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Action for Burma
Patrick Cook-Deegan traveled to Burma as part of his "Cycle for Schools" trip, a bike ride he used to raise money for building schools through Room to Read. He says, "While there I learned a great deal about the political and social troubles that the Burmese government inflicts upon its people."
A senior at Brown University, Cook-Deegan is now actively involved in U.S. Campaign for Burma. He and other students are organizing to get the message out about abuses being committed by Burma's repressive military dictatorship. This year, Burma was listed among the world's most failed states by Foreign Policy magazine, right behind Sudan in human rights violations.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which usually maintains a neutral position, strongly condemned the regime in late June on the grounds of forced labor and repeated atrocities committed against groups in eastern Burma—including murder, violence, arbitrary arrest and "large scale" destruction of food supplies. According to the BBC, this is the strongest public criticism since it spoke out against the Rwandan genocide over a decade ago. Students can take action on behalf of Burma at http://uscampaignforburma.org/action/action.html.
Unsustainable Production
Madeline Mahowald, of St. John's College
Madeline captured this image while working as a photojournalism intern with the Institute for Central American Development Studies in San Jose, Costa Rica. This man from Siquirres, Costa Rica, is one of thousands of Central Americans who work on banana plantations, enduring long hours with low pay, denial of their federal rights as laborers and as human beings, and sustained, direct contact with agricultural chemicals dangerous enough to be banned in the United States. The system ensures a low price and strict standards of uniformity in such trivial aspects as banana length, width, curvature and peel coloration, but it is not sustainable. The production process sickens and kills both the environment on which it depends and the people on whom it depends.