As an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern Mississippi, I tell my students in American Government 101 that when you are not sure how to respond to apparent abuses of human rights or civil liberties, at least you can go stand by the people who have been abused. With that in mind, my wife, Betty Press, a photographer, and I are heading to Oaxaca, Mexico to join an international human rights delegation that will attempt to learn more about the series of public protests and state responses to them.
News accounts detail months of protests by teachers and others as well as state concern for law and order. Recent accounts of police firing live bullets on protestors, killing a number of protestors plus an American journalist covering the events, plus accounts of mass arrests and jailings and some cases of torture, are enough to make me hope that the presence of this and several other international delegations will somehow have a calming effect, or perhaps a restraining effect, that will lessen violence. That is a hope.
I welcome comments on the events there as well as on the trip and its aim.
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