1. Report on today’s historic Human Rights Treaty hearing from Margaret Huang:  Just a quick note to all of you who were interested in today’s hearing on domestic implementation of human rights, held by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law. There were written testimonies received from 41 organizations as of Monday (the record will stay open for another week) and standing room only in the room. Both of these established a new record – the highest number of testimonies or attendees for any hearing of this Subcommittee.  Our colleagues, Wade Henderson and Elisa Massimino, representing the NGO community, did a great job, and there was clear enthusiasm from the government witnesses, Mike Posner from State and Tom Perez from DOJ, for the issue.

Congratulations to all of us for demonstrating that we are an influential and growing constituency for human rights in the U.S. Many thanks to everyone who submitted testimony, called the Subcommittee or their Senators, and who followed the hearing with interest. There will be more to come but we should celebrate a significant achievement today.

2. Webcast of today’s hearing:  Today’s hearing was webcast live online at: http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/hearing.cfm?id=4224 and will be archived for later viewing as well if you couldn’t watch it live.

3. Comment Period Open for Seven Days:  please remind all orgs interested in our growing human rights movement that if they have not already filed comments with the Subcommittee that they have a week following today’s hearing (until close of business EST Dec. 23) to file written comments with the Subcommittee relating to this historic hearing.  Surely each org that filed already (41) can get 10 other orgs to file comments to set further records for Subcommittee participation.  Written comments should be sent by 4PM EST Dec. 23 to Subcommittee staffperson Heloisa Griggs: Heloisa_Griggs@Judiciary-dem.senate.gov.

4. Centralized Posting of All Our Testimonies/Comments:   I have learned that the Bringing Human Rights Home Lawyer's Network Listserv is compiling all 41 of the written testimonies/comments entered into the record at today’s hearing.  The statements already received by the listserv are available by clicking on this link: http://www.law.columbia.edu/center_program/human_rights/HRinUS/HRinUSPro... (scroll halfway down the page).  If you already filed testimony with the Subcommittee you may have already been contacted by JoAnn Kamuff Ward about posting your statement.  If you submitted a statement and have not yet been contacted by JoAnn, please consider shortening her work by contacting her (JWard@law.columbia.edu) and giving permission to post your statement on the website.  It will be very beneficial to have a good central location like this for us, the media, and our growing base to access these statements.  Hopefully the project will expand to include all the written comments that will be submitted to the Subcommittee in the 7-day comment period, which (again!) is one week following today's hearing, i.e., until close of business EST Dec. 23. 

5. Exemplary Testimony:  To give a flavor of the kind of testimony being heard by Subcommittee members, here is the statement of one of the four persons who actually got to speak to the Subcommittee members, Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.  As part of his presentation, Mr. Henderson announced  that the name of his organization will be changing its name to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights as of January 1, 2010.  We are on the verge of something here, friends!  His statement is attached.