Reply-To: Avi Chomsky
To: North Shore Colombia Solidarity Committee
Date: Apr 7, 2006 10:24 AM

Another update, from Chloe Schwabe in Washington:

Things have picked up steam in the last day or so. Jose Julio was kind of tired and suffering from neck pains when he arrived, and still gets them when he tries to read. We got him some vitamin B, which he requested and seems to be helping him.

We had a really good meeting with Jeff Vogt yesterday at WOLA (he was previously working on the Tabaco case at ILRF). He thought it could still be possible to sue in the US. He thought a case against Exxon might be weak since they have already sold the company and might say that it is not their responsibility anymore. We could sue the subsidiaries of the other companies, but it would mean mutliple cases since they are all in different states. He thought the best might be to sue the other corporations in their home countries. He thought the OECD was a good way to go, although it is a mild castigation.

He suggested that we talk with ILRF and sent us down there. His aide also helped us make three visits in congress for today and I made one via a friend of mine.

Last night he had a good presentation at All Souls Church. I reached out to some different groups and we had a different crowd than we usually have at CHRC events. Everyone was really touched and we raised some money. THe Colombian Human RIghts Committee is going to take up the issue at its next meeting to see if we will continue working with Tabaco more seriously.

Working backwards, Wednesday he met with Marino Cordoba of AFRODES. Marino invited him to come back in June for a conference of Afro-Colombians. A few days would be spent with them altogether as a group strategizing how they will work with congress (in particular the Black Caucus) to come up with real solutions to displacement in Colombia. Then they will have meetings with Congress, the World Bank and other institutions as well as a few public panels. I am wating for a proposal from Marino, but I wanted to throw that out there to everyone.

Then we went to Leslie Gill's class and showed the movie to her class. There were lots of questions. She had some law students in that class it seemed. There was one woman really familiar with the terminology he used that supported Lesley and I with the translation. It in the end was a small group, but still worth it. In the end they were able to give a full honorarium to pay for the cost of the ticket back to Boston.
Today, we ae going to try and talk with Oxfam and encourage them to do a prorgam in Colombia under their mines and community program. Then we are going to meet with BIC (Bank information center- they follow and monitor ifi's). Then we are going to meet with Derek from the ILRF. I want to thank them for the ticket, update them on what we are doing and see where we are with the case or maybe if they have other ideas of who we might talk to (such as the CJA mentioned in a different email. They have won some powerful cases related to El Salvador. I do distantly know someone who works there. He is the son of a friend of my family).

Then we have a brown bag at WOLA with many of the NGOs in town working on human rights issues in Colombia. After that, we have 3 or 4 visits in Congress (one woman said we should stop by and she would talk with us if there is time).

If there is time, I might try to go to Global Rights and talk with them about if they think we do have a case in front of the InterAmerican Court on Human RIghts, which Jose Julio says the community has been working on with the Comision de Abogados. Jeff was going to see someone from this group this weekend in New York and was going to put in a word to them to see how this process is going too. I guess they have been talking about this for three years with them.

We also went to look at the cherry blossoms at the tidal basin and to rock creek park with a detour to the zoo- which ultimately we both found depresssing.

Bueno, that is the update for right now.

I will fill you in on how the visits in Congress go. I think we are going to talk about the Free trade agreement and what possibility there would be for the members to write a letter to the government to enforce the supreme court ruling.

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North Shore Colombia Solidarity Committee: http://home.comcast.net/~nscolombia/

Posted by nscolombia at 2:53 PM EDT

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