Adrienne Pine to speak about Honduras and the media

For Immediate Release: May 29, 2012

Contact: Adrienne Pine 202-652-5601

On May 29, at 7 pm at Cohousing Commons, 5th and T Streets in Sacramento, Adrienne Pine, noted scholar and activist, will speak on the current situation in Honduras since the coup in 2009.

Dr. Pine is an Assistant Professor at American University in Washington, DC and travels frequently to Honduras. She is the author of Working Hard, Drinking Hard: Violence and Survival in Honduras, and will sign copies of her book at her public lecture on Tuesday night at the Southside Park Cohousing Common Room. Admission to the event is free.

Dr. Pine will also give a lecture at noon on Tuesday, May 29, 2012 in Room 1277, Social Science and Humanities Building, UC Davis, on the topic “The Obama Administration and Honduras."

Admission to both events is free.

Dr. Pine has written many articles and has given dozens of lectures and presentations about Honduran society since she became involved with that country while working on her doctorate in anthropology at UC Berkeley. She has been invited to speak in the United States, Canada, Honduras, Argentina, Mexico, Egypt and Brazil. A medical anthropologist, Dr. Pine has also done extensive research and writing in the area of healthcare and labor relations.

Her talk on Tuesday evening in Sacramento will focus on Honduras, Iraq, and the Media. Dr. Pine notes that post-coup Honduras has been repeatedly mentioned by U.S. officials in recent months as the inheritor of the lessons and resources of the Iraq war. Among the many worrisome implications accompanying this assertion is the use of embedded journalism for stories like the New York Times' front page article "Lessons of Iraq Help U.S. Fight a Drug War in Honduras" (May 5).

Meanwhile, Honduran reporters carrying out unembedded investigative reporting work in one of the most dangerous climates for journalism in the world, facing high rates of targeted assassination and other forms of direct violence by the U.S.-funded and trained Honduran military and militarized police. In her talk Dr. Pine will discuss how U.S. policies in Honduras and Iraq have mutually informed each other since the 1980s, and the perils of reporting on them.

Since the then-president, Manuel Zelaya, was removed from office in June of 2009 by the Honduran military, Honduras has seen a stunning increase in violence, including the death of 18 journalists and numerous human rights activists, labor leaders, and community organizers. At present Honduras is considered by the United Nations to be the most violent country in the world, with 86.5 homicides annually per 100,000 population. More journalists been killed than in Honduras in recent years than in any other country in the world except Mexico.

In addition to Dr. Pine, Michael Ring, a local activist working with the US-El Salvador Sister Cities organization, will speak about his work with the Honduras Solidarity Network. Michael has been involved in solidarity with Central American liberation and social justice movements since the 1980's.

Currently, Michael helps coordinate the Honduras Solidarity Network's Congressional Action Team which this Spring successfully organized Dear Colleague letters signed by over 100 US Congresspeople and Senators calling for a change in US policy to support human rights and democracy in Honduras. He served as the national coordinator of US-El Salvador Sister Cities from 1995 to 2002.

CHIMES, (California Honduras Institute for Medical and Educational Support), a local Sacramento nonprofit which supports a hospital and other healthcare projects in the Garifuna communities of Honduras, will also be represented at the event on May 29. Information will also be available concerning the Honduras Accompaniment Project, operated by the Friendship Office of the Americas in Washington, D.C., which seeks to protect human rights activists in Honduras by providing them with international accompaniment.

For more information about the event at Cohousing Commons on May 29, contact Carole Harper at ch1979 [at] earthlink.net, or call 916-457-5018.