New York Passes Same-Sex Marriage

Last week I blogged that The Marriage Equality Act was passed by the New York State Assembly and was headed directly to the State Senate. Well, unless you spent a long-weekend away from any kind of news or social media (which we all should do from time to time), you know that late on Friday night, the State Senate did in fact approve same-sex marriage, giving the national gay-rights movement one of its largest victories to date! The bill passed in a historic 33 to 29 vote and will take effect in 30 days. Last week’s victory was the result of decades of work by gay rights activists and politicians. New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat who had pledged to support same-sex marriage, also played a key role in this victory by making same-sex marriage one of his top priorities. Cuomo had his top aides coordinate the efforts of a half-dozen local gay-rights organizations that were working tireless for this victory.

With last week’s victory, New York now becomes the largest state where LGBT couples are able to legally wed. Currently, only five other states currently permit same-sex marriage: Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia.

Let us hope that what happened here in New York serves as a turning point for other states around the country. The momentum is here, but it cannot be wasted. If you want to learn more about what you can do to ensure that what happened last week in New York will be replicated across the country, please check out the recent campaign from Freedom To Marry. You can add your voice to those supporting the freedom to marry and pledge to work to enable same-sex couples and their families to share equally in the responsibilities, protections, and commitment of marriage.

You can also watch this video to learn more the strategy for legalizing same-sex marriage in other states and ending federal marriage discrimination.

Trust Texas Women

Some high-profile cases are chipping away at some of the strides made by Roe v. Wade – but the Center for Reproductive Rights, an Overbrook Foundation grantee, is stepping in to meet one such challenge.  A seminar at the Center’s national office earlier this month outlined some of the frightening ways in which pro-life legislation has been encroaching on reproductive rights.  The measure set to go into law later this year in Texas is one of the most restrictive in recent memory.

Starting this fall, a woman seeking an abortion will not be able to undergo the procedure before meeting certain requirements.  More specifically, the law will force a patient to receive an ultrasound, look at the images, and hear detailed information on the fetus.  And it doesn’t end there.  After the initial visit, the patient will have to wait 24 hours to receive the abortion (unless she traveled at least 100 miles to the abortion provider).  Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed the measure into law this past May, calling it an “emergency item.”  It places Texas on par with Oklahoma, in terms of having some of the most restrictive ultrasound laws in the nation.

But the Center isn’t letting the law take effect without calling for some emergency action of its own.  Last week, the Center filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the physicians and medical clinics affected by the measure.  It also unleashed its newest campaign: “Trust Texas Women.”  According to the campaign’s website, the suit calls the new law an attack on “physicians’ free-speech rights by requiring them to deliver ‘politically motivated’ messages” and “that the law could put doctors cross-wise with the wishes of their patients.”  

Hopefully, the initiative – and impending lawsuit – will help restore a woman’s full right to choose, which measures like this are unfortunately trying to overturn.  Roe v. Wade entrusts women to be able to make decisions about their bodies for themselves; and politics shouldn’t get in the way of a doctor being able to provide much-needed services.  If you’d like to contribute to the Center’s campaign, or join Team Texas, click here.

Site Visits from Latin America

Last month, Overbrook Foundation President and CEO Stephen Foster travelled in Ecuador and Costa Rica where he visited five ecotourism hotels and lodges that work closely with Rainforest Alliance staff in developing and implementing site-based sustainability programs. While there, he also met with Rainforest Alliance staff in Quito, Ecuador and San Jose, Costa Rica in order to review Rainforest Alliance’s plans to expand its ecotourism efforts beyond working with individual hotel and lodge sites to working with entire communities and regions to developing higher impact sustainability programs focused on tourist “destinations” rather than individual enterprises.

The lodges and hotels visited were located in geographically diverse locations ranging from the Amazon Rainforest (Kapawi Ecolodge Ecuador) to the cloud forests in the central mountain range of Costa Rica (Villa Blanca, San Ramon, Costa Rica). Also visited were a working coffee plantation and lodge (Finca Rosa Blanca) outside San Jose, an ecolodge and wildlife refuge on the edge of a heavily touristed national park (Si Como No, Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica), a high end resort set in a private nature reserve on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica (Lapa Ruis Rainforest Ecolodge) and the Marriott Hotel in Quito, Ecuador.

Each of these sites shares the following practices in their sustainability work, despite their very different geographic settings:

• They work to diminish the impact of their operations by reducing their carbon footprint

• They alert their guests to their commitment to sustainability by providing information on their own practices and offering steps guests can take to support their efforts

• They hire and train staff locally, providing them with jobs that provide living wages for members of the local community

• They work with local communities to advance sustainability within the communities where they are located while promoting the local culture of those communities to their guests

The development of these hotels and lodges as models of sustainability were a testament to the hard work and success of the Rainforest Alliance ecotourism program. RA has been working with individual micro, small and medium size entrepreneurs in Latin America since 2003. More than 180 sites in Ecuador alone have been incorporated into the sustainability program. In Costa Rica, over 150 hotels now participate in the Certification for Sustainable Tourism conservation program created by the Costa Rican Tourism Board. In Mexico, RA interacts with the highest levels of government in advocating for policies supportive of building an ever larger number of businesses committed to meeting the highest ecotourism standards.

However, all these efforts combined reach only a small fraction of the tourist industry. In talks with Rainforest Alliance staff in Ecuador and Costa Rica, the need to develop a broad strategy was made abundantly apparent. Until “destinations”; i.e., communities or local regions develop sustainability efforts that touch all local enterprises, ecotourism will be insufficient to counter the forces of development and unable to satisfactorily protect the local environment and the people and culture that depends upon local resources for economic and cultural sustenance.

The following are some of Stephen’s final thoughts on ecotourism:

This trip was exciting and quite provocative. By visiting so many varied settings, the challenge of successfully developing sustainable ecotourism was made all the more clear. By traveling extensively with local tour guides in Ecuador and Costa Rica, I was privileged to learn much about local cultures, the challenges facing women, the role of the Catholic Church, the impact of poverty on the local environment, the impact of corruption at all levels of government on business development and the enormous pride that Ecuadorians and Costa Rican “Ticos” hold for their countries.

In Kapawi in the Ecuadorian Amazon, I saw the impact of western civilization on the local indigenous culture of the Achaur who made contact with the west less than 50 years ago. Very large questions arose in my mind about that interaction. It is possible to preserve a culture, like that of the Achuar, without treating the Achaur people as a museum exhibit? How do we react to the very subservient role played by women in that culture? Is helping to preserve that culture in return for saving a million acres of untouched rainforest an ethical way to proceed in dealing with the Achaur?

Do we have any responsibility for introducing the “benefits” of western society; e.g., clean water, sanitation, public health, electricity to the Achaur or is it ethical to allow them to remain untouched? Is it inevitable that the pressures of modernity will ultimately crash down on the Achuar and destroy their culture based on complete harmony with the rainforest? Has the destruction of that culture already begun?

Will New York Pass Same-Sex Marriage?

Yesterday, by a vote of 80-63, the New York's State Assembly approved a same-sex marriage bill, known as The Marriage Equality Act. The Act will be sent directly to the State Senate, where it will most likely face a much closer vote.

More specifically, the Marriage Equality Act if passed, would grant same-sex couples equal rights to marry "as well as hundreds of rights, benefits and protections that are currently limited to married couples of the opposite sex," according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office.

Currently, New York State does not grant same-sex marriages. In 2008 however, in an appellate court ruling, it was ruled that same-sex couples do have the rights to have their same-sex marriages recognized if they are performed elsewhere in another state where same-sex marriage is legally recognized. There are five states -Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont and New Hampshire – as well as the District of Columbia that currently grant same-sex marriage licenses.

Here at The Overbrook Foundation we believe that same-sex marriage is a fundamental human right. We see this work as integral to our larger domestic human rights portfolio which focuses broadly on gender, LGBT rights and reproductive rights. Over the past decade, the Foundation has supported a variety of organizations pushing for the rights of same-sex couples, as well as working to ensure basic rights for LGBT individuals. To say that it would please us to see same-sex marriage pass here in our home state of New York is an understatement. We think it is great that Mayor Bloomberg will travel to Albany this morning to try to persuade Republican state senators to legalize same-sex marriage. But we are also realistic, recognizing that because the state legislature is scheduled to adjourn this Monday this gives the Senate only three days to take up the marriage bill.

If you are interested in learning more about the rights of same-sex couples, please check out the work of some of the Foundation’s current grantees in this area: Civil Marriage Collaborative, Freedom To Marry, and the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund. These organizations pursue a variety of strategies, including advocacy work, policy reforms and legislation to ensure for the rights of LGBT individuals.

Environment Grants Awarded at June 2011 Board Meeting

At its June 2011 Board of Directors meeting this week, The Overbrook Foundation's Environment Program awarded $675,000 in grants to 15 organizations in the categories of Latin American Biodiversity Conservation, Sustainable Production and Consumption, and Media.

For its work supporting Latin American Biodiversity Conservation, the Foundation awarded $370,000 in grants. Grants awarded included: a $40,000 EARTHWORKS for its International Program and No Dirty Gold Markets Campaign, a $55,000 grant to the Environmental Investigation Agency for Leveraging the U.S. Lacey Act and Promoting Forest Conservation in Latin America, a $75,000 grant to Fundacion Cordillera Tropical for its training work, a $45,000 grant to Rainforest Action Network for its RAN Tropical Forests Program, a $75,000 grant to the Rainforest Alliance for its work achieving conservation and community development through healthy sustainable tourism destinations, and a $80,000 grant to Root Capital for its program fostering innovation and biodiversity conservation in Ecuador, Mexico and Nicaragua.

For its Sustainable Production and Consumption work, the Foundation awarded $250,000 in grants. Grants awarded included: a $70,000 grant to Clean Production Action for its work securing market adoption of the green screen by strengthening its organizational structure, a $60,000 grant to Green For All, a $25,000 grant to the Green Press Initiative, a $250,000 grant to The Keystone Center for the Green Products Roundtable, a $40,000 grant to the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy for its work recycling and creating good jobs in the regional waste industry, a $20,000 grant to the Product Stewardship Institute for driving product stewardship for phone books and packaging, and a $15,000 to the Tides Center for the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption.

In the category of "Media," the Foundation awarded $25,000 grant to National Public Radio for its coverage of environmental and human rights issues, and a $55,000 grant to Grist.org.

The organizations listed above demonstrate the Foundation’s continued commitment to conservation and innovation. Please click on the links above to learn more about these organizations.

Human Rights Grants Awarded at June 2011 Board Meeting

Earlier this week at its June 2011 Board of Directors meeting, The Overbrook Foundation's Human Rights Program awarded $1,120,000 in grants to 22 organizations in the categories of Domestic Human Rights and International Human Rights.

In its Domestic Human Rights program, the Foundation awarded grants to organizations working on issues of marriage equality/LGBT rights, Reproductive Rights, the US Human Rights Movement, and Media. In its International Human Rights, the Foundation awarded grants to three organizations that to a large extent focus their work to support human rights defenders as well as reproductive rights.

In its Domestic Human Rights program, for its work representing a unique collaboration among LGBT and other progressive funders to achieve marriage equality for same-sex couples in the United States, the Foundation awarded a $100,000 grant to Freedom to Marry and a $75,000 for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.

In support of other grantmaking activities in the domestic human rights movement, the Foundation awarded a $40,000 grant to Facing History and Ourselves for its Fundamental Freedoms program, and a two-year $70,000 grant to the Hastings Center for a program titled “Undocumented Patients After Health Reform: Human Rights, Access to Health Care & the Ethics of the Safety Net”. Other grants in this category include a $50,000 to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Education Fund for the CEDAW Public Education Project, a $50,000 to the New York Civil Liberties Union Foundation, a $55,000 to Urban Justice Center for The Human Rights Project and Sex Workers Project and a two-year $300,000 grant to The U.S. Human Rights Fund.

The Foundation’s reproductive rights grants were awarded to three organizations; a $50,000 grant to Advocates for Youth, a $30,000 grant to the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program for its work in training new generations of reproductive rights advocates, and a two-year $200,000 grant to the Center for Reproductive Rights for its U.S. Legal Program and Latin America Regional Office.

In its media portfolio, the Foundation awarded three grants; a $35,000 to Mother Jones for its reporting on domestic human rights issues in the United States, a $25,000 to National Public Radio for its coverage of environment and human rights issues, and a $65,000 to WNYC for its program On the Media.

Three other grants were awarded in the domestic human rights program area; a two-year $60,000 grant to Green For All (a joint project with the Foundation’s Environment program), and a $45,000 grant to The Innocence Project for its public policy program.

In support of International Human Rights, the Foundation awarded grants in two areas: human rights defenders and reproductive rights. Grants awarded from the human rights defenders category include a $25,000 grant to the Environmental Defenders Law Center, a $30,000 grant to Peace Brigades International for its Latin America Program, a $40,000 grant to Urgent Action Fund of Latin America for Women’s Human Rights, and a $50,000 grant to WITNESS for its work promoting video advocacy in the Americas. In support of international reproductive rights, the Foundation awarded two grants; a $50,000 grant to the Human Rights Center and the University of Chile Law School for its fellowship program, and a $40,000 grant to International Planned Parenthood Federation Western Hemisphere.

If you’re interested in learning more about these organizations, click on the links above to learn more. For a complete list of organizations support by The Overbrook Foundation, you can visit our website.