International Human Rights Day: An Ongoing Effort
Image Credit: University of Minnesota
Zoe Marinkovich currently works as a 5th-grade teacher at Jefferson Elementary School in the San Francisco Bay Area. Zoe is well educated in human rights and has dedicated her time to sharing this passion with younger generations. She previously worked at Summit Public School in San Francisco, educating students on human rights and current events, and empowering them to become student advocates.
How did you become passionate about human rights?
My high school teachers sparked this passion. My social studies teacher and my literature teachers at George Washington High School in San Francisco spent a lot of time talking about social justice, racism, and poverty, and encouraged us to think about our role in bringing an end to some of this injustice. When I was in high school I had a social studies teacher who taught me about the death penalty and human rights, and supported me in starting an Amnesty Club.
Why do you think education is the best way for you to impact topics you care about?
Sometimes I’m not always sure that it is, but I think for me it is because that’s my skill set. I like working with young people, I love learning, I love educating, so for me that makes sense. But it can’t be all that we do. I’ve pushed myself to be more engaged in advocacy work, but education is the foundation of advocacy work— educating your constituency, your elected officials, etc., so I think both are important.
Image Credit: Prison Policy Initiative
What are the most pressing human rights issues today?
There are so many and they are all important and they are all interconnected. I think the war in Ukraine is on the front of our minds. It is really important. We have seen how it impacts food production and people’s ability to live stable healthy lives all over the planet. The genocide of the Uyghurs in China is impacting millions of people. Climate change is a human rights issue, whether it’s protecting the Amazon or ensuring everyone in Canada has clean water. Police brutality, not just in the US but across the planet. There’s no shortage of pressing issues.
I was just thinking about Russia today because I was reading about the basketball player in Russia and I think that’s an example of the broad consequences of war. On the ground it’s also impacting the Ukrainian children and their right to an education. It’s impacting food production and food security around the globe. And with all these issues, it hits home that when there’s all of this suffering and a lack of freedom anywhere, no one is really free. As a US citizen, the US is so powerful and is involved in supporting or not supporting these issues. Even though it feels far away, as US citizens we have a responsibility to understand our own government’s role.
How do you personally navigate the tension between wanting to make a tangible impact and being far away from many international human rights issues?
That’s a wonderful question. There are lots of horrible things happening in San Francisco that I need to educate myself on. I feel connected through work that I do at Amnesty International, because their model is to highlight the plight of human rights activists all over the world. My group, Group 30 in San Francisco, has worked for a long time on the case of Tashi Wangchuk, who advocated for Tibetan children to be able to learn the Tibetan language. For that he was imprisoned, and is still under house arrest. That’s a real person. We wrote on his behalf to ambassadors and whoever would listen to us. The goal in Amnesty’s work was for him to get out of prison. Now he is. Those victories are important to celebrate, in particular when it’s one person whom you can know and relate to. It helps me feel motivated and keep going and not feel removed or isolated.
There are no shortage of human rights issues across the globe, but everyone can find some that they are personally connected to. For me for a long time it was working in the HIV community. I felt so passionate about working with HIV positive youth in Kenya. Right now I’m really passionate about abolishing the death penalty worldwide, which I became passionate about when I learned in high school in the 1990s that the US was sentencing juveniles to death. I couldn’t believe it. Since then the US has decided not to sentence juveniles, but the shock I felt inspired me. Now I have a new friend Kevin Cooper, who I’ve been working with for 5 years. I have a new friend on death row who I believe is innocent, and our work remains.
How do you personally bring your power and privilege but also humility when working on issues outside of your own experience?
So much of what I do is designed to target people like me, in positions of power, however powerless it feels. I agree to play my role. Donating little bits of money, writing to my elected officials with whatever power they have to act. In some ways you leverage that. I think it’s recognizing that you have to be humble. I’m not an expert in these places, or human rights law, no matter how much time I spend reading and studying. I have to listen to the folks who are lived experts on the ground. I also try to listen to folks who have a different opinion or who are offering criticism.
Eleanor Roosevelt holds up The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Image Credit: NPR.org
What is one thing you would like to see everyone reading to honor International Human Rights Day?
A good place to start is learning about the UDHR. That document is why December 10th is International HR day— it marks the signing of the UDHR. Learning about how and why it was created, including the controversy and criticism, would be a great place to start.
After Donald Trump was elected to office I felt very overwhelmed with the amount of problems in the US as well as internationally. I signed up for every email list of every organization that I thought was doing good work. I felt like I was doing nothing, clicking a thousand petitions all the time— I felt really bombarded, really paralyzed. So for my new year’s resolution I decided to pick one organization for a year and give them all my energy. I wanted something that was a good fit for my life as a mom of a young daughter and as a teacher, so I picked Amnesty because I could do a lot of the letter writing on my own time.
I’ve been able to participate at a much higher level, learned how to lobby my elected officials, and have hosted so many events. I don’t think if I was spreading myself thinly across many organizations that I would be able to do that. I now have a team of people that I work with, so even though I can’t accomplish everything, together we accomplish a lot. We have people focusing on gun violence, ending violence against women, environmentalism in Cambodia, and more, so even though my work is on criminal justice reform, I get the benefit of working alongside people I trust and getting to hear about their progress.
What additional recommendations do you have for readers based on your interests?
Reading: Blood Child by Octavia Butler; The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (Young Reader's Edition) by Jeanne Theoharis
Watching: For All Mankind on Apple TV
Eating/Drinking: Basil Strawberry simple syrup to make sparkling lemonade (with or without gin!)