(Great work guys. Another reason to love Huey 😉 – promoted by juls)

We have some amazing news! Over the last four months, Nick Shepard and I (Neil Pople) have been struggling to begin Ripples of Hope. We’ve been talking with important officials, meeting with potential donors, taking advice from some of the most respected non-profit organizations and their staff, and making contact with potential board of advisors and even celebrity supporters. And now, we’re happy to report, that progress has begun moving along at an alarmingly rapid pace.

We have officially recruited our first two Board of Advisors member, Denise Gilpatrick and Wendy Doromal. Denise is a licensed clinical social worker specializing in sexual and pre-teen abuse. Her work is what got her interested in the Marianas, and has been working through volunteering, researching and internet blogging to bring awareness to the public on the islands’ plight. With her experience and knowledge, we now have a great start to our board. Wendy Doromal, as many of you may know, is a high school teacher from Orlando, Florida. She was an investigator for the Department of the Interior in the late 1990’s and documented the abuses on the Mariana Islands for President Clinton and Congress. She has since worked tirelessly to help the victims of the Marianas, and adds a tremendous amount of experience to our team.

On February 20th, Nick and I signed and sent our request to be recognized as a corporation with the California Secretary of State’s office. This is a critical first step in being recognized as an official non-profit. It has been incredibly difficult to start an organization from scratch, but we aren’t giving up now that we’ve come so far and we are on our way to being able to help the people who need it most.

To top off a fantastic February and begin another great month in March, we received a wonderful gift from actor/comedian Jorge Garcia. Jorge, who plays “Hurley” on ABC’s smash-hit television series `LOST,’ has joined our efforts to help bring justice to the Mariana Islands. He has been committed to helping those less fortunate whenever he can, from playing in celebrity charity poker tournaments benefiting Katrina reconstruction to volunteering time to help with a children’s theater group in Hawaii. Now he has thrown his support behind building up Ripples of Hope, and we couldn’t be happier!

Ripples of Hope has also garnered the attention of two American heroes: former California Congressmen Jerome Waldie (D) and Pete McCloskey (R). The interest of these great statesmen to RoH only goes to show that this is not a left vs. right issue, but indeed something both sides of the political spectrum can come together on. This is indeed an issue of right vs. wrong.

Our next step is to finally file for official 501(c)3 status with the IRS. With Mr. Garcia’s generous assistance, we are days away from doing just that. We are also continuing our work in recruiting a strong board of advisors, and will be opening a bank account in the upcoming days as well.

However, we still need your help.

We need to ensure that the men, women and children of the Mariana Islands are cared for. There’s no reason why immigrant workers should be sold into sex slavery, forced to abort their babies, work in sweatshop conditions and get paid a fraction of our minimum wage.  We need pledges to help us get started. A pledge to help Ripples of Hope will ensure that the people on the islands have a voice. When we get up and running, we want to help support Karidat, the Catholic social services group on the islands, as well as developing our own programs like those designed to help the pregnant immigrants have a safe place to have their babies free of worry or fear.

Help us begin our work with a contribution pledge by visiting our website at www.ripplesofhope.org and continue to send us your thoughts and comments. We appreciate all that you have done so far.

We also need your help in identifying and finding people of influence that can help us build this organization. Does anyone have contact with  political figures like Congressman George Miller or former Secretary of State Madeline Albright? Bloggers like Howie Klein? A TV or film actor that might be sympathetic to the plight of the people on the Marianas? If so, tell them about what we are working to achieve and what their support could mean. We are looking to find people that are committed to helping create positive change in the Marianas and eventually elsewhere around the world. If you’re a former campaign worker like Nick and myself or just an astute political enthusiast, you understand how an endorsement or statement of support can help a long way. We appreciate all the kind words and the encouragement we have seen so far.

(I love diaries with maps… – promoted by blogswarm)

As we speak, hundreds of young immigrant women and children are being sexually abused in the US Territory of the Northern Mariana Islands, and our government has done little to stop this from continuing.

In 2005, it was discovered that numerous lawmakers in the House of Representatives were being essentially bribed by a lobbyist representing the Marianas. The lobbyist was none other than Jack Abramoff. Mr. Abramoff, who is now in prison for bribing public officials for votes benefiting his clients, lobbied key Congressmen such as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, John Doolittle and Richard Pombo to kill or halt legislation that would have forced the Marianas to comply with US labor and immigration laws. In exchange for supporting the causes that literally put lives in danger, Abramoff and his clients gave considerable donations to the re-election campaigns of these GOP leaders.

There are horrific human rights abuses on these tiny Pacific Islands under US supervision. Workers in the garment industry work roughly 18 hour days locked into cramped spaces with no restroom facilities. Men are literally beaten by their employers for no reason. Women are told if they get pregnant they could face imprisonment or deportation, so they resort to back-alley abortions to keep their jobs. Children barely 13 years old are pulled from their sweatshop jobs and sold into virtual sex slavery as go-go dancers in “karaoke” clubs in the Marianas’ capital of Saipan. They are too ashamed to tell their families in mainland China, Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or the Philippines of their experiences in the “American Islands”. Culturally, they are in a position to be completely cut off from their families and loved ones if they speak out in their letters home.

Situations like these are happening right this moment all around the world. We see sexual abuse all throughout the globe. Forced abortions happen all around in the third world. Sweatshops have been discovered in Panama City, Nairobi, Beijing and New York City.

But the Marianas are different.

The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) has been a US Territory since 1978. During World War II, the Japanese Empire had a firm grip on the Marianas. A garrison of nearly 30,000 Japanese soldiers under Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito had been deeply entrenched on the islands. Admiral Chester Nimitz led the Pacific Fleet on a brutal campaign to free the Marianas from Japan in 1943. By June of 1944, Saito abandoned his hold on the Marianas’ main airfield. By July of that year, Saito was killed in a final charge against the Americans, along with a majority of the final 3,000 Japanese soldiers that had survived nearly two months of intense fighting. When all was said and done, 3,426 Marines lost their lives in the taking of Saipan and the Northern Marianas. American blood was spilled for the freedom of the CNMI.

In 1952, Japan officially gave up all claims to the Marianas at the Treaty of San Francisco, and the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands was created, with the United States as the administering authority. On January 1978 the Northern Mariana Islands became self-governing in political union with the United States under the terms of a covenant negotiated between the two government and the area’s first elected governor took office.

Over the last 5 decades, our tax dollars have gone into repairing the damage inflicted on the Marianas from the war. Almost every law and regulation observed in the United States is observed on the Marianas, with the conspicuous exceptions of labor and immigration control. With these exceptions, major corporations have ended up taking advantage of these small islands. Garment factories from mainland China started making their way to the islands, some run and owned by suspected Chinese mafia families. No tariffs and duty-free, clothing produced in China are sent to the Marianas where “Made in the USA” labels are sewn onto the foreign-made garments. Those garments are then sent to the United States for consumption by an unwitting public.

From a security standpoint, we should all be concerned about the Marianas’ lax immigration and labor practices. Our ports are frighteningly insecure, and a potential threat to our country is highly likely to come from such a place. With the Marianas a virtual “middle man” to the rest of Southeast Asia, and little inspection or security in places like Long Beach and Seattle, any type of weaponry or other foreign agents could potentially be smuggled to the US.

The situation on the Marianas could become a threat to the stability and integrity of this nation. We must do what is necessary to right the years of wrongs done to these islands. Ripples of Hope aims to do just that.

My name is Neil Pople. I served as Deputy Communications Director for the Charlie Brown for Congress campaign in California’s 4th Congressional District. My friend and former co-worker, Nick Shepard, served as Field Director on the Brown campaign. Together, we are in the process of starting up a non-profit organization called “Ripples of Hope.”  We are basing our organization on a simple thought, a quote from a speech Senator Robert F. Kennedy gave in South Africa in 1966:

“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.  Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope; and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

This simple notion, that we stand up and take action whenever and wherever we see problems, has been part of the backbone of American idealism since its inception. Action, on the other hand, has not been as popular as the intention… but we hope to change that.

The most effective way to address the issue is to force our government to recognize the problem. Because the CNMI is a US territory, the United States Congress has ultimate authority over the islands. It can pass legislation to help stop the abuses but has thus far been unwilling to do so other than Congressman George Miller’s minimum wage bill passed last week.  A great first step would be for everyone who hears about this to write to Congress and ask them to look into the issue and what needs to be done on a governmental oversight basis to help. Then, visit our webite at www.ripplesofhope.org and email us at [email protected] to be put on our contact list.

We would be proud to have your support in our endeavors if at all possible. Nick and I are still in the process of getting the group official 501(c)3 status. However, money has become an issue. To put it simply, a lack of money means that we cannot get started just yet. In the meantime, we have been active on the internet by spreading word about the Marianas on blog sites like DailyKos and Calitics. We’ve been contacting potential board members and donors, and planning our first fundraiser once we get cleared with the IRS. A pledge to our group will help ensure that we will have the financial means to get the work done that needs to be accomplished in the Marianas.

We would love to have your input on Ripples of Hope and what should be done with this group. Please feel free to email us with any questions, comments or concerns you might have.

Thank You,
Neil Pople
Co-Founder, Ripples of Hope
[email protected]