Amnesty International Hosts Open Mic Night
Broadside Contributor Kelsey Huber

This past Monday, Amnesty International put on a three-hour event featuring “open mic” time, poetry readings, a petition signing and letter writing.

The event began with an introduction to Amnesty International, given by the event’s coordinator, Samim Atmar.

“Amnesty International’s vision is of a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards,” Atmar said.

The introduction was then followed by “open mic” time in which people were encouraged to come up to the podium and express any opinions or stories they had about human rights.

One of the first to speak, Joshua McCreary, a theater major at George Mason University, read three poems of his own writing. 

“I really love the enthusiasm Amnesty has,” McCreary said. ”There’s always something they’re moving towards.”

Other attendees and participants expressed the view that it was hard not to get involved with Amnesty International once they understood their mission.  There was a general passion for human rights such as free speech and freedom of religion.  One of the group’s goals is to support the release of “prisoners of conscience,” people who were arrested for expressing their beliefs.

At the beginning of the event a petition for the release of two “prisoners of conscience” was placed on a podium at the front to allow people to sign it during the various speeches and readings. The prisoners Filep Karma and Yusak Pakage were arrested in 2004 for raising the Morning Star Flag in Indonesia, according to www.amnestyusa.org.
Halfway through the event, participants were also given the opportunity to write letters to people in a position of influence, urging them to support human rights. 
 
“Letter writing is one of the biggest practices of Amnesty International,” Amnesty International President Erin Neff said. “The premise is writing to someone who can represent us.  It gets to the people it needs to get to. It lets those people know that the rest of the world is aware of what’s going on and is prepared to do something.”

Amnesty International is a 46-year-old movement to establish and preserve internationally recognized human rights. The organization exists woldwide without governmental sponsorship. It counts 2.2 million supporters from countries around the world.