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For Immediate Release
September, 28 2010, 04:10pm EDT
Contact:
Rachel Myers, (212) 549-2689 or 2666; media@aclu.org
Mandy Simon, (202) 675-2312; media@dcaclu.org
U.N. Report Highlights Need For U.S. Civil And Human Rights Commission
U.S. Should Implement Working Group Recommendations, Says ACLU
NEW YORK
A
report examining the state of human rights of people of African descent
in the United States was presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council
today. The U.N. Working Group on the Rights of People of African Descent
reported that, while the U.S. government has taken some steps to
promote the rights of people of African descent, much more needs to be
done to bring the U.S. into compliance with international treaty
obligations. The international group of experts visited the United
States last January at the invitation of the U.S. government, meeting
with local, state and federal officials and human and civil rights
groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and conducting a
thorough examination of laws and policies and their impact on people of
African descent.
According to the working group's
report, "due partially to the legacy of slavery, racism and
discrimination, African Americans have had economic, social and
educational disadvantages, as well as challenges to the enjoyment of
basic human rights." The report noted that people of African descent in
the U.S. continue to face unequal access to quality education, electoral
disenfranchisement and discrimination in the justice and legal systems,
among other issues.
The ACLU called on the Obama
administration to implement the working group's recommendations,
including by reforming the existing U.S. Commission on Civil Rights into
a civil and human rights commission that oversees compliance with human
rights treaty obligations.
The following can be attributed to Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office:
"This report serves as both a marker
of our achievements and a reminder of our failures when it comes to
protecting the rights of people of African descent. In order to lead by
example, it is imperative that the U.S. establish monitoring mechanisms
to uphold civil and human rights in the U.S. The Obama administration
should work with Congress to reform the existing U.S. Commission on
Civil Rights to include a mandate to monitor our human rights treaty
obligations."
The following can be attributed to Chandra Bhatnagar, staff attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program:
"As the working group report shows,
there are still many obstacles to equality facing people, and especially
children, of African descent in the United States. The U.S. government
should take heed of the group's important recommendations and bring the
U.S. into compliance with our international treaty obligations,
including taking steps to outlaw racial discrimination and protect the
rights of children."
The working group report is available online at: www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/racism/groups/african/docs/A-HRC-15-18.pdf
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
(212) 549-2666LATEST NEWS
50,000 March in Brazil to Celebrate Death of Fossil Fuel Industry at COP30
"It is time to put these old fuels where they belong—in the ground of history.”
Nov 16, 2025
An estimated 50,000 people took to the streets of Belém do Pará, Brazil on Saturday to demonstrate outside the halls of the United Nations annual climate summit, holding a "Great People's March" and makeshift "Funeral for Fossil Fuels" as they demanded a just transition toward a more renewable energy system and egalitarian economy.
Organized by civil society organizations and Indigenous Peoples groups from Brazil and beyond, the tens of thousands who marched outside the thirtieth Conference of the Parties (COP30) summit called for an end to the rapacious greed of the oil, gas, and coal companies as they advocated for big polluters to pay for the large-scale damage their businesses have caused worldwide over the last century.
“We are tens of thousands here today, on the streets of Belém, to show negotiators at COP30 that this is what people power looks like," said Carolina Pasquali, executive director of Greenpeace Brazil, said as the march took hold. "Yesterday we found out that one in every 25 COP30 participants is a fossil fuel lobbyist, proportionally a 12% increase from last year’s COP. How can the climate crisis be solved while those creating it are influencing the talks and delaying decisions? The people are getting fed up–enough talking, we need action and we need it now.”
The report by the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition last week showed that at least 1,600 lobbyists from the fossil fuel industry are present at the conference, making it the second-largest delegation overall, second only to Brazil's, the host nation.
"It’s common sense that you cannot solve a problem by giving power to those who caused it," said Jax Bongon from the Philippines-based IBON International, a member of the coalition, in a Friday statement. "Yet three decades and 30 COPs later, more than 1,500 fossil fuel lobbyists are roaming the climate talks as if they belong here. It is infuriating to watch their influence deepen year after year, making a mockery of the process and of the communities suffering its consequences."
While the overwhelming presence of fossil fuel lobbyists has once again diminished hopes that anything worthwhile will emerge from the conference, the tens of thousands in the streets on Saturday represented the ongoing determination of the global climate movement.
João Talocchi, co-founder of Alianza Potência Energética Latin America, one of the key groups behind the "Funeral for Fossil Fuels" portion of the day's action—which included mock caskets for the oil, gas, and coal companies alongside parades of jungle animals, wind turbines, and solar panels representing what's at stake and the better path forward—noted the key leadership of Indigenous groups from across the Global South.
"From the Global South to the world, we are showing what a fair and courageous energy transition must look like," said Talochhi.
Ilan Zugman, director of 350.org in Latin America and the Caribbean, noted the significance of the demonstration, including the symbolism of the funeral procession.
"We march symbolically burying fossil fuels because they are the root of the crisis threatening our lives," explained Zugman. "Humanity already knows the way forward: clean energy, climate justice, and respect for the peoples who protect life. What is missing is political courage to break once and for all with oil, gas, and coal. It is time to put these old fuels where they belong—in the ground of history.”
With the COP30 at its midway point, climate activists warn that not nearly enough progress is being made, with the outsized influence of the fossil fuel industry one of the key reasons that governments, year after year and decade after decade, continue to drag their feet when it comes to taking the kind of aggressive actions to stem the climate crisis that scientists and experts say is necessary.
“We are taking to the streets because, while governments are not acting fast enough to make polluters pay for their climate damages at COP30, extreme weather events continue to wreak havoc across the globe," said Abdoulaye Diallo, co-head of Greenpeace International's "Make Polluters Pay" campaign. "That is why we are here, carrying the climate polluters bill, showing the projected economic damages of more than $5 trillion from the emissions of just five oil and gas companies over the last decade."
"Fossil fuel companies are destroying our planet, and people are paying the price," said Diallo. "Negotiators must wake up to the growing public and political pressure to make polluters pay, and agree to new polluter taxes in the final COP30 outcome."
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'National Security Threat'? 95-Year-Old Human Rights Scholar Richard Falk Interrogated for Hours by Canada
"Clearly, the international repression of the Palestinian cause knows no bounds."
Nov 15, 2025
Ninety-five-year-old Richard Falk—world renowned scholar of international law and former UN special rapporteur focused on Palestinian rights—was detained and interrogated for several hours along with his wife, legal scholar Hilal Elver, as the pair entered Canada for a conference focused on that nation's complicity with Israel's genocide in Gaza.
"A security person came and said, ‘We’ve detained you both because we’re concerned that you pose a national security threat to Canada,'” Falk explained to Al-Jazeera in a Saturday interview from Ottawa in the wake of the incident that happened at the international airport in Toronto ahead of the scheduled event.
“It was my first experience of this sort–ever–in my life,” said Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author or editor of more than 20 books, and formerly the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories.
Falk, who is American, has been an outspoken critic of the foreign policy of Canada, the United States, and other Western nations on the subject of Israel-Palestine as well as other issues. He told media outlets that he and his wife, also an American, were held for over four hours after their arrival in Toronto. They were in the country to speak and participate at the Palestine Tribunal on Canadian Responsibility, an event scheduled for Friday and Saturday in Ottawa, the nation's capital.
The event, according to the program notes on the website, was designed to "document the multiple ways that Canadian entities – including government bodies, corporations, universities, charities, media, and other cultural institutions–have enabled and continue to enable the settler colonization and genocide of Palestinians, and to articulate what justice and reparations would require."
In his comments to Al-Jazeera, Falk said he believes the interrogation by the Canadian authorities—which he described as "nothing particularly aggressive" but "random" and "disorganized" in its execution—is part of a global effort by powerful nations complicit with human rights abuses and violations of international law to “punish those who endeavour to tell the truth about what is happening” in the world, including in Gaza.
Martin Shaw, a British sociologist and author of The New Age of Genocide, said the treatment of Falk and Elver should be seen as an "extraordinary development" for Canada, and not in a good way. For a nation that likes to think of itself as a "supporter of international justice," said Shaw, "to arrest the veteran scholar and former UN rapporteur Richard Falk while he is attending a Gaza tribunal. Clearly, the international repression of the Palestinian cause knows no bounds."
Canadian Senator Yuen Pau Woo, a supporter of the Palestine Tribunal, told Al-Jazeera he was “appalled” by the interrogation.
“We know they were here to attend the Palestine Tribunal. We know they have been outspoken in documenting and publicizing the horrors inflicted on Gaza by Israel, and advocating for justice,” Woo said. “If those are the factums for their detention, then it suggests that the Canadian government considers these acts of seeking justice for Palestine to be national security threats–and I’d like to know why.”
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Maine Senate Candidate Graham Platner Says 'Nobody Works Hard Enough to Justify $1 Billion'
"I refuse to believe that in a state like Maine where people work as hard as we do here, that it is merely hard work that gets you that kind of success. We all know it isn't. We all know it's the structures. It's the tax code."
Nov 15, 2025
Echoing recent viral comments by music superstar Billie Eilish, Maine Democratic candidate for US Senate Graham Planter is also arguing that the existence of billionaires cannot be justified in a world where working-class people with multiple jobs still cannot afford the basic necessities of life.
In video clip posted Friday of a campaign event in the northern town of Caribou from last month, Platner rails against the "structures" of an economy in which billionaires with vast personal fortunes use their wealth to bend government—including the tax code—to conform to their interests while working people are left increasingly locked out of controlling their own destinies, both materially and politically.
"Nobody works hard enough to justify $1 billion," the military veteran and oyster farmer told potential voters at the event. "Not in a world where I know people that have three jobs and can't even afford their rent."
With audience members nodding their heads in agreement, Platner continued by saying, "I refuse to believe that in a state like Maine, where people work as hard as we do here, that it is merely hard work that gets you that kind of success. We all know it isn't. We all know it's the structures. It's the tax code. That is what allows that money to get accrued."
No one works hard enough to justify being a billionaire. pic.twitter.com/Ezvf5fPLfv
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) November 14, 2025
The systemic reasons that create vast inequality, Platner continued, are also why he believes that the process of the super wealthy becoming richer and richer at the expense of working people can be reversed.
"The world that we live in today," he explained, "is not organic. It is not natural. The political and economic world we have did not happen because it had to. It happened because politicians in Washington and the billionaires who write the policies that they pushed made this happen. They changed the laws, and they made it legal to accrue as much wealth and power as they have now."
The solution? "We need to make it illegal again to do that," says Platner.
The comments questioning the justification for billionaires to even exist by Platner—though made in early October—echo more recent comments that went viral when spoken by Billie Eilish, a popular musician, who told a roomful of Wall Street movers and shakers in early November that they should do a better job reflecting on their outrageous wealth.
"Love you all, but there’s a few people in here that have a lot more money than me," Eilish said during an award event in New York City. "If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate, but yeah, give your money away, shorties."
"If you're a billionaire, why are you a billionaire?"
— Billie Eilish clocking billionaires.pic.twitter.com/BVpRExp1GQ
— Billie Eilish Spotify (@BillieSpotify_) October 30, 2025
While those remarks took a long spin around the internet, Eilish on Friday doubled down on uncharitable billionaires by colorfully calling Elon Musk, who could end up being the world's first trillionaire, a "fucking pathetic pussy bitch coward" for not donating more of his vast fortune, among the largest in the world, to humanitarian relief efforts.
This week, as Common Dreams reported, a coalition of economists and policy experts called for the creation of a new international body to address the global crisis of inequality.
Like Platner, the group behind the call—including economists like Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty, Ha-Joon Chang, and Jayati Ghosh—emphasized the inequality-as-a-policy-choice framework. Piketty, who has called for the mass taxation of dynastic wealth as a key part of the solution to runaway inequality, said “we are at a dangerous moment in human history” with “the very essence of democracy” under threat if something is not done.
On the campaign trail in Maine, Platner has repeatedly suggested that only organized people can defeat the power of the oligarchs, which he has named as the chief enemy of working people in his state and beyond. The working class, he said at a separate rally, "have an immense amount of power, but we only have it if we're organized."
No one from above is coming to save us. It’s up to us to organize, use our immense power as the working class, and win the world we deserve. pic.twitter.com/Xm3ZIhfCJI
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) November 11, 2025
"No one from above is coming to save us," Platner said. "It’s up to us to organize, use our immense power as the working class, and win the world we deserve."
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