Human Rights Education: The 4th R
Get Up, Stand Up! Celebrating 50 years
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
vol. 8, No. 2, Fall 1997.

Too often, human rights abuses are perceived to be in a state of crisis outside of the frontiers of the United States. But the rates for school drop outs, campus violence, suspensions, disciplinary referrals, and remedial education that fall unequally along lines of gender, race, and native language illustrate how human rights should be the concerns of all teachers in the United States. Similarly, press coverage of police brutality, unfair labor practices, and knowing disposal of toxic waste illustrates issues where community activists are engaged in human rights work, whether they realize it or not. Using a variety of strategies from the arts, humanities, and social sciences, the teaching team created a summer institute to foster thoughtful, reflective practice among teachers and community activists, by making them aware of this human rights dimension of their work and by building collaborative partnerships with one another.

We committed ourselves to the task of creating a human rights culture in which educator/activists would proactively use a human rights framework as an organizing principle in their work. With the inexhaustible hands-on support of AIUSA Board member Julianne Cartwright Traylor and Western Region director Cosette Thompson, this daunting task took shape in the institute seminars and related activities. The teaching team focused on the basics of human rights advocacy and invited participants to share individual and community-organizing experiences as the basis for reflection and learning about human rights issues, particularly in 1997 about immigrants and refugees. The complex social, economic, and political conditions they face are human rights concerns for all communities of teachers and activists dedicated to positive social change.

Socio-economic issues frequently dominate the everyday discussion of border politics which define the U.S.-Mexico frontier, and in the process much is overlooked. Borderlands of race, gender, and class intersect our every encounter, giving the seasoned as well as novice traveler opportunities to engage in the discourse of border crossing—and indeed in the possibility of profound personal and societal transformation.

Indeed the very multicultural dimensions of daily life here in California (the final physical frontier) bring vitality and concreteness to the thinking of the paradigm of assimilation with its bifurcating distinction between "citizen" and "alien." We come face-to-face with questions of mythic (sometimes cursed) proportions: Where is America?And in which America does one live? Nothing shy of a multi-faceted inquiry into the evolving realities which create border consciousness and identity would lead us into the ambiguous territory through which any passage had to be taken.

To facilitate the crossing of synchronistic borders, we sought the assistance of San Francisco-based Global Exchange, an organization well-known for its reality tours and economic development advocacy projects. With their recommendation, we contacted Jorge Hinojosa, a long-time border activist and currently economic development specialist with the National Council of La Raza. With Jorge’s invaluable assistance, we traveled along the frontier of transformative realities looking closely with a lens that was at once political and poetic.

The community of thirty-two participants ranged in age from 18 to 60. Teachers of every level; grass roots community organizers; attorneys specializing in immigration law; directors and program officers of nonprofit organizations; student interns; artists; U.S. nationals, immigrants and refugees; and A.I. staff and a board member brought richly diverse and insightful perspectives to the journey.

The institute’s itinerary began at U.C.-Irvine with presentations on border culture and the neighborhoods of privilege that contribute to a definition of identity. Afterwards, the group met up with Jorge Hinojosa and two guides from the Global Exchange Mexico program, Lisa Russ and Ted Lewis who accompanied small groups of participants as we traveled on both sides of the frontier, visiting with nonprofit organizations and activists. Members of the teaching team facilitated debriefing sessions, providing time to strategize, reflect, and inquire into the broader implications of what we had experienced. A simple (or even detailed) listing of the itinerary does not do justice to the multi-dimensional experiences of institute participants; however, as each one of us was asked to bring to the final session some artifact from one’s own border crossing experience, those words and images may best articulate the powerful and resonant nature of the passage.

A Sampling of Artifacts:

• a porceline angel wing from a child’s toy dropped in the parched soil patrolled by U.S. officials north of the wall
  
• a child’s shoe, stiff and sun-bleached, abandoned on the trail to a migrant sanctuary in North County near San Diego
  
• the deep sense of violation we felt at first sight of the U.S. militarized fencing cutting off the beaches of Tijuana by jutting 100 yards out into the shark-infested ocean
  
• the bare-handed mother and child splashing toxic solvent onto plaster Disney figures, readying them for the next day’s tourist market
  
• train tracks leading nowhere
  
• Michael Schnorr’s documentary on the construction of the U.S. wall by the Army Corps of Engineers
  
• the view of Colonia Libertad from La Muralla (the wall)
  
• the giant Mexican flag waving freely over the neighborhoods of Tijuana
  
• the sandy dunes of Camp Pendleton and the bald surface of the border crossing point known as the soccer field etched with tire tracks
  
• brave faces, eloquent voices and the vision of the women activists at Casa de la Mujer
  
• our eyes watching the U.S. Border Patrol watching "Smokey and the Bandit" and watching us watching them as we arrived at their offices
  
• Cosette Thompson presenting the Border Patrol officers with their first copy of the UDHR
  
• walking along the concrete river at dusk with Grupo Beta and looking out across the fence to San Ysidro, California
  
• the provocative images of Tijuana’s youth created by a 20-year old border-culture filmmaker
  
• neighborhood murals five blocks long
  
• the empty INS detention center, with a poster explaining one’s rights hidden in part by the Coca Cola machine
  
• the thick toxic atmosphere in the industrial park and the lone flower blooming along the oil-stained path
  
• Jorge Hinojosa’s words: "If we’re ever going to move beyond these barriers—physical and political barriers between us—we are going to have to experience each other on a first-hand basis. We’re going to have to get out of our comfortable places, open up, create a north/south dialogue, move all parties forward and create institutional relationships betweeen nonprofits in the U.S. and Mexico. Nonprofits are potential true representatives of civil society and attempts not effectively realized on the part of government or even political parties. Linking up with nonprofits has huge potential for far-reaching collaboration that will impact our communities dramatically."

Sushanna Ellington, coordinator of the Western Region HRE Institute, is a member of the AIUSA Human Rights Educators' Network.

Contact her by e-mail at: sushanna@igc.org

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