The Revere Human Rights Commission (HRC) held its regular monthly meeting last Thursday evening (December 2) in the City Council Chamber. Chairperson Chaimaa (Shay) Hossaini and fellow members Kourou Pich, Molly McGee, Assistant Superintendent of Equity and Inclusion and Chair of the Equity Advisory Board of the Revere Public Schools Dr. Lourenco Garcia, and Fire Chief Chris Bright were on hand for the meeting. Claudia Correa, the city’s Chief of Talent and Culture and HRC’s Executive Director, also was in attendance.
After the commission held the usual Land Acknowledgement in which the commission recognized the Pawtucket Tribe as “the original overseers of this land,” Hossaini announced the various observances that are scheduled in the month of December: Human Rights Month, World Aids Day, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, Hanukkah, International Human Solidarity Day, Winter Solstice, Christmas, and Kwanzaa.
The meeting focused on the meaning and significance of Universal Human Rights Day (December 10) and Universal Human Rights Month (December), which were formally declared by the United Nations in the aftermath of WWII on December 10, 1948.
The group watched a video (which was narrated by Eleanor Roosevelt) that told the history of Universal Human Rights Month, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. The commissioners then met in a circle for about an hour to discuss what human rights means to each member. Pich and Garcia led the discussion with each member sharing their views.
When the discussion got to the topic, “What rights should humans have?” most of the members spoke in general terms about freedom from oppression and the right to clean water, food, shelter, and health care.
However, three members, Garcia, Pich, and Hossaini, also made references to the current conflict in the Middle East.
“If you don’t have rights, you don’t have freedom,” said Garcia. “When I think of this, I think about the people who live in Palestine right now. Their rights are being violated right and left and they are being killed right and left. I’m sure that the same thing has happened in Israel and many other parts of the world, but what is happening in Palestine, at the velocity and speed with which it is happening, where children, adults, and the elderly, are being deprived of rights they have, it certainly, regardless of our political views, has touched my heart and I question where is the Declaration of Human Rights.”
Later in the meeting, Pich spoke briefly about the conflict, noting, “When we are speaking of oppression and racism, we have to look at the whole history and who has been impacted, especially right now with what the world is experiencing….the Palestinians, and also the Israelis…there needs to be a conversation in this community because both parties belong to this community and we are not addressing equity and justice. How can we prioritize one group when we know that there has been a history of oppression against one group?”
“I think that I will echo what everyone has said about the freedom to [have] basic human essentials, like clean water or food, a home, is something that really sits with me because the people whom I represent, people I consider, like, my people, fellow Muslims, fellow Arabs, especially with the stuff that is going on between Palestinians and Israel, there are things that aren’t being met, that haven’t been met since the declaration of Human Rights, ever since 1948, especially when the Nakba (the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Israel in the 1948 war) happened. This is something that has been deprived from these people for so long.”
The group then turned their thoughts to the lack of basic human rights for many citizens in this country.
“This isn’t being met in the country that has been so great, America, where people have more access to phones than to clean water,” Hossaini added, referring to a recent statistic, and then concluding that America “values ‘things’ (such as phones) more than the things we actually need.”
Picking up on that theme, Garcia noted that “five out of 10 children in this country go hungry every day.”
Later in the discussion, Pich spoke about the right to bear arms in the context of domestic violence, noting that the presence of a gun in a home greatly increases the chances that a victim of domestic violence will be killed by a gun.
“Who is benefiting from these policies?” Pich asked, also noting that Black men and boys disproportionately are victims of gun violence.
The meeting concluded with each member summing up how they define their commitment to human rights.
