February 1, 2011, 5.00 am
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In mid-December, more than two dozen people either burned, fell or suffocated to death when a preventable preventable fire broke out in an unsafe, multi-story clothing sweatshop in Bangladesh. Today, six weeks after the fire, we are pleased to announce that after 65,000 Change.org members from more than 70 countries called on all international companies sourcing from factory to take responsibility, every last one of them have finally pledged to do the right thing.
In mid-December, more than two dozen people, most of them poor women making luxury clothes for Americans, either burned, fell or suffocated to death when a preventable preventable fire broke out in an unsafe, multi-story clothing sweatshop in Bangladesh. Several dozen more suffered severe burns.
We weren’t about to sit back and let such an easily preventable tragedy in a slave-like sweatshop producing luxury cloths for American companies go unanswered.
Today, six weeks after the fire, we are pleased to announce that after 65,000 Change.org members from more than 70 countries called on all international companies sourcing from factory to take responsibility, every last one of them have finally pledged to do the right thing.
Read more at Change.org.
Earlier today the Egyptian activists who launched an international solidarity campaign over the phone told us Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was about to resign. “We’re just ecstatic!” they said. In the end, the reality was quite different, and the revolution goes on…
Blog Campaigning News
More than 65,000 people have called on Target and Abercrombie & Fitch to compensate the families of 28 workers killed in a fire while making their clothes. The campaign is now the third most popular Change.org action of all time! What have the companies offered in response? Training programs.
Indian consumers have long been inundated with ads that use prominent Bollywood actors to promote skin-lightening products. But now tens of thousands of Change.org members have told Elle publishers exactly what they think about the whitening of Indian women. This weekend the 50,000th person joined the campaign!
The momentum in the Change.org Human Rights community has been incredible over the past few months, with 140,000 of us getting a South African minister to take ‘corrective rape’ seriously and some 40,000 of us pushing Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and the Gap to do the right thing. Early this morning, the Change.org Human Rights community hit a new milestone – 600,000 members – making it our second-largest cause!
Human rights activists have been kicking up a storm ever since the tiny Gulf Kingdom of Bahrain, a staunch US military ally, arrested 23 of their colleagues, brutally tortured them and put them on trial for treason. But a less known story of resistance has come from a more subtle, surprising part of the courtroom: the lawyers.
Last month a tiny group of lesbian activists hiding out in a safehouse in the townships of Cape Town started a petition calling on the country’s justice minister to declare ‘corrective rape’ a hate crime. Their Change.org petition, the most popular of all time, received it’s 100,000th signature earlier today.
It’s been an energetic year for human rights organizing across the globe. Activists from disparate communities have increasingly turned to Change.org to hold everyone from multinational corporations and international institutions to local officials and companies accountable for their actions…
Navid Mohebbi, the youngest blogger ever arrested, was released by Iran on Christmas Day! While governments and mainstream media have paid little attention to Navid’s case, A Safe World for Women has led the way, using Change.org to pressure senior UN human rights officials into advocating for Navid’s release.
The Ghanaian government has imminent plans to evict thousands of destitute “Railway Dwellers” after signing a $6 billion contract with a Chinese company to completely overhaul the country’s railways last month.
They call themselves “The Dude Gooders” and their thing is “adventure philanthropy.” At the end of this month, they’ll climb Kilimanjaro to raise money for Falling Whistles, an advocacy group fighting to end the war in the Congo and rehabilitate child soldiers affected by the conflict.
Emmanual Jal, a Sudanese child soldier turned hip hop artist and activist, is pushing a music video espousing the benefits of peace in Sudan. Alicia Keys, George Clooney, Richard Branson, Peter Gabriel, Kofi Annan and Jimmy Carter have all joined in, and in a Change.org interview earlier today, Emmanual argues that global pressure is the only thing left to save Sudan from civil war.
Profiles
