Back then, there were black and white water fountains, black and white restrooms, and black women could not try on a dress or a pair of shoes in a downtown department store. No blacks had any jobs downtown anywhere in Alabama, except as drivers to the delivery people. No black had served on a jury anywhere in Alabama in 100 years. The police were a law unto themselves in the black community. They did whatever, whenever, to whomever. And you did not ask a question or they'd find your body floating in the Alabama River. I've known black men to be killed for not saying 'Sir' to a white person or yielding the sidewalk to a white woman. Those were awful times. And I'm just talking about a few years ago - 1958. That's the reason I came back. When you have been born into those circumstances and you have to live under that, it either makes you or breaks you...

Neta Golan
Hares is a beautiful West Bank village that has become my home for the last month. Ancient olive trees - more than 1,500 of them - have been cut down or uprooted in the past two months by the Israeli army. Now Israeli settlers surround the village. As with many other Palestinian villages, Hares has been under siege from the beginning of the Intifada. Its inhabitants have been denied the right to move in or out, to go to work, to receive medical treat ment, or to study.

Today, I've joined the villagers in opening and removing a roadblock.. We're trying to lift the cement block, placed at the village entrance by the Israeli army, with crowbars. The heavy men are standing on the bars. I am sticking stones under the lifted block and the rest of us are pushing.

My presence is meant to reduce the chances that the passing army patrols will open Þre on us. It is a terrifying reality that Palestinian/Arab blood does not count for much in the world these days. If anyone bothers to ask questions about why people are killed, the army can always claim that the people were throwing stones, as if that is a good enough reason for killing someone. When Israeli or foreign people and cameras are present, the army's behavior is usually more restrained: shooting an Israeli girl could lose someone a vote.

We push the cement block for about an hour, until it Þnally rolls over. It is a small victory in the face of an impending catastrophe. We know that the army can put many more blocks whenever they are ordered to and that thousands of villages in the West Bank and Gaza remain under siege, but we allow ourselves to enjoy it for the moment.

When I arrive home to the family that is hosting me, I get a call from my friend Ata Jaber. Ata and his family are farmers from the Baka Valley, near Hebron. He tells me that his house has been taken over by Israeli settlers. The police have notiÞed the family that settlers will be allowed to stay until after Shabat. If Palestinians attempt to take over a settler house they would be shot dead within minutes...

Dr. Riffat Hassan
There are two myths that you find in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions upon which rest the idea that men are superior to women. These ideas are that God's primary creation was Adam and from the rib of this male person, God created a woman - secondary and subordinate to man. The second is that although she's secondary in creation, she got Adam thrown out of paradise. Therefore women are to be seen as temptresses and seductresses, weak and dangerous to men.

I've done a lot of theological work to show that these beliefs are not supported by the basic teachings of Islam. The average Muslim thinks that woman was created from Adam's rib, but this story is not found in the Qu'ran , the sacred book of the Muslims. It has infiltrated into the Islamic tradition. In the Qu'ran there are 30 creation passages in which it says that God created all human beings at the same time and in the same manner. This shows that the traditional beliefs about women are contrary to Qu'ranic teaching.

In Pakistan, as in other cultures, honor is very prized by males. If a woman is seen by men as somehow compromising herself, then men believe they have the right to take that woman's life. A woman can bring shame on her family through allegations of an illicit affair or rape, for marrying a man of her choice, or for the merest rumor of impropriety. Basically, the idea is that women belong to men as property, and if a woman causes them to lose face in society, the men can kill her. These are called honor killings...

Kouthar and Marwa Al-Rawi
Some say it takes a village to raise a child. My sister and I disagree. We believe it takes a world to raise a child. Unfortunately, many villages today do not work together or get along. They bomb, murder, terrorize, and blackmail each other behind closed doors and in the public eye. Villages pass policies (like sanctions) on each other, which harm children and take away basic human rights.

My sister and I decided to take responsibility for the world we live in. Our work starts with our village, the United States, and its policy of sanctions against other villages, countries, and nations. The US imposes unilateral sanctions against some 75 countries, most notably against Cuba. The list goes on to include Iran, Libya, North Korea, and Sudan, just to name a few. The US also supports multilateral sanctions with other nations against Angola, Liberia, Rwanda, and Somalia. And finally the village under the severest sanctions of all - Iraq.

On August 6, 1990 the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 661, imposing economic sanctions and a full trade embargo on Iraq. Those sanctions deny the children adequate food, clean water, and medicine. According to the United Nations International Children's Fund (UNICEF), the sanctions cause 5,000 deaths of children under the age of five each month. This has gone on for ten years and has killed more than half a million children.

The charter of the United Nations says, "We the people of the United Nations are determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." Why then are the children in Iraq not being saved? Are they different from the children of all the villages that make up the world?

'Anela 'O Maunakea
Who am I? Maybe the question should be - To Whom Am I? I am a tree that yearns for water. I am a cloud that has no rain. I am the daughter of La, the sun that shines fiercely. He teaches me to be a warrior, to have courage with a flame that burns. I am Makani, the wind that uplifts your spirit. I am Waiola, the waters of life. I am Papahanaumoku or Earth Mother. I am the voice that you hear whispered in your ear. I am somebody. I am a Kanaka Maoli, a native Hawaiian. My ancestors, my elders, my mother and father, my family, my friends, and the Earth are my roots. They ground me and keep me true. They teach me to stand tall. I am their hope.

Makua Valley, near where I live, is a beautiful valley untouched by development. There are numerous legends about it, hundreds of ancient sites (including temples and shrines), and over 30 endangered species. 'Makua' mean 'parents' in Hawaiian. It is our church, our sanctuary, and our place of refuge. And for the past 60 years, the US Army has been bombing there.

During World War II, when martial law went into effect, the military condemned the valley, evicted the families who farmed and grew up there, and destroyed the community for target practice. Houses were bombed, the church was bombed, and the Army took over the lease for the cost of a single dollar. A measly dollar, in exchange for years of memories, history, legends, and tradition! At the time, the Army claimed that after the war, they would return the valley to its people. This has yet to happen. Today, the military is the second largest industry in Hawaii, and it occupies thirty percent of the Makua Valley.

The United States currently imprisons up to two million people. More than five million people are presently under some form of supervision within the criminal justice system. According to US Department of Justice statistics, by 1992 one out of three Black men between the ages of 20 and 29 (and in some cities such as Baltimore and Washington, DC, 50 percent of Black men between the ages of 18 and 35) were under some form of criminal justice supervision. The Department of Justice predicts that at the current rates of incarceration, a Black male born in 1991 has a 29 percent chance of going to prison at least once during his lifetime (Dyer, 2000).

Women represent the fastest-rising prison population. Since 1980, the number of women incarcerated in the US has risen by almost 400 percent. According to the May 1994 issue report of the Women's Economic Agenda Project, 54 percent of women in prison are women of color (prisonactivist.org). Furthermore, racism continues to be a major determining factor in the United S tates, manifested by the policies, programs, and doctrines of white supremacy. This institutionalized racism is reinforced by a capitalist, profit-driven economic system. At the dawn of the 21st century, the shift from monopoly capitalism to global capitalism is the defining phenomenon. In this period, nation-states have become less autonomous and have surrendered more of their control to multinational bodies, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Deindustrialization, technological breakthroughs, and global job competition have resulted in unemployment, underemployment, and poverty, particularly in people of color communities (Holt, 2000).