How you can help

Hi John,

Last week we reached out to ask for help fundraising and spreading awareness about our work. You can read that email here ([link removed]) .

Tomorrow is #GivingTuesday. A day to focus our energies not on consuming but on giving. While this day has become incredibly impactful for many nonprofits we also stress the importance of how you give, and where you give.

We share here our thoughts on the Importance of Grassroots Funding and how through donating to Rights Action and similar organizations your funds are used to support community resistance struggles directly.

We encourage all to read, share in your networks, and keep supporting grassroots initiatives!
SUPPORT RIGHTS ACTION NOW! ([link removed])

Importance of Grassroots Funding
(This commentary was initially presented by Grahame Russell to a Donor’s Conference)

These thoughts on the fundamental priority of getting funds directly to community defenders and activists are based on my work with Rights Action, funding and supporting community defense and truth/memory/justice struggles, mostly in Honduras and Guatemala, since 1995.

Funding and Support

Rights Action provides funding on an on-going basis to community defense and truth/memory/justice work and struggles. We also provide emergency funds in response to hurricanes and drought, repression and evictions, health crisis such as Covid19, etc.

By “community defense”, I refer to community-led work and struggle in defense of the environment, land and territory and human rights.

By “truth/memory/justice”, I refer to work and struggles to tell the truth about, recover historic memory, and seek justice for genocides and crimes against humanity of the 1970s and 80s, mainly in Guatemala and also in Honduras.

Victims/Survivors/Protagonists

Most work and struggles we support are led by victims of the abuses and violations, losses and destruction, who, with family and community members, have scrambled to survive while being protagonists to denounce, address and remedy the harms and violences they are suffering.
La Puya lives because it resists

Education, Activism and Advocacy Aimed at Global North

The other main aspect of our work are education, activism and accountability efforts directed at the U.S. and Canadian governments, our companies, banks and investors, the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), whose policies and projects often cause and profit from the harms and violences our partner groups are working to address and remedy.

Most community defense struggles are in response to violence, harms and corruption of different sectors of the global economy including mining, hydro-electric dams, for-export food industry and tourism.

Most truth/memory/justice struggles address genocides and crimes against humanity of the 1970s and 80s, funded and supported by the U.S. and Western allies.

Direct Funding

In this context, it is impossible to overstate the importance of getting funds, however small the amounts, on an on-going basis to land, environment, human rights and justice defenders.

Money is not the solution to the ills they suffer. There are many other facets of work and struggle that need to be carried out from the local to national to global levels.

But the glaring reality is that most community defenders around the world – particularly in global south countries - live in conditions of exploitation and poverty, violence and corruption to begin with. When they suffer further violence, destruction and harms, it worsens their pre-existing life conditions.

It is also true that most community defenders struggle to stay on their lands, defending their rights and environment, as best they can, with or without outside support. In most cases they have no options. In every sense of the notion, they are struggling for their lives.

Getting them even small amounts of funds helps them do more of this.

How Funds are Used

Repetitively, funds are used mostly for: responding to needs of victims of human rights violations, evictions, criminalizations and jailings, etc.; buying phones and data; transportation and food costs for gatherings of community members and defenders; documentation and reporting on harms and violences suffered; protests and advocacy work.

Your donations and support are vital to empowering communities in Guatemala and Honduras who are fighting for their rights and defending their land. who are engaged in courageous work and struggle for truth/memory/justice.

Please consider donating, and as always we encourage all to share in their networks, and get involved in any way possible.

All the best,
Your friends at Rights Action

Tax-Deductible Donations (Canada & U.S.)

To support land and environmental defenders, and human rights, justice and democracy defense struggles in Honduras and Guatemala, make check to "Rights Action" and mail to:
* U.S.: Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887
* Canada: Box 82858, RPO Cabbagetown Toronto, ON, M5A 3Y2

Credit-Card Donations: [link removed]
Direct deposits, write to: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
Donations of securities, write to: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])

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