World View

When Dr. William F. Schulz became executive director of Amnesty International USA in April 1994, he assumed leadership of an organization struggling to define itself in a changing world. Images of Chinese students protesting in Tiananmen Square and the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had inspired human rights activists across America. The ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and the genocide of an estimated 1 million Tutsi and moderate Hutus in Rwanda had appalled them. But AIUSA was not in prime form to help realize human rights gains following these developments. Membership had begun to decline after considerable growth in the 1980s. Fundraising had leveled off. The organization was divided about how best to combine grassroots leadership with staff and volunteer expertise.

The largest national section of one of the world’s most pre-eminent human rights organizations was at a crossroads. AIUSA needed more than a strong new director with a commitment to social justice. It needed a visionary with the expertise in organizational growth, management, fundraising and public relations to rebuild its foundation. And it needed an inspirational leader who would build bridges and heal wounds. Schulz, then the president of the Unitarian Universalist Association and a former minister, was well-prepared to take AIUSA forward.

Schulz admits bridging the organizational divide was a major early challenge. “Being responsive to staff needs that are often very diverse, hearing all the members pushing Amnesty in different directions, and then trying to balance them with the international movement’s own needs and priorities is always a complex challenge,” he says. “I was surprised there was as much tension between staff and volunteers as I found when I got here. So I tried to be a bridge-builder…to not take a radical position. I think everyone, no matter what their perspective on the organizational issues, was deeply committed to the human rights agenda. Calling people back to that agenda and reminding them why we were all in this together was very important.” The Dalai Lama and Bill Schulz mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the Carter Center in Atlanta Ga., in 1988.

Schulz next to AIUSA’s Advocacy Director for Europe and Eurasia Maureen Greenwood, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton and a delegation of the Algerian Mothers of the Disappeared.

After an initial tour of AIUSA, Schulz decided quickly to build a staff of some of the most talented individuals in the human rights field and a dynamic senior management team. He also prioritized dramatically increasing revenues. “I knew no matter what else we did right, if we didn’t have enough money the organization would be at odds with itself…constantly fighting about financial priorities” and diminishing its capacity to fulfill its core mission. Schulz’s strategies worked. Since 1994 the staff has grown from 80 to 160. Many are experts in their fields. Between 1996 and 2005 the dues-paying membership grew by nearly 30 percent. The organization has doubled its budget to $42 million. Gifts of $5,000 or more have grown from a total of $500,000 a year to more than $5 million a year. This enormous increase in major gift-giving has provided a base for AIUSA’s first comprehensive capital campaign, now in Phase 1, and supported the development

of AIUSA’s Web site, whose online community now exceeds 400,000 individuals. “Bill has been an incredibly intense, creative and inspired leader and a very successful fundraiser,” says Paul Hoffman, a civil rights attorney in California and former chair of AI’s International Executive Committee. “The work he has done will leave the organization on firm financial footing for many years to come.”

Schulz also recognized that grassroots activism must retain a place at the heart of an organization built by volunteers. So to expand and support an active, vibrant and diverse membership base, AIUSA created the Activist Growth and Development Blueprint in 2003. Under Schulz’s direction in 2005, the organization sharpened its focus on activist development and created the National Training Program and the National Student and Youth Program, to better prepare members to campaign and to enlist and serve young members, some of AIUSA’s most dedicated activists. The stronger membership networks lend force to AIUSA’s work to secure the release of prisoners of conscience and advance the larger human rights agenda around the world.

Under Schulz’s leadership, an invigorated AIUSA has expanded its work via new programs, including OUTfront! for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender human rights; a Research Department to conduct field research on domestic human rights issues; the Business and Human Rights program to work on corporate responsibility; the Crisis Preparedness and Response Unit to mobilize the organization on rapidly unfolding and grave human rights situations; the Domestic Human Rights Program to focus on U.S. abuses; and Artists for Amnesty to engage members of the creative community such as actors Mira Sorvino, Halle Berry and Nicolas Cage. Post-September 11, Schulz has increased resources to address violations in the U.S.-led “war on terror,” especially rollbacks on the absolute prohibition on torture.

Cultivating new leadership networks has been a hallmark of Schulz’s tenure. During his first year with AIUSA he formed the Executive Director’s Leadership Council (EDLC), which includes major contributors who meet twice yearly to discuss programs and often take direct action themselves. In 2000 EDLC member Bianca Jagger hand-delivered a letter co-signed by Schulz to the office of then-Texas Governor George W. Bush urging him stop the execution of Gary Graham, whose guilt had come under serious question. “Bill has played an indispensable role personally in developing the EDLC,” says Curt Goering, Senior Deputy Executive Director for Policy and Programs at AIUSA. “It’s become more than just a collection of individuals, but rather a group with such good rapport it’s created its own momentum.”

Schulz also played a critical role during the mid-1990s in creating a coalition of the directors of 12 human rights groups. They have come together quarterly, planned collaborative work and met with senior government officials. Schulz “has been in most of these meetings and has been a very articulate and clear voice for holding the line,” says Michael Posner, Executive Director of Human Rights First, a coalition member. “The effort to challenge the current administration’s detention policies culminating in the [McCain] amendment is one of the biggest successes I can remember. Amnesty is the mother ship. It’s the foundation on which the human rights movement has been built. As the leader of AUISA for the last 12 years, Bill has set a very positive tone that encourages human rights organizations to work collaboratively and collectively, which is the way we need to work to make change.”

These innovations have put AIUSA in a position to influence domestic policy on human rights. In a 2004 report, AIUSA recommended successfully that law enforcement agencies limit the proliferation of electro-shock weapons such as Tasers, the use of which has too often been a contributing factor in torture and death. The Stop Child Executions! campaign focused attention on capital punishment for juvenile offenders and culminated in 2005 when the Supreme Court declared these executions unconstitutional. And after more than 92,000 Amnesty activists signed a petiJimmy Carter and Schulz at the Carter Center, where the former president addressed the AIUSA Board of Directors in 1999.

Schulz at the premiere of Hotel Rwanda with cast members Don Cheadle and Sophie Okonedo on the right and event co-hosts Angelina Jolie and Harrison Ford on the left.

tion calling for President Bush to renew the Violence Against Women Act, he signed its reauthorization into law in January 2006. The act will provide approximately $3.9 billion during the next five years toward the fight against domestic violence in America. Schulz is savvy about boosting awareness about human rights among the American public. He has published two well-received books and been a strong presence in the U.S. news media, appearing on radio and television programs from Morning Edition and 60 Minutes to Politically Incorrect. “I did so many national media appearances because I wanted to reach beyond the traditional constituency and expand the arena of people who thought about and talked about human rights,” he says. As a result, AIUSA is now routinely cited in major news media outlets. And according to Edelman Public Relations’ 2006 Trust Barometer, in which 1,500 opinion leaders were surveyed, AI is now one of the most trusted NGOs in the country. The New York Review of Books said of Schulz in 2002 that he has “done more than anyone in the American human rights movement to make human rights issues known in the United States.”

Schulz Leads AIUSA Through 12 Years of Progress

March 1994. Dr. William F. Schulz appointed executive director of Amnesty International USA. [MAY] 1995. Schulz convenes first meeting of Executive Director’s Leadership Council, an advisory group of major supporters from business, entertainment, the arts, education, science, media and philanthropy. October 1997. Schulz joins an AI mission to Liberia to investigate atrocities committed during the country’s civil war. November 1998. AIUSA launches the OUTfront! program to fight for the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. November 1999. With the Sierra Club, AIUSA inaugurates the JustEarth! program, now a part of the Business and Human Rights program. November 1999. AIUSA launches its first Internet campaign, “Raise the Roof,” to support activists in building relationships with their elected officials. May 1999. Schulz joins an AI mission to Northern Ireland to urge that human rights protections be incorporated into the peace process. October 2000. AI launches a new global anti-torture campaign. AIUSA’s membership takes part via Fast Action Stops Torture (FAST), its first extensive online network. Internet-based AIUSA activism blossoms. June 2000. AIUSA’s Crisis Preparedness and Response Unit is created to mobilize membership, staff and allies on human rights emergencies. April 2001. Beacon Press publishes Schulz’s first human rights book, In Our Own Best Interest: How Defending Human Rights Benefits Us All, with a foreword by Mary Robinson. May 2001. Artists for Amnesty established in Los Angeles. August 2001. After some 40 years of campaigning only for civil and political rights, AI opens the door to work on economic, social and cultural rights. August 2001. AIUSA launches its own Research Department. March 2002. AIUSA’s Research Department releases its first report, Amnesty International’s Concerns Regarding Post-September 11 Detentions in the USA. October 2002. The U.S. Domestic Human Rights Program is established. September 2002. AIUSA’s Online Action Center launches in its current form, with 40,000 supporters. May 2003. Schulz receives the Public Service Citation from the University of Chicago. September 2003. Nation Books publishes Schulz’s second human rights book, Tainted Legacy: 9/11 and the Ruin of Human Rights. September 2004. Schulz participates in Amnesty mission to Darfur, Sudan, to help address the humanitarian crisis in that region. April 2005. AIUSA launches National Activist Development Unit to cultivate youth organization and coordinate the Denounce Torture initiative. June 2005. Schulz defends AI against the Bush administration’s vociferous attacks after the organization’s criticism of U.S. detention facilities in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. September 2005. AIUSA’s Online Action Center reaches 400,000 supporters, a tenfold increase in three years.

Schulz himself is modest in his assessment of all he has accomplished for AIUSA through staff development, fundraising, membership support, program expansion and media exposure. When he speaks before crowds of members and volunteers at events across the country, however, his oratorical zeal is in effect. Darcie Olson, an activist from Costa Mesa, Calif., remembers well his appearance at the Western Region conference in Salt Lake City, shortly after the 2004 presidential election. “He gave such an inspirational speech when so many of us were down,” she says. “He reminded us of our long-term vision for the human rights movement and told us not to be discouraged and to keep fighting. It was exactly what we all needed to hear at that moment. A lot of us walked out afterwards just saying ‘Wow!’”

“Human rights people are not shrinking violets,” Schulz insists, explaining why he has taken on adversaries from Bill O’Reilly to Donald Rumsfeld. “I was trained in debate in high

“As the leader of AUISA for the last 12 years, Bill has set a very positive tone that encourages human rights organizations to work collaboratively and collectively, which is the way we need to work to make change.”

MICHAEL POSNER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST

school and can be kind of a combative guy....We ought not to be afraid to be confrontational, to call people to account, to be very honest and very direct [when] we are dealing with the most extreme circumstances that human beings can face.”

His conviction comes in part from his experiences on international missions, during which he has met many who suffer in extreme circumstances. He recalls a mission to Liberia, where he visited with a prisoner “whose body was covered with red dots. I asked him what had happened and he said he had stolen a radio. The police had caught him but instead of just arresting him they had forced him to lie down in a bed of red ants, and he had spent hours with the ants biting him. It was a shocking, dramatic example of how human beings can gratuitously inflict cruelty upon one another.”

Schulz has also seen how a heart hardened by sustained conflict can be touched. He remembers meeting David Trimble, the Protestant Prime Minister of Northern Ireland in 1999, after having visited the same day with a Catholic family whose son had been killed by a Protestant mob. “I said, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, you are no longer leader of the Ulster Unionist Party. You are the leader of Northern Ireland. Someone has to reach across the divide to people who are not grieving Catholic parents, but simply grieving parents. Wouldn’t you like to be the person who did

AIUSA Marks the 1000th U.S. Execution Since the Resumption of the Death Penalty in 1977

Rick Halperin, Chair, AIUSA Board of Directors, speaks at a vigil in Raleigh, N.C., for Kenneth Boyd, who was executed on Dec. 2, 2005, at 2 am.

Abe Bonowitz

»USA From the War on Terror to the War on Torture

Former Army Muslim Chaplain James Yee. Wilson Gautreaux

AIUSA activists saw their efforts pay off last December as the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Anti-Torture Amendment, 308-122, following the Senate’s 90-9 vote. The amendment to the Defense Department appropriations bill reaffirmed the prohibition on torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. AIUSA Director of Government Relations Alexandra Arriaga called the victory significant for “every American who values our nation’s core principles.”

AIUSA’s Denounce Torture Initiative activists worked tirelessly for passage of the amendment, convening community forums from Boston to Houston to Pasadena, Calif. At a Dec. 7 forum in Charleston, S.C., West Point graduate and former Army Muslim Chaplain James Yee recounted his experience ministering at the U.S. detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he was falsely accused of being an al-Qaeda infiltrator. Attendees held teach-ins throughout the city, and the event drew extensive media coverage.

But the news wasn’t all good. Congress also adopted the Graham-Levin-Kyl Amendment which— for the first time in U.S. history and in violation of the Constitution—legalizes the use in military proceedings of evidence obtained by torture and restricts detainees’ legal rights to challenge their imprisonment and treatment in custody. And President Bush, who originally agreed to support the Anti-Torture Amendment, later appeared to reverse himself. His “signing statement”—providing his official interpretation of the measure—asserted a presidential authority to waive the law when he deems it necessary. AIUSA has called for Bush to withdraw his signing statement and continues to push for an independent commission to investigate allegations of torture by agents of the U.S. government and prevent such acts from recurring.

Jason Opeña Disterhoft

It’s not too late to sign up to attend Make Some Noise: Human Rights at High Volume, the 2006 AIUSA Annual General Meeting, in Portland, Ore., April 28-30. On Friday, hundreds of AIUSA activists will rally in Portland’s town square to denounce torture. On Saturday night Portland band March 4th and musicians from Oakland-based Youth Movement Records will play the famed Roseland Theater. The weekend’s speakers include British former Guantánamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg and James Yee, the former Army Muslim Chaplain at the U.S. detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Get the latest news and register at amnestyusa.org/events/agm AGM 2006 Human Rights at High Volume »USA

Copyright Black Eyed Peas

The Black Eyed Peas

Let’s Make Some Noise!

AIUSA’s Imagine campaign— founded on Yoko Ono’s generous donation of the rights to John Lennon’s ballad—helped Amnesty illuminate the vision of a world where human rights are realized for every man, woman and child. Now with Ono’s additional extraordinary gift of Lennon’s entire songbook, Amnesty International will combine our vision of universal human rights with the universal language of music.

Launched on Dec. 10— International Human Rights Day— the new Make Some Noise campaign pairs the world’s largest human rights organization with the world’s hottest artists, who are re-recording contemporary versions of Lennon’s most memorable work. Avril Lavigne, The Black Eyed Peas and The Cure are just a few of the artists participating in this groundbreaking mix of music, celebration and action that reaches out to a new, younger generation of potential supporters. A compilation album will mark one of the greatest music projects of the decade. Music downloads already available include The BlackEyed Peas’ rousing version of Power to the People, The Cure’s Love, Snow Patrol’s recording of Isolation and Grow Old With Me by The Postal Service. To download these exclusive singles via MSN Music and obtain human rights updates: amnesty.org/noise

Amber Massey

New Executive Director Comes Full Circle Larry Cox Brings Intellectual Depth and Leadership Expertise to the Table

Longtime human rights advocate Larry Cox, 60, has come full circle with his selection as Amnesty International USA’s new executive director. Cox spent 14 years at AI before becoming executive director of the Rainforest Foundation and then senior program officer at the Ford Foundation’s Human Rights Unit, his most recent job. At AI he held a number of positions that gave him a deep and extensive understanding of the organization, including deputy secretary general of AI’s International Secretariat. At AIUSA during the late 1970s and early 1980s—a period of significant growth for the organization—he served as deputy director, communications director, and founder and first director of the Program to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Cox’s passion for human rights work has only intensified with time. “Human rights are increasingly being treated as irrelevant or even harmful to solving the most serious problems facing humankind,” he says. “There is no easy or simple way to turn this situation around, but the starting point surely has to be the creation of a much more broadly based and effective human rights movement, particularly in the United States.” Cox believes no human rights organization is better prepared to mobilize popular support for the human rights movement than Amnesty International.

AIUSA’s Board of Directors confirmed the selection of Cox during its January meeting, and he will begin his tenure as the new executive director on May 1, working for a few months with outgoing Executive Director Bill Schulz to ensure a smooth transition.

“I think Larry is the right person for this job at the right time,” says AIUSA Board Chair Rick Halperin. “He will be great at bringing a strong sense of enthusiasm about the work to our membership, and he also brings the necessary high moral quality required in human rights efforts.”

»ISRAEL

Internal Dissent

Pointing to a photo of four Palestinian children playing at getting frisked against a wall, a former Israeli soldier explains, “This is their emotional reality.” It is one of many telling moments in the video documentary Breaking the Silence (Shovrim Shtika in Hebrew), produced by an eponymous NGO based in Jerusalem.

A group of former Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) officers formed the organization and interviewed hundreds of their fellow ex-combatants who served in the Occupied Territories during the second intifada in 2000.

The resulting testimonies revealed gross human rights violations and forced the military to reopen investigations that had been closed. Because Breaking the Silence relies on the testimonies of a broad cross section of the country’s citizens who were conscripted into military service, it has become a credible voice of dissent in mainstream Israeli discourse.

“We had to speak out for our own personal selves, but it also became our duty to question what we as a society were willing to legitimize,” says Avichay Sharon, 24, a former soldier in the IDF Special Forces. Photos of blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian men detained for breaking curfew at checkpoints are common. There are

Palestinian children play at getting frisked in an image taken by an Israeli soldier. Breaking the Silence

also more self-critical images documenting the soldiers’ own growing indifference and desensitization to violence, such as a photograph of a young Palestinian boy feeding his pigeons as seen through the viewfinder of the sniper’s weapon.

Yair Hirschfeld, one of the key architects of the Oslo Peace Accords and a professor of Middle East history at Haifa University, says the debate over Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories will continue to be polarized until Israel can credibly assess questions about international law, the proportionality of war, military force and the legitimacy of self-defense. “The answers to these will be more important in shaping policy than negative soldier testimonials alone,” he says.

Breaking the Silence is not the only group of soldier dissenters. But their unusual approach has brought their voices into the mainstream media dialogue about occupation, both in Israel and abroad.

breakingthesilence.org.il

Ranjani Ramaswamy

Rosa del Angel

Staff and interns launched AIUSA’s mobile billboard from the Washington, D.C., office as part of AIUSA’s campaign, in advance of the Jan. 31 State of the Union address, to urge the president to be honest about the U.S. government’s use of torture in the “war on terror.”

William F. Schulz, Executive Director, AIUSA Rage Against the Dying of Light

Iwent into the ministry more than 35 years ago because I couldn’t stand the fact that life entails death, that everyone I loved would eventually die, that no matter how kind, generoushearted, wise or robust, each one of us eventually succumbs to that fate. I took Dylan Thomas’ words as my mantra— “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” I didn’t think that by becoming a minister I could ease the hard facts. (Had I thought that, I would have chosen a different faith than Unitarian Universalism!) But I wanted to live intimately with death, to not run from it, to accompany others into its world and therefore to understand something more about life. I expected to spend a lifetime as a parish minister who comes up against death and hardship all the time.

Well, it didn’t work out as I had planned. I was a parish minister for less than three years before I was asked to resuscitate the Unitarian Universalist denomination’s national social justice program. I went on to become president of the church and then was appointed executive director of AIUSA. As a religious bureaucrat, I managed to keep some distance from death. But, interestingly, through Amnesty International death and I have become reacquainted. You can hardly be a human rights activist and not be on intimate terms with death, torture, “disappearances,” political killings and state executions that occur in so much of our world. Only my Amnesty sojourn with death has been different than what I anticipated as a young minister. For most of the death we deal with comes capriciously and at the hands of human agents rather than the natural rhythms of life’s unfolding. And most importantly at Amnesty, we can do something about it. We can actually sometimes defeat death’s dominion— at least for a time.

I love that. I don’t know if I have saved anyone’s life during my 12 years at Amnesty, but I know that collectively we’ve saved thousands. And I love the congruence of my having gone into the ministry in order to reconcile myself to the existential fact that all life ends and ended up in a “ministry” designed to stave off that ending’s arrival. We Amnesty activists never give up raging, raging against the premature dying of the light. As I grow closer to my own death, I have become a bit more reconciled to the inevitability of my own demise, but I still can’t stand all the rest of you dying on me. Stop it, won’t you? Or, if you won’t, at least realize that to have been part of an organization devoted to warding off the intentional infliction of death and suffering is holy work—work worth celebrating.

Thank you for all you do to make such work possible, for the privilege I have had to be a part of it, and for reminding me over and over again that, no matter our ultimate human fate, to do justice and love mercy is to know that life itself is a blessing.

Continued from page 7 ▲

that?’ Tears came into his eyes. It was a fascinating moment.”

The sum of experiences like these has changed Schulz. “This job has forced me to live in the whole world, not just in a portion of it. [It has] given me the opportunity to act upon my own personal faith that history is not fated or scripted… . We human beings make it for the whole world.” It’s that awareness and the opportunity to work with people committed to making the world “more tender, more civilized, and more gracious” that Schulz says he has loved most about his job.

Schulz will leave his successor an energized, better-funded and more united organization with new challenges to face. Changes in AI country rules have already freed AIUSA to focus on an array of human rights violations at home. Amnesty International decided in 2003 to step beyond the traditional agenda of civil and political rights and tackle issues of economic, social and cultural rights. “These two changes alone are enormously significant and will be into the future, particularly in shaping Amnesty as an organization,” Schulz says. The political climate in the United States could also remain contentious. “Americans who care about human rights are going to have an enormous battle on their hands if those who can without apology oppose prohibition on torture [in the war on terror] remain in power in this country over the long haul.”

But Bill Schulz remains optimistic about the future of AIUSA. He looks forward to making way for new leadership, as well as to his own future. “E.B. White said, ‘Every morning I awake torn between the need to save the world and the desire to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day.’ I’ve always loved that. I think the first thing I’m going to do after leaving Amnesty is take a little time to savor the world.” ai

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