High Road for Human Rights - Change
The Wind
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Former mayor Rocky launches new campaign to wipe out abuse
His High Road for Human Rights wants ordinary citizens to press leaders
for action against abuses
By María Villaseñor
The Salt Lake Tribune
Rocky Anderson is back on the campaign trail - sending mailers, giving
speeches, raising money.
But the former two-term Salt Lake City mayor isn't seeking votes; he's
seeking converts.
Anderson's nonprofit High Road for Human Rights sent out its first mass
mailing this week, mostly to Utahns, asking recipients to donate their time
and dollars to help eradicate human-rights abuses.
The mailer tells of four Utahns: a Tutsi who lived during the Rwandan
genocide, a Cambodian who endured Pol Pot's massacres, a Japanese-American
who was interned at Topaz and a Bosnian who saw his family suffer during
ethnic cleansings by Serb forces.
It's the atrocities these four survived that Anderson wants to prevent.
"What we've clearly seen over the years is most elected leaders don't
provide the leadership," Anderson said Friday in a phone interview
from Washington, D.C.
The former mayor said public officials wait to hear from constituents
before addressing genocide, torture, human trafficking and environmental
degradation. Meanwhile, he added, Americans assume their representatives
already are taking action against such abuses.
It's that "vicious cycle of complacency and complicity" that
Anderson credits in allowing people to vow never again to let atrocities
occur but then look away when genocide happens.
Anderson wants High Road members to press their leaders to make the United
States a force in preventing and stopping human-rights abuses and climate
change.
In the mailer, he urges people to, among other actions, speak to civic
groups, attend town meetings, talk with reporters, organize fundraisers,
write their representatives or pen letters to the editor. He hopes to set
up grass-roots chapters across the nation.
"We're pushing together both for greater consciousness about the
issues and the challenges and solutions," he said, "and also to
help bring about change in federal policy relating to human-rights abuses."
High Road for Human Rights
Peace and Human Rights Rally - May 28, 2008
High Road for Human Rights Launch - March 2008
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