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#peacebuilding — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #peacebuilding, aggregated by home.social.

  1. A Day for the World to Say Sorry

    From Australia’s National Sorry Day Toward an International Day of Truth, Repentance, and Repair

    A PeaceGrooves Reflection

    There are words so overused that they risk becoming weightless. Sorry is one of them. We say it when we bump into someone in a hallway, when we answer an email too late, when we make an insignificant mistake. Yet there are times when sorry is not small at all. There are wounds so deep, so deliberately inflicted, and so long denied that the speaking of sorrow becomes an act of public truth.

    Australia’s National Sorry Day, observed each year on May 26, is such a day. It remembers the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children forcibly removed from their families, communities, languages, and cultures under government policies now associated with the Stolen Generations. The date marks the anniversary of the 1997 tabling of the Bringing Them Home report, the landmark national inquiry that gathered testimony from survivors and documented the devastation caused by these removals. The report called not only for recognition of what had happened, but for apology, healing, reparations, family reunion, access to records, and measures ensuring such violations would never recur.

    National Sorry Day did not begin as a sentimental holiday….

    Read the full essay at PeaceGrooves.

    #AboriginalAndTorresStraitIslanderPeoples #AnabaptistPeaceWitness #Australia #buildingAJustFuture #colonialism #globalPeace #Healing #historicalMemory #IndigenousJustice #InternationalSorryDay #NationalSorryDay #Nonviolence #Peacebuilding #PeaceGrooves #publicApology #Reconciliation #rememberingThePast #reparations #Repentance #RestorativeJustice #SocialJustice #StolenGenerations #truthAndReconciliation
  2. How Government #FusionCenters Violate Americans’ Rights — and How to Stop It

    The Biden administration and Congress must impose oversight and accountability on the state-run centers.

    by Mike German
    December 15, 2022

    "A federal jury awarded $300,000 this month to a #MaineStatePolice trooper who was demoted after blowing the whistle on privacy violations at the state’s intelligence #FusionCenter. The federal government spurred the development of fusion centers after 9/11 as a means for sharing counterterrorism intelligence among state and local governments, as well as select private entities. The facts revealed during this trial adds to a mountain of evidence that fusion centers require greater regulation and oversight.

    "The trooper alleged that the Maine Intelligence and Analysis Center, 1 in a network of 80 fusion centers operating across the country, was illegally collecting and sharing information about Maine residents who weren’t suspected of criminal activity. They included gun purchasers, people #protesting the construction of a new power transmission line, the employees of a #peacebuilding #SummerCamp for teenagers, and even people who travelled to New York City frequently. The whistleblower also claimed that fusion center supervisors pressured him to illegally share sensitive FBI information he had access to because of his position on the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

    [...]

    "Shortly after the Maine trooper filed his lawsuit in May 2020, a hack of a fusion center contractor exposed 296 gigabytes of intelligence records from more than 200 law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and DHS. The records substantiated the trooper’s complaints about privacy and #CivilRights violations at the #Maine fusion center and showed similar abuse occurring throughout the network, particularly in tracking #BlackLivesMatter #protests. The documents also showed that fusion centers had regularly spread misinformation sourced from dubious social media posts, including false reports alleging that #antifascists were starting wildfires or planning acts of violence. These specious reports distracted law enforcement during public safety emergencies."

    Read more:
    brennancenter.org/our-work/ana

    #FTPFriday #ACAB #SLAPPs #Fascism #CivilLiberties #ClimateActivists #QuebecHydro #CMP #CMPCorridor #ForestDefenders #WaterProtectors #CorporateColonialism