 Aloha and welcome to Cooper Union, what's happening with human rights around the world. Today we're looking at the universal periodic review of the United States. What's next in our neighborhood and nation? And today we have three amazing activists and advocates sharing their experience through this UPR process, third cycle. May 11th would be the one year anniversary. However, due to the COVID crisis, we, the UPR, the universal period for the United States was moved to November 9th. But we were busy preparing one year ago for this important review. Today we'll be speaking with three activists organizing to make sure that the review of the United States was very thorough, but also transformative. And we'll be looking at it from the human rights city approach, as well as all the way to the capital, as well as to global civil society. So it's an honor to welcome our three guests. I'd like to begin with Jackie Smith, who's a professor at FIT, but also really one of the founders to really mobilize the human rights city approach. And Jackie, could you share with us what it was like to organize this third cycle and how you were able to move from the second to the third? So I came to this work through my work as an organizer in the Human Rights City Initiative, which is a global initiative. And all I did, all I can claim responsibility for is getting people in Pittsburgh really organizing around it. And so we created a human rights city alliance in Pittsburgh and began talking with other cities about how can we bring human rights home? How can we take these great international treaties and laws and standards that we have for visioning human rights and make sure that our local officials implement them and organize to make that happen? And so we started talking with people in cities and communities around the country and trying to organize and strategize about how to do this. That led to a number of meetings in Washington, DC and a number of other places. But last, it was 2018, I think, in Atlanta in April. We were there. And Josh Cooper pointed out that in a year we would be doing the UPR review of the United States or over the next year. And so we began talking with folks there and envisioning a plan to do a UPR cities project where we would have tools and background and resources to help local organizers use the UPR process to review human rights in their communities and bring that story to the UN and then also bring that UPR report at the end. So this report that was to come out last May and bring it home and help local officials know what they're supposed to help us, the United States, do from their own communities. Because if things don't change in Pittsburgh, they're not going to change in the United States. And so bringing our folks in our communities into this project of implementing the UPR recommendations. So we had to learn and we had to help others learn. And that's what this is about. And we continue to do that, both locally but also across our cities and communities. That was exciting. I remember a meeting in Atlanta. It was getting together all of the human rights city and all the initiative around the country coming together to see how we can make sure that for the first time ever there'd be a UPR cities working group where all cities would work together to highlight the most important human rights issues and be able to then bring those to the global stage. And one of the exciting things, of course, is that's where we met Donna. And Donna joined that and has been on the UPR Task Force since and even really active for the last event where we're at the adoption in March 17th to make sure that we the people were able to have a voice there. Donna, could you share your experience with the UPR Task Force and UPR cities movement and what it lasts you? Yes, the Atlanta event was a life changing event for me. I actually met Joshua Cooper and Jackie Smith at that. And I was directed there because of going to the Sustainability Conference at the UN. And someone said to me, are you part of the human rights city in Atlanta? And of course, I had never heard of that. It was just the sustainability portion that had drawn me to the UN for that. And to find out it was something right there in my city that I could take advantage of, I immediately signed up to attend the conference, didn't know what to expect, and was blown away. I was blown away both by the local issues, some of which I didn't know anything about. And I thought I was connected. And the openness of all of the people traveling from different cities to support us. So I then spoke to what I was really passionate about. And that was artificial intelligence. And everybody kind of looked at me at that time. And I'm like, we're in a data-driven society. And we're working on all of our stories, all of our issues. However, no one is realizing how the data has been corrupted and the perception of our stories is being thwarted. And that needs to be something that is important. Jackie said, I would help you however I need to, Donna. You need to do a report on that. And Joshua says, yes, let's get an artificial intelligence working group. The reason that was so exciting to me is because the UN, when you hear anything related to that, there's this great mystique. It has to be all of these people that are untouchables. They are the iconic people in here. My voice was going to be heard. And that was something I was very passionate about is the individual stories of the individual people and making sure that the authenticity of that still remained in any document. And it also helped me to understand that many of us were landing up in the human rights arena. When the human rights is what we all start off with as one of our mutual friends, Robin Benton, reminded me today is that we all have those rights. However, we're working on governmental rights, declaration rights, treaty rights and different things. But there is one document that unifies the world. And that is the declaration of the human rights with those 30 articles. So I'm still excited. I'm still here. And that process is daunting. However, it is empowering. Thank you so much, Donna. And that does remind me about all the exciting work that we did organize from Atlanta, all the way through submission of those stakeholder reports where people were able to make sure that their questions were raised off the global scale and also their recommendations were put to the US at that level. And also when the UPR was delayed due to COVID, it was exciting to see how we organized around COVID and human rights and to look at it from that lens because there was no mention of it in the first US report. And then also a week later, Earth Day, all the indigenous peoples of the world also had a side event to tell the governments of the world what was most important and what's happening on the ground. So absolutely exciting for you to share from Atlanta to last April. And then that brings up really important issue that's been there since the beginning. And I remember being there in 2010 and Sex Workers Alliance and NGOs coming together to speak. And it's really exciting to make sure that that issue is still at the forefront, but unfortunately not enough actions been taken. So Mariah was gonna ask you, how can the US finally take meaningful steps to implement that historic recommendation 86 from the 2010 UPR, which stated, quote, ensure access to public services, paying attention to the special vulnerability of sex workers to violence and human rights abuse? Which the Obama administration accepts in the response, we agree that no one should face violence or discrimination and access to public service based on sexual orientation or their status as a person in prostitution. Could you maybe expand on what you see are the recommendations that must be taken one decade later and how we can turn that page in this new administration? Yeah, absolutely. And first, I wanna acknowledge the work of sex worker advocates, people who have experienced in the sex trades who were instrumental in making this recommendation happen and also the acceptance by the administration at the time in accepting this recommendation. So I would say on the state level, decriminalization of sex work is the most urgently needed and the administration, the current administration can support that by speaking out about the need for decriminalization. That's something that no administration has meaningfully done. Of course, the UPR recommendation 86 was historic, but no action was really taken by any administration since then in implementing the recommendations and their agreement to ensure that there's no discrimination in access to public services based on an individual working in the sex trade. So also creating opportunities, Donna was speaking to the importance of people with lived experience being at the table and having a voice in making sure that human rights are protected and that they're able to be involved in advising on any policy or law past it, whether that be the federal or the state or the local level. And those opportunities aren't equally accessible to people in the sex trade. So one of the things that I think of is different agencies have these consulting groups that focus on anti-trafficking. But we know that a lot of anti-trafficking legislation and policies at many different levels of government impact sex workers and at the present state have a very deleterious effect on sex workers. So there's these groups through the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice, the Department of State who brings together consultants who have expertise, lived experience and having been trafficked but are not inclusive of people who are supportive of decriminalization. They're actually barred from discussing decriminalization of sex work and conducting this work. So the government is being advised with only partial information. They're not being advised to actually work towards an approach to sex work that is inclusive of people's human rights and protecting their human rights. So that's something that I see as critical is that these opportunities to advise government agencies and to advise government staff and employees on this issue be inclusive of people who are in supportive decriminalization of the sex trade. I would also see that during this upcoming reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act that efforts be made to remove any language that conflates sex work and trafficking. We see that trafficking is something that exists within the confines of the sex trade just as it does within any labor sector and that the conflation and the misconstruing of sex work as inherently harmful is not helpful towards the people who are involved in the sex trade and does nothing to protect the rights of people who are doing sex work, whether that be by choice circumstance or coercion. So that's something that we would see as critically needed at this time. Also at like local level, I know that Donna and Jackie have been speaking of what's happening at the city and local level. So district attorneys have a huge influence on protecting the rights of people involved in the sex trade. They can decide whether or not to actually prosecute the charges related to sex work. And we have seen that there's been a few leaders in these district attorney positions, one in Washington County in Michigan, who's actually made it policy to refuse prosecuting charges related to sex work that's both for sex workers and for their clients. And that comes to a critical point about protecting workers includes making sure that they can actually make an income. So their right to economic ability to do the work that they choose. And for sex workers, that includes being able to see clients in a safe way and not having that person be at risk of arrest. Thank you so much. And that really brings us to a couple of exciting points of what we were involved in. And Jackie, I remember in January and February, we were hosting events in Washington DC, as well as in New York city to meet with embassies of governments as well as UN missions. Can you share some of that experience with you and how that then moved us forward from the stakeholder reports to the interaction with those governments and how helpful that was at the city level. I remember you had everybody get on the bus and go for human rights. And that was one aspect of bringing human rights home. Can you share that experience? Yeah, so as part of our work on the UPR cities in Pittsburgh, we held a number of community forums over the months before the UPR submissions were due at the United Nations, which was I think October of 2019, was it? Yeah. And so that process got people to learn about the UPR and got them to think about what are the issues in our community that we need to work on. And it brought different groups together. And so then we pulled our report together and that was a collaborative process. And then we wanted to keep people's attention on it. So Josh organized an opportunity for us to go in lobby in Washington DC. And so I was able to reach out to one of our partners, Casa San Jose, which organizes immigrant rights issues. And they have a youth group that was really keen to go and speak on behalf of the issues that they were bringing to our work and they had a bus or a little van. And so we were able to bring a few different coalition partners there. And people were really excited to really see, meet some of the faces that are behind this UPR. The UN became real in this way and in a way that really energized some of our local activists and helped them understand how the UN and how human rights could be a real tool for us to push for the changes that we've long been working for in Pittsburgh and not making the progress that we need. So that was a really helpful learning process. So much Jackie and Donna, I remember you also being involved as we led up to the actual UPR on November 9th, the side events that we organized. Would you like to share some of the issues you're able to raise during the side event and the ability to interact with those governments in Geneva prior to the actual UPR? Yes, as everyone knows, there was a lot of anti-racism issues against black people and people of African descent. We had the George Floyd, we had the numbers of people dying from COVID and the number of people being infected by it and not getting hospitalization. And to be in a conversation where people were bringing forth not all of the issues that were feeding into this, whether it was climate change, whether it was pay, whether it was sex rights to do a profession that you wanted, all of these disparities actually led into a group understanding that all of this is interconnected. It all has a basis in one ism of one or the other. And it is all of them are violations of our human rights, our actual right to pursue our own individual happiness without disregard or disrespect to someone else's. So to look at being in a conversation where representation for five continents was present, that was powerful because we are all fighting for this thing right, the right to be human. Thank you so much, Donna. And that really does point out the essence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that all human beings are born equal. And I really think that's the point of we're talking about here is this UPR was a process where everybody to know what their rights are, to demand their rights, and then to realize their rights through advocacy. And Mariah, can you share a little bit more around how sex workers rights are now being guaranteed and how the community is being able to coordinate campaigns through their creativity, as well as their compassion to make sure that the rights are realized. Yeah, absolutely. So we're seeing a number of state legislation come through that is either full decriminalization or repealing certain harmful laws. We've seen great success in New York state. So this year, during this current legislative session, the what is hopefully known as the walking while trans ban was repealed. So this is the loitering for the purposes of prostitution law. This is a very archaic law that led to significant profiling of black trans women as sex workers and being picked up for arrest and convictions. We see in the case of Leilene Polanco, the devastating effect this law has had. She was a black trans Afro-Latinx woman who was held in Rikers Island on sex work and drug charges. She couldn't pay the bail of $500 and ended up dying in jail. It is absolutely devastating to see that this is happening. This is one high profile case, but we know that there's incidents that go on every day in jails across the United States where people who are trying to survive in a country that does not respect or protect their human rights to an income, to housing, to food, to healthcare, to a myriad of things that should be protected by this government, both at the federal and the state and the local level and they end up being imprisoned. We see this in efforts to address trafficking. And as I said earlier, the conflation of trafficking as synonymous with sex work is extremely harmful. And we see a number of local and law enforcement operations that happen where in the course of what they call anti-trafficking, they arrest people who are doing sex work, whether that be by choice or circumstance or perhaps they are experiencing exploitation, but law enforcement makes the excuse that they must arrest people in order to investigate these cases. So their right to freedom, their right to not be arbitrarily detained is being denied in order to supposedly protect their human rights. It doesn't make any actual logical sense and any law enforcement that says they must detain people in order to protect them or not doing their job. So we see this as a critical issue that anti-trafficking efforts must not be done in a way that actually denies people their human rights. People have a right to do the job that they choose. Sex work is work. And I think that it's really just a matter of a discomfort within this country on sexuality and sex and being able to talk about it honestly that far as this from having common sense legislation that allows people to do the work they need to do to survive in this country. Thank you so much, Mariah. And we know that COVID did delay the actual review. However, the civil study across the country joined forces for justice and freedom. And we really did focus and highlight on economic, social, and cultural rights. That's of course a giant gap where the government has yet to realize economic, social, and cultural rights. We see now that the US had a record number of recommendations and we can see as we explore those actual recommendations issued to the US, there were 347. So what we can look at now is maybe how we plan to implement those recommendations to realize human rights in our communities, cities, and capital. If you look at the chart that was created by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, it's exciting to see how they linked it with what Donna was talking about earlier about the environment, that the sustainable development goals and global human rights are interconnected with one another. In that chart, it shows the breakdown of how most of those recommendations fall under SDG 16, but also cover the entire rainbow of rights that are essential with economic, social, and cultural rights. Jackie, can you share some of the exciting things you're doing in Pittsburgh with the youth forums and other ways to make sure that these recommendations don't just sit on a report as one of our good friends, Rob Robinson, loves to share about those recommendations when that report actually become policy and promote a better life to promote and protect the rights of all people. Yeah, so I got involved in this work because I realized that there were great reports that we as a human rights movement were not using to hold our public officials accountable. And as I've gotten more involved locally, we've seen that the local officials really know very little about the United Nations and they don't know what the UPR is. So we've been educating them and educating ourselves. And so getting community members and our coalition members involved in this process, we're now taking those recommendations and we're building a local report. So translating, what does it mean if the US is supposed to do these things? What do we have to do in Pittsburgh? And so there are some things that we can make recommendations relevant to local policy. But another thing that we're doing is also talking with our local officials about how we can work with them to push the United States government to do the things that would help us do the work that we need to do in Pittsburgh. Like one of the key things is strengthening human rights institutions at the national level. So that our local human rights institutions and these are our allies, they've been partners in this UPR work for the whole time, they need help. So we can help work with them. We can also work with our council members to say you need more money to do affordable housing and to do the projects that we're pushing you to do so we can work with you. We'll use the UPR, we're gonna push the federal government to do what it needs to do so the cities can do what they need to do. And that's how the UPR can really have an impact. So it's a long process, a lot of educating and really translating these ideas to the local. Thank you so much. And Donna, of course, I think our last time was really around the adoption and making sure that all those recommendations that were featured on that chart are actually then accepted by the government. And so they didn't accept a high percentage. Donna, what are some of the priorities you're working on from those recommendations right now in your community? Some of the priorities this top for me is healthcare. During this COVID pandemic and in my personal life there has been so many different illnesses and deaths that are coming about. And it crosses every socioeconomic group. So when we talk about racial disparities, the cultural practices that have also contributed to this, the distrust of many agencies, we see this with the vaccine rollout. But we also see that there is so little effort being put forth from a preventative perspective with knowledge and information. Everything is about response. And now trust me, all of a sudden, trust me. And so it is acclaiming my community with the consortium of other people through the Gap Girls and Gap Guys to educate them with all of these government agencies are what are the responsibilities to the people? For many black and brown people, we have thought of it as this mammoth organization and group of people that are not there for us. Many of us don't realize our tax dollars. There are many, many documents, policies, acts and things that protect us. So you don't have to fear. And I'm starting off with saying, no, don't look at just a law or policy that addresses one perspective. Start with your human rights, what you are entitled to and be empowered by that. Thank you so much, Donna. And moving to Mariah, I also remember one of the most exciting examples of local human rights advocacy was exactly what Urban Justice Center does. They actually create a report card for their county council members, I remember. Can you share a little bit about that? And then some of the priorities around sex workers rights that you also see that you'll be advocating for to realize these recommendations? So the report card was something that was before my time, but I know that it was something that was implemented in New York City to hold council members account to their agreements to support and protect people's human rights at a local level. But I think something that I would like to speak to is this human rights commission that we are helping to organize in Oregon. So this will be a historic event where sex workers from Oregon and also nationally and internationally will come together to speak to the human rights issues that they're seeing that are impacting them, both at a local, state, and national and international level. So we were going to convene this panel of experts both through lived experience and people from academia, government, a variety of different sectors to come together and discuss the human rights implications of criminalization of the sex trades and discuss the urgent need for decriminalization and the de-stigmatization of sex work. We see that many of the recommendations from this last UPR highlighted the extensive racism, xenophobia, police brutality, racial discrimination that is endemic in this country and sex worker rights and the sex worker rights movement is intersectional in that it will address all of those issues. So we see it as a critical piece to holding the United States to account to what they've agreed to in this last UPR cycle. Thank you so much. And really, if we do look at that chart, we can see that 52% of those recommendations were looking at these justice and strong institutions and that's what we're trying to do as Jackie and Mariah and Donna all shared. We're trying to make sure those city human rights commissions are actually strong and then reduced inequalities, 19% looking at that, 11% on gender equality and then 5% on good health and wellbeing and only 2% on those decent work economic growth. So we know that we've done a lot but we also know that the governments of the world are pretty set in what they focus on and what they concentrate on. So we know as we move forward going into the fourth cycle but also looking at the other opportunities that exist. We know there's already another letter to look at creating a commission of inquiry related to systemic racism and police brutality that'll be submitted to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. And we also know all these special procedures, the rapport tours, the working groups and independent experts all do country visits but also thematic reports. And I look forward to working with all of you as we move forward. Thank you for joining us as we're here. That would have been the one year anniversary of the third cycle of the UPR and it's been amazing to see all that's been able to be done in this time and look forward to the future as we make sure these recommendations become reality in people's lives across the country and around the world. So thank you so much for joining us and Mahalo.