CHERI HONKALA,
cherihonkalappehrc[at]gmail.com
Honkala is with the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, which highlights glaring poverty and gross income inequality in Philadelphia, Penn.
See: “A guide to the Philadelphia DNC that media won’t show you, from extreme poverty to police misconduct,” from Salon.
The group helped organize the “March for Our Lives,” which released a statement: “The city will spend thousands of dollars to host this convention for millionaires and billionaires, yet fails to provide for its most vulnerable citizens. Demonstrate that this hypocritical practice is UNACCEPTABLE. Join us in demanding an end to unemployment, hunger and homelessness; money for education; affordable, accessible housing; living wages; and an end to the prison industrial complex. Money for the poor not for WAR!”
LAURA CACERES, via Lillian Boctor, lillian[at]ggjalliance.org
Laura Cáceres is daugher of slain Honduran Indigenous activist Berta Cáceres. She will join a rally against the Trans-Pacific Partnership at the DNC Philadelphia on Wednesday afternoon at 5:00 p.m.
It Takes Roots to Change the System released a statement: “Laura Zuñiga Cáceres arrived in Philadelphia this weekend on a bus full of multiracial organizers from across the U.S. who have been on the road with the It Takes Roots to Change the System People’s Caravan from Cleveland to Philadelphia demanding justice for her mother, Berta Cáceres. Berta Cáceres, a Lenca woman, was one of the leading organizers for indigenous land rights in Honduras. Internationally recognized for her Human Rights work, Cáceres won the renowned Goldman Environmental Award in 2015 for her leadership in the campaign to stop one of Central America’s biggest hydropower projects, the Agua Zarca cascade of four giant dams in the Gualcarque River basin. On March 2, 2016, Berta Cáceres’s life was taken from her and those who loved her when armed gunmen stormed into her home and shot her.”
Laura Cáceres said: “We know very well the impacts that free trade agreements have had on our countries. They give transnational corporations, like the one my mom fought against, the power to protect their profits even if it means passing over the lives of people who defend the water, forest and mother earth from destruction caused by their very own megaprojects.”
The group states: “The assassination of Berta Cáceres has become one of the most controversial issues of Secretary Clinton’s campaign because of her support of the military coup in 2009. Organizers on the caravan are calling on Secretary Clinton to take responsibility for the role of the U.S. in supporting the military coup, and to take immediate action to end U.S. military aid to Honduras. Among the DNC platform committee are House Representatives Keith Ellison (MN), Barbara Lee (CA) and Luis Gutierrez (IL) who are co-sponsors of the Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act which calls for an end to U.S. military aid and training to Honduras.”
