Glasgow University Amnesty International

Meeting on Tuesday 29th October and our Pub Quiz Today (Sunday)!

Hi everyone,

Welcome to our new members! It’s lovely to still have people joining the society. If you missed the meeting, you can read Ali’s blog on what happened.

I hope you are all remembering our PUB QUIZ TODAY!! Looking forward to seeing you then! We will be starting at 7.30pm in Jim’s Bar, QMU and those of you who are bringing home-baking, thank you in advance, we will add them to the stall with our tote bags.

Conflict-Free Campus Initiative

If you didn’t make this meeting (2 weeks ago), you can read the blog to see what this is all about. Some people who were there said that they would ask certain lecturers if they would support the campaign – please do this is you haven’t already. I will also remind folk on Tuesday!

Next meeting – Tuesday 29^th 5pm, QMU

We have been unsuccessful in finding another meeting room for Tuesday so will still be in Committee Room 1.

Unfortunately the Equality Network and Scottish Transgender Alliance do not have anyone who can come and talk to us on Tuesday, but there is a small chance of getting a speaker towards the end of term leaving us with the opportunity to show a recent documentary featuring Stephen Fry who has travelled to various countries where the gay community face persecution, violence and potentially the death penalty.

As this is officially our final LGBT rights meeting, we were hoping to finish with a quick letter writing action to the International Olympic Committee to send with our photos.

Debbie will be bringing along our previous Secret Policeman’s Ball posters so that we can think about the design for this year, and for those of you who want to enter the competition, this is an opportunity to get started!

November Campaign – Women’s Rights with a focus on India

For those of you who have just joined us, we voted this as our 2^nd campaign of the year. At Tuesday’s meeting we will have a discussion about what particular topics to cover in our meetings in November and possible campaign actions we want to do.

Day of Silence

Wednesday 20^th November – Day of Silence

‘The National Day of Silence is a day of action in which students across the country vow to take a form of silence to call attention to the silencing effect of anti-LGBT bullying and harassment in schools.’

Although the date for this is in April and focuses on schools in the USA, we thought this was a brilliant solidarity action and even better when we can end our Day of Silence with our Jamnesty gig.Â We will invite the LGBTQ+ Society to take part with us and anyone else who wants to join in is welcome to, so spread the word!

Love is a Human Right Jamnesty

Wednesday 20^th November, The Halt 2 (Woodlands Road), 7.30pm

Well the banners are looking amazing! Thank you to everyone last week who helped make them J Ali is printing off all of our LGBT campaign photos as well so that we can stick these up all over the venue.

We are going to start selling tickets for this event because the Halt 2 need to know numbers in advance in order to organise staffing for the night. For this reason we decided to make tickets £3 in advance and £4 on the door- so remember to get yours on Sunday at the Pub Quiz, or at our next meeting.

See you later on!

Ruth

Tags: cfci, competition, fundraising, india, jamnesty, lgbt, love is a human right, pub quiz, spb, women's rights
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Meeting Round Up: LGBT Rights Campaign (Tuesday 22nd October)

The focus of our meeting last Tuesday (22^nd October) was our LGBT Rights campaign.Â This is the first of our campaigns running over the 2013/14 academic year and includes a specific focus on Russia.

Why Russia? Increasing violence towards the LGBT community and repressive new laws have significantly infringed LGBT rights there.Â Despite being a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights the country seems to be moving away from the values of tolerance and open-mindedness that underpin the treaty.Â In 2007 Russia was selected to host the 2014 Winter Olympic games.Â Amnesty is concerned that the IOC has failed to preserve the Olympic ideal and see the detrimental effects of the discriminatory legislation.Â Russia is not alone.Â From Iran to Cameroon, many countries are experiencing a deteriorating LGBT Rights situation.

On this note, Dom and I (Ali) started off the meeting with a presentation outlining LGBT Rights around the world. Did you know that:

more than half of the world’s countries either directly oppose LGBT Rights or are unwilling to give recognition to them?
transgender people still have to undergo sterilisation before their gender is recognised in many European Countries?
in Nigeria a law was recently passed outlawing same-sex marriage, punishable with a 14-year prison term?

A big thanks to Josh from Amnesty Scotland who also talked about the campaign.

After the presentation everyone got stuck into banner decorating.Â This was for our ‘Love is a Human Right’ Jamnesty gig which will be held on Wednesday 20th November. The banners look really impressive and it was especially good to see new members getting painty!Â Meanwhile Rob was overseeing the photo campaign. Check out the updated pictures below.Â A small group then headed off to the Glasgow University Union to get their committee involved in this element of the campaign.Â As of Thursday we also have GUSA!

Finally, a few members headed into town after a quick bite of pizza to see the play Cured.Â The production was especially commissioned for the Glasgay festival: Scotland’s annual celebration of LGBT Culture. Inspired by real accounts of conversion therapy, two performers, Julie Hale and Mary Gapinski, uncovered the stories of four women dealing with the treatment’s effect.Â Cured really complimented the campaign, highlighting the stigmatization of many who consider themselves L, G, B or T.Â Despite dealing with serious issues both actresses got laughs throughout. Make sure you don’t miss out if the production runs again!

Hope to see everyone on Tuesday.

Ali

Tags: lgbt
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Photos from Week 5 Meeting – Banner Making and more LGBT Photo Campaign

Thank you to everyone who took part in our continuing LGBT photo campaign, and a big well done to everyone who was involved in the banner-making!

Tags: banner, lgbt, meeting
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LGBT Photo Campaign (Updated!)

Thanks to everyone who has taken part so far. If you haven’t taken part yet and want to get involved, please come along to one of our meetings or contact us using the details on our about page.

Additional thanks to Josh from Amnesty Scotland for coming along to take part too!

Thanks to the GUU board for taking part in the campaign.

Thanks as well to the GUSA Council for being involved in the campaign.

Thanks to these guys who are probably the last three to be taken for LGBT photo campaign at a meeting this year:

Big thanks to all the QMU board for taking part in the campaign too!

Well done and thanks to everyone who took part. Look out for our photos going up around campus, and at Jamnesty on the 20th November!

Tags: lgbt, photos
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Tuesday 22nd October: LGBT Rights with Pizza and a Trip to The Arches

Hey everyone,

We are back in Committee Room 1 in the QMU on Tuesday at 5pm.

Read the blog of what happened in last week’s meeting on our conflict minerals campaign. If you missed this then you can still take action in writing to David Newall – all of the details are in the presentation which is now on our website.

Attached is a list of events happening at the CCA which are all related to human rights and some of our chosen campaigns. Scroll down to see what’s coming up.

Student Conference

We have filled our places for the London Student Conference in November BUT are on stand-by for an update of spare places that may be passed on to larger groups like ours. If you wanted to come but didn’t book your place, then let us know and there is a chance that you can still come with us! More information on the conference itself can be found here.

Next meeting

We are continuing our LGBT photo campaign on Tuesday as well as starting our banners and posters for our ‘Love is a Human Right’ Jamnesty gig on Wednesday 20^th November. Ali and Dom and are going to take the meeting giving a short presentation on the persecution of the LGBT community in Russia as is the focus of our current campaign.

After the meeting, we are heading to see ‘Stef Smith: Cured’ at The Arches 7.30pm. You can buy your ticket in advance from here but there is an additional £1.50 charge, otherwise you can hopefully get one on the door. Â During the meeting we will organise some pizzas for those who want or you can head early and get food from somewhere and meet us at The Arches, it is entirely up to you. If you’re sticking with us though, we’ll be leaving at 6.45pm to get the subway into town.

Tuesday 29^th – Guest speakers

Our campaigns officer Dom is STILL working very hard to get someone from Equality Network/the Scottish Transgender Alliance/Patrick Harvie MSP (or all of them!) to come and talk to us about LGBT rights and UK based campaigns. Â We’ll keep you posted, but fingers crossed.

Pub Quiz THIS SUNDAY

Jana and Duncan have been writing the rounds, and if anyone wants to bring home-baking for the cake stall then that would be lovely. We’ll also have our tote bags that members worked hard to make a couple of weeks ago, so come along on Sunday and bring friends. We are making it £3 entry per person, of which £2 will go to us and £1 will be added to the winning pot.

‘Love is a Human Right’ Jamnesty

We have had a date and venue change for our fundraiser gig and that has been due to capacity issues. We are now having it at The Halt 2 on Woodlands Road on Wednesday 20^th November. This venue is a much better size and still has a stage area for performers as well as a separate bar.

See you Tuesday in the QMU!

Ruth

Our promotional partner, the CCA, has put together a list of relevant events happening from now till December:

Download Upcoming-Events-at-the-CCA-Sauchiehall-Street.doc (DOC, 33KB)

Tags: lgbt, newsletter
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Meeting on Tuesday 15th October- Conflict Minerals, The Student Conference and our Pub Quiz!

Hello everyone, sorry this is so late.

**IMPORTANT: there has been a double booking for our usual slot in Committee Room 1 so we are moving to the ST ANDREWS BUILDING ROOM 443A at the bottom of Gibson Street, opposite The Old Schoolhouse. There will be someone inside to show you where to go.**

First things first, congratulations bakers and crusaders – what a success on Thursday! We certainly marked International Day Against the Death Penalty, raising £121.30 and collecting over 60 signatures for Reggie Clemons: a great start to the year. Thanks again to those of you who stood in the beautiful sunshine/freezing shade to help out.

In summary:

Our campaign plans for the rest of October
‘Stef Smith: Cured’ at The Arches on Tuesday 22^nd
BOOK YOUR PLACE FOR THE STUDENT CONFERNCE! See below for details.
Our Pub Quiz is on the 27^th in Jim’s Bar

Tomorrow’s meeting – Conflict minerals and the crisis in the DRC

We shall be taking a break from LGBT rights for this week and looking at our conflict minerals campaign. We need to get this back up and running before David Newall (our Secretary of Court) starts thinking that we have disappeared. Â I will take you through the Conflict Free Campus Initiative’s mission and give an overview of the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and how we as consumers are linked to this deadly conflict through the technology that we use every day.

Tuesday 22^nd– LGBT rights continued, pizza and ‘Cured’ at The Arches

Presentation on LGBT persecution in Russia. This is when we will take a closer look at the situation in Russia decide how best to use our photos and publicise our ‘Day of Silence’ solidarity action.

I know that some of you didn’t make last week’s meeting and therefore haven’t participated in our LGBT photo campaign, but don’t worry, because we will continue with this the week after. In the meantime, we shall be adding photos of the SRC, GUSA and hopefully the QMU and GUU to the bundle.Also at this meeting we will need to make our visual props for our ‘Love is a Human Right’ Jamnesty in November so we’ll have the paints out again.

This is the day that we were hoping to go and see ‘Stef Smith: Cured’ at The Arches in town. Since it starts at 7.30pm, a brilliant suggestion was put forward for us to grab some Dominos ‘Two for Tuesday’ action during the meeting so that we can head into town together after the meeting. I am currently waiting for a reply about getting a group discount for the play, so will get back to you with that – without discount, tickets are £8.

Tuesday 29^th – Guest speakers

Our campaigns officer Dom is working very hard to get someone from Equality Network/the Scottish Transgender Alliance/Patrick Harvie MSP (or all of them!) to come and talk to us about LGBT rights and UK based campaigns. Â We’ll keep you posted, but fingers crossed.

Student Conference – book your place!

We will be finalising numbers on Tuesday so that we can book our travel so let us know by then if you are coming!

Dates: 2^nd-3^rd November 2013

Location: Amnesty International UK HQ – London

Cost: £20 + travel

Fun to be had: Are you kidding? 250 students in the same place at the same time, I guarantee it will be one of your most memorable experiences at university.

There have been several people interested in heading down to London for the Student Conference, which is great. We have 8 places to fill so get cracking and book your place here. Also let us know if you are planning to come and we can all arrange our travel together.

These Amnesty weekends are truly inspirational and empowering.

This year’s agenda includes:

Syria: ‘I can still see hope’
Afghanistan: Violence against women
Sri Lanka: Torture and impunity
Northern Ireland: Failure to deal with the legacy of past human rights abuses
Looking to Amnesty’s future

As well as this, there will be workshops and campaign actions to get involved with, not forgetting a social event on Saturday night. We shall also be collecting our award for our Secret Policeman’s Ball 2013!

[If you are unable to attend the Student Conference in November, remember that Action for Change happens in March. This is a similar weekend in terms of structure and workshops, but will have different speakers and talks and campaign actions. ]

PUB QUIZ – Sunday 27^th in Jim’s Bar

We are all set for our pub quiz – all we need is for you to bring friends. We are making it £3 entry per person, of which £2 will go to us and £1 will be added to the winning pot.

Game on.

See you (somewhere) tomorrow,

Ruth

Tags: lgbt, newsletter, pub quiz, student conference
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Meeting Tuesday 8th October: Let’s Get Down To Business

Hope you’re all having a good weekend!

If you missed my update earlier this week, our chosen campaign for October is LGBT rights with a focus on Russia. You can check the website for our full list of campaigns for 2013-2014, as well as all the campaign action ideas put forward last week.

I am trying hard to keep the newsletters brief, but there are just so many exciting things I don’t want to leave out. For those of you who are too busy to read it all, I’ve written a summary just for you.

At Tuesday’s meeting we are splitting the committee rooms according to upcoming events
The elections are taking place at 6pm with drinks afterwards at the Old Schoolhouse on Woodlands
LGBT events (scroll down)

Here’s the plan for Tuesday:

Committee Room 1 – Campaigns

‘End the Death Penalty’ demo preparation

Our first demo will be next Thursday 10^th October, which is of course International Day Against the Death Penalty. Â We have some banners made in previous years and some AK-47s (of the cardboard variety) that we can put to good use so we need everyone who is free on Thursday to contribute ideas for an effective demonstration on library hill. We will be bringing along paints, sheets and cardboard to continue from past creative efforts.

LGBT Rights in Russia

We will begin our first campaign with a photo action as suggested by someone last week. We will have Robert (our website manager) along with his super expensive camera to take photos of us sending messages of solidarity to LGBT students on our campus and in the wider community. Â We can also use this photo action to send a message to the Olympic Committee which has ignored Principle 6 of the Olympic Charter which states:

‘Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement’.

Our third photo action shall be focused on Vladimir Putin’s violent persecution of the LGBT community in Russia which we discussed on Tuesday which, believe it or not, is the same day that it was announced that he has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Â A NOBEL PEACE PRIZE!!! Oh dear.

Committee Room 2 – Fundraisers

This room shall be finalising our list of events for the year and planning our first semester fundraisers:

Bake sale alongside Thursday’s demo

We still have GU Amnesty tote bags that we can have on the stall as well and hopefully more will arrive by Tuesday for us to paint.

Pub quiz in October

We need to finalise our date for this and delegate responsibilities for running the quiz.

‘Love is a Human Right’ gig night in November, for which I am pleased to say that we have already recruited some acoustic talent!

Nikola will be looking for help with poster designs for our pub quiz and gig night.

Elections for Ordinary Board Members

The elections will take place at 6pm. Anyone who wants to stand for OBM but can’t make 6pm, please get in touch either via email or Facebook and we will try to make some arrangements.

Afterwards we shall head to the Old Schoolhouse for some more socialising.

LGBT Events

The Glasgay festival has officially begun and there are a whole lot of events taking place between now and 9^th November.

In particular:

Tuesday 22^nd October – ‘Cured’ 7.30pm @ The Arches

‘Inspired by real accounts of conversion therapy, two performers, Julie Hale and Mary Gapinski, uncover the stories of four women in a brand new play about love, identity and The Golden Girls.’

I think this event looks really good and happens to take place on a Tuesday after our meeting – if people are keen then we can go as a group. Tickets are £8.

Equality Network and Scottish Transgender Alliance event:

Thursday 17^th October – ‘Including Intersectional Identities Film and Discussion Event’ 2pm Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

‘The films focus on Minority Ethnic LGBT and Disabled LGBT intersectional people and include their ideas on how services can better include them. A discussion about including intersectional identities in services will follow the screening.’

This event is free but places are limited. If you don’t have classes on Thursday at 2pm then give this a look.

Well done for making it to the bottom,

Ruth

Tags: death penalty, elections, fundraising, lgbt, stall
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