Amnesty International Takes a stand against the Drug War!
The following effort created by The November Coalition takes less than a minute to sign on to.
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Dear Friends:
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As many of you know, Amnesty International has finally taken on the prison-industrial complex in the United States in their Rights for All campaign. A core segment of their message in each of their reports has been how the war on drugs contributes to the human rights abuses of prisoners.
These are courageous steps for AI to take, both because attacking the US as a human rights abuser can alienate its US members and because any dissension of the drug war encourages ideological opponents to attack AI’s work.
Amnesty’s support for prison-reform and their message about the impact of the drug war is important, because AI’s message is heard and promoted throughout the social-justice community. (High school civics classes regularly engage in Amnesty International campaigns). However, if domestic criticism is heavy enough, and there is little vocal support for AI’s work, there is a chance that they will simply stop working on US issues.
In order to let Amnesty know that their work is valuable and supported, the November Coalition is organizing a campaign to acknowledge Amnesty’s good work. Please visit our site at: http://www.november.org/ai/
Fill out the form and add whatever comments you would like. Hard copies of the letters of support will be printed at the November Coalition’s headquarters and mailed to Amnesty International’s director of campaigns.
If you would like to read the on-line versions of Amnesty’s excellent documentation of human rights abuses within the US prison system, please visit: http://www.amnesty-usa.org/rightsforall/index.html
Best regards, Paul Lewin