human rights workshops

i had to give a half hour talk at a disability human rights workshop about the global/US disability rights movement. that morning, obama made my job easier / me very proud by signing the UN Optional Protocol on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. you go, barack.

human rights workshops are a good example of ngo work at its most ambiguous. they sound great, gather 50 or so disabled slum citizens to discuss what is owed to them and how they can access it, but you leave the workshop and nothing really happened. people might know they are owed government support, but knowledge, in a corrupt and buearacratic society like kenya, is not actually that much power.