Human Earth Animal Liberation (HEAL) is part of a
legacy of community organizers and freedom fighters that have taken
a stand for justice, liberty, and equality throughout history and
today. The war for reason, compassion, peace, and ethical
responsibility has been raging for centuries. We are not the
first to notice the evil of which human beings are capable. We
are not the first to take a stand. And, we know there will be
a need for community organization and freedom fighting long after we
cease to exist. As long as there are unscrupulous, selfish,
greedy, fear-driven, power-hungry, narcissistic sociopaths working
their way through hierarchical systems of dominance and peonage,
there will be a need for those of us who stand up even if it is just
to say "no".
We dedicate this particular webpage to the
memories and legacies of those listed here. We have not made
note of every person to organize, inspire, and fight for change.
It would be an impossible task to do so. We just wanted to
share with you some of our sources of inspiration and understanding.
FIGHTING FOR SOCIAL EQUALITY!
Priest John Ball
(the "Mad" Priest of Kent" 1338-1381
"Priest John Ball
was a leader in the peasant uprising of 1381. "He is
said to have gained considerable fame as a roving preacher —
a "hedge priest" without a parish or any cure linking him to
the established order — by expounding the doctrines of
John Wycliffe, and especially by his insistence on
social equality. These utterances brought him into conflict
with the
archbishop of Canterbury, and he was thrown in prison on
three occasions." (see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ball_(priest) )
FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM!
Ruminahui (Inca warrior)
"Rumiñahui, or alternatively
Rumiaoui, born late 15th (1400's)century, died
June 25,
1535, was an
Inca warrior who, after the death of Emperor
Atahualpa's, led the resistance against the Spanish in
the northern part of the Inca Empire (modern-day Ecuador) in
1533. Though his real name was Atic Pillahuaso, born in
Píllaro (actual province of
Tungurahua,
Ecuador), he was nicknamed "Rumiñahui" which in
Kichwa (Note; Quechua is spoken by the indigenous
inhabitants of Peru and Bolivia, Kichwa is spoken by the
indigenous people of Ecuador) means "eyes of stone)". Inca
historians tend to believe that he was Atahualpa's half
brother, born from a native noble woman. After
Francisco Pizarro captured Atahualpa and demanded a
ransom to release him, Rumiñahui had been marching towards
Cajamarca to deliver a huge amount of gold. Nonetheless,
even as the Spanish obtained a room of gold, they still
ordered Atahualpa's immediate execution out of distrust.
Once Rumiñahui learned of this, he returned to the area that
is now Ecuador, believed to have
thrown the gold off a cliff, and prepared to resist the
Spanish. Pizarro sent his lieutenant
Sebastián de Benalcázar to capture Rumiñahui, take
Quito and bring whatever gold. The forces of Rumiñahui
and Benalcázar met at the
Battle of Mount Chimborazo, where Rumiñahui was
defeated. However, before the Spanish forces captured Quito,
Rumiñahui had it burned to the ground, and killed the temple
virgins to preserve their purity. Rumiñahui was eventually
captured, tortured and killed by the Spanish. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumiñahui_(Inca_warrior)
FIGHTING SUPERSTITION!
As you can see in
the article below, mass hysteria, puritanical brainwashing
cults, and lack of reason cause horrible human rights abuses
including the murder of women and children. This fight
is nothing new. It's just taken on a new form,
behavior modification!
"America has a long, rich, and
sometimes STRANGE history. One of the most bizarre times in
the history of what would become the United States occurred
in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692.
It
all began in late January of 1692 at the home of Samuel
Parris. His daughter and niece, Betty and Abigail, began
exhibiting strange and destructive behavior. They shrieked
throughout the house, had convulsions and seizures, entered
trance-like states and suffered from high fever. Parris
tried desperately to keep the girls condition a secret, but
finally agreed to contact his physician. Upon examining the
girls, Doctor William Griggs could find nothing physically
wrong with them. He suggested their condition might be the
result of witchcraft. The diagnosis of witchcraft, while
certainly devastating, was not uncommon at the time.
Throughout February, Parris prayed for the evil forces to
release the girls.
The Puritan townspeople began pressuring the girls to
identify the reasons for their suffering. The girls named
three women as witches. One was a slave named Tituba who had
often told them magical stories from her native Barbados,
another was a peasant mother named Sarah Good, and the last
was an elderly woman names Sarah Osborne who regularly
failed to attend church. The women were arrested and
examined in the village meetinghouse. During the
examinations the girls described how they had been attacked
by "spectors" of these three women. While the two Sarah's
denied engaging in witchcraft, for some reason, Tituba
confessed! Tituba then claimed the two Sarahs were also
ghosts and had conspired with her to torment the girls.
Soon, more young girls began acting in a similar matter to
Betty and Abigail. One of the girls, Ann Putnam, was the
daughter of one of the most influential families in Salem.
Her family's support of her accusations helped to legitimize
the guilt of the "witches".
Other townspeople soon would be accused of engaging in
witchcraft. The people within the town of Salem became
hysterical. Even Rebecca Nurse, a mother of eight, would be
tried and convicted of witchcraft. Several girls claimed
that Nurse's apparition (ghost) tortured them and other
witnesses linked her to the unusual deaths of several Salem
residents (some residents of Salem used the witchcraft
hysteria to settle long-standing arguments). She was even
accused of having "teets" (what baby mammals suckle to
obtain milk form their mother). At her trial, 39 of her
neighbors signed a petition stating she was a woman of
propriety (virtue or goodness). When the jury declared her
not-guilty, an uprising nearly occurred. The audience was
horrified that she was acquitted, and several of the judges
were left unsatisfied or left the bench. The jury was forced
to reconvene and the court brought a confessed witch by the
name of Deliverance Hobbs to the courtroom. When asked about
Hobbs, the nearly deaf Nurse replied 'she was one of us'.
After hearing the words of Nurse, the jury returned a guilty
verdict. Nurse later explained that she had never really
heard the question, and that when saying 'she was one of us'
she meant a co-defendant. Nurse was nevertheless hanged on
July 19, 1692. Other accused witches were tortured until
they confessed. About 25 "witches" hanged. (See:
http://www.mrnussbaum.com/history/
Thomas Jefferson was
the author of the Declaration of Independence and a
contributor to the US Constitution. Thomas Jefferson
fought for freedom and made an American Revolution!
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_
In the late 1800's
into the early 1910's Mahatma Gandhi was a civil rights
activist in South Africa. He worked on many projects
through out his life.
Click Here for more!
FIGHTING INSTITUTIONALIZED ABUSE
Dorothea
Lynde Dix 1802-1887
"Dorathea Dix: The Asylum
Movement That same year Dix traveled in England with
friends, returning home months later with an interest in new
approaches to the treatment of the insane. She took a job
teaching inmates in an East Cambridge prison, where
conditions were so abysmal and the treatment of prisoners so
inhumane that she began agitating at once for their
improvement. Prisons at the time were unregulated and
unhygienic, with violent criminals housed side by side with
the mentally ill. Inmates were often subject to the whims
and brutalities of their jailers. Dix visited every public
and private facility she could access, documenting the
conditions she found with unflinching honesty. She then
presented her findings to the legislature of
Massachusetts, demanding that officials take action
toward reform. Her reports—filled with dramatic accounts of
prisoners flogged, starved, chained, physically and sexually
abused by their keepers, and left naked and without heat or
sanitation—shocked her audience and galvanized a movement to
improve conditions for the imprisoned and insane. As a
result of Dix’s efforts, funds were set aside for the
expansion of the state mental hospital in Worcester. Dix
went on to accomplish similar goals in
Rhode Island and
New York, eventually crossing the country and expanding
her work into Europe and beyond."
"Working as a reporter
(beginning in 1885) for The Pittsburgh Dispatch at a rate of
$5 per week—and taking on the pen name by which she's best
known, after the Stephen Foster song "Nelly Bly" [sic]—Bly
expanded upon the negative consequences of sexist ideologies
and emphasized the importance of women's rights issues. She
also became renowned for her investigative and undercover
reporting, including posing as a sweatshop worker to expose
poor working conditions faced by women. However, Bly became
increasingly limited in her work at The Pittsburgh Dispatch
after her editors moved her to the paper's women's page, and
aspired to find a more meaningful career."
""...The insane asylum on Blackwell's Island is a human
rat-trap. It is easy to get in, but once there it is
impossible to get out. I had intended to have myself
committed to the violent wards, the Lodge and Retreat, but
when I got the testimony of two sane women and could give
it, I decided not to risk my health -- and hair -- so I did
not get violent." "...I had, toward the last, been shut off
from all visitors, and so when the lawyer, Peter A.
Hendricks, came and told me that friends of mine were
willing to take charge of me if I would rather be with them
than in the asylum, and I was only too glad to give my
consent. I asked him to send me something to eat immediately
on his arrival in the city, and then I waited anxiously for
my release. It came sooner than I had hoped. I was out 'in
line' taking a walk, and had just gotten interested in a
poor woman who had fainted away while the nurses were trying
to compel her to walk. 'Good-bye; I am going home,' I called
to Pauline Moser, as she went past with a woman on either
side of her. Sadly I said farewell to all I knew as I passed
them on my way to freedom and life, while they were left
behind to a fate worse than death. 'Adios,' I murmured to
the Mexican woman. I kissed my fingers to her, and so I left
my companions of hall 7." "...I had looked forward so
eagerly to leaving the horrible place, yet when my release
came and I knew that God's sunlight was to be free for me
again, there was a certain pain in leaving. For ten days I
had been one of them. Foolishly enough it seemed intensely
selfish to leave them to their sufferings. I felt a Quixotic
desire to help them by sympathy and presence. But only for a
moment. The bars were down and freedom was sweeter to me
than ever." "...Soon I was crossing the river and nearing
New York. Once again I was a free girl after ten days in the
madhouse on Blackwell's Island.""
Frederick Douglass, a former slave and eminent human rights
leader in the abolition movement, was the first black
citizen to hold a high U.S. government rank. 1 of 17 quotes
“If there is no struggle there is no progress. . . .
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it
never will.”
“Find out just what any people will
quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the
injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”
“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of
incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false,
and to incur my own abhorrence.”
“Believing,
as I do firmly believe, that human nature, as a whole,
contains more good than evil, I am willing to trust the
whole, rather than a part, in the conduct of human affairs.”
“To educate a man is to unfit him to be a slave.”
“To deny education to any people is one of the
greatest crimes against human nature. It is easy to deny
them the means of freedom and the rightful pursuit of
happiness and to defeat the very end of their being.”
—Frederick Douglass
In later years, Douglass
credited The Columbian Orator with clarifying and defining
his views on human rights. Douglass shared his newfound
knowledge with other enslaved people. Hired out to William
Freeland, he taught other slaves on the plantation to read
the New Testament at a weekly church service. Interest was
so great that in any week, more than 40 slaves would attend
lessons. Although Freeland did not interfere with the
lessons, other local slave owners were less understanding.
Armed with clubs and stones, they dispersed the congregation
permanently. With Douglass moving between the Aulds, he was
later made to work for Edward Covey, who had a reputation as
a "slave-breaker.” Covey’s constant abuse did nearly break
the 16-year-old Douglass psychologically. Eventually,
however, Douglass fought back, in a scene rendered
powerfully in his first autobiography. After losing a
physical confrontation with Douglass, Covey never beat him
again."
And, what is the Covey family doing these
days? Working with Hyrum W. Smith and running behavior
modification/slave training camps throughout the US.
Know your facts, folks!
We mention Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley because she wrote "A Vindication of
the Rights of Women". This statement was the
inspiration of the women's movement in the US in the 1910's
and led to women getting the vote in 1920 in the US!
Franklin D.
Roosevelt ran for the presidency in part on a platform to
repeal prohibition! Prohibition is a ridiculous
practice of infantilizing grown adults by paternalistically
punishing them for exercising free will.
Prohibition in the
above statement and that was repealed in 1933 was the
prohibition of alcohol. In the 1920's illegal speak
easies and underground parties reigned supreme with
gangsters and bootleggers raking in big bucks for the
illicit stuff. Now, prohibition is still at work,
gangs are still getting rich, politicians are still being
bought, and the people are still being denied basic freedoms
in the way they choose to live and what they choose to
experience.
FIGHTING FOR WORKERS'
RIGHTS!
1940
NYC
Air King Corp RadioStrike
We can go back
further than 1940, to before rumors of Jesus Christ, to
before the days of Mesopotamia and find oppression and
revolt. The picketers above were fighting for their
rights. They were fighting for living wages. We
continue that fight today!
FIGHTING FOR EQUALITY!
George Hayes, Thurgood Marshall,
and James Nabrit celebrating the
de-segregation of schools because "separate is not equal!"
The verdict came down from the
US Supreme Court in 1954.
We salute all of those who have
struggled and continue to struggle for equality!
FIGHTING FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE!
Martin Luther King,
Jr., 1929-1968
Martin Luther King,
Jr. fought for equality and opposed the war in Vietnam.
He was targeted by the FBI "Counter-Intelligence Program"
and according to FBI documents, that agency is credited with
his assassination. See more at:
Dean Kahler
300 ft (91 m); back wound fracturing the
vertebrae - permanently paralyzed from
the chest down
Douglas A.
Wrentmore 329 ft (100 m); hit in his
right knee
James Dennis
Russell 375 ft (114 m); hit in his right
thigh from a bullet and in the right
forehead by birdshot - both wounds minor
{died 2007}
Robert F. Stamps
495 ft (151 m); hit in his right buttock
{died June 11, 2008}
Donald Scott
MacKenzie 750 ft (230 m); neck wound
If you've read through
the rest, you probably understand that oppression doesn't
exist in a vacuum. Human rights struggles never end.
Get involved. Kent State can not happen again.
FIGHTING FOR EQUALITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE!
In the 1980's
world pressure, including from human rights activists in the
US, worked to put the world's attention on the barbarism and
cruelty of the Apartheid system. There is still much
improvement needed...
"Apartheid
(meaning separateness in
Afrikaans,
cognate to
Englishapart and
-hood) was a system of legal
racial segregation enforced by the
National Party government of
South Africa between 1948 and 1990.
Apartheid had its roots in the history of
colonisation and settlement of southern
Africa, with the development of practices
and policies of separation along racial
lines and domination by European settlers
and their descendents. Following the
general election of 1948,[1],
the National Party set in place its
programme of Apartheid, with the
formalisation and expansion of existing
policies and practices into a system of
institutionalised racism and white
domination. Apartheid was dismantled in a
series of
negotiations from 1990 to 1993,
culminating in
elections in 1994, the first in South
Africa with
universal suffrage. The legacies of
apartheid still shape South African politics
and society.
Apartheid legislation classified inhabitants
and visitors into
racial groups (black, white,
coloured, and Indian or Asian). South
African blacks were stripped of their
citizenship, legally becoming citizens
of one of ten tribally based and nominally
self-governing
bantustans (tribal homelands), four
of which became nominally independent
states. "
Yes, racism,
oppression, corruption, and murder still exist. These
are all social problems we must address if we hope to live
peaceably in the future.
FIGHTING FOR TEEN LIBERTY!
1990s
"On November 30,
1991 Elizabeth Steiner (photo) traveled up from Florida
with Richard Bradbury, David Pearson of Largo, Florida, and
a fourth person to picket Straight-Atlanta.
[Photo: Don Plummer, Marietta Daily Journal, 12/1/91] "
Photo and info provided by:
http://www.thestraights.com/pickets/
FIGHTING AGAINST FRAUDULENT, ABUSIVE, BRAINWASHING CULTS!
2007-2009
This photo was taken
at a protest organized by
HEAL-KY
Coordinator, Tony Connelly. HEAL is taking on programs
from coast-to-coast and throughout the midwest with 8
chapters in 7 states!
We've helped parents
retrieve their children from abusive programs. We've
helped prevent children from being placed in abusive
programs. And, we've helped families and survivors
understand their rights. We've also created a
Teen
Rights page to inform young people of the law and how it
can be used in their favor to protect them from
institutionalized abuse. That's only a
snippet of our big picture!
Summer 2010 (Free the Children--Fuck the
Programs!)
Syeda Ghulam Fatima and
the Bonded Labour Liberation Front
Against all odds,
(BLLF) has achieved the release of over 80,000 bonded
Pakistan from the shackles of slavery. From January 1988 up
to May 2009, men, women and children from all provinces of
Pakistan. They belong to different sectors like agriculture,
brick kiln, and carpet industries. 45% of them were
children, 25% of them were women and 30% were men. These
bonded workers were freed through Habeas Corpus
applications, which were filed in High Courts as well as
with the intervention of the concerned authorities, only in
2010 till date BLLF released 523 bonded workers.
Kathryn Bolkovac (former UN Peacekeeper and
Whistleblower)
Maiello Bolkovac disclosed the
horrors of sexual enslavement of young women, trafficked
mainly from Russia and the Ukraine -- also performed by UN
peacekeepers in Bosnia. According to a
report provided by Human Rights Watch, the "clientele"
in Bosnia consisted of International Police Task Force
(IPTF) members, SFOR (Stabilization Force in Bosnia and
Herzegovina) staff, local police, international employees,
and local citizens. Recently Bolkovac returned to UN
headquarters in New York City, introducing her book The
Whistleblower, the testimony that inspired the film with the
same name, starring British actress Rachel Weisz. It is a
moving and enlightening scripture that serves as a crucial
reminder that according to a document released by the UN in
March 2010,
titled "Sexual Exploitation and Abuse": "sexual
exploitation and abuse, in a variety of different forms, has
been found to exist to a greater or lesser extent in all
duty stations." Former Nebraska police investigator Kathryn
Bolkovac joined the UN Police Task Force in post-war Bosnia
in 1999 as an employee of the private military contractor
DynCorp in order to train local police officers. She became
a human rights investigator, and after blowing the whistle
on the humanitarian crimes taking place, she was fired.
Bolkovac sued DynCorp in a British employment tribunal,
claiming she had been unfairly dismissed. The tribunal ruled
in her favor.
