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.

Solidarity Forever

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Graham Stinnett

May Day 2013, the recent collapse of a garment factory on top of hundreds of workers in Bangladesh just five days ago is yet another grievance charged against the global game of capitalism. The inequalities exacerbated by globalization in Bangladesh have roots in the same issues facing workers the world over since the formation of wage labor: the right to a living wage, the right to collective bargaining, an equal wage and the right to a safe working environment. These grievances have been outsourced to the third world for commodity production which we see as goods in the US marketplace; however, the agriculture industry, for which 51% of US land is dedicated, relies on cheap labor power to harvest.

A recent acquisition to the Human Rights Collection are the records of UConn’s Migrant Worker Health Clinic. At the University of Connecticut Health Center, the office of the Migrant Worker’s Health Clinic runs a mobile clinic at agricultural farms throughout the state, providing health, dental and eye care through volunteer physicians and students to seasonal migrant laborers. Workers from Latin America and the Caribbean come to Connecticut to work on Tobacco and fruit farms without health coverage and other labor rights afforded to US citizens. With immigration being a continually vibrant topic of discussion (as well as the shaper of the country we know today) this collection provides a very real context of local immigration issues surrounding the precarious labor relationship with foreign workers. This collection is an ongoing acquisition which portrays the quantitative data on the labor pool itself as well as the outreach and resources provided on behalf of the clinic.

In addition, Robin Romano’s photograph collection and personal papers from his work on child labor in the third world provide an important visual representation of what unrestricted market demand looks like.

For more information, please contact the curator to schedule an appointment to view these materials.

Take Back the Night, the Day, the Street, the Home…

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Graham Stinnett

Wednesday, April 17th is Take Back the Night on the University of Connecticut campus. An event recognized across North America in response to violence against wimmin. Since its inception Take Back the Night has been about reclaiming space beyond the physically passive act of recognition and observation. Wimmin, the disproportionate victims of domestic violence, rape, sexual assault and harassment, have found solidarity through the action of speaking out and mobilization en masse against this violence. It’s sister mobilization, Slutwalk, has also achieved support across the broad spectrum of wimmin who experience patriarchy in the streets, an intended social space for interaction in work, transit and play.

The Alternative Press Collection (APC) in the Archives contains numerous publications on wimmin-positive theory and praxis in response to gender violence since the 1960s. Of note is the feminist publication Aegis: Magazine on Ending Violence Against Women published in 1978 by the Feminist Alliance Against Rape. Defined by the magazine’s statement of purpose, the movement to build solidarity through information was seminal in establishing wimmin’s resources in regions where silence was (is) the normative response to gender violence:

The purpose of Aegis is to aid the efforts of feminists working to end violence against women. To this end, Aegis provides practical information and resources for grassroots organizers, along with promoting a continuing discussion among feminists of the root causes of rape, battering, sexual harrassment and other forms of violence against women.

Depicted in the image below is the cover of the September/October 1979 issue, portraying the advocacy debate around wimmin’s rights to self defense.

In addition to our extensive APC collection of periodicals is a recently acquired special collection art installation about building solidarity and non-violence amongst wimmin through art therapy. In this case, pulping panties into paper! From the Peace Paper Project comes another alliterative piece, Panty Pulping! The installment consists of loose pieces of paper made from mulched wimmin’s underwear that has been forged anew through storytelling and constructing the foundations of a new page for which a narrative can be written about wimmins voices together.

To view these pieces or any materials about wimmin’s rights and radical feminism, please contact the curator.

2012-2013 Human Rights Film Series

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Graham Stinnett

The next film series event organized by the Human Rights Institute will be held on April 10th, 2013 and will be showing Women Behind Bars. The film will be shown at 4pm in Konover Auditorium in the Dodd Center.

For more information follow the link to the film series calender http://web2.uconn.edu/wdlcalendar/index.php/occurrence/129894

Human Rights and Archives Lecture, TODAY!

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Graham Stinnett

Human Rights and Archives: The Role of Archives to Help Bring Transitional Justice

Join Dr. Joel A. Blanco-Rivera, Assistant Professor of Archival Studies at Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science as he explores the emerging role of archives in the field of human rights. Are archives neutral keepers of records or social actors whose work shapes the historical record? His focus will include the role of archives as mechanisms of transitional justice in Latin America.

Following the program, join us for a reception to meet and share ideas with Graham Stinnett, Human Rights Archivist for the UConn Libraries.

Monday, April 1
3:00pm Lecture – Homer Babbidge Library, Class of 1947 Room
4:00pm Reception – Dodd Research Center, Public Lounge

Sponsored by the UConn Libraries, Human Rights Institute, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center and El Instituto

For more information, contact: Marisol Ramos at marisol.ramos@lib.uconn.edu

Guatemalan Criminal Tribunal Begins

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Graham Stinnett

From the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission:

“In Guatemala today, Efraín Ríos Montt and José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez are going to trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for massacres committed against indigenous civilians in Guatemala’s Ixil triangle. This historic case is the first time that a former head of state is being tried for genocide in a domestic court. It is crucial for the nation’s healing process, and will be a key step in ending impunity for the atrocities committed during the war.”

The trial of these major military leaders is an important attempt by human rights defenders and victims to bring those still able to stand trial to justice. The crimes commited against those who lost life and loved ones to the Guatemalan state’s coordinated terror campaign form a seminal era in Cold War history. The targeted killing of indigenous peoples across Central America in the name of fighting communism on the US’s dime lays bare the implications of imperialism, indigeneity and land use in a stratified third world country of the 1980s.

Follow the trial monitoring blog organized by the Open Society Justice Initiative! To access video resources relating to Guatemala’s indigenous struggle, two important films are available in Babbidge library: When the Mountains Tremble, and Granito: How to Nail a Dictator. For a comprehensive archival collection, the Guatemalan Documentation Project coordinated by the National Security Archive contains key documents that will be utilized in the trial.

Slingshot Collective

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Graham Stinnett

A recent acquisition to the Archives’ Alternative Press Collection is Slingshot, a radical journal published by the Slingshot Collective out of Berkeley, CA. We have early back issues from 1988 up to the current issue. In addition, we also carry samplings of the popular Slingshot Organizers which are artistically, historically and resourcefully compiled booklets that function as the primary fund raiser for the collective.

In addition, the collective published a book edited by Terri Compost in 2009 about the People’s Park in Berkeley which was a site of contention beginning in the late 1960s between the University of California and the community invested in making the space public. It currently exists as a semi-free space for gardening, theater, play and all things other than volleyball.

These materials and other collective publishing ventures can be accessed in the Alternative Press Collection at the Archives & Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut.