of the audiences I met in my lectures. This is the story without apologies of what is going right on this planet, narratives of imagination and conviction, not defeatist accounts about the limits. Wrong is an addictive, repetitive story; Right is where the movement is. There is a rabbinical teaching that holds that if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, you first plant a tree and then see if the story is true. Islam has a similar teaching that tells adherents that if they have a palm cutting in their hand on Judgment Day, plant the cutting. Inspiration is not garnered from the recitation of what is flawed; it resides, rather, in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “Consider” (con sidere) means “with the stars”; reconsider means to rejoin the movement and cycle of heaven and life. The emphasis here is on humanity's intention, because humans are frail and imperfect. People are not always literate or educated. Most families in the world are impoverished and may suffer from chronic illnesses. The poor cannot always get the right foods for proper nutrition, and must struggle to feed and educate their young. If citizens with such burdens can rise above their quotidian difficulties and act with the clear intent to confront exploitation and bring about restoration, then something powerful is afoot. And it is not just the poor, but people of all races and classes everywhere in the world. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice”2 is Mary Oliver's description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world. Although the six o'clock news is usually concerned with the death of strangers, millions of people work on behalf of strangers. This altruism has religious, even mythic origins and very practical eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first group to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no citizen group had ever filed a grievance except as it related to itself.3 Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists then, just as conservatives taunt liberals, progressives, do-gooders, and activists today by making those four terms pejoratives. Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. It is not a liberal or conservative activity; it is a sacred act. It is a massive enterprise undertaken by ordinary citizens everywhere, not by self-appointed governments or oligarchies. Blessed Unrest is an exploration of this movement--its participants, its aims, and its ideals. I have been a part of it for decades, so I cannot claim to be the detached journalist skeptically prodding my subjects. I hope what follows is the expression of a deep listening. The subtitle of the book--how the largest movement in the world came into being--cannot be answered by one person. Like anyone, I have a perspective based on biases accumulated over time and a network of friends and peers who color my judgment. However, I wrote this book primarily to discover what I don't know. Part of what I learned concerns an older quiescent history that is reemerging, what poet Gary Snyder calls the great underground, a current of humanity that dates back to the Paleolithic. Its lineage can be traced back to healers, priestesses, philosophers, monks, rabbis, poets, and artists “who speak for the planet, for other species, for interdependence, a life that courses under and through and around empires.”4 At the same time, much of what I learned is new. Groups are intertwingling--there are no words to exactly describe the complexity of this web of relationships. The Internet and other communication technologies have revolutionized what is possible for small groups to accomplish and are accordingly changing the loci of power. There have always been networks of powerful people, but until recently it has never been possible for the entire world to be connected. “Blessed Unrest” is an overview that describes how this movement differs from previous social movements, particularly with respect to ideology. The organizations in the movement arise one by one, generally with no predetermined vision for the world, and craft their goals without reference to orthodoxy. For some historians and analysts, movements only exist when they have an ideological or religious core of beliefs. And movements certainly don't exist in a vacuum: a strong leader(s) is an earmark of a movement and often its intellectual pivot point, even if deceased. The movement I describe here has neither, and so represents a completely different form of social phenomenon. The following three chapters are glimpses of some of the movement's roots. One cannot do justice to its history in a clutch of books, much less a few chapters. America has been the home of some of the most important progressive efforts in history--women's suffrage, abolition, civil rights, food safety--but you would not know that, given the narrowness of scope of today's education. My survey reflects the views of a North American because it is the only history I can adequately present. This bias is important to acknowledge, because global history is invariably skewed when seen through the eyes of Western culture, no matter how hard one tries to be objective. There are other histories, African and Native American, English and Japanese, Brazilian and Mediterranean, all equally valid, and all with their own particular inflections. In India, for example, environmentalism is a social justice movement, concerned with the rights of people to the land and its bounty. In 1991 Sunita Narain, the director of the Center for Science and the Environment in New Delhi, called global warming environmental colonialism, and was one of the first to question whether environmental management should be based on human rights rather than legal convention. In the United States the environmental movement found itself faced with a backlash when it was accused of placing the rights of the animals and plants on the land before those of people. Ron Dellums, an African-American congressman from Oakland, California, asked the Sierra Club, “I know you care about black bears but do you care about black people?” In Germany the green movement became an organized political party, and its members now hold positions at the highest echelons of government. In the global South, environmentalism is a movement of the poor, with peasants leading campaigns that include land reform, trade rights, and corporate hegemony. The environmental movement began in England as a series of public health campaigns during the Industrial Revolution. In Italy, it concerns the dynamics between la città and la campagna; in South Africa it is inextricably bound to social justice issues embedded in the country's history.7 My purpose in recounting some of the threads of the past is not merely to extol great personages such as Darwin, Gandhi, Rachel Carson, or Thoreau, but to recognize the importance of connection and coincidence. Long ago small, seemingly inconsequential actions took place that eventually changed the world--outcomes the original actors might never have imagined. One such occurrence was Emerson's encounter with the Jussieu family of scientists in Paris , a little remarked-upon event whose influence, as we will see, eventually wends itself into the civil rights movement 123 years later. In a time when people feel powerless, a history of altruism can be a balm because it reveals the power of helpful and humble acts, a reminder that constructive changes in human affairs arise from intention, not coercion. “Indigene” and “We Interrupt This Empire” concern globalization. “Indigene” is concerned with indigenous cultures. Their traditional lands represent the greatest remaining sanctuaries of life on earth, and resource-hungry corporations are commercializing and destroying these biological arks. The cultures that have coevolved with these environments are resisting the encroachment, uniting with alliances of nonprofits to bring accountability and limits to unchecked development. “We Interrupt This Empire” focuses on organizations that are engaged in protecting citizens, workers, and environments from the juggernaut of free market fundamentalism. The final two chapters look at the entire movement from two perspectives. “Immunity” uses the cellular metaphor of how an organism defends itself as a plausible way to describe the collective activity of the movement. The immune system is the most complex system in the body and provides a useful model for examining the properties of these groups. The terms environment and social justice encompass innovative organizations that are redolent with ideas and inventive techniques, and a few are explored here. I also consider the weakness of the movement, how its multiplicity and diversity may hobble it as the world descends into violence and disorder. “Restoration” describes the biological principles that inform all forms of life, including human beings, and uses the principles as a framework to bring a different vocabulary to the movement. In biologist Janine Benyus's quintessential summation, “life creates the conditions that are conducive to life.” It is fair to ask whether that might not be a suitable organizing principle for all human activity, from economics to trade to how we build our cities. While it is risky to rely on life sciences to explain social phenomena, it is equally risky to assume that the standard language that has served to chronicle past social movements is sufficient to describe this one. The individuals featured in this book all try to do good, but this book is not only about doing good. It is about people who want to save the entire sacred, cellular basis of existence--the entire planet and all its inconceivable diversity. In total, the book is inadvertently optimistic, an odd thing in these bleak times. I didn't intend it; optimism discovered me. Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from BLESSED UNREST by Paul Hawken. Copyright © Paul Hawken, 2007. --- 4. [US] Drug Agency Reaffirms Ban on Gay Men Giving Blood By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON, May 23 (AP) — Gay men remain barred from donating blood, the government said Wednesday, leaving in place a 1983 prohibition meant to prevent the spread of H.I.V. through transfusions. The Food and Drug Administration reaffirmed the policy on its Web site on Wednesday, more than a year after the Red Cross and two other blood groups criticized the ban as “medically and scientifically unwarranted.” “I am disappointed, I must confess,” said Dr. Celso Bianco, executive vice president of America’s Blood Centers, whose members provide nearly half the nation’s blood supply. Before giving blood, all men are asked if they have had sex, even once, with another man since 1977, when the AIDS epidemic began in the United States, according to the drug agency. Those who say they have are barred from donating. The drug agency says those men are at increased risk of infection by H.I.V., which can be transmitted by blood transfusion. Anyone who has used intravenous drugs or been paid for sex is also permanently barred from donating blood. In March 2006, the Red Cross, the international blood association AABB and America’s Blood Centers proposed replacing the lifetime ban with a one-year deferral after male-to-male sexual contact. New and improved tests, which can detect H.I.V.-positive donors within 10 to 21 days of infection, make the lifetime ban unnecessary, the blood groups told the F.D.A. In a document posted Wednesday, the drug agency said it would change its policy if it received data proving that doing so would not pose a “significant and preventable” risk to blood recipients. The agency said the H.I.V. tests now in use were highly accurate, but still could not detect the virus 100 percent of the time. The estimated H.I.V. risk from a unit of blood is about one per two million in the United States, according to the agency. Critics of the exclusionary policy say it bars potential healthy donors, despite the increasing need for donated blood, and discriminates against gay men. The F.D.A. acknowledges that the restriction means many healthy donors cannot give blood, but rejected the suggestion that the policy was discriminatory. --- 5. Gay Activists Beaten Up At Moscow Demo By Rachel Shields The Independent: 28 May 2007 Peter Tatchell, the rights campaigner, and Richard Fairbrass, the lead singer in the Right Said Fred pop group, were assaulted by anti-gay activists in Moscow, as violence erupted at a protest calling for the right to hold a gay pride parade. Nationalists chanted "death to homosexuals" while throwing kicks, punches and eggs at the protestors, who were trying to present a petition signed by 40 MEPs to Mayor Yuri Luzhkov asking him to lift the ban on the parade. The mayor has made openly homophobic remarks in the past, calling such marches "satanic". About 31 demonstrators were detained by police, although most were released by last night. Mr Fairbrass was left with a deep gash under his left eye and blood pouring down his face after receiving several blows to the head, while trying to speak to journalists. Peter Tatchell, co-founder of the direct-action gay rights group Outrage! and member of the Green Party, was also badly beaten before being arrested by riot police. Mr Tatchell described the eruption of violence at the banned protest by about 100 demonstrators, held to mark the 14th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Russia: "We arrived at City Hall and were immediately surrounded by neo-Nazis, who began to crowd and infiltrate our group. The Moscow police and riot squad gave them a free hand to attack people. I was punched in the eye, pushed to the ground, and kicked all over my body by six people. The riot police then moved in and arrested me, allowing my attackers to go free." Mr Tatchell accused the Moscow police of colluding with the anti-gay protesters, claiming: "There seemed to be a connivance between them. They only began arresting the neo-Nazis when it was clear that journalists had footage of the attacks." He was escorted to a local hospital to assess the extent of his injuries, then taken to the police station to make a statement, before being released without charge. A German MP, Volker Beck, and a European Parliament deputy from Italy, Marco Capatto, were similarly subjected to punches before being arrested and questioned by police. Gay activists were also attacked by right-wing protesters and arrested during a similar march last year. Some campaigners believe orthodox Christian and Muslim groups are encouraging the government to overlook such attacks. The incident prompted Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, to announce she would raise the issue of human rights with President Vladimir Putin at next month's G8 summit in Germany. "It has been shown once again today that human rights are systematically abused in Putin's Russia," she said in a statement. --- 6. Public Injection Site Likely Reduces Drug Use: Study Peter O'Neil CanWest News Service Friday, May 25, 2007 OTTAWA - The Harper government's refusal to support North America's only legal supervised drug-injection site is driven by ideology and politics - not research, two health scientists said Thursday after the release of a new report on the Vancouver facility. The report, published in a British medical journal, says Insite has resulted in a 30 per cent increase in the use of detoxification programs. This suggests that the site "has probably helped to reduce rates of injection drug use among users of the facility," concluded the five scientists at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in their report, published in the June issue of Addiction. Health Minister Tony Clement questioned whether research supported Insite last September when he refused to grant a 3 1/2-year permit extension. "The government seems intent on ignoring scientific evidence to pursue an ideological agenda at the expense of lives in the Downtown Eastside," said co-author Dr. Julio Montaner. He said the new conclusions answer Clement's questions about whether Insite is contributing to lower drug use and fighting addiction. The report said the average number of users entering detox programs increased from 21.6 to 31.3 in the year after Insite opened. "There have been many benefits of Insite in terms of public order and reduced HIV risk," said co-author Dr. Evan Wood. "However, the fact that it appears to be pulling people out of the cycle of addiction by leading them into programs that reduce drug use is remarkable." Erik Waddell, a spokesman for Clement, noted Thursday that the government has followed through on its commitment to expand research on safe injection sites. Health Canada is commissioning a study costing up to $250,000 to analyse health, public order, and operational issues as well as "local contextual issues" relating to injection sites. --- 7. What Is Bush's Dumbest Utterance? The Nation * "You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror." * "If the Iranians were to have a nuclear weapon, they could proliferate." * "Those who enter the country illegally violate the law." * "It is a time of sorrow and sadness when we lose a loss of life." * "I believe that....young cows ought to be allowed to go across our border." * "The illiteracy level of our children are appalling." --- B Upcoming Conferences and Events (send your event listings to [email protected]) The 2007 International Drug Policy Reform Conference December 5-8, 2007 Working Toward a New Bottom Line December 5-8, 2007 ~ Astor Crowne Plaza ~ New Orleans, LA ~ The Drug Policy Alliance's International Drug Policy Reform Conference is the world’s principal gathering of people who believe the war on drugs is doing more harm than good. No better opportunity exists to learn about drug policy and to strategize and mobilize for reform. For more information, please click here. --- C Quotes Heroin doesn't affect my musical life at all. - Johnny Thunders AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals. - Jerry Falwell I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you. - Anonymous --- D How To Help The Harm Reduction Project is able to provide services through the support of individuals such as yourself. Please help us make a difference and pledge your support today! PLEASE CLICK HERE TO DONATE or call 801-355-0234 ext 3# for more information. --- E About HRP The Harm Reduction Project works for the enhancement of services available to marginalized populations. HARM REDUCTION PROJECT | SALT LAKE CITY | TEL (801) 355.0234 FAX (801) 355.0291 | 235 West 100 South, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101 HARM REDUCTION PROJECT | DENVER | TEL (303) 572.7800 FAX (303) 572.7800 | 775 Lipan Street, Denver, Colorado 80204 www.harmredux.org