You've probably encountered many of the same reports that I have:

Haiti's president tonight issued a desperate appeal for international aid following the earthquake that has devastated his country, as fears grew that the death toll could rise above 100,000.

René Préval said the damage caused by the magnitude 7.0 tremor was "un­imaginable" and appealed for help, describing hearing the screams of those trapped under collapsed buildings while he and his wife stepped over bodies lying in the streets.

"Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them. All of the hospitals are packed with people. It is a catastrophe," said Préval.

With chaotic scenes in and around the capital, Port-au-Prince, officials said it was impossible to gauge accurately the scale of the disaster, but the country's prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, told CNN that the final death toll could be well over 100,000. "I hope that is not true … But so many, so many buildings, so many neighbourhoods are totally destroyed, and some neighbourhoods we don't even see people, so I don't know where those people are."

The people of Haiti are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. Here are three possibilities that have been brought to my attention by friends and family for anyone interested in making a donation to facilitate Haitian relief efforts, First, the National Nurses United:

More than 1,500 registered nurses from across the U.S. have responded in less than one day to the call by the nation’s largest organization of registered nurses for volunteers to provide assistance to residents of earthquake devastated Haiti —leading the RNs to now issue an urgent appeal for the public to support these efforts with donations of funds to support travel costs and medical supplies on their upcoming emergency nursing mission.

Press and nurses are invited to a conference call Thursday morning at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time for an overview of the efforts and their logistics, including the details on the first teams of nurses traveling to the area. Press can call in for the briefing at (866) 320-4709 using the access code 143135, or gather with local nurses and representatives in Boston, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Oakland, Los Angeles, and Miami.

The relief efforts are being coordinated by the Registered Nurse Response Network (RNRN), a project of the 150,000-member National Nurses United (NNU), formed last month through the unification of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, United American Nurses and Massachusetts Nurses Association. RNRN/NNU is hoping to have nurse volunteers on the ground in Haiti within the next few days and is coordinating with Haitian nurses on the effort.

Details are still being worked out, but those able to support the efforts of these nurses can get involved via:

www.NationalNursesUnited.org to sign up to volunteer or donate

@NationalNurses on twitter or by following: #haitiRN

Call the RNRN hotline: 1-800-578-8225

Support the RNRN/NNU disaster relief effort in Haiti by sending checks c/o California Nurses Foundation, 2000 Franklin St., Oakland, CA 94612. Charitable contributions will be used to pay for travel/related costs and medical supplies for volunteer RNs on their emergency nursing mission in Haiti.

RNRN sent hundreds of nurse volunteers to the Gulf region following Hurricane Katrina. RNRN has also sent volunteers to Sri Lanka after the South Asia tsunami and to help following huge Southern California wildfires. RNRN is affiliated with National Nurses United, AFL-CIO, the national union and professional association for registered nurses.

“The need for help has never been so acute. We need financial support to transport them,” said NNU Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro. “Nurses will be fundamental to the disaster relief process, to provide immediate healing and therapeutic support to the patients and families facing the devastation from this tragic earthquake,” DeMoro said.

Second, Mercy Corps:

Mercy Corps is deploying an emergency response team to the island nation.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is plagued by hunger and political instability. This disaster will drastically increase the needs of families who had little to lose in the first place.

Families need your help -- food, shelter and other supplies -- in the aftermath of the worst disaster to strike the region in years.

Mercy Corps has a long history of helping earthquake survivors meet their immediate needs and recover what they've lost. We aided families after earthquakes in Peru in 2007, China and Pakistan in 2008, and Indonesia last year.

Lastly, there is also a local (for me), Sacramento area effort, Children's Hope, founded by Leisa Faulkner. Faulkner has traveled to Haiti numerous times and raised funds to support social programs there through Children's Hope:

As you probably have seen today, a huge earthquake (7.3) has hit Haiti just 10 miles southwest of the center of Port-au-Prince (PAP). Children's Hope needs your help. Three of the major centers of our humanitarian work in Haiti are centered in PAP, are still not responsive and we are very concerned for the children and families: the boys home (St. Josephs) is located on Delmas, PAP, Sopudep School (for street children) is in PAP, and "The Lamp" free clinic is in low lying Cite Soleil, PAP. Early reports have many structures down on Delmas, the presidential palace in collapse, and the large local hospital is down. Fear of rising water may further threaten the low laying Cite Soleil, where our clinic "The Lamp" is located. I have not been successful in getting through by phone. We here are sick with worry at early reports like the one below. If you have a few dollars to spare, lives will be saved. We are sending emergency funds starting tomorrow, and then as soon as pledges come in, since the need is urgent. We also really need to raise shipping money for the supplies already donated by a local hospital here (Marshall Hospital of Placerville) to send these supplies to Haiti. If you pledge, please remember to then send the check to Children's Hope. But please pledge now, so we can get new medicines ordered now, and help on the way.

Children's Hope
3025 A Cambridge Road
Cameron Park, CA 95682

Please feel free to post contact information for any other organizations that are involved in the relief effort. Long time readers of this blog know that I'm not a big fan of the American Red Cross. There are, of course, socioeconomic dimensions to this catastrophe that should be explored, and I may do so, but, for now, humanitarian assistance is urgently required.

Labels: CNA, Earthquake, Haiti, Humanitarian Assistance

Conditions in Gaza are dire, with approximately 50,000 displaced people, not to mention the lack of food and medical supplies for the remainder of the populace. Want to help? Here is a list of organizations with a documented record of providing assistance in Gaza. And, of course, there's always the Middle Eastern Children's Alliance. Please consider making donations to them as the need is great.

Labels: Gaza, Humanitarian Assistance, Middle East Children's Alliance, Palestine

It happens about once every couple of weeks. I get an e-mail from a non-profit to which I have contributed in the past, imploring me to send more money to help avoid a substantial curtailment in services and political activity, or, even worse, closure.

This is one of the consequences of the credit crunch and the ongoing global recession that has not been recognized, the prospect that an activist infrastructure constructed over several decades is about to be lost. Accordingly, if you have the ability to do so, please consider donating to non-profits that have a mission that you consider worthy of support.

For me, that means organizations like the Middle East Children's Alliance, AK Press, the Central Committee for Conscientous Objectors, Common Ground Relief, Critical Resistance, and, yes, even my son's day care provider, a cooperative, among others. You undoubtedly know of additional organizations with socially important goals. Again, please consider donating to them, and volunteering as well, because, if we don't support them, who will? And, how will we replace them once they are gone?

Labels: Activism, American Culture, Humanitarian Assistance

Charitable contributions for alternative, left and radical causes. Here are some of the ones that I posted last year, and they remain equally suitable today:

KDVS Community Alternative Radio

Now, I admit that I broadcast on KDVS, so my self-interest is rather obvious. But KDVS is a station that is cooperatively managed by students and community programmers, with very little oversight by the UC Davis administrators. Programmers are free to broadcast almost anything outside of the commercial constraints of the marketplace. If you live beyond the confines of Northern California, look for a station with similar values, and consider financially supporting them, and remember NPR stations don't qualify.

Common Ground Collective

Hurricane Katrina has exacted a terrible toll upon New Orleans, one that endures to this day. Both the federal government and institutions, such as the Red Cross, have failed to respond adequately, requiring local, grassroots organizations to step forward: Common Ground's mission is to provide short term relief for victims of hurricane disasters in the gulf coast region, and long term support in rebuilding the communities affected in the New Orleans area. Common Ground is a community-initiated volunteer organization offering assistance, mutual aid and support. The work gives hope to communities by working with them, providing for their immediate needs and emphasizes people working together to rebuild their lives in sustainable ways.

Middle East Children's Alliance

Living conditions for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are dire, with more than one in four Palestinians considered deeply impoverished, as are the prospects for the creation of a Palestinian state that would acknowledge their right to self-determination. Western governments have withdrawn funds because of the electoral success of Hamas, seeking to collectively punish them as a means of forcing them to elect a new government more agreeable to them. The Middle East Children's Alliance, or MECA, raises funds for food and medical supplies for them, as well as for the people of Lebanon.

AK Press

As described by wikipedia, AK Press is a collectively owned and operated independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical and anarchist literature. It has published numerous books that describe social movements within the US and around the world that have been depreciated or otherwise deliberately erased from public memory by both the mainstream as well as the institutionalized left.

Last year's reissuance of The Subversion of Politics, by Georgy Katsiaficas, is an excellent example, and, having read it myself, a real page turner, as the suppressed memories of the past are remembered. Consider becoming a Friend of AK Press to assist in the continued publication of books that challenge the mainstream view of history, social relations and the origins of political change.

And, just to bring things up to date, living conditions in Gaza remain horrible, so a contribution to the Middle East Children's Alliance remains as important as ever, while AK Press has published a number of excellent books in the last year or so, including Marina Sitrin's Horizontalism and Ben Dangl's The Price of Fire. A contribution will enable it to continue to release more excellent works of this kind.

Labels: AK Press, Alternative Media, Humanitarian Assistance, Hurricane Katrina, Lebanon, Middle East Children's Alliance, Palestine

Yesterday, I received a letter in the mail from the Middle East Children's Alliance. Executive Director Barbara Lubin described the severe malnutrition experienced by an estimated 400,000 Iraqi children, a condition characterized by diarrhea and protein deficiencies.

The Alliance is asking for $40,000 in donations so that it can send medicine and other medical supplies to Dr. Salma Haddad af the Children's and Women's Hospital in Baghdad. The Alliance needs to receive them within the next 10 days. As observed here earlier in the week, Lubin notes that Iraq now has some of the highest infant mortality rates in the world.

You can contact the Alliance by clicking on the link, and reading the contact information at the bottom of the page. Or, alternatively, here it is: Middle East Children's Alliance, 901 Parker Street, Berkeley, CA 94710 • Tel: 510-548-0542 • Fax: 510-548-0543 • meca@mecaforpeace.org

I'm sure that they would be delighted to explain how you can promptly send them a donation. I've already sent one off in the mail.

Labels: Humanitarian Assistance, Middle East Children's Alliance, Occupation of Iraq

From an article published by Johann Hari in the Independent:

In Salfit, on the other side of the West Bank, Jamilla Alahad Naim, 29, is waiting for the first medical check-up of her five-month pregnancy. "I am frightened all the time," she says. "I am frightened for my baby because I have had very little medical treatment and I cannot afford good food ... I know I will give birth at home with no help, like I did with Mohammed [her last child]. I am too frightened to go to hospital because there are two checkpoints between our home [and there] and I know if you are detained by the soldiers, the mother or the baby can die out there in the cold. But giving birth at home is very dangerous too."

Hindia Abu Nabah - a steely 31-year-old staff nurse at Al Zawya Clinic, in Salfit district - says it is "a nightmare" to be pregnant in the West Bank today. "Recently, two of our pregnant patients here were tear-gassed in their homes ... The women couldn't breathe and went into premature labour. By the time we got there, the babies had been delivered stillborn."

Many of the medical problems afflicting pregnant women here are more mundane than Jamilla's darkest fears: 30 per cent of pregnant Palestinians suffer from anaemia, a lack of red blood cells. The extreme poverty caused by the siege and now the international boycott seems to be a key factor. The doctors here warn grimly that as ordinary Palestinians' income evaporates, they eat more staples and fewer proteins - a recipe for anaemia. There is some evidence, they add, that women are giving the best food to their husbands and children, and subsisting on gristle and scraps. The anaemia leaves women at increased risk of bleeding heavily and contracting an infection during childbirth.

Earlier this year, conditions for pregnant women on the West Bank - already poor - fell off a cliff. Following the election of Hamas, the world choked off funding for the Palestinian Authority, which suddenly found itself unable to pay its doctors and nurses. After several months medical staff went on strike, refusing to take anything but emergency cases. For more than three months, the maternity wards of the West Bank were empty and echoing. Beds lay, perfectly made, waiting for patients who could not come.

In all this time, there were no vitamins handed out, no ultrasound scans, no detection of congenital abnormalities. Imagine that the NHS had simply packed up and stopped one day and did not reopen for 12 weeks, and you get a sense of the scale of the medical disaster.

Some women were wealthy enough to go to the few private hospitals scattered across the West Bank. Most were not. So because of the international boycott of the Palestinians, every hospital warns there has been an unseen, unreported increase in home births on the West Bank.

Hari observes that the Independent Christmas Appeal is contributing some of its funds for medical care in the West Bank. If you are inclined to contribute, go here. As I noted recently, you can also contribute to the medical assistance programs of the Middle East Children's Alliance in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon.

Labels: Humanitarian Assistance, Middle East Children's Alliance, Palestine

Charitable contributions are something that we should consider all year round, but the holidays motivate people to consider the question more seriously. For me, the question of personal and community empowerment has become increasingly primary in my thought, so here are some recommendations:

KDVS Community Alternative Radio

Now, I admit that I broadcast on KDVS, so my self-interest is rather obvious. But KDVS is a station that is cooperatively managed by students and community programmers, with very little oversight by the UC Davis administrators. Programmers are free to broadcast almost anything outside of the commercial constraints of the marketplace. If you live beyond the confines of Northern California, look for a station with similar values, and consider financially supporting them, and remember NPR stations don't qualify.

Common Ground Collective

Hurricane Katrina has exacted a terrible toll upon New Orleans, one that endures to this day. Both the federal government and institutions, such as the Red Cross, have failed to respond adequately, requiring local, grassroots organizations to step forward: Common Ground's mission is to provide short term relief for victims of hurricane disasters in the gulf coast region, and long term support in rebuilding the communities affected in the New Orleans area. Common Ground is a community-initiated volunteer organization offering assistance, mutual aid and support. The work gives hope to communities by working with them, providing for their immediate needs and emphasizes people working together to rebuild their lives in sustainable ways.

Middle East Children's Alliance

Living conditions for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are dire, with more than one in four Palestinians considered deeply impoverished, as are the prospects for the creation of a Palestinian state that would acknowledge their right to self-determination. Western governments have withdrawn funds because of the electoral success of Hamas, seeking to collectively punish them as a means of forcing them to elect a new government more agreeable to them. The Middle East Children's Alliance, or MECA, raises funds for food and medical supplies for them, as well as for the people of Lebanon.

Samidoun

Both Lebanon and Gaza were subjected to assaults by the Israeli military, using weapon systems supplied by the United States. In both instances, the US government has unequivocally supported these actions, despite the consequences for the civilian populace. Samidoun is an indigenous alternative to MECA if you want to contribute to an organization attempting to assist people in the aftermath of the IDF destruction of the infrastructure of Lebanon: SAMIDOUN is a grassroots coalition that aims to work in a democratic and participatory atmosphere. The coalition is multi-confessional and diverse in terms of nationality. The coalition is also diverse in its composition in terms of supporting organizations, from student groups, to the gay and lesbian center, to arts and film production collectives, to small political parties, to environmental groups. But the bulk of the work is through young volunteers from all over the country, some of whom are refugees themselves.

AK Press

As described by wikipedia, AK Press is a collectively owned and operated independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical and anarchist literature. It has published numerous books that describe social movements within the US and around the world that have been depreciated or otherwise deliberately erased from public memory by both the mainstream as well as the institutionalized left.

The reissuance of The Subversion of Politics, by Georgy Katsiaficas, is an excellent example, and, having read it myself, a real page turner, as the suppressed memories of the past are remembered:

Since the modern anti-globalization movement kicked off with the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, a new generation has been engaging in anti-capitalist direct action. Its aims, politics, lifestyles, and tactics grow directly out of the autonomous social movements that emerged in Europe from the 1970s through the mid-1990s. In fact, today's infamous "Black Blocs" are the direct descendants of the European "Autonomen." But these important historical connections are rarely noted, and never understood.

The Subversion of Politics sets the record straight, filling in the gaps between the momentous events of 1968 and 1999. Katsiaficas presents the protagonists of social revolt—Italian feminists, squatters, disarmament and anti-nuclear activists, punk rockers, and anti-fascist street fighters—in a compelling and sympathetic light. At the same time, he offers a work of great critical depth, drawing from these political practices a new theory of freedom and autonomy that redefines the parameters of the political itself.

Consider becoming a Friend of AK Press to assist in the continued publication of books that challenge the mainstream view of history, social relations and the origins of political change.

Labels: AK Press, Alternative Media, Humanitarian Assistance, Hurricane Katrina, Lebanon, Middle East Children's Alliance, Palestine