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20th Anniversary Vigil and Film Screening
(click here for the photos, and here for the press release!)

On Wednesday, December 1st, 2004, students at Georgia State University participated in "Corporate Responsibility & Global Justice", a discussion with Community activists/members followed by a Candlelight Vigil, documentary and music by Michael of The Indicators.

Reading survivors' testimonials at the candlelight vigil

There were perhaps 30 people in the audience. It seems that many were GSU students, and given the crunch time at the end of the semester (and the less progressive state of Atlanta), the turn-out was good.

After airing the hip-hop song, "Flames, not Flowers," we showed the film, "Twenty Years without Justice." We took some questions and comments from the audience after Alka added some more background information and framed the issue in the context of the unequal power imbalance of the current form of globalization.

There also were some people who brought some different issues related in some way to the Bhopal issue (e.g., Coca-Cola's devastating effects in India [it's important especially because Atlanta has the Coke's world headquarters], and effects of depleted uranium on people and the environment in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere by the U.S. military) to our attention - so hopefully the audience got those connections or the larger context that leads to injustices in different ways to different, but relatively powerless, people.

We were fortunate to have a GSU student from Bhopal who spoke his experience or memories of the disaster and the aftermath when he was a small child in 1984.

We collected petitions to Dow Chemical (off the bhopal.net) and to the Madhya Pradesh government (off the AID web-site) and a petition to Coca-Cola. People also filled out postcards to Dow by the Amnesty International. A local artist, on a very short notice, created and brought a sort of quilt with some sewn pictures on which people wrote their messages with markers (I think to be sent to the survivor groups in Bhopal - with some pictures we took).

We then went outside to have a candle-light vigil. A guitarist from a local band, the Indicator, played a nice slide guitar for us, and we had a short testimony reading as well as a moment of silence – remembering and recognizing not only the suffering and struggles of the Bhopali survivors, but also people in India and elsewhere whose lives are unjustly affected by neoliberal globalization and the U.S. empire.

Unfortunately, there was no media at the event, but there have been at least two Atlanta Journal-Constitution (local/southeastern newspaper) articles on Bhopal.

This was the first of a three-day series of events entitled “Bhopal & Search for Global Justice: 20 Years in the Making” that was sponsored at three Atlanta-area universities by a diverse collection of student and community groups, including: Association for India's Development (A.I.D.) Atlanta & Greens of GSU with support from Atlanta Jobs with Justice, Amnesty International, Asian Studies at Emory U., Bengali Association of Greater Atlanta (BAGA), Emory Global Health Organization (EGHO), Indian Classical Music Society of Greater Atlanta (ICMS), Indian Student Association (GSU), International Association for Health & Human Rights (Emory), Khabar, Kaya Collective, Raksha, Rollins Environmental Health Action Committee (Emory), Power of Women (GSU), Student Labor Action Project (GSU), Students for Peace & Justice (GSU) and Women's Action for New Directions (WAND) in solidarity with the survivors of Bhopal and workers world-wide who keep inspiring us.

Copies of the new book about Dow, Trespass Against Us, will also be donated to all three college libraries.

Read the article in the Hindustan Times!

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Candlelight Vigil and Documentary
(click here for the photos!)

December 3rd, 2003 was a cold, windy and rainy evening in Atlanta. Bundled up in hooded coats and gloves, nearly 30 brave souls lit candles in the Unity Plaza and remembered tens of thousands who were killed and are still suffering in Bhopal, the site of one of the worst industrial disasters in the world. The vigil, organized on the 19th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster by Association for India’s Development (AID), Atlanta along with the Greens of GSU, started appropriately with a moment of silence, with gentle background music of one of Gandhiji’s favorite bhajans played on a mandolin.

The vigil participants recounted the horrible night on December 3, 1984 in Bhopal as they read personal testimonies of survivors. One of the stories was by Jewan Shinde, who lived in Teela Jamalpura, Bhopal and was a 32 year old auto-rickshaw driver when the lethal gas leaked. “Around 2:30a.m. I suddenly awoke -- there was screaming and shouting of “bhago, yaha se bhago”. (Run, run away from here). By this time smoke had started seeping through from under the door. It felt like someone was burning chilies.

Outside everyone was running, screaming, nothing could be seen - the thick fog hung everywhere. I cannot tell you what state people were in. The roads were full of people. The stampede of the dead and living. By the time I got home my eyes were swollen and were red like tomatoes. I will never forget what I have seen.”

The second part of the event attracted additional people and screened the BBC documentary, “Hunting Warren Anderson.” The organizers shared updates about recent actions taken by U.S. Congresspersons, investor groups to Dow, and the growing international campaign for the people in Bhopal. After Q&A, everyone in the room got a chance to add an observation or comment ranging from students who had never heard of Bhopal and were wondering why this was not included in their curriculum to others who pledged to put more pressure on Dow. Everyone seemed to sympathize with the survivors of Bhopal and to appreciate the resolve of the people of Bhopal to keep fighting after almost two decades and to continue to demand that the Indian government and courts cooperate with them in their struggle for justice.

The gathering in Atlanta was also supported by Atlanta Jobs with Justice, Environmental Law Society of GSU, Solidarity, Power of Women, Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and Raksha, Inc. For more information on this event or the local A.I.D. chapter, visit www.aidindia.org/atlanta.

Also, read this account in Khabar Magazine.

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Bhopal Survivor Champa Devi Shukla Visits

In May 2003, when the gas-affected stationery workers activist Champa Devi Shukla came to Atlanta, her talk at Georgia State University was cosponsored by AID Atlanta, Atlanta Jobs with Justice, Atlanta 9 to 5, Black Workers for Justice, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, the Georgia Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, the Green Party of DeKalb County, the Greens of GSU, the Labor Education and Action Project of GSU, Project South, Solidarity, and the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice. Shukla's powerful testimony not only moved activists in Atlanta to empathize with the suffering of people in Bhopal but in turn helped translate the significance of the struggle in Bhopal to a variety of contexts here in the South: toxic dumps in black communities, pesticide exposure among immigrant Latina/o farmworkers, asbestosrelated illnesses among retired workers, radiological contamination from nuclear bomb-making plants. A benefit showing of Bhopal Express (dir. Mahesh Mathai, 1999), an Indian film about a couple caught up in the disaster, was very successful in highlighting the human cost.

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