MCHR Education Materials

Join MCHR in calling for the restoration of habeas corpus, a stop to renditions for torture, the abolition of secret prisons, fair trials, and the closing of Guantánamo Bay!

Download "Ten Steps to Restore the U.S.' Moral Authority:
A Common Sense Agenda for the 110th Congress"

Election Day is November 4, 2008! Vote Smart! 

This year, Americans will vote for their new President and Vice President, along with 35 Senate seats, all House seats, and gubernatorial positions in 11 states. In an effort to inform voters on important issues, we thought it would be useful to give you a Voter Guide that you can use and share with others before going to the polls in November. Our Voter Guide is non-partisan and is intended to be an educational tool on the Midwest Coalition’s three project areas enabling voters to make informed choices when deciding which candidate(s) to support.

The U.S. is among the 173 State parties to the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. The 18 member Committee, the first body created by the United Nations to review actions by States to fulfill obligations under a specific human rights agreement, examines reports submitted periodically by States parties on efforts to comply with the Convention. Government representatives generally present the report, discuss its contents with Committee members, and answer questions.

Background

In May 1972, John Burge was promoted to Chicago Police Detective and was assigned to the Area Two detective division on the south side of Chicago. Area Two serves a mostly African-American community, and it is here that the military training in torture he received in Vietnam first began to arise in the context of his police work. Burge was promoted to Sergeant of Area Two in 1977 and to Lieutenant in 1981. He was then also placed in charge of the Violent Crimes Unit.

Line speed in U.S. meat packing plants moves at a rate of about 400 head of cattle an hour - one every ten seconds - resulting in cuts, lacerations, and in some cases amputations or death.

Check out our Slow Done the Line! printable postcard here.

Over 32,000 immigrants are detained on any given day in the U.S.
They are held in various detention facilities, county jails, and private for-profit prisons accross the country.

To see if there are immigrants detained near you, take a look at this detention map.

This map also includes information on specific detention centers, community organizations, Immigration & Customs Enforcement offices, and Immigration Courts.

State and local law enforcement agencies have shown increased interest over the past year in a program to train officers to enforce federal immigration law, and Congress will soon decide whether to fund further growth of the program.

Greater interest in the program worries some of its critics, who say involving local police in immigration enforcement leads to less cooperation from immigrants and heightens the risk of racial profiling.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are responsible for ensuring that immigrants who are detained are provided safe and human conditions of confinement while their cases are in immigration proceedings or are awaiting deportation to their home countries. Due to an increase in Detention and Removal proceedings since the 1990s, it quickly became clear that oversight was needed to ensure that immigrant detention was meeting the needs of detainees and facility personnel along with maintaining a safe and humane environment.

Members of MCHR's Immigrant Detention Project routinely conduct "Know Your Rights" Presentations to local immigrant communities and at detention facilities in an effort to curb the recent increase in enforcement activity by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It is important that immigrant rights advocates and local communities be prepared in the event of an ICE raid. You can join in this effort as well!