Human Rights Activists Unite 

Michael Farfaglia

Issue date: 4/12/07 Section: News 

Activists can change the world "working together, meeting people, planting seeds," said student activist Alyssa Milan, a 4th-semester sociology major and member of Idealists United.  

The Everyday Activism Panel, part of the Human Rights Awareness Festival, sought to promote small groups fighting for various causes through student activism Wednesday. The three-member panel was sponsored by the Connecticut Public Interest Research Group (ConnPIRG), Idealists United and UNESCO, all student-run organizations. 

Milan was the first to address the crowd. She spoke about her work as a volunteer, first in the Community Outreach Alternative Break program's attempts to help areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina and later in Idealists United.  

"I saw a sign put up by Alternative Breaks ... to work during the 2006 winter intersession," Milan said.  

Milan and a group of other students went to Biloxi, Miss. to repair houses still damaged by flooding more than a year after the storm. 

While Milan admitted the work was difficult, she stressed that it was rewarding to see the families left homeless return.  

"The biggest thing for me was meeting the people," Milan said. "Some were actually crying and saying 'thank you,'" Milan said.  

Milan also traveled with Community Outreach to New Orleans over Spring Break 2007 to help rebuild the still flood damaged area. 

Since then Milan has acted as a trip director for a community outreach trip to work with mentally ill homeless people living in a group home called the "Pine Street Inn" as well as attending a "Save Darfur" rally in New York City in 2006.  

"We're bombarded with so much negativity, but you don't see the people trying to make a difference," Milan said. Only by coming together in large numbers, she said, can activists make a difference. 

William Armaline, a graduate student studying sociology, addressed the crowd next, advocating radical change. Describing himself as anti-racist, anti-fascist and anti-capitalism, Armaline attacked the prison system in America as victimizing the poor and minorities. 

"Do socio-economic factors matter in who gets incarcerated? Yes," Armaline said. "But if you look at the life of these individuals every place policy plays a role...race is the deciding factor."

Armaline charted a rise in the prison population from 300,000 in 1973 to 2.3 million today. 

Armaline also attacked the idea that prisons are meant to reform prisoners.  

"Prisons were never meant to solve crime," Armaline said. "They create crime 

rather than prevent it." 

"They got rid of what is actually effective - counseling, job training," Armaline said. He said they replaced it with "reactionary criminal 

justice."  

Armaline explained that most prisoners are not in for more sadistic crimes such as rape or murder but rather crimes intended to support themselves. He said the prisons and the government colluded to imprison minorities, calling it a "fast track to the cage."  

To Armaline, activists should work with young people in poor areas to educate them to support themselves without resorting to crime. 

Janet Pack, a same-sex marriage activist was the last to address the audience. Pack, a co-chair of the speaker bureau of Love Makes a Family, a gay-rights advocacy group, is also a plaintiff in a lawsuit to allow same-sex marriage in Connecticut. When asked if she thought there was a right for homosexuals to marry in the constitution, she replied that there always had been. 

"We believe it is against the constitution to keep us from getting married," Pack said. "Our opposition are the ones seeking a constitutional amendment." 

Pack told of how she and her partner of thirty-one years had been prevented from getting a marriage license in Massachusetts by then Governor Mitt Romney and were now fighting to marry in Connecticut. Pack remains unwilling to accept a civil union, a proposed compromise. 

"Nothing has the status and the power of the word marriage," Pack said. 

Pack related her battle for same-sex marriage to her involvement with 

civil rights campaigns in the past.  

"The struggle for black rights taught me that separate is never equal, women's rights taught me private is also personal and gay rights taught me to be out and proud," Pack said.  

The audience, though small, was passionate about the subject. When asked what students could do to have an impact on the state of human rights, most believed organized activism could bring about dramatic change. 

"Discourse," answered Tom Butler, an 8th-semester business major, when he was asked how to bring change. "It will help remove the stigma of being an activist."  

A registered Republican, Butler claims he is a perfect example that human rights are compelling and open to all parts of the political spectrum. 

To Jeremy Jelliffe, a 6th-semester biophysics and philosophy double major, felt the groups were too small to have an impact working alone.  

"They need to start working together and get more groups involved like fraternities, student government and even SUBOG," he said.