About Graham Stinnett

Curator of Human Rights Collections and Alternative Press Collections, Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut. Stinnett holds a Master’s degree in Archival Studies from the History Department at the University of Manitoba, where he also earned a Bachelor’s degree in Latin American History. Stinnett's graduate work focused on human rights non-governmental organizations and their importance to archives and the role of archivist as activist. He has published in the Progressive Librarian on the subject. Stinnett has worked in University Archives with human rights collections at UC Boulder, Manitoba and UConn. His involvement with the Manitoba Gay and Lesbian Archives collection project and the LGBTTQ Oral History Initiative, the El Salvador Human Rights Archive at Boulder and the extensive AltPress & Human Rights Archives at UConn have resulted in a multitude of engagement and outreach activities. He also briefly served as the Archivist for the Vancouver Whitecaps Football Club in British Columbia.

Remembering Ben Linder through the Human Rights Internet

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Graham Stinnett

Archives & Special Collections staff member Tanya Rose Lane spent a great deal of time working on the Human Rights Internet Collection as a history student before completing her BA and being hired as an Assistant Archivist at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center. The following account reflects her experiences and findings while processing this extensive collection.

Few students are as fortunate as I am to do real, meaningful work while they are still completing their Bachelor’s degree. Even fewer have the opportunity to work on a collection that truly stimulates interest within the student. This summer, performing the inventory for the Laurie S. Weisberg and Harry Scoble Human Rights Internet Collection here at the Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center has provided me the opportunity to not only preserve history but also preserve the stories of great American humanitarians.

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Punks Freed

Posted on December 23, 2013 by Graham Stinnett

In a bold move, the Putin administration granted an amnesty releasing 30+ political prisoners from Russian penitentiaries last week. Included in this band of rogues were members of the Greenpeace activist contingent arrested for disrupting Gazprom’s arctic drilling operations, the former richest man in Russia oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and the two remaining jailed members of the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot who denounced the church and Putin while taking the stage of a large Orthodox Church in Moscow by force. Pussy Riot members had been moved to Siberian prisons as a punitive measure. Many media sources, as well as the prisoners themselves, believe that the amnesty was passed to contradict Russia’s glaringly bad human rights record. This measure precedes the 2014 Olympics which will be hosted this year in Sochi. Already large mobilization campaigns have begun to boycott the games because of the discrimination and brutality which LGBTQ communities face in even the most cosmopolitan centers of the country.

In relation to this, punk rock still carries a torch for challenging power through art and subversive culture. A new collecting area has been initiated for the Alternative Press Collection at the Archives & Special Collections for 1980s and 90s punk rock ephemera. Still being cataloged, the Joe Snow Punk Rock Collection features show flyers, demos, distro catalogs, photographs, zines and lots and lots of Maximum RocknRoll. The finding aid will be published in the coming month and is currently available for research.

Contact the curator for more details on the APC Punk Rock Collection.

Tutela Legal Archives

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Graham Stinnett

A report came out on October 4th, that the offices of a well respected Human Rights monitoring organization in San Salvador, Tutela Legal, were closed by its governing body, the Archdiocese of El Salvador. Contained in these offices are the archives of the organization dating back to the late 1970s when El Salvador’s US backed dictatorship was terrorizing the civilian population as a response to the cold war. Tutela Legal’s archives document disappearances and abuses which were recorded in hundreds of case files compiled from testimonies of witnesses and survivors.

Currently, the records remain in the hands of the Archdiocese, which has safely housed the organization since the state terror period as a continuation of Archbishop Oscar Romero’s vision of human rights and liberation. In the mid-1990s, University of Colorado at Boulder Archivist Bruce Montgomery funded a mass reproduction of Tutela Legal’s archives in order to store facsimiles outside of the country at his institution. During that period, an amnesty law was passed making any future legal convictions regarding war crimes or crimes against humanity during the conflict period illegal in El Salvador. Effectively, ‘it’s been dealt with, now go away.’ The eventuality of records destruction or alteration in human rights organization records outside the archival sphere makes collaborative projects like this between CU Boulder and Tutela Legal a reminder of the tenuousness of grassroots organization archives as well as the necessity for outreach from archivists to solidify networks of information solidarity.

UConn Slutwalk 2013

Posted on September 17, 2013 by Graham Stinnett

Slutwalk, a march to end victim blaming, will be held on Friday, September 27th on the UConn Campus. This years’ Slutwalk is organized by the student group Revolution Against Rape and will be leading the event down Fairfield Way at 4pm. Slutwalk is a direct action approach to sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape culture by challenging these aggressions of power and violence.

For information on how women have organized themselves in the past, consult the Archives’ Alternative Press Collection. Some related items include:

Freeing our Lives: A Feminist Analysis of Rape Prevention (1978) PAM 346

Fighting Back: A Self-Defense Handbook (1977) PAM 347

Aegis; Magazine on Ending Violence Against Women

Off Our Backs

and the colorful Wimmen’s Comix

Be sure to check out our current exhibit in the Dodd Center Gallery: A Private and Sensuous Encounter: women’s fine press books, deluxe books and bookworks, 1980-present

2013-2014 Human Rights Film Series

Posted on September 4, 2013 by Graham Stinnett

The first installation of the 2013-2014 Human Rights Film Series is upon us. On Wednesday September 11, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator will be shown in the Konovar Auditorium at the Dodd Research Center from 4-7pm. This award winning documentary (often promoted on this blog) provides rich context for the recently scrutinized trial of Guatemalan General Rios Montt. The film will be followed by a discussion with expert forensic anthropologist Dr. Victoria Sanford of the Lehman Center for Human Rights and Peace Studies.

Details can be found on Events Calender

Homelessness and Unemployment

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Graham Stinnett

Two weekends ago in the early hours of Saturday July 20th, two men were severally beaten on the garden bridge at the Mill in Willimantic, CT. A group of youth armed with baseball bats took to the men, badly injuring one who will remain in long term care at Windham Regional Hospital, the other had his arm broken and severe bruising. The youth attempted to throw the men from the bridge into the river below. These men are part of the homeless community of Willimantic which camp along the banks of the river throughout the year. This attack on the homeless by violent youth in a small depressed mill town reflects a hatred that is inbred through a societal violence of displacement and disparity. Senseless acts of violence are rarely worth critiquing as this kind of debate relies largely on speculation and assumption. However, the overwhelming rate of violent crime committed against homeless populations is more than crime of opportunity. It lies within the perception of human disposability, the unwanted and unnoticed. The No Freeze shelter of Willimantic is reopening (generally a winter only shelter) this summer in order to provide a safe space for those under threat of attack. The best way to fight back against these types of crimes is to occupy space frequently. Public space is for public use, the more foot traffic the more eyes to witness. Large portions of the town of Willimantic are resurfacing from dereliction, we need spaces like the No Freeze shelter to continue operation to temporarily house people. Thirdly, working towards community building, as demonstrated in our archival collections, includes prioritizing basic human necessities which a state like Connecticut – having the largest income disparity in the country – needs most of all.

The Archives and Special Collections houses Alternative Press Collection material as well as manuscript collections dealing with homelessness, unemployment and housing. The following are examples of relevant materials:

Barbara B. Kennelly Papers

Connecticut Citizens Action Group Records

Jeremiah J. Driscoll Collection

Capitalism and Unemployment, 1983. APC Pam 892.

Gingrich, Paul. Unemployment: A Radical Analysis of Myth and Fact, (1978).

Hartman, Chester W. Displacement, How to fight it. APC Bk f47

Helstein, Ralph. A Conversation – Jobs, Machines and People, (1964) APC Pam 765.

National Unemployed News, “Housing for People, not Profit,” (1983).

Unemployment and Overproduction, 1932. APC Pam 492

Unemployment and the Machine, International Workers of the World, (1934). APC Pam 170.

Unemployment Must be Abolished!, Interfaith Conference, Washington DC (1940). APC Pam 151.

Unemployed Workers Organizing Committee, Hartford CT. APC File

Society of American Archivists and the Belfast Project

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Graham Stinnett

The Society of American Archivists held a virtual chat today over the internet on the impact of the Boston College tapes documenting “The Troubles” between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom, known as the Belfast Project. Since the court ruling to allow the British government to subpoena 11 oral histories of paramilitary members, archives have had to re-examine the vulnerability of protected documentation in light of newly legislated states’ rights.

For a collection of related information and analysis on the tapes and the archival implications, follow the link.

Dictator in the Dock

Posted on July 16, 2013 by Graham Stinnett

Trial film series of Rios Montt, Dictator in the Dock, has been compiled and is available online through skylight pictures.

Off the record…

Posted on June 6, 2013 by Graham Stinnett

Thanks to diligent journalism and investigation at the Guardian, recent breaking news on the National Security Agency’s data mining of Verizon phone records is out in the open. But can we as users do anything about it? Surveilling journalist’s telephone calls and sequestering records of Verizon subscribers sounds like a major violation of constitutional rights in the United States…Well, it’s not. What everyday users of cell phones believe to be relevant information transferred over the phone is technically protected, however raw data of the call itself – 101001 – is not. The Bush Administration’s initiation of the War on Terror and the tide of privacy legislation that came with it continues as the old war measures acts have been used to justify data collection in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing.

From an archival standpoint, a major concern lies in the potentially lucrative contracts which the NSA and private phone companies make in order to exchange call logs for network dominance. Arguably, phone companies which record call logs have the largest collection of involuntary census data ever recorded. The collusion between the world’s largest surveillance organization (NSA/CIA) and potentially the world’s broadest data transfer company (Verizon) challenges uses of everyday communication and re-frames what counts as “relevant” information. The embedded metadata within digital call logs has use-value from individualized surveillance to big data monitoring of towns and neighborhoods. The early 21st century fears about micro-chipping and the New World Order got it half right, things have data trails. The other half revolves around accountable data collection and consent based records creation. To extrapolate from the census record, this information is very important for historians, health research, sociological data, etc.; however, the right to opt out is always present. Through privatized cell-towers and data plans, the company owns your record as well as your rights to say no to data collection. When telecommunications signs away the users right to be recorded to the NSA, profit based record creation in late capitalism has dire implications for privacy.

Rios Montt does the Pinochet

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Graham Stinnett

10 May 2013:

Over thirty years after the Scorched Earth campaign by the military and death squads in Guatemala, General Efrain Rios Montt is convicted of genocide committed against the Mayan’s of the Ixil region. Like the notorious Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, Montt (86 years old) was brought to trial late in life – however, the distinction of having been forced into the courtroom, despite legal defense attempting to waylay the inevitable, is what stands between the two notorious figureheads. Montt’s sentence of 80 years in prison stands as a penalty for the crime versus a punishment he can withstand. This precedent setting national conviction will serve as a warning to both heads of state and top ranking military officials that impunity, even in the most stratified of countries, can be challenged.

Filmmakers Pamela Yates and Paco de Onis (When the Mountains Tremble and Granito) were on hand for both the filming of the trial as well as witnessing their own footage used as evidence in the closing remarks against Montt. A great collection of daily summaries from the trial can be seen in their ongoing film series Dictator in the Docket. Though the conviction has happened, the greivances still exist for the crimes committed in Guatemala. With this piece of history, a social dialogue can begin to unpack the roots of an extermination campaign against indigenous peoples and their corresponding position in society today.

UConn Library Human Rights Archives

Author Archives: Graham Stinnett