Migrant Center at St. Francis of Assisi

135 W 30th St, NYC

The International People's Tribunal is hosting an event in connection with the forced disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa in Mexico, and asked me to give a short performance to support the event. 

"Fuerza Mundial, the ITCPM, the History Department and Hemispheric Center for Performance and Politics at New York University (NYU) and the National Lawyers´ Guild are joining together to host the first U.S. Tribunal hearings on the deepening human rights crisis in Mexico and Central America in all of its relevant dimensions including the role of U.S. aid and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its connections to mass incarceration and police violence in the U.S.

The Tribunal is timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the forced disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa in Mexico and with this year’s opening of the United Nations General Assembly and a concurrent visit by Pope Francis. The Tribunal will be dedicated in solidarity with the families of the Ayotzinapa students who have been touring the U.S. expressing their anguish and sorrow and seeking support and justice for their children and public attention to this critical human rights case. The Tribunal hearings will examine key cases of persistent human rights violations in Mexico, against immigrants of Mexican origin in the U.S., and against migrants in transit from Central America and Mexico and especially the continuing exodus of children and youth. The current human rights crisis in Mexico is unprecedented in that country´s history in terms of scale, depth, extent (over 140,000 dead and 26,000 disappeared since 2007, not including a still unknown number of disappeared migrants).

We are urgently seeking your help in bringing the Tribunal to the U.S. By holding this historic event in New York City at the time of the annual session of the UN General Assembly, we are showing that the people of the United States of America stand in solidarity with the nations of the world to hold our leaders accountable, to put an end to human rights violations and insure the safe movement of all people throughout the globe."