by Rob Hallam January 24, 2014 in main, meetings by Rob Hallam
The room for our (rather packed!) meeting on Tuesday has been confirmed as 433 in the St Andrews Building. Check out the previous post for details, particularly if you were thinking of standing in the EGM!
The St Andrews Building is located on Woodlands Road, across from the Old Schoolhouse (pub) – see OpenStreetMap below for more info.
by Ruth January 23, 2014 in events, main, meetings, newsletter by Ruth
Hello all,
This one is coming early as there is an important announcement about the EGM NEXT WEEK. The committee has decided that we would like to create the new position of Press Officer, as there is great importance of using media outlets to publicise our campaigns and events- which is something that we have not achieved due to a lack of time that everyone else on the committee experiences because there is so much else going on! Given the very exciting news that we have received in response to our LGBT rights campaign and petition to Coca-Cola, we felt that the creation of this position couldn’t wait until the AGM in March. Read on for more!
We have an updated Doodle poll for our Guantanamo Bay demonstration next week so please update your availability! http://www.doodle.com/fr7gq32u4xr2rkq6
**We are back in the same room as last week**
There will be two positions open:
Campaigns Coordinator – responsible for overseeing the campaign actions. The person with this role will help to research the chosen campaigns and coordinate any events in collaboration with other societies/organisations. Be prepared for lots and lots of emailing.
Press Officer – responsible for engaging with student and local media as well as updating our Facebook/Twitter accounts. The person with this role will work closely with the Campaigns Coordinator and Publicity Officer to put together press releases, blogs and update Amnesty International UK with our news and planned events. AIUK has published resources to help with writing press releases and support this role.
Anyone can run for these positions and if you are interested, then you are welcome to email us and we will be happy to answer any questions.
– After the meeting we will be heading for a drink to welcome the new committee members so everyone is invited for that.
Last week we heard a very interesting and useful presentation on the history of Guantanamo Bay and so next week we will show a 15 minute documentary that takes a closer look at the treatment of prisoners who are still held there, the ongoing hunger strikes and the campaign for the release of British resident Shaker Aamer.
The last part of the meeting will focus on Syria with a presentation by Jana. We are also inviting some of the guest speakers from the Panel Discussion which will be held the next day so that those of you who cannot make it have still had the opportunity to hear from other organisations that are working on the to help those affected by the conflict.
Dom has now launched GU Amnesty’s petition to Coca-Cola through Change.org, requesting that they put the LGBT rainbow on their products to truly support LGBT people as they continue to sponsor the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Not only was this a fantastic idea in the first place, but it has received special attention from the staff at Change.org who have been in contact with us to establish a plan to promote the petition further. They have told us that there are people within the USA and Ukraine who have expressed a desire to help promote the campaign, so this is very exciting news!
1)Â Â Â Â Â Please sign and share with friends!
2)Â Â Â Â Â Join our Thunderclap!
GU Amnesty are a member of the GU Coalition for Syrian Refugees, a group formed last year to hold events to raise money for charities who are providing aid to those affected by the conflict in Syria.
“Syria: I can still see hope”
This is shaping up to be a fantastic event so I hope you can make it!
Chairperson: Assaad Al Achi from the Syrian Non-Violence Movement, a group that AIUK is working with and supporting.
Other speakers include:
Kurt Mills, Convenor of the Glasgow Human Rights Network
A guest speaker from Syria, supported by the Scottish Refugee Council
Oxfam UK
Unicef on Campus
Friends of MSF Glasgow
Event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/573301232761988/
The Challenge is for team of up to 4 people who are enjoy a little competition – all in the name of raising money for various funds for Syrian refugees. Registration is open from 12noon and teams will be given a list of challenges to complete in about 2 hours. The challenges are to be filmed on a smart phone and the winners will be announced at the ceilidh.
The ceilidh is happening in QUDOS at 7pm. Of course there is a raffle with some fantastic prizes, and this event will round up all our efforts and hopefully see a considerable sum raised for our cause.
Our multi-award winning night of comedy is back. Once again we are bringing you the biggest student charity fundraiser on campus, hosted by Billy Kirkwood.
Our afterparty is being kindly hosted by Philanthrobeats who have recently gained official charity status and have raised money for many excellent causes since their first club night in 2012. Check out their website to see their events and how to get involved!
This year looks to be even bigger and better – remember to get your tickets in advance! Here’s the event page for those on Facebook and website page for those who aren’t.
**The deadline for this is the 28th January**
Do you have a passion for human rights and a talent for art, writing or campaigning? Enter the HART Scholarship Competition 2014.
The Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART) works to provide lasting change through aid and advocacy for those suffering oppression and persecution. The communities we work with have little presence in the international media, and the humanitarian situations they face are largely unknown and unreported. Many live behind closed borders, meaning it is difficult for aid and support to get in, and for information to get out.
We are calling for essays, artwork and campaign strategies which focus on the political and humanitarian situations faced by our partners around the world, and which raise awareness of human rights violations.
HART Scholarships will be awarded to winning entrants, including the chance to see your work published or exhibited, or to put your campaign plan into action, a cash prize and an invite to tea in the House of Lords. For more information, please visit www.hart-uk.org/campaigns/hart-scholarship-competitions.
by Ruth January 18, 2014 in main, meetings by Ruth
Hi again,
Here are a couple of very important things that require your attention!
We are sad to announce that our Campaigns Coordinator is stepping down. Dom has put in a huge amount of effort since the start of the year and we are so grateful for all his time and dedication to the role.
This means that in two weeks’ time we will be holding an EGM to elect a new Campaigns Coordinator. Anyone can run for this position and if you are interested, I recommend that you get in touch with Dom or myself to find out more about the role. You can talk to us at the next meeting, or email us and we will be happy to answer any questions.
Dom has now launched GU Amnesty’s petition to Coca-Cola through Change.org, requesting that they put the LGBT rainbow on their products to truly support LGBT people as they continue to sponsor the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Please sign and share with friends!
Thanks!
Ruth
by Ruth January 18, 2014 in events, information, main, meetings, newsletter by Ruth
Hey all,
Happy Saturday and congratulations for making it through the first week back! It was great to see so many people at the SPB publicity launch on Tuesday; I hope you all enjoyed the comedy preview!
In short, here are the most important links:
**Room change: St Andrew’s Building Room 433A/B**
Our chosen campaign for this month is Guantanamo Bay. Despite Obama’s promise to have it closed, Saturday 11th marked the 12th anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay and for a number of inmates, including British resident Shaker Aamer, this will also be their 12th year as prisoners. Many of these individuals have in fact been cleared for release but remain detained at the facility despite international pressure to have them released. Find out more on the AIUK website.
Guest speaker: we are hoping to have Dr Iain Banks from the University to deliver a presentation on the history of Guantanamo Bay.
Demonstration on campus: we are still waiting for the orange jumpsuits so the demo will take place later next week. Fill in the Doodle if you want to take part.
Back-up plan – conflict minerals continued: Our chosen campaign for the year
Communication has been difficult with Dr Banks so this is the alternative arrangement if he is unavailable. We plan on making full use of the fact we have a better room for showing documentaries and will be screening ‘Blood in the Mobile’ a documentary film that looks more into the use of conflict minerals in our everyday consumer electronics. http://bloodinthemobile.org/the-film/
GU Amnesty are a member of the GU Coalition for Syrian Refugees, a group formed last year to hold events to raise money for charities who are providing aid to those affected by the conflict in Syria.
Chairperson: Assaad Al Achi from the Syrian Non-Violence Movement, a group that AIUK is working with and supporting.
Other speakers include: Unicef on Campus and Friends of MSF Glasgow
Event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/573301232761988/
The Challenge is for team of up to 4 people who are enjoy a little competition – all in the name of raising money for various funds for Syrian refugees. Registration is open from 12noon and teams will be given a list of challenges to complete in about 2 hours. The challenges are to be filmed on a smart phone and the winners will be announced at the ceilidh.
The ceilidh is happening in QUDOS at 7pm. Of course there is a raffle with some fantastic prizes, and this event will round up all our efforts and hopefully see a considerable sum raised for our cause.
Our multi-award winning night of comedy is back! Once again we are bringing you the biggest student charity fundraiser on campus, hosted by Billy Kirkwood.
Our afterparty is being kindly hosted by Philanthrobeats who have recently gained official charity status and have raised money for many excellent causes since their first club night in 2012. Check out their website to see their events and how to get involved!
This year looks to be even bigger and better – remember to get your tickets in advance! Here’s the event page for those on Facebook and website page for those who aren’t.
A message from Students for Co-operation:
Hi, we’d appreciate it if you could see if any of your members are interested in or are in student cooperatives as we are having our founding conference of Students for Cooperation in Birmingham in February! We have some funding too to get students down from Scotland. It is a new national organisation (and cooperative!) for student cooperatives to get together and to help new cooperatives form, thanks!
Here is the event page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1424534744446779/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming
We are invited to the North-East regional conference organised by students at Newcastle University. The agenda will be emailed to us at the end of the month but they have requested that we let them know if any of us are interested in attending. Arrangements for food and accommodation will also be detailed later on.
If you are interested then let me know – president@guamnesty.org.uk
As you can probably tell, we have a very busy semester ahead of us! It’s going to be fantastically hectic for the committee but huge amounts of fun for all.
Ruth
by Ruth January 12, 2014 in main, meetings, newsletter, spb by Ruth
Hello everyone and happy New Year!
I hope you all had a lovely break and if you are feeling a bit rubbish about being back at uni then I hope this gives you a few things to look forward to at least. If you didn’t make any of our meetings last year but are still interested in what we do, then we would love to see you. As always though, you can join us at any time and there are no membership fees – just come along when you can! This weekly newsletter will detail all of our upcoming events so even if you can’t make the meetings, there are plenty of other occasions to join us. If you have any questions about anything, just drop us an email: mail@guamnesty or you can get in touch with the relevant committee member who are listed on our Facebook page and website.
We’ve got a very busy semester with lots of campaigning events and our biggest fundraiser of the year coming up. Here are our plans for January, and some other events that may be of interest to you:
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Secret Policeman’s Ball Publicity Launch
**Please note the change of venue for this meeting!**
Our Vice President, Debbie, and the SPB Sub-committee have been working very hard to get everything organised for our 6th annual Secret Policeman’s Ball comedy fundraiser. This is our biggest event of the year and has won multiple awards from both the SRC and Amnesty International UK for its success.
The date this year is the 22nd February, so get that in your diary! Tickets will be available online soon.
Our first meeting back is going to be the official publicity launch and our host Billy Kirkwood has organised for a few of the performers to give us a short preview of their material to get us excited for the main event. Since it is our first meeting back, we will be going for food/drinks afterwards so you are all welcome to come along.
Event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/245702882272000/
Our chosen campaign for this month is Guantanamo Bay. Despite Obama’s promise to have it closed, Saturday 11th marked the 12th anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay and for a number of inmates, including British resident Shaker Aamer, this will also be their 12th year as prisoners. Many of these individuals have in fact been cleared for release but remain detained at the facility despite international pressure to have them released. Find out more on the AIUK website.
Guest speaker: we are hoping to have Dr Iain Banks from the University to deliver a presentation on the history of Guantanamo Bay but are awaiting confirmation.
GU Amnesty are a member of the GU Coalition for Syrian Refugees, a group formed last year to hold events to raise money for charities who are providing aid to those affected by the conflict in Syria. One of these events is a panel discussion which we have co-organised and will welcome guest speaker Assaad Al Achi from the Syrian Non-Violence Movement, a group that AIUK is working with and supporting.
A message from Students for Co-operation:
Hi, we’d appreciate it if you could see if any of your members are interested in or are in student cooperatives as we are having our founding conference of Students for Cooperation in Birmingham in February! We have some funding too to get students down from Scotland. It is a new national organisation (and cooperative!) for student cooperatives to get together and to help new cooperatives form, thanks!
Â
We are invited to the North-East regional conference organised by students at Newcastle University. The agenda will be emailed to us at the end of the month but they have requested that we let them know if any of us are interested in attending. Arrangements for food and accommodation will also be detailed later on.
If you are interested then let me know – president@guamnesty.org.uk
I hope your first week back doesn’t hit too hard. See you on Tuesday for some laughs 🙂
Ruth
by Ruth December 24, 2013 in information, main, meetings, newsletter by Ruth
This has been a very successful first semester with our LGBT and Women’s Rights campaigns and our pub quiz, Jamnesty and Christmas carolling fundraisers. Our first meeting back will be on Tuesday 14th January for our Secret Policeman’s Ball publicity launch and social. We will then be starting our Guantanamo Bay campaign as well as continuing our plans for the Coalition for Syrian Refugees panel discussion event that we are helping to organise.
There will be more details next year, this is just a heads up. We have done a fair bit of letter writing so far, so I found this video to illustrate why it is so important in the hope of making you feel good for all your efforts. I hope you have enjoyed this semester, and have a fantastic holiday!
The Importance of Letter Writing
See you all in the new year,
Ruth
by Rob Hallam November 28, 2013 in main, meetings, photos by Rob Hallam
Great work creating the Coca Cola shame poster, and thanks to those that posed for photos with signs decrying Coca Cola’s homophobia.
Our poster
Suggested Coca Cola branding
The group hard at work
by Ruth November 24, 2013 in events, main, meetings, news by Ruth
Hey lovely people,
Congratulations everyone on such a good effort for the Day of Silence and Jamnesty! We managed to get the photo action posters up and you should be able to see them in the QMU, SRC, GUU and GUSA office soon, if not already. Also, the Thunderclap was a success! (Although it did go off a little later than we originally planned.) And finally, we managed to get at least 88 people to Jamnesty, raising over £300!
I have to say that Jamnesty has been rated as one of GU Amnesty’s best events ever, and I completely agree. It was such a good night and our performers were all fantastic. You can see the photos on our website where you can also find the links to Yew, Chrissy Barnacle and Flying Penguins’ pages so that you can listen again and download their music.
You may have heard that Coca-Cola have refused to speak out against the discrimination and violence that is being directed at LGBT people in Russia. Here is their pretty pathetic statement.
Our plan is to create a banner/poster that will highlight Coca-Cola’s failure to act and plan how to raise awareness on campus.
There are a few other things that we need to discuss, including our final social (see below) and fundraiser of the semester, and a Secret Policeman’s Ball update but it’s going to be a fairly short meeting (30 mins planning and discussion, 30 mins campaign action) because this is happening at 6/6.30pm:
(A message from ex-committee member, Cat, about the Reclaim the Night March)
“Hello everyone! Before I go on this post, I’d just like to congratulate all of you that took part in the day of Silence on Wednesday. It was absolutely lovely to see all of your photos and I hope you raised plenty of money!
November is drawing to a close, which means we are about to enter the 16 Days of Action for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. There are an awful lot of activities going in Glasgow in order to raise awareness about this, so please forgive me for not linking to them all.
I would like to make you aware of this one, though. The Rape Crisis group will be holding their annual Reclaim the Night March, which this year will take place on Tuesday 26th October.
The march will start at 18:30 outside the main entrance of the Botanic Gardens (opposite Oran Mor), and will go down Byres Road, up University Avenue, then down Gibson St to the STUC on Woodlands Road- where there will be hot drinks, food, speeches and music. You can start assembling outside the Botanic Gardens from 18:00.
In the years I was with the group, we got quite a few people to attend. So I really hope I’ll see some of you there!
Once again, great work with the campaigns so far this year, and I’m looking forward to the SPB already!
So anyone who wants to come along, we will be joining the march as GU Amnesty. We will have an Amnesty banner and if you want to bring jars with tealights, that is quite often what people do. We will go together, straight from the meeting.
Oh dear, I can’t believe we’re planning for things in December. That’s scary.
For our last official meeting, we have a documentary film in mind related to women’s rights so thought this would be a good way to finish our women’s rights events. We will discuss this at the meeting and are open to more suggestions.
Our favourite day of the year, and it’s on a Tuesday 🙂
As this is during our exam period, we were not planning on having an actual meeting but we really cannot ignore such an important date in our calendar. So, we hoped to make this our end of term social, which we are going to discuss at the next meeting so we can get an idea of what folk might want to do.
Sunday 1st December: Pridepop! (World Aids Day)
World AIDS Day is celebrated on 1 December every year and is an international day to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS. It is an opportunity for us as human beings to unite and support each other in our fight against HIV.
PRIDEPOP is a night of love, acceptance and respect. It is a night of intolerance towards prejudice and hate. The party itself is a musical and visual drinking system that combines music, dancing and alcohol. PRIDEPOP could mean anything. But for Andrew and Carlo it is a celebration of equality. It is a night where we come together regardless of our HIV status to penetrate the night with our pride in who we are and what we can achieve when we treat everyone as equal.
The event is being held at the Berkeley Suite from 8pm on Sunday 1 December.Â
Event page for the campaign week with relevant news articles and reposts being posted each day.
Event page for the film screening and discussion (Wednesday 4th December, 7pm, room tbc).
‘Medics against Violence are working alongside Police Scotland, and the Violence Reduction Unit and are campaigning to raise awareness of sexual violence. Sexual violence is a major problem with huge numbers of incidents involving both male and female victims each year.
This December we will be holding a ‘Campaign Week’ 2nd-6th December. We want to get more people talking about this serious topic and to learn more about the early warnings that you may see. We want everyone to be safe this Christmas, and to know who to turn to if you see something or if something happens to you.
Each day we will be emailing and posting articles and news reports relating to the campaign.
We will be holding stalls at lunchtime throughout the week where you can get more information about the campaign, donate to the campaign and buy wristbands.
We will also be holding a film & discussion night, led by Graham Goulden, Chief Inspector and National Anti-Violence Campaign Coordinator at the Violence Reduction Unit, Glasgow.
The event page for this can be found here:Â https://www.facebook.com/events/1410819055821606 It will be at 7.00pm, Boyd Orr Building (Room TBC) – Wednesday 4th December.’
It may nearly be the end of this semester, but there is still a lot going on! Remember to bring warm clothes on Tuesday if you are marching with us.
Ruth
by Rob Hallam November 18, 2013 in main, meetings, photos by Rob Hallam
A big thanks to everyone who wrote a letter or sent off a card as a part of Write for Rights. Participating in these things makes a huge difference.
by Dominyka October 30, 2013 in information, main, meetings by Dominyka
Hey everyone!
Yesterday we had our final LGBT Rights campaign meeting – which left some of us wondering where October went… There were some great events over the month though, so it’s not something to be upset about!
To remember why we chose this as our first campaign, and why a special focus on Russia is needed, we turned to the recent BBC’s documentary Stephen Fry: Out There. The excerpt we watched focused on Russia and featured both members of the gay community that face violence and laws against them, and people that make such laws, namely a Russian politician Vitaly Monolov who initiated a ban on ‘propaganda of homosexuality’ among minors in Saint Petersburg back in 2012.
This was followed by some letter writing: we addressed the International Olympic Committee, which will receive the letters together with our photos (Rob made sure that those of you who haven’t had a chance before got their pictures taken!), and the companies sponsoring the Games, such as Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.
We also had a look at the previous Secret Policeman’s Ball posters to encourage everyone to take part in the design competition!
Our first campaign being over definitely doesn’t mean we’re finished and never looking back at it again! Wednesday 20th November will be our Day of Silence, when we symbolically (or not) take a form of silence to demonstrate solidarity and draw attention to LGBT-related harassment, bullying, and persecution around the world. We have agreed to look into the options of white t-shirts and stickers for the occasion. The silence will be broken at our ‘Love is a Human Right’ Jamnesty gig which you’ve all probably heard about by now, but if not, check it out and get a cheaper ticket in advance!
The next meeting will see the start of the Women’s rights campaign – but you’ll hear more about this from Ruth in the upcoming newsletter!
See you soon,
Domi