OCTOBER 25 HONDURAS SOLIDARITY UPDATE FROM US-ES SISTER CITIES

Dear US-ES Sister Cities Friends,

The Michelleti coup regime’s harsh repression against the Honduran popular movement continues. Negotiations between Michelleti’s representatives and those of President Manuel Zelaya have stalled as reports indicate that Michelleti refuses to agree to the return of President Zelaya to office.

Actions:

The heroic people’s resistance movement in Honduras continues to need our support. Here are three actions we can take to help:

1) Pressure US Lobbying firm to stop their PR work on behalf of the coup regime.

Hondurans organizing in the United States against the coup have called for pressure on the Washington, DC lobbying firm of Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates to cease their public relations work for the Coup Regime. To take action go to: http://www.SOAW.org/clsa. (For Background info on the lobbying firm, go to: http://porlademocracia.org/actividades.html)

2) Contact your congressperson

Several of you responded to our call last week to contact your congresspersons and ask them to sign the letter from Congressmen Serrano and Grijalva to President Obama calling for an end to the coup regime’s human rights violations against the Honduran people. The US continues to send economic aid to the regime and has not withdrawn its ambassador as almost all other countries have. Those who asked their congressperson to take action had some success, so everyone please reach out. Thanks! For more info: http://quixote.org/content/us-representatives-ask-president-obama-denounce-human-rights-abuses-honduras

3) Human Rights Delegation to Honduras
RIGHTS ACTION is organizing a HUMAN RIGHTS DELEGATION TO HONDURAS November 24 – December 1, 2009. The delegation will overlap with November 29th, the date slated for Honduras’ presidential elections. It is highly doubtful that fair elections can be held, let alone whether elections should be held at all on November 29th given the on-going state of militarization and repression by the oligarchic-military regime. For more information: http://rightsaction.org/Delegations&Tours/Honduras_112409.html

Public Education:

The mainstream US press continues to fail miserably in providing accurate coverage of the situation in Honduras. To learn more and to share information with others, please see the following sources:

a) An excellent short piece on who’s who in Honduras by Honduran medical doctor and human rights activist Juan Almendres: http://www.quixote.org/content/honduran-resistance-giant-awakes-new-hope-born

b) To find out more about how the coup is affecting women in particular, see this article by Margaret Knapke in Foreign Policy In Focus.:http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6518

c) Finally, for an easy-to-read, shor, illustrated version of events in Honduras, check out: http://www.alternet.org/images/slideshows/houduras_coup/illustration.php

Ok, thanks to everyone for all your help! Let us know what actions you take and any response you get from the officials you contact. Adelante!

In solidarity, US-El Salvador Sister Cities

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...across the world a thousand and one new forces are emerging...from the bottom
up and the inside out...reviving the battered traditions of tolerance, mutual
assistance and communion with nature.... These movements are mosquitoes on the
attack, stinging a system that repels the hug and compels the shrug...

-Eduardo Galeano, Upside Down