by Jessica Mosby
USA

In an admirable effort to contribute to the dialogue on what to do to save the planet, Leonardo DiCaprio has recently released a documentary film, The 11th Hour, which he produced and narrates. However, if you are already feeling overwhelmed by the world’s problems and suffering, you probably shouldn’t see it. It might push you over the proverbial edge as surely as if you were a polar bear slipping unexpectedly off a melting glacier!

• Image courtesy of Warner Independent Pictures •

One problem is The 11th Hour’s narrative structure, or lack thereof: it is painfully short on the pizzazz needed to take environmentalism from the grassroots of individual action to an international movement. Instead, one expert pops up briefly on the screen (name, title, and credentials are dutifully noted) to lecture for a few minutes while seated in front of a black wall, then the film cuts to the next expert, and then the next. Occasionally the monotony of “expert” footage is broken up by cutting to montages of very basic news reels set to a musical score; at other times, digitally drawn diagrams appear, imposed next to an expert’s head to illustrate their points.

by Kelly Vásquez
USA

I have always been deeply affected and influenced by music. Depending on my mood, I happily switch between drastically varying genres, but from age six when I first heard Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong deftly banter back and forth at one another, I was hooked on jazz.

• A vintage sign from America's past. Photograph courtesy of The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia •

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

by Constance Manika
- Zimbabwe -

As I write this piece, a soldier is in critical condition at the army hospital after residents from the notorious suburb, Mufakose attacked him and three of his colleagues for "harassing innocent civilians". It’s another manifestation of what everyone in this country knows: Robert Mugabe has for all intents and purposes succeeded in turning the Zimbabwean army and police against their own people. Effectively, the police and the military have become extensions of his arms.

• Dzivarasekwa residents step over raw sewage leaking from unrepaired pipes. Photograph by the Combined Harare Residents Association. •

The police and army attack women and children who sell their wares to earn a living. Confiscating their goods, they charge that the women are conducting businesses in "undesignated" locations, yet the government destroyed these "legal" vending areas during Operation Murambatsvina! (To find out more, read Constance's article on Operation Murambatsvina)

The police and army have been known to disrupt demonstrations and protests - they are not ashamed to even beat up women with children on their backs. The unlucky ones arrested at these demonstrations are denied food and water, medical care and access to legal representation. When human rights lawyers seek their release, they are either chased away from the police stations or threatened with arrest themselves.

by Imelda V. Abaño
Philippines

• Women like this 70-year old landfill dweller in Baguio City must find water wherever they can.
Photograph by Imelda V. Abaño. •

In many developing countries, it’s a woman's job to collect water for cooking, cleaning, drinking and sanitation. Women and girls walk an average six kilometers each day to fetch water. They carry around 20 kilograms - roughly the weight of a piece of travel luggage - on their heads.

"We walk long distances every day, sometimes slipping on rocks in the process, but we go on. The water isn't good. It’s brackish. We don't have clean water but we have no choice," says Dela Cruz as she carries two water pails on her way back home.

by Halimah Abdallah Kisule
Uganda

• A roadside billboard in Zambia encourages the community to spray.
Photograph by Valentina Baj. •

In Uganda alone, 50 million man-hours are lost per year and 43% of school absenteeism can be attributed to malaria. The country’s Ministry of Health spends 10% of its annual budget on malaria efforts; 23-40% of all outpatient clinic visitors and 50% of all inpatient admissions are for malaria. And pregnant women are especially at risk: they are four times as likely to contract malaria than their non-pregnant counterparts; malaria can also lead to miscarriages. Over 100,000 people in Uganda die preventable deaths each year.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
Germany/Argentina

• Sept 12 - Austria: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner meets with Austrian chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer. •

by Imelda V. Abaño
Philippines

• Anti-Estrada protestors in 2001. Photograph by Imelda V. Abaño. •

The court found Mr. Estrada guilty of plunder - a capital offense - in a 262-page decision, though the former president will avoid the death penalty as it was recently abolished. He was acquitted of the perjury charges that alleged he had falsely declared his assets.

by Michelle Chen
USA

• Detail of mural co-painted by the author. Photograph by Michelle Chen. •

A smile blooms on the round face of a middle-aged man as his home begins to glow. For the past three days, he has watched volunteers, including me, spread paint over the front wall, washing the drab cement slab in a torrent of rainbow stripes and geometric shapes.

We work and sweat contentedly, surrounded by children who color in purple bubbles alongside us and never tire of crying, ‘What’s your name?’ in English. The wall fills up: a lone crude window is subsumed in a human-sized purple triangle, and paralleled on the right by a pink triangle containing an imaginary window, which looks out on a landscape that one of the inhabitants instructively scribbled for us on paper. As I put the last dots of color on a scene of a pink sailboat drifting before a forest with snow-capped mountains, the man offers a gentle suggestion.

by Halimah Abdallah Kisule
Uganda

• In Uganda, the widespread burning of counterfeit CDs has robbed musicians of their due. Photograph by Indi Samarajiva. •

As a result, individuals and organizations regularly infringed on the rights of artists, oftentimes pirating, duplicating and playing their music with impunity for economic gain. And the impunity continues to this day, one year after the Copy Right and Neighboring Rights Act 2006 was introduced into law.

Artists and other writers have long campaigned for a law that protects their work. Thanks to parliament and the cabinet, who presented the bill, they now have their wish.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

The issue of deforestation hasn’t been on my radar for some years. It is one of the problems on our planet that I’d assumed would be so obvious that surely “they” would have discovered something more sustainable than chopping down our last remaining virgin forests for profit!

Yet, earlier this month, while driving up the Oregon coast for the first time, to my horror, I saw that the situation appears to be even worse than the last time I checked. Fresh scars mar hillsides; small, random patches of trees are left standing with no apparent logic dictating what has been cut and what left behind. Virgin forest has been shamelessly clear-cut all the way from the edge of the highway, up and over what were once green, pristine mountainsides.

In this critical period of climate change, healthy forests play a crucial role. They abate global warming by absorbing and storing carbon dioxide. Thriving forests also regulate the water cycle and stabilize soils. What look more like Christmas tree farms have replaced some of the old forest land. These young trees will take decades of growth to absorb and store the same amount of carbon their old growth ancestors once did. When wilderness is destroyed, the carbon it stored is either burned or oxidized. The threat of deforestation is even greater today than it was twenty years ago. With all the discussion surrounding biofuels, one topic embarrassingly absent is “where will all the land needed to produce biofuels come from”?

by Megan Tady
USA

If only “Find the Warhawk Dressed in Sheep’s Clothing,” were a children’s game. Unfortunately, it’s a real life scenario that US voters face as we weigh the options of the Democratic presidential candidates placed before us like limp split peas on a platter when we asked for carrots.

Most of the candidates are dressing for show, and when the party’s over, they slip into something more comfortable, which just happens to be a charging general’s uniform. After all, a politician is a politician is a politician.

The two main political parties in the US – the Democrats and the Republicans – are traditionally pitted against each other in the media with descriptors that evoke good cop versus bad cop scenarios or, in more poetic terms long in use, for some reason they are referred to with winged similes. The Republicans, who currently hold the US hostage with their White House presence, are most often characterized as “warhawks” for their zeal in pursuing war and violence, supposedly to both protect and further America’s “interests.” Democrats, on the other hand, are portrayed as “doves” for their commitment, at least theoretically, to non-aggressive, diplomatic strategies during confrontation.

by Imelda V. Abaño
Philippines

• Opening session of the conference. Photograph courtesy of AIS 2007 •

by Jessica Mosby
USA

• Image courtesy of IFC •

The documentary film, The Devil Came on Horseback, which is currently playing across the United States, spends 85 minutes answering that very question. The film is pure humanitarian propaganda: a call-to-action to stop the killing and displacement of innocent people.

by Natasha Dokovska
Macedonia

19-year old Natasha Kmetovska and 10-year old Heroldina Iljazi both died last year after being hit by stray bullets; their killers have yet to be found. Natasha was killed at the New Year’s celebration held in downtown Skopje, Macedonia’s capital. Little Heroldina was struck and killed in her own yard by a stray bullet fired during a wedding celebration in her neighborhood. In both cases the police say they are continuing their search for the perpetrators, but they persist in classifying the deaths as accidental rather than criminal.

• Photograph by Jonathan Sopko •

An 11-year old girl was recently injured in the Albanian-dominated Gazi Baba settlement in Skopje, where firing guns at family celebrations is steeped in tradition; there isn’t a single celebration without gunfire. The girl was playing on the balcony of her home when she was hit in the back by a stray bullet. She was immediately rushed to Red City Hospital where doctors began treating her injuries. She is still fighting for her life.

Only one day later, three-year-old Jana was walking with her mother through the yard of her daycare center when she was shot in the foot by a stray bullet. She too was sent to the hospital, but despite her doctors’ best efforts, the injury will leave her disabled for life.

by Louise Belfrage
News Editor, The WIP
Argentina/Sweden

Having spent the summer months in Europe, away from my home in busy, wintry Buenos Aires, many observations have become permanent tenants in my mind. One of the issues that I am most consumed by is how much personal interest in or caring about critical international issues differs from continent to continent. Personally, I find myself hungrily reading everything written on the four yearlong conflict in Sudan and the horrific, unabated genocide in Darfur.

• A young African man at NYU's
"One Week for Darfur"
candlelight vigil held in March.
Photograph by Sarah VanTassel. •

I encountered similar levels of disinterest in France and in Italy. The French seem to be either very upset or very thrilled about their new Le President de la Republique, as many call Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy. Italians on the other hand seem most concerned about the difficulties switching to the European currency is causing them. They complain loudly about how they no longer can afford the month-long vacations they used to be able to enjoy. “Now only Americans come to spend their cash,” sighed the owner of my bed and breakfast inn in Bellagio, by Lake Como in northern Italy.

by Constance Manika
- Zimbabwe -

• Harare, Zimbabwe.
Photograph by Gary Bembridge. •

The new legislation grants the president the right to intercept any communications he considers necessary to protect "the interests of national security or the maintenance of law and order".

by Sarah McGowan
Content/Photo Editor, The WIP
- USA -

Recently relocated to Los Angeles, artists Kim Strouse and Joseph Michael Lopez are no strangers to the often aggressive nature of both “big city” life and life itself.

• Artists Kim Strouse
and Joseph Michael Lopez •