Tufts Amnesty International members attend annual regional conference

Students from Tufts Amnesty International joined hundreds of Amnesty International members and activists who attended the 39th annual Northeast Regional Conference at Boston University on Nov. 7.

According to President of Tufts Amnesty Stina Stannik, Amnesty International is the largest grassroots human rights organization in the world. The international nonprofit has over 7 million supporters worldwide and works to protect human rights all over the globe, according to the organization's website.

The Northeast Amnesty conference featured workshops and panels, which allowed participants to learn about human rights and network with one another, according to the Amnesty International website. Panels at the conference included "Mass Injustice in the United States" and "People on the Move: Survival Migration and the Human Rights Implications in Syria," and program workshops included sessions such as "Turning the World Inside Out: Using Portraits, Paper and Glue to Stand Up for What You Believe," "40 Years in Solitary: Albert Woodfox and the Crisis of Mass Incarceration in the USA" and "LGBT Human Rights: A Movement Beyond Marriage." Participants were also invited to discuss resolutions and attend a voting plenary.

According to Stannik, a senior, one of the many Tufts students at the conference, the event is attended by student groups, local groups and individual members.

Stannik, who has attended the regional conference three times, said that the conference was a chance for those involved with Tufts Amnesty to meet with other activists, learn more about the issues they support and gain practical ideas about strategy and tactics to reinvigorate student activism.

"It’s really easy to get bogged down in this work and to think it’s having no effect," she said. "It’s easy to feel like you’re not doing anything, and this conference is always effective at reminding people that there’s a big network of us doing this work.”

Stannik explained that the value of the conference is that it puts students in touch with people who have been directly affected by human rights issues. During one panel that Stannik attended on mass incarceration, several former prisoners spoke about what Amnesty has done for them.

“For me, going the third time, I definitely see different things,” she said. “A lot of the workshops are more intro level, and so I think for me, I didn’t get as much out of those as I did with conversations with individual activists and the other plenaries and the voting period."

Stannik added that the conference also reflected the international organization's growth over the years.

“As long as I’ve been involved with Tufts Amnesty, the national organization has been undergoing some organizational shifts,” she said. “That’s been evident at the regional conference, so I think every year it’s been getting better as they learn as well.”

Cassidy Olsen, internal and first-year liaison to Tufts Amnesty International, said she had a better understanding of the Amnesty community after attending the regional conference.

“You really get the sense of the widespread nature of Amnesty and how many connections you can make,” Olsen, a sophomore, said. “I think we’re really trying to incorporate that more in what we do now, how we expand into the broader Boston and regional community.”

She said the conference gave participants from Tufts a sense of the types of activists operating in Boston and of how Tufts Amnesty could collaborate with these activists in the future.

“[Overall] I think this was a very practical and productive conference -- very much action-oriented,” Olsen said. “I really felt like we accomplished something.”

Stannik explained that the Tufts Amnesty chapter, which has been active on campus since 2009, brings members together every week to discuss global and domestic human rights issues. For Stannik, one of the key takeaways from the conference -- one that could be useful for the Tufts Amnesty chapter --  is the importance of strategic planning.

“We don’t really do a lot of that with the Tufts club,” she said. “We work very week-to-week and event-to-event, and I think we could really benefit from having a focus for the year or taking on a case for the semester, and trying to build up to something rather than just fitting in what we can.”

Stannik said she hopes to sit down with the Executive Board of Tufts Amnesty at the beginning of next semester to try to bring more strategy to the work that the group does. She explained that an overarching theme of the group's work this fall has been human rights issues in solitary confinement, a focus prompted in part by the proposed reforms to solitary confinement policy currently being reviewed in Massachusetts legislature.

“We are working on lobbying training,” Olsen said. “We hope to lobby our senators in the state house, specifically on the issues of solitary confinement and some others.”

Olsen added that the Tufts group has tried to do more networking and outreach on campus this semester, including collaborating with the new Tufts chapter of the Petey Greene Program, a prison tutoring program, the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL) and the Tufts chapter of Love146, an organization that works to combat child trafficking worldwide. Tufts Amnesty has also worked with the peace and justice studies and philosophy departments, she said.

Stannik said that while Tufts Amnesty is affiliated with the greater Amnesty International organization, the Tufts chapter does not receive any funding from it.

"We choose our own direction but take guidance from the national and international organization,” she said.

Cynthia Gabriel Walsh, a senior organizer for Amnesty International USA and one of the organizers of the conference, said that she has worked with Tufts Amnesty in the past by supporting them in their activities and providing the chapter with training and resources. She was pleased by the reception that the conference got.

“The conference was really well received,” Walsh said. “Every conference is very unique. There’s definitely a lot going on right now globally and domestically. [It also] really provided a global perspective on human rights and how it also plays out here in our own country.”