Human Rights in Our Own Backyard

Human Rights in Our Own Backyard PDF Author: William T. Armaline
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812205146
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
Most Americans assume that the United States provides a gold standard for human rights—a 2007 survey found that 80 percent of U.S. adults believed that "the U.S. does a better job than most countries when it comes to protecting human rights." As well, discussions among scholars and public officials in the United States frame human rights issues as concerning people, policies, or practices "over there." By contrast, the contributors to this volume argue that many of the greatest immediate and structural threats to human rights, and some of the most significant efforts to realize human rights in practice, can be found in our own backyard. Human Rights in Our Own Backyard examines the state of human rights and responses to human rights issues, drawing on sociological literature and perspectives to interrogate assumptions of American exceptionalism. How do people in the U.S. address human rights issues? What strategies have they adopted, and how successful have these strategies been? Essays are organized around key conventions of human rights, focusing on the relationships between human rights and justice, the state and the individual, civil rights and human rights, and group rights versus individual rights. The contributors are united by a common conception of the human rights enterprise as a process involving not only state-defined and implemented rights but also human rights from below as promoted by activists.

Human Rights in Our Own Backyard

Human Rights in Our Own Backyard PDF Author: William T. Armaline
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812205146
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description
Most Americans assume that the United States provides a gold standard for human rights—a 2007 survey found that 80 percent of U.S. adults believed that "the U.S. does a better job than most countries when it comes to protecting human rights." As well, discussions among scholars and public officials in the United States frame human rights issues as concerning people, policies, or practices "over there." By contrast, the contributors to this volume argue that many of the greatest immediate and structural threats to human rights, and some of the most significant efforts to realize human rights in practice, can be found in our own backyard. Human Rights in Our Own Backyard examines the state of human rights and responses to human rights issues, drawing on sociological literature and perspectives to interrogate assumptions of American exceptionalism. How do people in the U.S. address human rights issues? What strategies have they adopted, and how successful have these strategies been? Essays are organized around key conventions of human rights, focusing on the relationships between human rights and justice, the state and the individual, civil rights and human rights, and group rights versus individual rights. The contributors are united by a common conception of the human rights enterprise as a process involving not only state-defined and implemented rights but also human rights from below as promoted by activists.

Our Own Backyard

Our Own Backyard PDF Author: William M. LeoGrande
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807898805
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 790

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Book Description
In this remarkable and engaging book, William LeoGrande offers the first comprehensive history of U.S. foreign policy toward Central America in the waning years of the Cold War. From the overthrow of the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua and the outbreak of El Salvador's civil war in the late 1970s to the final regional peace settlements negotiated a decade later, he chronicles the dramatic struggles--in Washington and Central America--that shaped the region's destiny. For good or ill, LeoGrande argues, Central America's fate hinged on decisions that were subject to intense struggles among, and within, Congress, the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House--decisions over which Central Americans themselves had little influence. Like the domestic turmoil unleashed by Vietnam, he says, the struggle over Central America was so divisive that it damaged the fabric of democratic politics at home. It inflamed the tug-of-war between Congress and the executive branch over control of foreign policy and ultimately led to the Iran-contra affair, the nation's most serious political crisis since Watergate.

Mixed Signals

Mixed Signals PDF Author: Kathryn Sikkink
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150172990X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
"Nowhere did two understandings of U.S. identity—human rights and anticommunism—come more in conflict with each other than they did in Latin America. To refocus U.S. policy on human rights and democracy required a rethinking of U.S. policy as a whole. It required policy makers to choose between policies designed to defeat communism at any cost and those that remain within the bounds of the rule of law."—from the Introduction Kathryn Sikkink believes that the adoption of human rights policy represents a positive change in the relationship between the United States and Latin America. In Mixed Signals she traces a gradual but remarkable shift in U.S. foreign policy over the last generation. By the 1970s, an unthinking anticommunist stance had tarnished the reputation of the U.S. government throughout Latin America, associating Washington with tyrannical and often brutally murderous regimes. Sikkink recounts the reemergence of human rights as a substantive concern, showing how external pressures from activist groups and the institution of a human rights bureau inside the State Department have combined to remake Washington's agenda, and its image, in Latin America. The current war against terrorism, Sikkink warns, could repeat the mistakes of the past unless we insist that the struggle against terrorism be conducted with respect for human rights and the rule of law.

How the Government Got in Your Backyard

How the Government Got in Your Backyard PDF Author: Jeff Gillman
Publisher: Timber Press
ISBN: 1604690011
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Aims to offer an unbiased view of the science and politics behind hot-button environmental issues--from pesticides to global warming.

A Universal Human Rights Model

A Universal Human Rights Model PDF Author: Nazar Al Baharna
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781478703860
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
One of the biggest issues in the world today is the violation of basic human rights. Across the globe, from Syria to Rwanda to Myanmar, millions of innocent people have been tortured, killed or persecuted for their beliefs or minority status. Ethnic cleansing and genocide have murdered millions more, and the widespread of denial of equal rights to women is still in the increase. Even in our own backyard, people are being subjected to torture and unlawful detention, and forced disappearance. No country in the world is unaffected by human rights abuse. But finally, we have a practical tool for solving the global human rights problem. It is this book, A Universal Human Rights Model. There are plenty of other books already in print that discuss human rights, but A Universal Human Rights Model is the only one to provide a basic human rights model that can be applied to achieve actual results on the ground in any context. The book: Defines human rights, details the elements of the human rights model, and explains how to use the model to implement a human rights action plan on a national scale. It also comprises a human rights index and indicators by which human rights actors can measure their progress in the transformation process. At 103,000 words, A Universal Human Rights Model is a comprehensive work that will appeal to duty bearers, state agents, government officials, human rights advocates, NGOs, researchers, and anyone interested in human rights.

We Keep Us Safe

We Keep Us Safe PDF Author: Zach Norris
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807029750
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
A groundbreaking new vision for public safety that overturns more than 200 years of fear-based discrimination, othering, and punishment As the effects of aggressive policing and mass incarceration harm historically marginalized communities and tear families apart, how do we define safety? In a time when the most powerful institutions in the United States are embracing the repressive and racist systems that keep many communities struggling and in fear, we need to reimagine what safety means. Community leader and lawyer Zach Norris lays out a radical way to shift the conversation about public safety away from fear and punishment and toward growth and support systems for our families and communities. In order to truly be safe, we are going to have to dismantle our mentality of Us vs. Them. By bridging the divides and building relationships with one another, we can dedicate ourselves to strategic, smart investments—meaning resources directed toward our stability and well-being, like healthcare and housing, education and living-wage jobs. This is where real safety begins. In this book Zach Norris provides a blueprint of how to hold people accountable while still holding them in community. The result reinstates full humanity and agency for everyone who has been dehumanized and traumatized, so they can participate fully in life, in society, and in the fabric of our democracy.

Gardens

Gardens PDF Author: Robert Pogue Harrison
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1459606264
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Humans have long turned to gardens - both real and imaginary - for sanctuary from the frenzy and tumult that surrounds them. Those gardens may be as far away from everyday reality as Gilgamesh's garden of the gods or as near as our own backyard, but in their very conception and the marks they bear of human care and cultivation, gardens stand as restorative, nourishing, necessary havens. With Gardens, Robert Pogue Harrison graces readers with a thoughtful, wide-ranging examination of the many ways gardens evoke the human condition. Moving from the gardens of ancient philosophers to the gardens of homeless people in contemporary New York, he shows how, again and again, the garden has served as a check against the destruction and losses of history. The ancients, explains Harrison, viewed gardens as both a model and a location for the laborious self-cultivation and self-improvement that are essential to serenity and enlightenment, an association that has continued throughout the ages. The Bible and Qur'an; Plato's Academy and Epicurus's Garden School; Zen rock and Islamic carpet gardens; Boccaccio, Rihaku, Capek, Cao Xueqin, Italo Calvino, Ariosto, Michel Tournier, and Hannah Arendt - all come into play as this work explores the ways in which the concept and reality of the garden has informed human thinking about mortality, order, and power. Alive with the echoes and arguments of Western thought, Gardens is a fitting continuation of the intellectual journeys of Harrison's earlier classics, Forests and The Dominion of the Dead. Voltaire famously urged us to cultivate our gardens; with this compelling volume, Robert Pogue Harrison reminds us of the nature of that responsibility - and its enduring importance to humanity.

Half the Sky

Half the Sky PDF Author: Nicholas D. Kristof
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307387097
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation—the oppression of women and girls in the developing world. From the bestselling authors of Tightrope, two of our most fiercely moral voices With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope. They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. That Cambodian girl eventually escaped from her brothel and, with assistance from an aid group, built a thriving retail business that supports her family. The Ethiopian woman had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon. A Zimbabwean mother of five, counseled to return to school, earned her doctorate and became an expert on AIDS. Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do; it’s also the best strategy for fighting poverty. Deeply felt, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen.

Backyard Medicine Updated & Expanded Second Edition

Backyard Medicine Updated & Expanded Second Edition PDF Author: Julie Bruton-Seal
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510748067
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
An Updated and Expanded New Edition of Backyard Medicine! Modern medicine is truly a blessing. Advances are made with astonishing speed every day, using both science and technology to make our lives longer and healthier. But if the era of modern medicine began less than two hundred years ago, how did people treat sickness and poor health before then? This book holds the answer. Researched and written by a practicing medical herbalist and natural healer, and now with even more herbs and medicinal plants, Backyard Medicine is the basis for a veritable natural pharmacy that anyone can create. Featuring more than 120 easily made herbal home remedies and fully illustrated with nearly three hundred color photographs, this book offers fascinating insights into the literary, historic, and global applications of fifty common wild plants and herbs that can be used in medicines, including: Comfrey Dandelion Honeysuckle Yarrow And so much more! Anyone who wants to improve his or her health in a completely natural way will find this book to be an absolute must-have for his or her home—and garden.

Our Great Big Backyard

Our Great Big Backyard PDF Author: Laura Bush
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062468405
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 41

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Book Description
#1 New York Times bestselling authors former First Lady Laura Bush and her daughter Jenna Bush Hager have created an exuberant picture book tribute to our national parks and the importance and fun of connecting with nature. Our Great Big Backyard follows Jane, whose plans of spending the summer playing video games with her friends are dashed when her parents announce that her family is going on a road trip to national parks around the country. Yet somewhere between the Everglades and Big Bend National Park, things begin to change. Jane starts paying attention to the magnificent sights and spends less time looking at her screen. The stunning views open up her imagination as she and her brother see everything that nature has to offer. And the more Jane discovers, the more she realizes how much there is to love about the outdoors—whether she’s in a national park across the country or right in her own backyard.