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Ever since the crash several years ago, Americans have felt precarious about the nation's economy and the value of its currency.
Ever since the crash several years ago, Americans have felt precarious about the nation's economy and the value of its currency. Money seems to take inconceivable, abstract, and even magical forms, traveling around the world at lightening speed with little oversight and obvious mismanagement.
We have little control over it -- the value of our currency is tied to conditions well beyond our control. It moves in directions that most of us are vehemently opposed to. We trusted that the banks, Congress, the Federal Reserve, corporations and Wall Street are managing money responsibly on our behalf, particularly with retirement funds and mortgages, but lately that trust has been broken. In response, local currencies have drawn interest from Occupy and other economic resistance groups to create an alternative to state-controlled money.
Since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 there has been a relative monopoly on money issuance by private banks through the Federal Reserve, which has drawn criticism from groups like the Monetary Reform Institute. For most of America's history, citizens used local currencies to meet their needs through local business, which often produced their own money. Before the Civil War, there were thousands of local currencies, and during the Great Depression they made a comeback, with hundreds of currencies used by the unemployed in particular.
Local currencies generally develop for one of two reasons -- the desire for local economic control (for a variety of reasons, from democracy to sustainability to social justice,) and a scarcity of national currency. In the current situation, both reasons weigh heavy.
When designed well and appropriately for the specific context, local currencies can boost a local economy and reward important work that needs to be done. Where national currency is not available because of overall scarcity or there is not enough market value for the work, local currencies can create real, tangible wealth we can see and control. Investing in community currency means investing in your community's health for the long haul, and therefore your own security and happiness.
When money is spent in chain stores, national currency leaks out of the local economy electronically to their headquarters elsewhere. Community currencies prevent this leakage of resources and energy to entities beyond our control and recirculate local wealth through the multiplier effect an average of three times more wealth (45 cents on the dollar for local currencies compared to 15 cents on the dollar for federal currency recirculating). They support local business by providing more loyal customers, increasing local employment and buffering them from the shock of a boom-bust economy. While currency experts are working on interchangeable currency platforms on an international scale, alternative currencies function as complements to support the local economy, not competitors with the national currency, which is currently more ubiquitously useful.
While the economy remains in recession, poverty rises, and local businesses shut down, social innovators and social service organizations are inventing new kinds of currencies all over the world. Here are some of the most exciting examples:
In the tiny country of Switzerland, the WIR Bank is a nationally circulated complementary currency by a cooperative of Swiss small- and medium-sized businesses that issue credit to each other based on rating and collateral. With over 60,000 member businesses, WIR currency circulates the equivalent of 1.65 billion Francs annually, helping small business get off the ground or expand, and allowing them to compete with international businesses and make it through tough times. It provides loans when national currency has dried up. GETS is a similar mutual credit B2B currency, with much more versatility, coming out of the UK and spreading to business networks in the US, like Green America and Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility.
Across Europe and Africa, thousands of LETS (Local Employment Trading Systems) like Community Exchange Systems and Community Forge provide local businesses, the self-employed, the underemployed, the creatively employed, and many radical idealists with a digital currency to organize and lubricate the informal economy. LETS are similar to commercial bartering systems, but use complementary currencies in an almost immeasurable variance of forms and structures, designed and controlled by the local community to meet its needs without money. LETS often consist of an online directory of goods and services offered by individual members and businesses and an accounting system. LETS credits are more abundant form or currency as a member can earn as many credits as they have time to work for, rather than waiting for scarce dollars to be available from bank accounts. Greeks in the midst of economic crisis have adopted a LETS currency called TEM, which has a Craigslist like directory and a digital and check-like currency form.
One specific and popular variance of LETS in the US and UK is called a Timebank. Timebanks have special qualities that make them particularly useful to the poor and underprivileged. They value everyone's hours equally, intentionally fund community service and development work that it often unfundable, and they operate more like a relationship-driven gift economy than a currency, with generosity the rule. Some have a reputation system built in to encourage good behavior. Timebanks tend to share core values that everyone's life and work are valuable, that everyone should be cared for equally, and that reciprocity and caring are key to a healthy economy. Timebanks have proven superior to money in applications such as senior care, disabled peer support and childcare and nonprofit service provision.
In New York and Montpelier, Vermont, and St. Louis, Timebanks have received large government grants to facilitate mutual assistance care for the sick and elderly in a more economically sustainable than the government can facilitate, as well as creating community amongst socially isolated people. The Visiting Nurses of New York Timebank conducted a study demonstrating remarkable impact in facilitating new friendships across cultures and languages and improving self-reported mental and physical health. Timebanks in their modern form originated in the '80s, but only recently took off, now numbering in the hundreds. They were also popular during the Great Depression amongst hundreds of thousands of members of unemployed associations that created a self-sufficient parallel economy, getting most of their needs met and orchestrating manufacturing, education, and more through exchange of hour credits, like the UXA. International Timebank organizations include OS Currency, Timebanks USA, hOur World, and Time for the World.
Whereas Timebanks and LETS have not yet succeeded in capturing a significant portion of the formal economy, community paper scrips have stepped in to fill the need. Berkshares and Ithaca hours are two successful versions of local scrip invented in the U.S. to support local business. Berkshares are a discount community currency backed by $USD that are widely accepted by businesses and banks in the Berkshires region of Massachusetts. The scheme is similar to the German Chiemgauer, which is a regional paper currency with negative interest built in (through required expiration renewal stamps). The Chiemgauer has succeeded in encouraging local import replacement businesses, like apple production, driven by flood of local currency that businesses accumulate from customers and only spend at other local businesses. Ithaca hours are issued by a nonprofit for membership, providing the goods and services based on trust in community, as well as transportation - the hours are accepted by the local transit authority.
Other scrips or paper currencies are popping up across the country from Corvallis Hours, to Detroit Cheers, to the Washington D.C. Potomac and Sand Dollars (New Earth Exchange) in Santa Cruz, CA. Many can't get off the ground with out financial support, while other struggle along until their currency is worth valuable services or goods. Credit card forms of business-backed currency that function more like local business rewards or discount cards are gaining ground to compete with the modern efficiency of digital money, like Sonoma Go Local, Bernal Bucks and the City government initiative, the Oakland Acorn -- all in the progressive nexus of Northern California. Both Bernal Bucks and Sonoma Go Local are planning on using their reward funds to support local business development when conventional loans are unavailable or at too high interest. Many local currencies also make grants to nonprofits.
In Brazil, over 50 community banks have drastically reduced poverty by issuing their own paper and credit card currencies based on the Banco Palmas model. Palmas are issued into circulation to fund community and infrastructure development projects and as small business loans and personal loans, dispersed based on community reputation rather than capital or collateral. They are run by community-based organizations. Local businesses and nonprofits directly incubated from Palmas advance the lives of youth, women, the poor, and artists. Palmas type currencies now help many Brazilians meet most of their needs locally, and invigorate the local economy with a charge of currency and employment. Palmas have proven so successful in alleviating poverty that they are now supported by the Brazilian national government. Venezuela has been experimenting with the Palmas model and it is widely promoted by the Chavez government.
Still in use today, Argentina's grassroots currency initiative, called the Red de Trueque, emerged to provide a third of the country with a means of exchange for basic needs during its economic crash in 1999, when large banks frozen resident's accounts and fled the country with currency. Woergl, Austria provides a brief but inspiring example of a municipal issued currency that pulled the city out of an economic crisis during the Great Depression. It functioned by spending into circulation depreciating local currency backed by public works, providing a dramatic 30% unemployment relief rate in in one year. It was crushed for its wild success by the national government as a grassroots threat to the national currency.
Instead of placing faith in the "economic experts," these currency projects are built on faith in community and the creation of real wealth. When carefully designed, they can be a source of community empowerment, prioritizing caring relationships and community values ahead of profit as well as and generating meaningful employment at local businesses. As shops shut down around us, municipal governments cut services, and the unemployed fall through the widening crevices in our economic system, perhaps its time we take our economy into our own hands. As these projects demonstrate, democratically controlled local money can be a powerful tool in shifting economic power and transforming the economy into a more loving and sustainable one.
For more information about local currencies, see the SF BACE library, Community Currency Magazine, and the Complementary Currency Database.
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Ever since the crash several years ago, Americans have felt precarious about the nation's economy and the value of its currency. Money seems to take inconceivable, abstract, and even magical forms, traveling around the world at lightening speed with little oversight and obvious mismanagement.
We have little control over it -- the value of our currency is tied to conditions well beyond our control. It moves in directions that most of us are vehemently opposed to. We trusted that the banks, Congress, the Federal Reserve, corporations and Wall Street are managing money responsibly on our behalf, particularly with retirement funds and mortgages, but lately that trust has been broken. In response, local currencies have drawn interest from Occupy and other economic resistance groups to create an alternative to state-controlled money.
Since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 there has been a relative monopoly on money issuance by private banks through the Federal Reserve, which has drawn criticism from groups like the Monetary Reform Institute. For most of America's history, citizens used local currencies to meet their needs through local business, which often produced their own money. Before the Civil War, there were thousands of local currencies, and during the Great Depression they made a comeback, with hundreds of currencies used by the unemployed in particular.
Local currencies generally develop for one of two reasons -- the desire for local economic control (for a variety of reasons, from democracy to sustainability to social justice,) and a scarcity of national currency. In the current situation, both reasons weigh heavy.
When designed well and appropriately for the specific context, local currencies can boost a local economy and reward important work that needs to be done. Where national currency is not available because of overall scarcity or there is not enough market value for the work, local currencies can create real, tangible wealth we can see and control. Investing in community currency means investing in your community's health for the long haul, and therefore your own security and happiness.
When money is spent in chain stores, national currency leaks out of the local economy electronically to their headquarters elsewhere. Community currencies prevent this leakage of resources and energy to entities beyond our control and recirculate local wealth through the multiplier effect an average of three times more wealth (45 cents on the dollar for local currencies compared to 15 cents on the dollar for federal currency recirculating). They support local business by providing more loyal customers, increasing local employment and buffering them from the shock of a boom-bust economy. While currency experts are working on interchangeable currency platforms on an international scale, alternative currencies function as complements to support the local economy, not competitors with the national currency, which is currently more ubiquitously useful.
While the economy remains in recession, poverty rises, and local businesses shut down, social innovators and social service organizations are inventing new kinds of currencies all over the world. Here are some of the most exciting examples:
In the tiny country of Switzerland, the WIR Bank is a nationally circulated complementary currency by a cooperative of Swiss small- and medium-sized businesses that issue credit to each other based on rating and collateral. With over 60,000 member businesses, WIR currency circulates the equivalent of 1.65 billion Francs annually, helping small business get off the ground or expand, and allowing them to compete with international businesses and make it through tough times. It provides loans when national currency has dried up. GETS is a similar mutual credit B2B currency, with much more versatility, coming out of the UK and spreading to business networks in the US, like Green America and Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility.
Across Europe and Africa, thousands of LETS (Local Employment Trading Systems) like Community Exchange Systems and Community Forge provide local businesses, the self-employed, the underemployed, the creatively employed, and many radical idealists with a digital currency to organize and lubricate the informal economy. LETS are similar to commercial bartering systems, but use complementary currencies in an almost immeasurable variance of forms and structures, designed and controlled by the local community to meet its needs without money. LETS often consist of an online directory of goods and services offered by individual members and businesses and an accounting system. LETS credits are more abundant form or currency as a member can earn as many credits as they have time to work for, rather than waiting for scarce dollars to be available from bank accounts. Greeks in the midst of economic crisis have adopted a LETS currency called TEM, which has a Craigslist like directory and a digital and check-like currency form.
One specific and popular variance of LETS in the US and UK is called a Timebank. Timebanks have special qualities that make them particularly useful to the poor and underprivileged. They value everyone's hours equally, intentionally fund community service and development work that it often unfundable, and they operate more like a relationship-driven gift economy than a currency, with generosity the rule. Some have a reputation system built in to encourage good behavior. Timebanks tend to share core values that everyone's life and work are valuable, that everyone should be cared for equally, and that reciprocity and caring are key to a healthy economy. Timebanks have proven superior to money in applications such as senior care, disabled peer support and childcare and nonprofit service provision.
In New York and Montpelier, Vermont, and St. Louis, Timebanks have received large government grants to facilitate mutual assistance care for the sick and elderly in a more economically sustainable than the government can facilitate, as well as creating community amongst socially isolated people. The Visiting Nurses of New York Timebank conducted a study demonstrating remarkable impact in facilitating new friendships across cultures and languages and improving self-reported mental and physical health. Timebanks in their modern form originated in the '80s, but only recently took off, now numbering in the hundreds. They were also popular during the Great Depression amongst hundreds of thousands of members of unemployed associations that created a self-sufficient parallel economy, getting most of their needs met and orchestrating manufacturing, education, and more through exchange of hour credits, like the UXA. International Timebank organizations include OS Currency, Timebanks USA, hOur World, and Time for the World.
Whereas Timebanks and LETS have not yet succeeded in capturing a significant portion of the formal economy, community paper scrips have stepped in to fill the need. Berkshares and Ithaca hours are two successful versions of local scrip invented in the U.S. to support local business. Berkshares are a discount community currency backed by $USD that are widely accepted by businesses and banks in the Berkshires region of Massachusetts. The scheme is similar to the German Chiemgauer, which is a regional paper currency with negative interest built in (through required expiration renewal stamps). The Chiemgauer has succeeded in encouraging local import replacement businesses, like apple production, driven by flood of local currency that businesses accumulate from customers and only spend at other local businesses. Ithaca hours are issued by a nonprofit for membership, providing the goods and services based on trust in community, as well as transportation - the hours are accepted by the local transit authority.
Other scrips or paper currencies are popping up across the country from Corvallis Hours, to Detroit Cheers, to the Washington D.C. Potomac and Sand Dollars (New Earth Exchange) in Santa Cruz, CA. Many can't get off the ground with out financial support, while other struggle along until their currency is worth valuable services or goods. Credit card forms of business-backed currency that function more like local business rewards or discount cards are gaining ground to compete with the modern efficiency of digital money, like Sonoma Go Local, Bernal Bucks and the City government initiative, the Oakland Acorn -- all in the progressive nexus of Northern California. Both Bernal Bucks and Sonoma Go Local are planning on using their reward funds to support local business development when conventional loans are unavailable or at too high interest. Many local currencies also make grants to nonprofits.
In Brazil, over 50 community banks have drastically reduced poverty by issuing their own paper and credit card currencies based on the Banco Palmas model. Palmas are issued into circulation to fund community and infrastructure development projects and as small business loans and personal loans, dispersed based on community reputation rather than capital or collateral. They are run by community-based organizations. Local businesses and nonprofits directly incubated from Palmas advance the lives of youth, women, the poor, and artists. Palmas type currencies now help many Brazilians meet most of their needs locally, and invigorate the local economy with a charge of currency and employment. Palmas have proven so successful in alleviating poverty that they are now supported by the Brazilian national government. Venezuela has been experimenting with the Palmas model and it is widely promoted by the Chavez government.
Still in use today, Argentina's grassroots currency initiative, called the Red de Trueque, emerged to provide a third of the country with a means of exchange for basic needs during its economic crash in 1999, when large banks frozen resident's accounts and fled the country with currency. Woergl, Austria provides a brief but inspiring example of a municipal issued currency that pulled the city out of an economic crisis during the Great Depression. It functioned by spending into circulation depreciating local currency backed by public works, providing a dramatic 30% unemployment relief rate in in one year. It was crushed for its wild success by the national government as a grassroots threat to the national currency.
Instead of placing faith in the "economic experts," these currency projects are built on faith in community and the creation of real wealth. When carefully designed, they can be a source of community empowerment, prioritizing caring relationships and community values ahead of profit as well as and generating meaningful employment at local businesses. As shops shut down around us, municipal governments cut services, and the unemployed fall through the widening crevices in our economic system, perhaps its time we take our economy into our own hands. As these projects demonstrate, democratically controlled local money can be a powerful tool in shifting economic power and transforming the economy into a more loving and sustainable one.
For more information about local currencies, see the SF BACE library, Community Currency Magazine, and the Complementary Currency Database.
Ever since the crash several years ago, Americans have felt precarious about the nation's economy and the value of its currency. Money seems to take inconceivable, abstract, and even magical forms, traveling around the world at lightening speed with little oversight and obvious mismanagement.
We have little control over it -- the value of our currency is tied to conditions well beyond our control. It moves in directions that most of us are vehemently opposed to. We trusted that the banks, Congress, the Federal Reserve, corporations and Wall Street are managing money responsibly on our behalf, particularly with retirement funds and mortgages, but lately that trust has been broken. In response, local currencies have drawn interest from Occupy and other economic resistance groups to create an alternative to state-controlled money.
Since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 there has been a relative monopoly on money issuance by private banks through the Federal Reserve, which has drawn criticism from groups like the Monetary Reform Institute. For most of America's history, citizens used local currencies to meet their needs through local business, which often produced their own money. Before the Civil War, there were thousands of local currencies, and during the Great Depression they made a comeback, with hundreds of currencies used by the unemployed in particular.
Local currencies generally develop for one of two reasons -- the desire for local economic control (for a variety of reasons, from democracy to sustainability to social justice,) and a scarcity of national currency. In the current situation, both reasons weigh heavy.
When designed well and appropriately for the specific context, local currencies can boost a local economy and reward important work that needs to be done. Where national currency is not available because of overall scarcity or there is not enough market value for the work, local currencies can create real, tangible wealth we can see and control. Investing in community currency means investing in your community's health for the long haul, and therefore your own security and happiness.
When money is spent in chain stores, national currency leaks out of the local economy electronically to their headquarters elsewhere. Community currencies prevent this leakage of resources and energy to entities beyond our control and recirculate local wealth through the multiplier effect an average of three times more wealth (45 cents on the dollar for local currencies compared to 15 cents on the dollar for federal currency recirculating). They support local business by providing more loyal customers, increasing local employment and buffering them from the shock of a boom-bust economy. While currency experts are working on interchangeable currency platforms on an international scale, alternative currencies function as complements to support the local economy, not competitors with the national currency, which is currently more ubiquitously useful.
While the economy remains in recession, poverty rises, and local businesses shut down, social innovators and social service organizations are inventing new kinds of currencies all over the world. Here are some of the most exciting examples:
In the tiny country of Switzerland, the WIR Bank is a nationally circulated complementary currency by a cooperative of Swiss small- and medium-sized businesses that issue credit to each other based on rating and collateral. With over 60,000 member businesses, WIR currency circulates the equivalent of 1.65 billion Francs annually, helping small business get off the ground or expand, and allowing them to compete with international businesses and make it through tough times. It provides loans when national currency has dried up. GETS is a similar mutual credit B2B currency, with much more versatility, coming out of the UK and spreading to business networks in the US, like Green America and Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility.
Across Europe and Africa, thousands of LETS (Local Employment Trading Systems) like Community Exchange Systems and Community Forge provide local businesses, the self-employed, the underemployed, the creatively employed, and many radical idealists with a digital currency to organize and lubricate the informal economy. LETS are similar to commercial bartering systems, but use complementary currencies in an almost immeasurable variance of forms and structures, designed and controlled by the local community to meet its needs without money. LETS often consist of an online directory of goods and services offered by individual members and businesses and an accounting system. LETS credits are more abundant form or currency as a member can earn as many credits as they have time to work for, rather than waiting for scarce dollars to be available from bank accounts. Greeks in the midst of economic crisis have adopted a LETS currency called TEM, which has a Craigslist like directory and a digital and check-like currency form.
One specific and popular variance of LETS in the US and UK is called a Timebank. Timebanks have special qualities that make them particularly useful to the poor and underprivileged. They value everyone's hours equally, intentionally fund community service and development work that it often unfundable, and they operate more like a relationship-driven gift economy than a currency, with generosity the rule. Some have a reputation system built in to encourage good behavior. Timebanks tend to share core values that everyone's life and work are valuable, that everyone should be cared for equally, and that reciprocity and caring are key to a healthy economy. Timebanks have proven superior to money in applications such as senior care, disabled peer support and childcare and nonprofit service provision.
In New York and Montpelier, Vermont, and St. Louis, Timebanks have received large government grants to facilitate mutual assistance care for the sick and elderly in a more economically sustainable than the government can facilitate, as well as creating community amongst socially isolated people. The Visiting Nurses of New York Timebank conducted a study demonstrating remarkable impact in facilitating new friendships across cultures and languages and improving self-reported mental and physical health. Timebanks in their modern form originated in the '80s, but only recently took off, now numbering in the hundreds. They were also popular during the Great Depression amongst hundreds of thousands of members of unemployed associations that created a self-sufficient parallel economy, getting most of their needs met and orchestrating manufacturing, education, and more through exchange of hour credits, like the UXA. International Timebank organizations include OS Currency, Timebanks USA, hOur World, and Time for the World.
Whereas Timebanks and LETS have not yet succeeded in capturing a significant portion of the formal economy, community paper scrips have stepped in to fill the need. Berkshares and Ithaca hours are two successful versions of local scrip invented in the U.S. to support local business. Berkshares are a discount community currency backed by $USD that are widely accepted by businesses and banks in the Berkshires region of Massachusetts. The scheme is similar to the German Chiemgauer, which is a regional paper currency with negative interest built in (through required expiration renewal stamps). The Chiemgauer has succeeded in encouraging local import replacement businesses, like apple production, driven by flood of local currency that businesses accumulate from customers and only spend at other local businesses. Ithaca hours are issued by a nonprofit for membership, providing the goods and services based on trust in community, as well as transportation - the hours are accepted by the local transit authority.
Other scrips or paper currencies are popping up across the country from Corvallis Hours, to Detroit Cheers, to the Washington D.C. Potomac and Sand Dollars (New Earth Exchange) in Santa Cruz, CA. Many can't get off the ground with out financial support, while other struggle along until their currency is worth valuable services or goods. Credit card forms of business-backed currency that function more like local business rewards or discount cards are gaining ground to compete with the modern efficiency of digital money, like Sonoma Go Local, Bernal Bucks and the City government initiative, the Oakland Acorn -- all in the progressive nexus of Northern California. Both Bernal Bucks and Sonoma Go Local are planning on using their reward funds to support local business development when conventional loans are unavailable or at too high interest. Many local currencies also make grants to nonprofits.
In Brazil, over 50 community banks have drastically reduced poverty by issuing their own paper and credit card currencies based on the Banco Palmas model. Palmas are issued into circulation to fund community and infrastructure development projects and as small business loans and personal loans, dispersed based on community reputation rather than capital or collateral. They are run by community-based organizations. Local businesses and nonprofits directly incubated from Palmas advance the lives of youth, women, the poor, and artists. Palmas type currencies now help many Brazilians meet most of their needs locally, and invigorate the local economy with a charge of currency and employment. Palmas have proven so successful in alleviating poverty that they are now supported by the Brazilian national government. Venezuela has been experimenting with the Palmas model and it is widely promoted by the Chavez government.
Still in use today, Argentina's grassroots currency initiative, called the Red de Trueque, emerged to provide a third of the country with a means of exchange for basic needs during its economic crash in 1999, when large banks frozen resident's accounts and fled the country with currency. Woergl, Austria provides a brief but inspiring example of a municipal issued currency that pulled the city out of an economic crisis during the Great Depression. It functioned by spending into circulation depreciating local currency backed by public works, providing a dramatic 30% unemployment relief rate in in one year. It was crushed for its wild success by the national government as a grassroots threat to the national currency.
Instead of placing faith in the "economic experts," these currency projects are built on faith in community and the creation of real wealth. When carefully designed, they can be a source of community empowerment, prioritizing caring relationships and community values ahead of profit as well as and generating meaningful employment at local businesses. As shops shut down around us, municipal governments cut services, and the unemployed fall through the widening crevices in our economic system, perhaps its time we take our economy into our own hands. As these projects demonstrate, democratically controlled local money can be a powerful tool in shifting economic power and transforming the economy into a more loving and sustainable one.
For more information about local currencies, see the SF BACE library, Community Currency Magazine, and the Complementary Currency Database.
"This sends a chilling message that the U.S. is willing to overlook some abuses, signaling that people experiencing human rights violations may be left to fend for themselves," said one Amnesty campaigner.
After leaked drafts exposed the Trump administration's plans to downplay human rights abuses in some allied countries, including Israel, the U.S. Department of State released the final edition of an annual report on Tuesday, sparking fresh condemnation.
"Breaking with precedent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not provide a written introduction to the report nor did he make remarks about it," CNN reported. Still, Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA's national director of government relations and advocacy, called him out by name in a Tuesday statement.
"With the release of the U.S. State Department's human rights report, it is clear that the Trump administration has engaged in a very selective documentation of human rights abuses in certain countries," Klasing said. "In addition to eliminating entire sections for certain countries—for example discrimination against LGBTQ+ people—there are also arbitrary omissions within existing sections of the report based on the country."
Klasing explained that "we have criticized past reports when warranted, but have never seen reports quite like this. Never before have the reports gone this far in prioritizing an administration's political agenda over a consistent and truthful accounting of human rights violations around the world—softening criticism in some countries while ignoring violations in others. The State Department has said in relation to the reports less is more. However, for the victims and human rights defenders who rely on these reports to shine light on abuses and violations, less is just less."
"Secretary Rubio knows full well from his time in the Senate how vital these reports are in informing policy decisions and shaping diplomatic conversations, yet he has made the dangerous and short-sighted decision to put out a truncated version that doesn't tell the whole story of human rights violations," she continued. "This sends a chilling message that the U.S. is willing to overlook some abuses, signaling that people experiencing human rights violations may be left to fend for themselves."
"Failing to adequately report on human rights violations further damages the credibility of the U.S. on human rights issues," she added. "It's shameful that the Trump administration and Secretary Rubio are putting politics above human lives."
The overarching report—which includes over 100 individual country reports—covers 2024, the last full calendar year of the Biden administration. The appendix says that in March, the report was "streamlined for better utility and accessibility in the field and by partners, and to be more responsive to the underlying legislative mandate and aligned to the administration's executive orders."
As CNN detailed:
The latest report was stripped of many of the specific sections included in past reports, including reporting on alleged abuses based on sexual orientation, violence toward women, corruption in government, systemic racial or ethnic violence, or denial of a fair public trial. Some country reports, including for Afghanistan, do address human rights abuses against women.
"We were asked to edit down the human rights reports to the bare minimum of what was statutorily required," said Michael Honigstein, the former director of African Affairs at the State Department's Bureau of Human Rights, Democracy, and Labor. He and his office helped compile the initial reports.
Over the past week, since the draft country reports leaked to the press, the Trump administration has come under fire for its portrayals of El Salvador, Israel, and Russia.
The report on Israel—and the illegally occupied Palestinian territories, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank—is just nine pages. The brevity even drew the attention of Israeli media. The Times of Israel highlighted that it "is much shorter than last year's edition compiled under the Biden administration and contained no mention of the severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza."
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have slaughtered over 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local officials—though experts warn the true toll is likely far higher. As Israel has restricted humanitarian aid in recent months, over 200 people have starved to death, including 103 children.
The U.S. report on Israel does not mention the genocide case that Israel faces at the International Court of Justice over the assault on Gaza, or the International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The section on war crimes and genocide only says that "terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah continue to engage in the
indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians in violation of the law of armed conflict."
As the world mourns the killing of six more Palestinian media professionals in Gaza this week—which prompted calls for the United Nations Security Council to convene an emergency meeting—the report's section on press freedom is also short and makes no mention of the hundreds of journalists killed in Israel's annihilation of the strip:
The law generally provided for freedom of expression, including for members of the press and other media, and the government generally respected this right for most Israelis. NGOs and journalists reported authorities restricted press coverage and limited certain forms of expression, especially in the context of criticism against the war or sympathy for Palestinians in Gaza.
Noting that "the human rights reports have been among the U.S. government's most-read documents," DAWN senior adviser and 32-year State Department official Charles Blaha said the "significant omissions" in this year's report on Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank render it "functionally useless for Congress and the public as nothing more than a pro-Israel document."
Like Klasing at Amnesty, Sarah Leah Whitson, DAWN's executive director, specifically called out the U.S. secretary of state.
"Secretary Rubio has revamped the State Department reports for one principal purpose: to whitewash Israeli crimes, including its horrific genocide and starvation in Gaza. The report shockingly includes not a word about the overwhelming evidence of genocide, mass starvation, and the deliberate bombardment of civilians in Gaza," she said. "Rubio has defied the letter and intent of U.S. laws requiring the State Department to report truthfully and comprehensively about every country's human rights abuses, instead offering up anodyne cover for his murderous friends in Tel Aviv."
The Tuesday release came after a coalition of LGBTQ+ and human rights organizations on Monday filed a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department over its refusal to release the congressionally mandated report.
This article has been updated with comment from DAWN.
"We will not sit idly by while political leaders manipulate voting maps to entrench their power and subvert our democracy," said the head of Common Cause.
As Republicans try to rig congressional maps in several states and Democrats threaten retaliatory measures, a pro-democracy watchdog on Tuesday unveiled new fairness standards underscoring that "independent redistricting commissions remain the gold standard for ending partisan gerrymandering."
Common Cause will hold an online media briefing Wednesday at noon Eastern time "to walk reporters though the six pieces of criteria the organization will use to evaluate any proposed maps."
The Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group said that "it will closely evaluate, but not automatically condemn, countermeasures" to Republican gerrymandering efforts—especially mid-decade redistricting not based on decennial censuses.
Amid the gerrymandering wars, we just launched 6 fairness criteria to hold all actors to the same principled standard: people first—not parties. Read our criteria here: www.commoncause.org/resources/po...
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— Common Cause (@commoncause.org) August 12, 2025 at 12:01 PM
Common Cause's six fairness criteria for mid-decade redistricting are:
"We will not sit idly by while political leaders manipulate voting maps to entrench their power and subvert our democracy," Common Cause president and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón said in a statement. "But neither will we call for unilateral political disarmament in the face of authoritarian tactics that undermine fair representation."
"We have established a fairness criteria that we will use to evaluate all countermeasures so we can respond to the most urgent threats to fair representation while holding all actors to the same principled standard: people—not parties—first," she added.
Common Cause's fairness criteria come amid the ongoing standoff between Republicans trying to gerrymander Texas' congressional map and Democratic lawmakers who fled the state in a bid to stymie a vote on the measure. Texas state senators on Tuesday approved the proposed map despite a walkout by most of their Democratic colleagues.
Leaders of several Democrat-controlled states, most notably California, have threatened retaliatory redistricting.
"This moment is about more than responding to a single threat—it's about building the movement for lasting reform," Kase Solomón asserted. "This is not an isolated political tactic; it is part of a broader march toward authoritarianism, dismantling people-powered democracy, and stripping away the people's ability to have a political voice and say in how they are governed."
"Texas law is clear: A pregnant person cannot be arrested and prosecuted for getting an abortion. No one is above the law, including officials entrusted with enforcing it," said an ACLU attorney.
When officials in Starr County, Texas arrested Lizelle Gonzalez in 2022 and charged her with murder for having a medication abortion—despite state law clearly prohibiting the prosecution of women for abortion care—she spent three days in jail, away from her children, and the highly publicized arrest was "deeply traumatizing."
Now, said her lawyers at the ACLU in court filings on Tuesday, officials in the county sheriff's and district attorney's offices must be held accountable for knowingly subjecting Gonzalez to wrongful prosecution.
Starr County District Attorney Gocha Ramirez ultimately dismissed the charge against Gonzalez, said the ACLU, but the Texas bar's investigation into Ramirez—which found multiple instances of misconduct related to Gonzalez's homicide charge—resulted in only minor punishment. Ramirez had to pay a small fine of $1,250 and was given one year of probated suspension.
"Without real accountability, Starr County's district attorney—and any other law enforcement actor—will not be deterred from abusing their power to unlawfully target people because of their personal beliefs, rather than the law," said the ACLU.
The state bar found that Ramirez allowed Gonzalez's indictment to go forward despite the fact that her homicide charge was "known not to be supported by probable cause."
Ramirez had denied that he was briefed on the facts of the case before it was prosecuted by his office, but the state bar "determined he was consulted by a prosecutor in his office beforehand and permitted it to go forward."
"Without real accountability, Starr County's district attorney—and any other law enforcement actor—will not be deterred from abusing their power to unlawfully target people because of their personal beliefs, rather than the law."
Sarah Corning, an attorney at the ACLU of Texas, said the prosecutors and law enforcement officers "ignored Texas law when they wrongfully arrested Lizelle Gonzalez for ending her pregnancy."
"They shattered her life in South Texas, violated her rights, and abused the power they swore to uphold," said Corning. "Texas law is clear: A pregnant person cannot be arrested and prosecuted for getting an abortion. No one is above the law, including officials entrusted with enforcing it."
The district attorney's office sought to have the ACLU's case dismissed in July 2024, raising claims of legal immunity.
A court denied Ramirez's motion, and the ACLU's discovery process that followed revealed "a coordinated effort between the Starr County sheriff's office and district attorney's office to violate Ms. Gonzalez's rights."
The officials' "wanton disregard for the rule of law and erroneous belief of their own invincibility is a frightening deviation from the offices' purposes: to seek justice," said Cecilia Garza, a partner at the law firm Garza Martinez, who is joining the ACLU in representing Gonzalez. "I am proud to represent Ms. Gonzalez in her fight for justice and redemption, and our team will not allow these abuses to continue in Starr County or any other county in the state of Texas."
Gonzalez's fight for justice comes as a wrongful death case in Texas—filed by an "anti-abortion legal terrorist" on behalf of a man whose girlfriend use medication from another state to end her pregnancy—moves forward, potentially jeopardizing access to abortion pills across the country.