Public Information

Ethical Prostitution

19th Century German Sex Worker, Anna Dorthea Hansen Flickr/creative commons

19th Century German Sex Worker, Anna Dorthea Hansen
Flickr/creative commons

As a follow up to yesterday’s discussion of the decriminalization of sex work, take a look at this video of a sex worker ally drilling down to the issues. While perhaps relying too much on sensational memes based on unreliable data that says most sex workers are sex-trafficked children, she makes a durable case for the complete decriminalization and legalization of sex work.

Social acceptance and legalization of sex work is the key to ending sex-trafficking, not its cause. Sex-traffickers are involved in organized crime and should be pursued and punished vigorously; if they disappear so will their victims. But unless society can recognize a separate and growing sex work industry based on voluntary participation, we will not be able isolate and end the scourge of international sex-trafficking.

The first encounter society has with a voluntary sex worker need not be the result of police and the court system, nor their only portal to adequate support, healthcare, and other medical social services (more here) .

Sexual healing from an out-of-the-closet industry is not a bad thing, and will go a long way to ending sexual oppression.

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Reminder: Win one of VenusPlusX’s prized t-shirts for making a video, writing a poem, or creating a work of art as part of our Sexual Freedom Project, on this subject or any other related to sexual freedom, contact: columbia@venusplusx.org. (More videos, here.)

 

 

Decriminalizing Sex Work: The Work Ahead

Highly-acclaimed, reader-supported news site, Truthout, has once again zeroed in on a pressing matter of social justice, the continued criminalization of sex workers. Mike Ludwig‘s news analysis, well worth a full read, weaves together several different threads of this issue in terms everyone can understand.

Ludwig points our attention to “a great leap forward” in New York’s state court system that has introduced 11 new prostitution courts called Human Trafficking Intervention Courts (HTICs). These new courts were designed to treat arrested sex workers as “trafficking victims” deserving of medical and social services instead of jails, and to focus instead on the traffickers.

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

Sounds good on the surface, right? Except that sex workers have been protesting this controversial new model because: a) its premise is based on unreliable and very narrow data; b) actual data collected by sex workers rights organizations, such as the Red Umbrella Project’s recent report, “Criminal, Victim or Worker?” were flatly rejected; and, most important, c) ignores completely the need to decriminalize sex work to begin with.

Balder Rosado, a member RedUP, told Ludwig that this new court model improves what it replaced but the issue remains that access to these services necessarily starts with an arrest by police.

Not every sex worker is a sex traffic victim as anti-trafficking advocates would have us believe. For many, it is a private and personal choice that should not by criminalized in the first place, and if “treatment” is required to help those who are trafficked or otherwise coerced, it should be within a non-criminal, non-police model.

Shira Hassan, a harm reduction and transformative justice specialist in Chicago, told Ludwig . . .

. . . [A]nti-trafficking advocates often push for laws and special courts that reduce the penalties prostitution defendants face, in the name of “decriminalization.” These efforts are not about decriminalization, she said. They are about “changing the process by which someone is criminalized.”

“Criminalization is about racism, it’s about your neighborhood, it’s about how you are dressed,” Hassan told Truthout. “It’s about policing.”

The needless criminalization of sex work unfairly targets poor people of color and is as unconstitutional as “stop and frisk.” As Ludwig notes, “Police can stop individuals for ‘loitering with intent’ if they are doing as little as wearing revealing clothing or hanging out in the wrong part of town.”

HTICs can only be called a diversion program, at best. They only serve a small number of those arrested, and only a small proportion of these people actually want and need medical or social services. And the HTICs to do not prevent re-arrest for simply walking in the same neighborhood where the first arrest took place thereby nullifying the HTIC’s decision. Only a minuscule number of traffickers every get arrested.

Ludwig quotes advocate Sienna Baskin from Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York:

“If the emphasis is changing to be about offering services and other income options to people who are doing sex work, and intervening in violent situations, and giving people what they need without [harming them], then we need to stop criminalizing them.”

I will add another disturbing dimension, one that Ludwig overlooked or chose not to include: The retired judge, Judy Harris Kluger, who helped develop these HTICs is using the very same faulty data to promote her new business providing the services that the court recommends, reaping financial benefits from the state. Worse still, there no regulations or public standards for non-profit, short-term service providers like hers. Unfortunately, privatization schemes and conflicts of interest now pervade our justice system. Mass incarceration itself is a testimony of how special interests have managed to lobby lawmakers to privatize probation and electronic monitoring services and the prison-industrial complex itself. When will special interests like these, that thrive on increased criminality and the personal pain of others, be brought to justice?

To learn more, get involved in your community to protect sex workers rights. The decriminalization of sex work will begin the end of sexual oppression, a first step towards a world of equality and peace.

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A Week of Climate Action Starts On November 1!

Popular Resistance is driving escalated climate action by calling for a week of demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere around the country, starting on November 1.

Like  Naomi Klein‘s recent, trailblazing book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, Popular Resistance says the time for being tentative, simultaneously tapping the break and hitting the accelerator, is over. We are now speeding towards a climate catastrophe.

The November action targets the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), an independent agency whose powers were expanded by the government with the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Before you get involved, update yourself on what the FERC actually does, such as licensing and inspecting (regulating) private, municipal, and state energy projects; and, what it does not do, like interfere with anything addressed through through other agencies, such as State Public Utility Commissions and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Nevertheless, FERC is an example of failed government policies because behind all their choices and decisions is a bank of corporate private energy interests, making FERC an excellent media symbol of everything that is wrong with how the U.S. and other countries are dealing with the urgency of climate change. FERC website’s crafty disclaimers aside, this commission’s power in representing special interests exposes in full the major impediment to the social changes that will be needed to meet the challenges of climate change. Simply put, greedy corporations are ruining our planet and must be stopped.

The planet’s life-threatening challenges have already exceeded predictions by shrinking our timeline, cutting it in half to one third of the time we originally believed. We have less time to actually be able to do something. That is why activists across the spectrum of causes have to also be doing something to protect our environment, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the shorelines we stand on. If not, ending racism and sexual oppression, ending war, solving immigration, equality, economic justice, etc., will never be realized. We will continue to make gains in all these areas but what if life ceases to exist in less than 50 years? Think about and let it chill you.

The well-written demands are attached below, and you can go to the Popular Resistance website for more information on how to get involved in the non-violent civil actions planned for this first week in November, in D.C., or in your own community. (Click here for the Schedule and Logistics, including how you can stay overnight in DC for $5/day.) By working together in larger and larger numbers can we can suppress all the greed-driven special interests, and wield the power we hold in our hands. Please don’t stand still.

WE call on our government to drop its “all of the above” energy strategy. Extreme energy extraction — fracking, tar sands, deep ocean drilling, Arctic drilling, and surface mining and undermining practices such as mountaintop removal and longwall coal mining — of the last fossil fuels condemns us to ravaged landscapes, poisoned water, and weather convulsions. And it ensures catastrophic global warming for future generations.

WE call on FERC to make decisions based on the well-being of current and future generations and the protection of our shared natural resources. Rubber stamping industry pipelines, compressor stations and export facilities contaminates the air, water, land and climate that support all life on Earth. Specifically, we call on FERC to reject the proposal to build a dangerous gas export facility at Cove Point and to place a moratorium on approvals of other export facilities.

WE can no longer allow our government to segment gas projects from all others, thereby hiding the full danger. We must look at the whole picture, evaluating what is happening downstream and upstream. Each export terminal creates hazards not only for the local community, but for communities where the shale gas will be extracted, for communities where pipelines and compressor stations are built to transport the gas, and for communities receiving the exported gas. We must also measure the release of climate-disrupting methane and other greenhouse gases during this whole process, from extraction, transport, export, and eventual burning in faraway communities.

WE call on the Obama administration and FERC to recognize the unfolding disaster guaranteed by fueling our economy from the last dregs of fossil fuels.

Nothing less will protect our communities, the climate and the Earth.

THE ACTION: During the week beginning November 1, our coalition will take to the streets of Washington to make these goals a reality

CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE BEYOND EXTREME ENERGY ACTION

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See also: Response to Climate Change Impossible Without a Revolution in Thinking, and more, herehere, and here.

 

 

Response to Climate Change Impossible Without A Revolution in Thinking

Adrian Kenyon's The World's A Balloon Flickr/creative commons

Adrian Kenyon’s
The World’s A Balloon
Flickr/creative commons

I will continue writing about the environment for how can we hope for a new age free from racial and sexual oppression if we destroy the world with our stupid choices?

In reading Naomi Klein‘s trailblazing book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, we are destined for ecological disaster within 50 years or less. Here she succinctly lays out the challenge . . .

. . . [W]e are left with a stark choice: allow climate disruption to change everything about our world, or change pretty much everything about our economy to avoid that fate.

And, the problem . . .

Living with this kind of cognitive dissonance is simply part of being alive in this jarring moment in history, what a crisis we have been studiously ignoring is hitting us in the face — and yet we are doubling down on the stuff that is causing the crisis in the first place.

The Real News seconds these ideas, exposing just how delusional government can be in misunderstanding the urgency of our response to  climate change.

 

Every activist concerned with social and economic justice should read Ms. Klein’s book. It’s a call to action that cannot be ignored.

. . . [P]oliticians aren’t the only ones with the power to decide [this] a crises. Mass movements of regular people can declare one too.

Slavery wasn’t a crisis for British and American elites until abolitionism turned it into one. Racial discrimination wasn’t a crisis until the civil rights movement turned it into one. Sex discrimination wasn’t a crisis until feminism turned it into one. Apartheid wasn’t a crisis until the anti-aprtheid movement turned it into one.

Let’s continue the forward momentum of this nascent movement and exercise our power, our people power, to silence or remove those who stand in the way of solving this epic problem. Stay informed. Get active. Your life depends on it.

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Retailers Finally Addressing Income Inequality

As politicians in Washington and state capitals debate raising the minimum wage, a new report from the Center for American Progress gathers new evidence showing that the United States’ top retailers are deeply concerned that stagnant wage growth and middle-class weakness are holding the economy back.

photo by pix.plz Flickr/creative commons

photo by pix.plz
Flickr/creative commons

We have written frequently about the scourge of income equality, from fast food workers‘ demanding a living wage and Wall Street’s response to connecting you to organizations on the forefront of this struggle, summing it all up this past Labor Day. Now this new report, “Retailer Revelations: Why America’s Struggling Middle Class Has Businesses Scared,” drills down further, showing us how flat wages has weakened consumer spending and put their stock prices at risk because of low demand for goods and services and high unemployment.

Retailers could improve their profits by embracing a middle-class-growth-oriented agenda instead of spending their political energy on preventing policies that increase wages. Policies such as a minimum-wage increase could provide the perfect mechanism for coordinating wage growth that could benefit the entire retail sector by fueling more consumer spending.

While banks have been rescued by our government and economic indicators in some sectors have been revived since the 2008 financial crisis, “median household income in 2013 stood 8 percentage points below its 2007 pre-recession level” while the cost of everything else, from health care to college tuition has risen.

The evidence assembled in this report directly repudiates “trickle-down economics”—the idea that the only way to produce economic growth is to redistribute money to the rich, who will create jobs for everyone else. Conservative politicians, lobbyists, and commentators may still be stuck in the trickle-down mindset of the 1980s, but corporate America and the Wall Street analysts who closely follow it know better.

In fighting income equality we have to aim our civil actions squarely on the proponents of trickle-down economics and those working actively against living wages, including lobbyists such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, until they get it. Congress is complicit in keeping the minimum wage low despite all the evidence pouring in from municipalities that have raised the minimum wage to $15/hour and actually created economic growth, including more jobs. These are the people and entities who are responsible. Educate yourself and organize accordingly.

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Anti Net Neutrality Lobbyists Will Stop At Nothing

Why Phone and Cable Companies Want to Kill the Internet’s Most Democratic Right

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

Lobbyists representing phone and cable companies have now reorganized and doubled down on disinformation campaigns. They are crying censorship against advocates who want to preserve the built-in democracy of the Internet that guarantees everyone a voice.

After all, corporations are people, folks. Therefore, net neutrality advocates are interfering with these large companies free speech rights.

Industry-funded think tanks have argued that any enforceable effort to protect the open Internet denies phone and cable companies their First Amendment right “by compelling them to convey content providers’ messages with which they may disagree.”

What???

This specious argument asserts that these large companies are de facto editors of Internet content and in that role they should be able to delimit the free speech of the rest of us. News flash: they are not the “owners” of the Internet.

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will soon announce its new rules. Will the Internet be re-established as a common carrier, like all other public utilities, or will it allow large corporations own the Internet, charging more for privileged “fast lanes” (a cost to be passed on to consumers) and relegating the rest of us to wobbly “slow lanes” or no lane at all because your content has been censored?

Here is what you need to know . . .

Returning the Internet to the widely used common-carrier standard is what these industry types fear most. It’s a fear that has reached a fever pitch after an overwhelming majority of the public urged the FCC to protect real Net Neutrality and reclassify broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act.

“Are your phone lines censored? Are enterprise lines censored? Are mobile voice services censored? All of these are common carriers. We need the same assurances with our Internet communications.” (Marvin Ammori, a First Amendment scholar and Internet policy consultant, Washington, D.C.)

Any two-way communications network that serves the public is not supposed to block, degrade or otherwise unreasonably discriminate in the transmission of the content it carries across its networks.

Why do we so often champion net neutrality? Believing as we do that all oppression and coercive systems by governments, corporations, and religious hierarchies stand in the way of economic and social justice (and peace), it is important that the powerless always have an unhindered voice. Human rights deserve, need, our active protection whether pertaining equality rights, sexual freedom, the environment, immigration, etc., and the end of all war and racism. For more, check out our related manifesto.

What’s your issue? What do you feel passionately about? Let us know what you are doing. If you are just going to sit there, get up and get busy, okay?

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Edelman’s Lisa Manley, Climate Change Activist

Lisa Manley is a Corporate Social Responsibility Executive with Edelman, one of the largest Public Relations firms. She has 20 years of experience in global sustainability strategy and engagement, and recently offered “Five Observations from UN Climate Week.” It gives us a bird-eye view of the outcomes from a business point of view.

Manley was inspired by all the events that took place over a week ago, including the People’s Climate March that drew more than 300,000 environmental activists. She acknowledges how lackluster the outlook has been since 2009’s disappointing climate conference in Copenhagen but points out several take-aways from this year’s Summit in New York, suggesting high hopes for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris next year. “Optimism is on the rise,” is her perspective.

Hewlitt-Packard's Gabi Zedlmayer at "Leader's vision for a low carbon economy" NYC Climate Week 2014 Flickr/creative commons

Hewlitt-Packard’s Gabi Zedlmayer at “Leader’s vision for a low carbon economy” NYC Climate Week 2014
Flickr/creative commons

Manley asserts “partnership is the new leadership” by citing promising new collaborations of businesses and governments, such as We Mean Business and RE100, and The World Bank global efforts building a coalition among businesses and governments to support carbon pricing.

Manley goes on to say that “business has new and compelling voices in the dialogue” noting that 100 CEOs attended this year’s Summit. She highlights Apple’s Tim Cook who believes that innovation induces economic growth, particularly in the area of renewable energy.”

“Our cities are likely where the change happen fastest,” says Manley, believing that as we look forward to Paris’s UNFCCC next year the focus will shift from nation states to what can be accomplished by major cities.

The world’s architects are leading the way with impressive commitments to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe) of urban areas by changing how buildings and cities are planned, designed and constructed. For instance, at the International Union of Architects (UIA) World Congress in August 2014, member organizations representing over 1.3 million architects in 124 countries unanimously adopted the 2050 Imperative — a declaration to eliminate CO2 emissions in the built environment by 2050. This is a significant commitment, considering urban areas generate 70 percent of all GHGe, mostly from buildings. Looking ahead to 2035 (and accounting for population growth and expected human migration), 75 percent of the built environment will be either new or renovated.

Manley concludes, “communication and engagement are critical as we continue to pave the path forward.” She brings to our attention an inspirational film shown to world leaders at the opening of the UN Summit, WHAT’S POSSIBLE, demonstrating that “climate change is solvable — but engagement and action are essential.” She notes that “two years ago, the NYC climate summit sparked 1 million social shares, last year it was 2 million and this year it was 83 million!

Continuous dialogue, commitments and follow-through will be crucial to motivate citizens and stakeholders as we build alignment by mid-century around paths for zero emissions. This week certainly provided a vital spark of optimism that we must maintain to achieve the success needed at climate summits in Lima, then in Paris and beyond. The impacts, challenges and opportunities of climate change are evolving in the hearts and minds of citizens around the world, opening doors of opportunity for continued communication and engagement.

Full article available here. Talk to your family and friends and the business you work for. Find out what you can do in your own community to make it greener. Redouble your efforts to reverse the destruction of planet earth. Okay?

 

Scalia’s Cry for Help: Impeach Me!

The most recent insanity expressed by United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:

…[T]he separation of church and state “doesn’t mean the government cannot favor religion over non-religion.”

…[S]ecularists concern over the overreach of religion into the government and every aspect of the public sphere is “utterly absurd” …

…[T]he Constitution’s only obligation is to protect Christian’s [sic] freedom of religion and was never intended to protect Americans from religious imposition.

Antonin Scalia Photo by Stephen Masker Flickr/creative commons

Antonin Scalia
Photo by Stephen Masker
Flickr/creative commons

The only pronouncement from Scalia that could be considered rational: I’m guilty of sedition. I am guilty of putting my religious fundamentalism ahead of all reason and justice. Impeach me, please!

Like an errant child, he is begging for our discipline, and we should oblige him by redoubling existing efforts to impeach him once and for all. There are other offenders of his ilk on the Court but he is by far the worst.

It is so very sad to see the psychological ravages of religious fundamentalism so sharply on display, especially by a person with immense power. Taken to its extreme, American religiosity erodes the very brains wherein it resides. Patient Zero is Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a very, very sad case, indeed.

Scalia’s religiosity and his powerful position on the Court aren’t centered on anything good, nothing greater than his/the radical right-wing agenda aimed at obliterating any progress since the 17th century, even since the Dark Ages, when religious hierarchies controlled every aspect of human life. His views parallel Sharia Law in practically every respect.

Scalia’s extreme religiosity has distorted his thinking so much that he is no longer capable of rational thought, or his job in interpreting the United States Constitution. The shreds left of his humanity have become devoted to openly pursuing his objective of making religion, specifically his distorted view of catholicism, the law of our land. Several Court decisions over the last few years reflect this in-bred malignancy, even as he continues his campaign to make religion supreme, in our schools, for corporations, and in government. Pundits rightly label him a Vatican surrogate.

In the last 100 years, progressives (both religious and not) have succeeded in demanding equal protections and rights guaranteed in the Constitution, including such things as the civil rights of minorities and a woman’s right to exercise her own healthcare decisions. Scalia and his minions’ reactionary behavior and actions against these inevitable gains are militant in their expression, totalitarian by any measure.

Progressives are not “shoving their disbelief down our throats,” as Scalia and others contend. This favorite screed of the radical right wing is just a fear reaction from those who have never accepted, and will never accept, the intended idea of the separation of church and state, that each person has the right to their own (personal) religious freedom, an unassailable human right that protects all of us with freedom from religion.

We often forget to remind ourselves that the puritans who left England were basically banished to the The New World because of their religious extremism, and their philosophical progeny has been at work to destroy our Constitution practically from the start. It’s an uphill battle to contain this extremism, to call it out for what it is, and we must continue to wrest freedom from the jaws of radical religiosity.

As ordinary citizens we have the power. Find out what you can do today to end the reign of freedom’s fiercest enemies, starting by calling for Scalia’s impeachment.

Scalia must go. United States Supreme Court Justices can be impeached for sedition and intentional distortion of our founding Constitution. Please sign this petition, and campaign among your family and friends to help end the scourge of religious fundamentalism, here and abroad.

 

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Related:
When Will We Move to Impeach Certain Supreme Court Justices? (Part 1)
When Will We Move to Impeach Certain Supreme Court Justices? (Part 2)
Religion: Real and Fake
When Free Speech Becomes Sedition
Right-Wingnuts Bless Progressives

Our September Round-Up

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, photo by 5oulscape Flickr/creative commons

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, photo by 5oulscape
Flickr/creative commons

This is our September round-up in case you missed some of our posts. If you like our unique mix of news and opinions, follow us on Twitter/VenusPlusX, and like our page, Facebook/VenusPlusX.

We kept up with many of our key issues with a discussion of how and why police bias is the chief cause of criminality in Culturally Inept Policing Schools Criminals; the psychology behind domestic violence in A Women’s Problem is a Men’s Issue; and the underlying ecology of progress in Everyone Needs Examples, Including Bad Examples. These followed our extensive take on the real legacy of the Michael Brown shooting.

We continued to monitor the Federal Communication Commission’s impending ruling which would destroy the inherent democracy built into the Internet by urging our visitors to participate in the Internet Slowdown Action earlier this month with Take Action On Wednesday For Net Neutrality, and outlined other things people can do in Today: Actions You Can Take To Assure Net Neutrality.

We asked you participate in the Fast Food Walkout with Support Tomorrow’s Walkouts To Raise Wages, and then cataloged the results in StrikeFastFood Protesters Walk Out, Get Arrested, Succeed.

We published Income Inequality Dampens Economic Growth for Rich and Poor Alike, a follow up to The Wealthy and Powerful Aid Social and Powerful Social and Economic Justice Activists and List of Organizations Working on Income Equality. And, we couldn’t overlook the Billions Wasted By Right-Wingnuts.

We covered the People’s Climate March, the next day’s Flood Wall Street sit-in, and the Climate Summit at the United Nations, with Climate March This Sunday Be Counted and Salutes and More Salutes and Stop, Hey, What’s That Sound?

The Global Poverty Project with aims to eradicate world poverty by 2030 and their Global Citizens Festival made a deep impression, We Are Here, We Are Here.

We commended actress and United Nations Ambassador Emma Watson’s succinct but bulls-eye redefinition of feminism for a new generation, in Salutes!

We riffed on lots of stories in the news, such as how recent research by Credit Suisse showed that profits go up in relation to the number of women in management and operations, in The Liberation of Women Will Change the World.

And, we continued to feature videos as part of our Sexual Freedom Project. Send us your video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you. This month: Gender Neutrality in Public Restrooms and Don’t Yuck Somebody’s Yum. (More videos.)

So stay tuned!

 

We Are Here, We Are Here

Let’s talk about our part
My heart touches your heart
Let’s talk about, let’s talk about living
Had enough of dying, not what we all about
Let’s do more giving
Do more forgiving, yeah
Our souls were brought together so that we could love each other

“We Are Here” (by Alicia Keys, 2014, Listen here)

The 3rd Annual Global Citizens Festival in New York City’s Central Park is underway right now. If you haven’t heard, it’s a presentation of the Global Poverty Project which is committed to ending world poverty by 2030.

The Project’s goals aim to redouble the efforts and financial support of governments, corporations, and individuals in the areas of of education, vaccination, and sanitation and water. You couldn’t buy a tickets to hear Alicia Key’s, JayZ, No Doubt, and other headliners. You joined the movement by registering as a Global Citizen and then did something concrete to help end poverty. More than 80% of today’s attendees are these activists.

Prime Minister of India, Narenda Modi, speaking to the Festival on behalf of 800,000 young people in India committed to improve sanitation and drinking water, joined with representatives from Scandanavian countries, Denmark and Norway, and Caterpillar Foundation in leading the way towards increasing financial commitments and hands-on aid to areas of extreme poverty. But, just like these lucky concert-goers, you can do your own part.

If you are not here, you can tune in at globalcitizen.org/festival or to MSNBC on television, right now. If you missed Alicia Keys singing this song, we’re highlighting it here. Just consider what is taking place today.

Alicia Keyes Flickr/creative commons

Alicia Keyes
Flickr/creative commons

We are united more than ever before, singing along with Alicia: “Right now it don’t make sense,” “Our souls are brought together so that we could love each other.” We can help heal this world by working together. It’s within our reach, but we have to reach.

Almost half of the world, over 3 billion people, live in poverty. Fourteen children die every minute of every day due to poverty, hunger, and preventable diseases.

What will you do today to make a difference? Start by singing along with Alicia.

We are here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here, why we are here
We are here

Bombs over Baghdad, tryna get something we ain’t never had
Let’s start with a good dad
So real but it’s so sad
And while we burnin’ this incense, we gon’ pray for the innocent
Cause right now it don’t make sense
Right now it don’t make sense
Let’s talk about Chi town
Let’s talk about Gaza
Let’s talk about, let’s talk about Israel
Cause right now it is real
Let’s talk about, let’s talk Nigeria
In a mass hysteria, yeah
Our souls are brought together so that we could love each other
Brother,

We are here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here, why we are here
We are here

No guns made in Harlem, but yet crime is a problem
He wanna shine, they wanna rob him
Single mother, where they come from?
How we gonna save the nation, with no support for education
Cause right now it don’t make sense
Right now it don’t make sense
Let’s talk about our part
My heart touch your heart
Let’s talk about, let’s talk about living
Had enough of dying, not what we all about
Let’s do more giving
Do more forgiving, yeah
Our souls were brought together so that we could love each other
Sister,

We are here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here, why we are here
We are here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here, why we are here
We are here
Oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh
Oh, oh

Oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh, oh

We are here (oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh)
We are here for all of us (oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh)
(oh, oh)
We are here for all of us (oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh)
(oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh)
that’s why we are here, why we are here (oh, oh)

Cause we are here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here, why we are here
We are, here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here,
Why we are here

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