Worcester Office of Human Rights

After Wednesday's discussion about local human rights offices I wanted to post a link to Worcester's human rights office. It seems as though Worcester's human rights office protects against discrimination on the basis of sex, disability, race, source of income, religion, and sexual orientation, to name a few. (I find it interesting that gender is not on this list.) One thing that is unique about it however is the fact that they have started a couple of outreach programs, including MA Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) and Latino Communites -- Friendly House, Inc.

You can view the homepage of the office here.

Hilary Clinton's Great New Speech on Human Rights and Gay Rights

In honor of Human Rights Day (Saturday, December 10), Hilary Clinton gave a powerful speech arguing that gay rights are human rights.

IACHR

Just like the U.S. government, there are separate state and national human rights organizations. The national organization is the Inter American Commission on Human Rights. This has officials who are voted in and it meets several times a year. A person can submit a petition or file an application to bring up a case. Their official website is here. I have not heard a lot about them, do you think they can be effective if their issues are not well publicized?

The song death and the maiden, featured in Dorfman's play, is of course about death and a maiden. It is about the "terror and comfort" of death and based off of the painting on the right. But why did Dorfman choose this song? Though Paulina feared death while a prisoner she has not know the "comfort" of death. Is he referring to her killing the doctor or killing the bad memory and finally getting closure on the events that have been haunting her? There is more information about the song here.

Since we have been talking about court systems, I thought I would post some information about how the U.S. court systems work. The lowest level deals with issues such as foreclosure, adoption, and other small cases. The next level is general and limited jurisdiction courts which deal with cases with more at stake. One can then go to the Appellate court which reviews these decisions if one of the parties feels the decision was unfair. After that is the state supreme court which works like the appellate court, only then can the case go to federal court. Each state has a slightly different system such as probate court vs small claims court, but all have the same structure. Here is a good overview.