by Jana December 1, 2013 in Human Rights News by Jana
BBC News – Croatians back same-sex marriage ban in referendum.
Just as Scotland takes its first steps to allow same-sex marriage Croatia has chosen to ban it through an amendment to their constitution.
by Ruth December 1, 2013 in events, information, main, news, newsletter by Ruth
Good Tidings GU Amnesty,
December is upon us and we are nearing the end of term and, dare I say it, the beginning of exams. So our next meeting will be our last for this year, but we also have our end of term social, and fundraiser– read on for all the details.
Last week we expressed our outrage at Coca-Cola’s failure to acknowledge human rights abuses in Russia: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.631682286875487.1073741835.458988730811511&type=1
We then took part in the Reclaim the Night March as part of the 16 days of action to end violence against women: http://www.guamnesty.org.uk/2013/11/photos-from-reclaim-the-night-march-2013/
We are back in the St. Andrew’s Building (Woodlands) for our final meeting and round-up of our campaigns of the semester. We have chosen a film which is related to our women’s rights theme for November, and this will look at ‘gendercide’. This term has come about following the recognition of the fact that many newborn girls are killed simply because they are girls. The film looks at this across different countries speaking to families who have both killed their own daughters and had their daughters killed.
For more information on the content of the film, please email us at mail@guamnesty.org.uk but here’s the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISme5-9orR0
Map for St. Andrew’s Building: http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_26876_en.pdf
Our Fundraising Officer, Maisie, was collecting the contact details for anyone wanting to join the carol singing group for our final fundraiser of the year. We have done this in previous years and it has been a huge success and great fun! We sang outside Hillhead subway for just over an hour and managed to raise quite a bit of money before heading for a well-earned hot chocolate, so I think this would be the plan for this year.
If you weren’t at the meeting on Tuesday and want to get involved, here’s the event page. The general feeling was to do it before the 10th December but I don’t think the date is absolutely fixed so we can finalise this on Tuesday.
Join the event if you are coming/thinking of coming so that we can get an idea of numbers. We are looking to have it in a pub but as always there will be no emphasis on drinking or staying out late. If you are more interested in human rights and less interested in socialising, there will be still be an action to do. Amnesty usually have a Christmas card appeal where we send Christmas cards to people who are in prison, to the families of those who have ‘gone missing’, to people who are awaiting investigations into human rights abuses that have taken place but fail to be acknowledged and others too, so this is something we feel is important to do.
So please come along, even if you are only free for an hour or so and then I can also wish you a Happy Christmas in person 😀
2nd December – 6th December: Medics Against Violence Campaign Week – Ask Listen &Respect Me
Event page for the campaign week with relevant news articles and reposts being posted each day.
Event page for the film screening and discussion (Wednesday 4th December, 7pm, room tbc).
‘Medics against Violence are working alongside Police Scotland, and the Violence Reduction Unit and are campaigning to raise awareness of sexual violence. Sexual violence is a major problem with huge numbers of incidents involving both male and female victims each year.’
‘We will also be holding a film & discussion night, led by Graham Goulden, Chief Inspector and National Anti-Violence Campaign Coordinator at the Violence Reduction Unit, Glasgow.
It will be at 7.00pm, Boyd Orr Building (Room TBC) – Wednesday 4th December.’
9th December: MEDSIN Campaign Poster Design Evening 7pm
MEDSIN are holding this event as a follow-up to the talk they had on human trafficking. As this is our chosen campaign for next semester, this may be of interest to many of you and we will be working with both MEDSIN and STOP THE TRAFFIK Glasgow next semester for our campaign. This session will focus on a poster campaign – here’s the event page for more information.
Happy 1st December and let the countdown begin!
Ruth
by Rob Hallam November 28, 2013 in actions, events, main, photos by Rob Hallam
Please share this with anyone who was a part of the march!
Reclaim the Night 2013 was yet again a great success with a strong turnout and a lot of positive energy. Some of our members went along carrying banners and candles- Â running most of the way to get there!
Our members en-route to the march
The march progresses along University Avenue
Along Gibson Street
Finishing up outside the STUC
by Rob Hallam November 28, 2013 in main, meetings, photos by Rob Hallam
Great work creating the Coca Cola shame poster, and thanks to those that posed for photos with signs decrying Coca Cola’s homophobia.
Our poster
Suggested Coca Cola branding
The group hard at work
by Ruth November 24, 2013 in events, main, meetings, news by Ruth
Hey lovely people,
Congratulations everyone on such a good effort for the Day of Silence and Jamnesty! We managed to get the photo action posters up and you should be able to see them in the QMU, SRC, GUU and GUSA office soon, if not already. Also, the Thunderclap was a success! (Although it did go off a little later than we originally planned.) And finally, we managed to get at least 88 people to Jamnesty, raising over £300!
I have to say that Jamnesty has been rated as one of GU Amnesty’s best events ever, and I completely agree. It was such a good night and our performers were all fantastic. You can see the photos on our website where you can also find the links to Yew, Chrissy Barnacle and Flying Penguins’ pages so that you can listen again and download their music.
You may have heard that Coca-Cola have refused to speak out against the discrimination and violence that is being directed at LGBT people in Russia. Here is their pretty pathetic statement.
Our plan is to create a banner/poster that will highlight Coca-Cola’s failure to act and plan how to raise awareness on campus.
There are a few other things that we need to discuss, including our final social (see below) and fundraiser of the semester, and a Secret Policeman’s Ball update but it’s going to be a fairly short meeting (30 mins planning and discussion, 30 mins campaign action) because this is happening at 6/6.30pm:
(A message from ex-committee member, Cat, about the Reclaim the Night March)
“Hello everyone! Before I go on this post, I’d just like to congratulate all of you that took part in the day of Silence on Wednesday. It was absolutely lovely to see all of your photos and I hope you raised plenty of money!
November is drawing to a close, which means we are about to enter the 16 Days of Action for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. There are an awful lot of activities going in Glasgow in order to raise awareness about this, so please forgive me for not linking to them all.
I would like to make you aware of this one, though. The Rape Crisis group will be holding their annual Reclaim the Night March, which this year will take place on Tuesday 26th October.
The march will start at 18:30 outside the main entrance of the Botanic Gardens (opposite Oran Mor), and will go down Byres Road, up University Avenue, then down Gibson St to the STUC on Woodlands Road- where there will be hot drinks, food, speeches and music. You can start assembling outside the Botanic Gardens from 18:00.
In the years I was with the group, we got quite a few people to attend. So I really hope I’ll see some of you there!
Once again, great work with the campaigns so far this year, and I’m looking forward to the SPB already!
So anyone who wants to come along, we will be joining the march as GU Amnesty. We will have an Amnesty banner and if you want to bring jars with tealights, that is quite often what people do. We will go together, straight from the meeting.
Oh dear, I can’t believe we’re planning for things in December. That’s scary.
For our last official meeting, we have a documentary film in mind related to women’s rights so thought this would be a good way to finish our women’s rights events. We will discuss this at the meeting and are open to more suggestions.
Our favourite day of the year, and it’s on a Tuesday 🙂
As this is during our exam period, we were not planning on having an actual meeting but we really cannot ignore such an important date in our calendar. So, we hoped to make this our end of term social, which we are going to discuss at the next meeting so we can get an idea of what folk might want to do.
Sunday 1st December: Pridepop! (World Aids Day)
World AIDS Day is celebrated on 1 December every year and is an international day to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS. It is an opportunity for us as human beings to unite and support each other in our fight against HIV.
PRIDEPOP is a night of love, acceptance and respect. It is a night of intolerance towards prejudice and hate. The party itself is a musical and visual drinking system that combines music, dancing and alcohol. PRIDEPOP could mean anything. But for Andrew and Carlo it is a celebration of equality. It is a night where we come together regardless of our HIV status to penetrate the night with our pride in who we are and what we can achieve when we treat everyone as equal.
The event is being held at the Berkeley Suite from 8pm on Sunday 1 December.Â
Event page for the campaign week with relevant news articles and reposts being posted each day.
Event page for the film screening and discussion (Wednesday 4th December, 7pm, room tbc).
‘Medics against Violence are working alongside Police Scotland, and the Violence Reduction Unit and are campaigning to raise awareness of sexual violence. Sexual violence is a major problem with huge numbers of incidents involving both male and female victims each year.
This December we will be holding a ‘Campaign Week’ 2nd-6th December. We want to get more people talking about this serious topic and to learn more about the early warnings that you may see. We want everyone to be safe this Christmas, and to know who to turn to if you see something or if something happens to you.
Each day we will be emailing and posting articles and news reports relating to the campaign.
We will be holding stalls at lunchtime throughout the week where you can get more information about the campaign, donate to the campaign and buy wristbands.
We will also be holding a film & discussion night, led by Graham Goulden, Chief Inspector and National Anti-Violence Campaign Coordinator at the Violence Reduction Unit, Glasgow.
The event page for this can be found here:Â https://www.facebook.com/events/1410819055821606 It will be at 7.00pm, Boyd Orr Building (Room TBC) – Wednesday 4th December.’
It may nearly be the end of this semester, but there is still a lot going on! Remember to bring warm clothes on Tuesday if you are marching with us.
Ruth
by Rob Hallam November 23, 2013 in events, main, photos by Rob Hallam
Another BIG BIG THANKS to everyone who made Jamnesty such a wonderful night. Particular gratitude is extended to the performers (Yew, Chrissy Barnacle and Flying Penguins) who were universally excellent and who kindly agreed to perform at our charity event. It was mentioned during the night, but if you enjoyed them please check out their stuff – Â they all have stuff to listen to FOR FREE (or you can pay what you want) so go for it:
And a big well done to everyone else involved as well- those who helped organise, co-ordinate, make decorations, put up decorations, take down decorations and ensure the smooth running all made it possible. You all know who you are and you all put in a lot of effort so you all share in the success.
(click on an image for a full-size popout)
Lastly, thanks to everyone that came along- you can’t have a gig night without an audience! Whilst it was a fun, entertaining night it touched on important and serious issues- equal marriage, LGBT rights in Russia and everywhere, the Transgender Day of Remembrance and the minute’s silence. These are matters close to many that were there.
by Rob Hallam November 23, 2013 in main, photos by Rob Hallam
Many thanks to Nathan Gale from the Scottish Transgender Alliance (see www.scottishtrans.org) for coming along and giving a really informative and positive talk about what we can do to promote transgender rights issues, the equal marriage legislation – more properly, the Marriage and Civil Partnership Bill – amongst other things, which was very well-received.
Kudos to everyone who painted a t-shirt for the Day of Silence and Jamnesty- they looked fab!
by Rob Hallam November 19, 2013 in presentations by Rob Hallam
Thanks Debbie!
Read the rest of this entry →
by Rob Hallam November 18, 2013 in main, meetings, photos by Rob Hallam
A big thanks to everyone who wrote a letter or sent off a card as a part of Write for Rights. Participating in these things makes a huge difference.
by Ruth November 16, 2013 in main, newsletter by Ruth
Hey everyone,
The highlight of our semester is here! I hope you are all as excited as I am for Jamnesty next Wednesday! Please, please remember to get tickets from me on Tuesday if you haven’t already and bring back money/spares. Also remember your t-shirts for decorating! See below for all the details.
In other news – Friday was the deadline for our SPB poster competition so if you really wanted to enter but didn’t quite manage to draft one up then you can still send one over the weekend if you want. Just email it to spb@guamnesty.org.uk
Due to time constraints we are aiming to start at 5pm so please try and arrive on time.
Our speaker Nathan Gale is coming along to talk to us about the work of the Scottish Transgender Alliance and the Equality Network. This talk is coming at a crucial time, in the midst of the new equal marriage bill making its way through the Scottish Parliament and the day before the Transgender Day of Remembrance and I am sure that Nathan will spend some time talking about both of these. The presentation will be quite informal and Nathan says that he is happy to answer any questions afterwards. I think this will be a brilliant opportunity to discuss effective campaigning strategies as demonstrated by the huge campaigning efforts for marriage equality.
After the discussion, we will jump straight to making our posters and t-shirts for our Day of Silence. Please remember to bring you own t-shirts for decorating! If you don’t have any spare, don’t worry, we will also have materials to hopefully make badges and material signs to pin on.
Our Publicity Officer, Nikola, is going to discuss how we can use Facebook and Twitter to promote the event ourselves and detail our plans for a publicity launch on the day. Most of this will involve using Thunderclap, which is a method of mass simultaneous posting on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Sign up to it and add the message you want to appear on your wall. Once you have added your message, this will be posted automatically for all of us at the same time – Wednesday 20th at 12 noon. How cool is that! Here’s the link. We need 100 people to sign up so get your friends to add their names as well.
This is a very important day for lots of reason. It is the Transgender Day of Remembrance, the day of the first vote on the equal marriage bill at the Scottish Parliament, and of course our Day of Silence and Love is a Human Right Jamnesty.
Our Day of Silence is about solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community and recognition of the silencing effect that bullying, discrimination and persecution has on people who identify as LGBTQ+. We will be promoting this solidarity action with the t-shirts that we are decorating at the meeting on Tuesday and putting up the posters that we will have completed around campus. We will also be launching a Facebook publicity campaign using Thunderclap (as mentioned above). Make sure you sign up to it!
Jamnesty tickets are selling quickly so please don’t forget to bring the right amount of money to get all the tickets you need on Tuesday. I will not be giving away any more tickets unless they are paid for so make sure you know how many you need and get friends to give you the money. Of course there will be some tickets on the door so if you/your friends are not 100% sure if you can make it then you will still be able to come. Tickets on the door are £4.
The Equality Network has organised an equal marriage rally to take place outside the Scottish Parliament from 12.30pm till 2pm ahead of the vote on the marriage equality bill. If you are free during the day and want to head to Edinburgh to take part, here are the details.
STAR (Student Action for Refugees) are holding a meeting at 12noon in the Fraser Building to discuss setting up a food bank for the charity Positive Action in Housing. Unfortunately their website seems to be down at the moment but here is their Facebook page. This is a charity whose work includes helping asylum seekers and refugees who are experiencing destitution and the food bank would help to provide the much needed aid for those who have been made homeless during the asylum process. They are one of very few places that can help destitute asylum seekers as they provide an emergency fund and shelter.
Please feel free go along if you are interested in helping to formulate plans for the food bank on campus.
Have a great weekend and see you on Tuesday!
Ruth
