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Stories tagged with “Colombia”

Election

Republican Poll Worker Complains About High Turnout Among ‘People Of Color’

By Adam Peck on Nov 16, 2012 at 1:35 pm

A screenshot from a video of a GOP poll worker in Colorado.On Thursday, the head of the Maine Republican Party found himself on the wrong side of controversy after he questioned the legitimacy of “dozens” of black people voting at the polls on Election Day. “Nobody in town knows anyone who’s black,” Charlie Webster — who has since apologized for his comments — declared.

Such faulty logic is more widespread throughout the Republican party, it seems. Racial justice news site ColorLines published a video the day after the election of a self-identified Republican poll worker in Colorado who can be heard phoning in his concerns that “a very high concentration of people of color” were turning out in his precinct, and that such turnout was suspicious because he normally sees fewer minorities “at the mall”:

“Yeah, a very high concentration of people of color. It’s not a problem, but, you know, when I go to the mall I see, you know this amount. Well I’m seeing at least double or triple that amount here. So what I’m saying is, it looks to me like this voting location was selected as the place they told everyone to come.”

Watch it:

As with Webster, the poll worker, identified by Color Lines as Dayton Conway, offers no evidence of any foul play at all other than his gut feeling that there were more minorities at his polling location than he normally sees at the mall. Conway perhaps failed to note that his polling location — the Arapahoe County CentrePoint Plaza in Aurora, Colorado — was one of 32 designated voting centers where voters who are registered anywhere in Arapahoe County could cast their ballots, meaning the turnout there might not be reflective of the precinct’s actual demographics.

Sadly, Conway’s instinctual suspicion of minority voters is something of a trend for Republicans this year. After the election, Rep. Paul Ryan blamed “urban voters” for costing him the vice presidency, while Mitt Romney argued that Obama won reelection by doling out “gifts” like health care, affordable education and food to minority groups and the impoverished.

Justice

Will Obama Follow Latin America’s Lead And Decriminalize Petty Drug Possession?

By Aviva Shen on Jul 2, 2012 at 6:30 pm

Today in GQ, Marc Ambinder reports on Obama’s second-term plans to tackle the War on Drugs. But Colombia may have already jump-started the process. On Friday, Colombia’s Constitutional Court approved a government proposal decriminalizing possession of small amounts of cocaine and marijuana.

This reform has been in the works for at least a year, when the Supreme Court threw out former President Alvaro Uribe’s draconian drug laws, including a ban on personal recreational use. Now that the government’s proposal has been approved, anyone caught with less than 22 grams of marijuana or one gram of cocaine for personal use may be treated for intoxication but may not be prosecuted or detained.

Colombia also has a bill in the works to legalize drug crops like marijuana, coca and poppy. Since 1961, the U.S. has led the mass herbicide spraying of coca and poppy crops in Colombia. By legalizing the crops, Colombia would almost certainly halt this practice, as Peru did last year, perhaps forcing the U.S. to rethink its tactics.

In the meantime, Obama might look at Colombia’s decriminalization as a model for U.S. policy reform. Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, pointed out how current U.S. drug policy is out of step with the rest of the world:

The United States clearly lags far behind Europe and Latin America in ending the criminalization of drug possession. Momentum for reform is growing with respect to decriminalization of marijuana possession, with Massachusetts reducing penalties in 2008, California in 2010, Connecticut in 2011 and Rhode Island earlier this year. All states, however, treat possession of other illegal drugs as a crime.

The tide is turning rapidly. Last year, a Gallup poll found support for marijuana legalization at a record-high 50 percent. Just a few months ago, New York Governor Anthony Cuomo tried to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana earlier this year, with the blessing of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the NYPD. Last week, Rahm Emanuel and Chicago’s City Council succeeded in a vote to decriminalize 15 grams or less of pot. Even one of Obama’s top advisers on drug policy recently said that drug addiction should be treated as a public health issue, not a crime. And Colombia, along with other Latin American countries increasingly hostile to the War on Drugs, are not likely to let the issue lie for long.

NEWS FLASH

Colombian Court Protects Gay Couples’ Public Affection | Colombia’s constitutional court has ruled that same-sex couples have the same right to express affection in public as their heterosexual counterparts. The case originated after a gay couple was kicked out of a shopping mall for kissing. The judge described the security guard’s actions as “discrimination that only affected gay couples.” The same court ruled last week that a gay American journalist could adopt two Colombian children.

NEWS FLASH

Colombia Approves Adoption By U.S. Gay Man | The Colombian Constitutional Court has approved the adoption of two brothers by New York Times journalist Chandler Burr, who is gay. Burr had finalized the boys adoption, but when officials learned he was gay, they canceled his newly adopted sons’ emigration visas, preventing him from returning to the U.S. with his family. A prominent Colombian bishop and the country’s Inspector General argued that Burr had a “disorder” and would be a threat to the children. In 2010, over two-thirds of the children adopted in Colombia, where nearly half of the population lives below the poverty line, were adopted by foreigners.

Climate Progress

Medellin’s Amazing Metro System: Colombia Uses Public Transport To Drive Societal Change

By Climate Guest Blogger on Mar 13, 2012 at 10:35 am

by Jorge Madrid

The public transportation system in Medellin, Colombia, is one of the most successful in the world. It is successful for promoting not just environmental sustainability, but social equity as well.

In 2012, it was named one of the top transport systems in the world by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), a global consortium of organizations founded in 1985 to promote sustainable transportation worldwide:

“The city [of Medillin] transformed violence and despair into hope and opportunity, using sustainable transport as one of the key levers to drive change,” said ITDP board member Holger Dalkmann.

The crown jewel of the city’s transportation system is the Metro de Medellín, a network of clean and efficient metro cars that serves over half a million (553,000) passengers every day.  This project was financed by a public-private partnership led by the city; construction took ten years, with the last major expansion completed in 2006.  The system saves 175,000 tons of C02 every year, the equivalent of planting 380,000 trees that would occupy 11% of the city’s land mass.  Metro calculates that it saves the city $1.5 billion in respiratory health costs every year, and $4 billion in reduced traffic accidents and congestion.

Perhaps the most impressive feature of the metro system is the world renowned metro cablé system, a network of 9 cable car systems that take passengers up steep mountainsides that line the Valley of Medellin.  The lines were completed in 2010 with plans for future expansion.  The metro cable system has revolutionized mobility and accessibility for residents of Colombia’s second largest city, particularly the poorest — and often most violent — communities that line the valley of Medellin’s mountainous region.

Read more

Climate Progress

Poisoned Climate: Still Submerged In Colombia

By Guest Blogger on Feb 13, 2012 at 5:18 pm

Our guest blogger is Alice Thomas, Climate Displacement Program Manager, Refugees International. In May, 2011, Alice wrote how the extreme floods of Colombia were devastating the nation. This post describes Colombia’s continued fight for survival in our poisoned climate.

As we approach the town of Manatí, in northern Colombia, I look eagerly out the window for signs of change. When I was here almost a year ago, makeshift shelters and tents lined the sides of the road. Random pieces of furniture were piled nearby: a refrigerator or a rocking chair – anything people could save from the floodwaters.

Today the tents are gone. But just outside of town, we turn off the road and into a lot, where temporary shelters made of fiberboard and corrugated metal have been constructed. I see Irida emerge from one of them. Smiling and laughing, we embrace each other.

Irida is one of approximately 225,000 people who were affected when unprecedented rains in the fall of 2010 caused the nearby Dique Canal to rupture. The break in the canal, which connects Colombia’s coastal city of Cartagena to the Magdalena River, submerged half of the northern state of Atlántico under 80 million cubic meters of water. When I first visited Manatí in March 2011, half of the town was still underwater, and Irida was living under plastic sheeting after being evicted from the local school. Irida’s house, which she showed me by canoe, had water up to the rooftop.

To some extent, Irida was lucky. Hers was one of the first families in the town able to move into these temporary shelters last April. In many of the nearby towns we have visited, they were not completed until three months ago.

But the shelter where Irida now lives was designed to last only three months. She has been there for almost a year. Worse than that, the floodwaters have still not dissipated, and her house is still flooded. According to the state governor’s office, 60 percent of the area that flooded when the Dique Canal burst in 2010 is still underwater today. Pumping has proven ineffective because much of this area was once wetland and is now returning to its natural state. So Irida and the roughly 600 other families in Manatí who’ve lost their homes are now being told they will have to relocate.

The day after our reunion with Irida, we join a town hall meeting where the governor tells a schoolyard full of flood-affected families that his priority is to find land and build homes for the thousands still displaced more than a year later. But Irida tells me that she doesn’t want to take the piece of land being offered. It is too far away from the center of town, she says. Before the floods, she ran a small grocery shop out of her house. If she relocates, she will be unable to restart her business and will be isolated from her community.

Like so many other Colombians we are meeting on this trip, Irida is quick to smile and laugh. But the pain and anxiety are nevertheless visible on her face. Beyond the relocation troubles, she has many more immediate worries. The toilets at her temporary shelter do not work, and two of the plastic water tanks have recently ruptured in the heat. The Colombian government discontinued food deliveries to the area in November. Her husband has been unable to find work. Without permanent homes or work, how can the process of recovery even begin?

I am at a loss for words as we say our goodbyes. I hope things will be better for Irida the next time we meet; I wish I could be more certain.

NEWS FLASH

Officials Investigate Wrongful Deportation Of Texas Teen Sent To Colombia | U.S. immigration officials say they’re investigating the case of Jakadrien Lorece Turner, a Dallas teen who ran away from home and gave a fake name to police — only to find herself being deported to Colombia. Turner, an American citizen, has been missing for a year and was finally discovered in Bogota, Colombia. American officials insist they followed procedure and there was no wrongdoing. But Turner’s grandmother says they should have done more to ascertain her real identity. Not to mention that something obviously must have gone awry for a 14-year-old to be sent to a foreign country where so had no history and no family. The U.S. embassy has reportedly submitted the necessary documents for Turner to return to the U.S., but there’s no word yet when she’ll be back in the country.

By Marie Diamond on Jan 6, 2012 at 11:00 am

LGBT

Colombian Bishop Worries That Gay Dad Could Develop Sexual Attraction To His Two Adopted Boys

By Igor Volsky on Dec 14, 2011 at 9:35 am

Chandler Burr and his adopted children

Earlier this week, a Colombian judge “ordered Colombia’s family welfare institute (ICBF) to return two Colombian minors to the custody of their adoptive father, Chandler Burr.” Burr, an American journalist, formally adopted the boys in March 2011, but temporarily lost custody of his children after he casually mentioned that he was gay.

But in an interview with with the newspaper El Tiempo, Colombian bishop Juan Vicente Cordoba and the country’s Inspector General strongly criticized the decision, suggesting that “the new father may become attracted to his adopted children” given his “disorder of sexual identity“:

When asked about Mr Burr’s suitability as a father the bishop said, “I do not know him and I am not accusing him of anything, but one thing is clear and that is that he has homosexual tendencies and he is going to receive a boy of 10-years-old and an adolescent of 13, and between them there won’t be a father-son relationship.” He continued, “He will receive two children at an age when they may be attractive to him, which could be a temptation“.

Cordoba, who is also a graduated psychologist, insisted that homosexuality was universally considered by mental health professionals to be a “disorder of sexual identity”.

When asked whether the children were at risk, Cordoba suggested that it was not advisable to have allowed a homosexual man to adopt male children, given his tendencies, and that female children may have been safer in Mr Burr’s care. Alejandro Ordoñez, Colombia’s Inspector General and known for his conservative Catholic views, supported the bishop’s opposition to the adoption, given that “there are apparent contradictions regarding the validity of his intimate relationships with same sex individuals”.

A range of studies, including the the American Psychological Association, have concluded that beliefs that people of the same sex “are not fit parents have no empirical foundation.” Colombia is currently home to more than 8,800 children “who are deemed difficult to adopt because of their age.”

NEWS FLASH

New Korea, Colombia, And Panama Trade Agreements Advance In Senate And House | This evening, the House of Representatives voted to advance trade agreements with Panama, South Korea, and Colombia. The vote for the Colombian trade agreement was most contentious, with all but 31 House Democrats voting against the agreement and only 9 Republicans voting “no.” As of this writing, the Senate has also voted to approve both the Panama and Colombian trade agreements, with 66 senators voting in favor of the Columbian agreement and 77 senators voting in favor of the Panama agreement.

By Zaid Jilani on Oct 12, 2011 at 10:57 pm

Economy

Memo To The Chamber: Colombia Is Still The Most Dangerous Place In The World To Be In A Union

By Zaid Jilani on Jun 21, 2011 at 11:50 am

An iconic photograph of the funeral of an assassinated trade unionist in Colombia.

Across the nation’s capital, business lobbyists are working furiously to hash out the details of a new trade agreement with Colombia. Tentatively known as the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), the deal was approved by the Colombian Congress in 2007 and has awaited U.S. ratification since then.

While business groups have lobbied heavily in favor of the agreement, a number of human rights and labor groups have opposed it, saying that Colombia has failed to make needed progress on human and labor rights standards and that the agreement may further undermine these rules and regulations.

Over at ChamberPost, John Murphy, the Vice President of International Affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, makes the argument that violence in Colombia has subsided and that it’s actually much more unsafe to be an American citizen than a Colombian union member:

Today, homicide rates are higher in the United States (5.0 per 100,000) than among Colombia’s labor union members (3.4 per 100,000). A resident of the District of Columbia is seven times more likely to be murdered than a Colombian labor union member. The allegation that labor union members are being targeted for assassination today comes from U.S. labor unions, not Colombians.

At the Huffington Post, Gary Shapiro, the president of the Consumer Electronics Association, makes a similar argument, saying, “Colombian union leaders visiting Washington this week are in more danger here than in their home country.” Shapiro then went on to point out in the comments that Murphy wrote an additional post mocking the AFL-CIO labor union for using a 13-year-old picture of a union member’s assassination to talk about violence against labor — with the suggestion that declining violence means that such scenes are not nearly as pressing.

Shaprio and Murphy’s statistics are deceptive. Victims of homicide are largely victims who aren’t targeted specifically due to occupation, while union members are being targeted specifically for their labor activism. Furthermore, both men leave out a crucial fact: Colombia is still the most dangerous place in the world to be in a labor union.

In fact, according to data from the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC) Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights, Colombia had 49 assassinations of labor officials in 2010 — more than the entire rest of the world combined (41 deaths were recorded elsewhere in the world in 2010). ThinkProgress has assembled the following graph comparing killings of trade unionists in Colombia with several other developing countries:

As you can see, Colombia easily leads the world in killings of union members. It is simply disingenuous to factor in other forms of killings — like common homicide — to absurdly claim that Colombian trade unionists are safe. After all, if Shapiro and Murphy decided to compare the murders of trade unionists between Colombia and the United States, the numbers would look completely different, because there were no assassinations of trade unionists of the United States last year.

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