MALCOLM X, HUMAN RIGHTS & 'THE NATION OF ISLAM'

Today, The Grandma is reading some information about the last protests in Barcelona and other Catalan cities. It is very difficult to find clear and honest information because the mass is contaminated by economic interests and fake news.

Social networks have changed journalism because they offer another point of view, non-official, less manipulated, and they always offer another explanation different to the official sources.

On a day like today in 1965, Malcolm X, an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist was assassinated. He was an uncomfortable voice for the power. The Grandma wants to remember the life of a man who said something like If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. This sentence is nowadays more alive than ever in the streets of Catalonia.

Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little; May 19, 1925-February 21, 1965) was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement. 

He is best known for his time spent as a vocal spokesman for the Nation of Islam.

Malcolm spent his adolescence living in a series of foster homes or with relatives after his father's death and his mother's hospitalization. He engaged in several illicit activities, eventually being sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1946 for larceny and breaking and entering. In prison, he joined the Nation of Islam, adopted the name Malcolm X (to symbolize his unknown African ancestral surname), and quickly became one of the organization's most influential leaders after being paroled in 1952.

 More information: Malcolm X

Malcolm X then served as the public face of the organization for a dozen years, where he advocated for black empowerment, black supremacy, and the separation of black and white Americans, and publicly criticized the mainstream civil rights movement for its emphasis on non-violence and racial integration.

Malcolm X also expressed pride in some of the Nation's social welfare achievements, namely its free drug rehabilitation program. Throughout his life beginning in the 1950s, Malcolm X endured surveillance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for the Nation's supposed links to communism.

In the 1960s, Malcolm X began to grow disillusioned with the Nation of Islam, as well as with its leader Elijah Muhammad. He subsequently embraced Sunni Islam and the civil rights movement after completing the Hajj to Mecca, and became known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.

After a brief period of travel across Africa, he publicly renounced the Nation of Islam and founded the Islamic Muslim Mosque, Inc. (MMI) and the Pan-African Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).

More information: The Atlantic

Throughout 1964, his conflict with the Nation of Islam intensified, and he was repeatedly sent death threats. On February 21, 1965, he was assassinated in New York City. Three Nation members were charged with the murder and given indeterminate life sentences. Speculation about the assassination and whether it was conceived or aided by leading or additional members of the Nation, or with law enforcement agencies, have persisted for decades after the shooting.

A controversial figure accused of preaching racism and violence, Malcolm X is also a widely celebrated figure within African-American and Muslim American communities for his pursuit of racial justice. He was posthumously honoured with Malcolm X Day, on which he is commemorated in various cities across the United States. Hundreds of streets and schools in the U.S. have been renamed in his honour, while the Audubon Ballroom, the site of his assassination, was partly redeveloped in 2005 to accommodate the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center. 

Malcolm Little was born May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, the fourth of seven children of Grenada-born Louise Helen Little and Georgia-born Earl Little. Earl was an outspoken Baptist lay speaker, and he and Louise were admirers of Pan-African activist Marcus Garvey. Earl was a local leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and Louise served as secretary and branch reporter, sending news of local UNIA activities to Negro World; they inculcated self-reliance and black pride in their children. Malcolm X later said that white violence killed four of his father's brothers.

Malcolm attended West Junior High School in Lansing and then Mason High School in Mason, Michigan, but left high school in 1941, before graduating. He excelled in junior high school but dropped out of high school after a white teacher told him that practising law, his aspiration at the time, was no realistic goal for a nigger. Later, Malcolm X recalled feeling that the white world offered no place for a career-oriented black man, regardless of talent.

In 1950, the FBI opened a file on Malcolm after he wrote a letter from prison to President Truman expressing opposition to the Korean War and declaring himself a communist. That year, he also began signing his name Malcolm X. Muhammad instructed his followers to leave their family names behind when they joined the Nation of Islam and use X instead. When the time was right, after they had proven their sincerity, he said, he would reveal the Muslim's original name.

In his autobiography, Malcolm X explained that the X symbolized the true African family name that he could never know. For me, my 'X' replaced the white slavemaster name of 'Little' which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed upon my paternal forebears.

More information: National Civil Rights Museum

After his parole in August 1952, Malcolm X visited Elijah Muhammad in Chicago. In June 1953 he was named assistant minister of the Nation's Temple Number One in Detroit. Later that year he established Boston's Temple Number 11; in March 1954, he expanded Temple Number 12 in Philadelphia; and two months later he was selected to lead Temple Number 7 in Harlem, where he rapidly expanded its membership.

In 1953, the FBI began surveillance of him, turning its attention from Malcolm X's possible communist associations to his rapid ascent in the Nation of Islam.

During 1955, Malcolm X continued his successful recruitment of members on behalf of the Nation of Islam. He established temples in Springfield, Massachusetts (Number 13); Hartford, Connecticut (Number 14); and Atlanta (Number 15). Hundreds of African Americans were joining the Nation of Islam every month.

Besides his skill as a speaker, Malcolm X had an impressive physical presence. He stood 1.91 m tall and weighed about 82 kg. One writer described him as powerfully built, and another as mesmerizingly handsome... and always spotlessly well-groomed.

By the late 1950s, Malcolm X was using a new name, Malcolm Shabazz or Malik el-Shabazz, although he was still widely referred to as Malcolm X. His comments on issues and events were being widely reported in print, on radio, and on television, and he was featured in a 1959 New York City television broadcast about the Nation of Islam, The Hate That Hate Produced.

More information: ABC News

In September 1960, at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, Malcolm X was invited to the official functions of several African nations. He met Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, and Kenneth Kaunda of the Zambian African National Congress. Fidel Castro also attended the Assembly, and Malcolm X met publicly with him as part of a welcoming committee of Harlem community leaders. Castro was sufficiently impressed with Malcolm X to suggest a private meeting, and after two hours of talking, Castro invited Malcolm X to visit Cuba.

On February 19, 1965, Malcolm X told interviewer Gordon Parks that the Nation of Islam was actively trying to kill him. On February 21, 1965, he was preparing to address the OAAU in Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom when someone in the 400-person audience yelled, Nigger! Get your hand outta my pocket! As Malcolm X and his bodyguards tried to quell the disturbance, a man rushed forward and shot him once in the chest with a sawed-off shotgun and two other men charged the stage firing semi-automatic handguns.

Malcolm X was pronounced dead at 3:30 pm, shortly after arriving at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. The autopsy identified 21 gunshot wounds to the chest, left shoulder, arms and legs, including ten buckshot wounds from the initial shotgun blast.

The public viewing, February 23–26 at Unity Funeral Home in Harlem, was attended by some 14,000 to 30,000 mourners. For the funeral on February 27, loudspeakers were set up for the overflow crowd outside Harlem's thousand-seat Faith Temple of the Church of God in Christ, and a local television station carried the service live.

More information: The New Yorker

The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.

Malcolm X

FIGHT HUMAN & CIVIL RIGHTS, 'LLIBERTAT PABLO HASÉL!'

Pablo Rivadulla Duró (born 1988), aka Pablo Hasél, is a Catalan rapper.

He has been convicted for praising banned groups and insulting the monarchy, prompting a debate on freedom of speech in Spain.

Born in Lleida, Hasél took his artistic name from a revolutionary character in an Arabic short story.

In a March 2018 interview, Hasél said he was unable to find work due to his criminal convictions that disqualified him from the public sector for ten years, and that his last work had been grape picking in France.

In October 2011, Hasél was arrested and bailed for a song titled Democracia su Puta Madre in which he praised Camarada Arenas, a convicted member of the GRAPO.

In April 2014, he was given a two-year prison sentence for ten songs in praise of GRAPO, ETA the Red Army Faction and Terra Lliure. This sentence was suspended for three years in September 2019, on condition that he not reoffend.

In May 2014, Hasél was arrested again for being part of a group that attacked another which it believed to be linked to the far-right Platform for Catalonia.

In June 2016, Hasél pushed and sprayed washing-up liquid at a TV3 journalist. He received six months in prison and a fine of €12,150 in June 2020.

In the same month, he received a 2​1⁄2-year sentence and €2,500 fine for another assault and obstruction of justice, namely the beating of a witness in the October 2017 trial of a policeman who was eventually acquitted of assaulting a minor.

In March 2018, Hasél was sentenced to two years in prison for praising terrorism and insulting King Juan Carlos I on Twitter.

In early 2021, he was ordered to voluntarily enter prison to serve a nine-month sentence for this conviction. He publicly refused this order, and was eventually arrested on 16 February after barricading himself in the University of Lleida.

Hasél's freedom was supported by Amnesty International and a letter signed by 300 Spanish artists including Pedro Almodóvar and Javier Bardem.

More information: Twitter

Das asilo a mi dolor kamikaze.

You give asylum to my kamikaze pain.

Pablo Hasél

JOHN LEWIS, NONVIOLENCE & CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE

John Lewis

Yesterday, we received sad news about the death of John Robert Lewis, the American civil rights leader and politician,  chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and one of the Big Six leaders of groups who organized the 1963 March on Washington.

The Grandma wants to pay homage to John Lewis, a symbol of the black struggle in a favour of Civil and Human Rights and against racism and segregation. She considers the best way to pay homage to John Lewis is talking about his life, his activism and his political career.

John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940-July 17, 2020) was an American civil rights leader and politician.

He was a member of the Democratic Party, and was the U.S. Representative for Georgia's 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death. He was also the dean of the Georgia congressional delegation. The district he served includes the northern three-quarters of Atlanta.

Lewis, who as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was one of the Big Six leaders of groups who organized the 1963 March on Washington, played many key roles in the civil rights movement and its actions to end legalized racial segregation in the United States.

He became a leader of the Democratic Party in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving from 1991 as a Chief Deputy Whip and from 2003 as Senior Chief Deputy Whip. He received many honorary degrees and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

More information: John Lewis

John Lewis was born on February 21, 1940, in Troy, Alabama, the third of ten children of Willie Mae and Eddie Lewis. His parents were sharecroppers in rural Pike County, Alabama.

As a young child, Lewis had little interaction with white people; by the time he was six, Lewis had seen only two white people in his life. As he grew older he began taking trips into town with his family, where he experienced racism and segregation, such as at the public library in Troy.

Lewis had relatives who lived in northern cities, and he learned from them that the North had integrated schools, buses, and businesses. When Lewis was 11, an uncle took him on a trip to Buffalo, New York, making him more acutely aware of Troy's segregation.

In 1955, Lewis first heard Martin Luther King Jr. on the radio, and he closely followed King's Montgomery bus boycott later that year. Lewis met Rosa Parks when he was 17, and met King for the first time when he was 18.

John Lewis with Martin Luther King, Jr. (1960)

Lewis graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, and then received a bachelor's degree in religion and philosophy from Fisk University. As a student, he was dedicated to the civil rights movement.

He organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Nashville and took part in many other civil rights activities as part of the Nashville Student Movement. The Nashville sit-in movement was responsible for the desegregation of lunch counters in downtown Nashville.

Lewis was arrested and jailed many times in the nonviolent movement to desegregate the downtown area of the city. He was also instrumental in organizing bus boycotts and other nonviolent protests in the fight for voter and racial equality.

While a student, Lewis was invited to attend nonviolence workshops held at Clark Memorial United Methodist Church by the Rev. James Lawson and Rev. Kelly Miller Smith. There, Lewis and other students became dedicated adherents to the discipline and philosophy of nonviolence, which he practiced for the rest of his life.

In 1961, Lewis became one of the 13 original Freedom Riders. There were seven whites and six blacks who were determined to ride from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans in an integrated fashion. At that time, several southern states continued to enforce laws prohibiting black and white riders from sitting next to each other on public transportation.

More information: My Black History

The Freedom Ride, originated by the Fellowship of Reconciliation and revived by James Farmer and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), was initiated to pressure the federal government to enforce the Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia (1960) that declared segregated interstate bus travel to be unconstitutional.

The Freedom Rides also exposed the passivity of the government regarding violence against citizens of the country who were simply acting in accordance with the law. The federal government had trusted the notoriously racist Alabama police to protect the Riders, but did nothing itself, except to have FBI agents take notes. The Kennedy Administration then called for a cooling-off period, with a moratorium on Freedom Rides.

In 1963, when Charles McDew stepped down as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Lewis, one of the founding members of SNCC, was elected to take over.

John Lewis & The March on Washington (1963)

In 1963, as chairman of SNCC Lewis was named one of the Big Six leaders who were organizing the March on Washington, the occasion of Dr. Martin Luther King's celebrated I Have a Dream speech, along with Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph, James Farmer and Roy Wilkins; Lewis was the youngest of the Big Six.

In 1964, Lewis coordinated SNCC's efforts for Mississippi Freedom Summer, a campaign to register black voters across the South and expose college students from around the country to the perils of African-American life in the South. Lewis traveled the country encouraging students to spend their summer break trying to help people in Mississippi, the most recalcitrant state in the union, to register and vote.

In 1966, Lewis moved to New York City to take a job as the associate director of the Field Foundation. He was there a little over a year before moving back to Atlanta to direct the Southern Regional Council's Community Organization Project. During his time with the SRC, he completed his degree from Fisk University.

In 1970, Lewis became the director of the Voter Education Project (VEP), a position he held until 1977.

More information: The Indian Express

In 1981, Lewis ran for an at-large seat on the Atlanta City Council. He won with 69% of the vote, and served on the council until 1986.

After nine years as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Fowler gave up the seat to make a successful run for the U.S. Senate.

Lewis represented Georgia's 5th congressional district, one of the most consistently Democratic districts in the nation. Since its formalization in 1845, the district has been represented by a Democrat for all but the nine years the seat was vacant when Georgia seceded during the Civil War.

John Lewis Mural, Atlanta (2020)

Lewis opposed the 1991 Gulf War, and the 2000 U.S. trade agreement with China that passed the House. He opposed the Clinton administration on NAFTA and welfare reform.

Lewis drew on his historical involvement in the Civil Rights Movement as part of his politics.

He made an annual pilgrimage to Alabama to retrace the route he marched in 1965 from Selma to Montgomery -a route Lewis worked to make part of the Historic National Trails program.

In March 2003, Lewis spoke to a crowd of 30,000 in Oregon during an anti-war protest before the start of the Iraq War. He was arrested in 2006 and 2009 and outside the Sudan embassy in protest against the genocide in Darfur.

He was one of eight U.S. Representatives, from six states, arrested while holding a sit-in near the west side of the U.S. Capitol building, to advocate for immigration reform. Lewis also led the 2016 House Democrats sit-in demanding that the House take action on gun control in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shooting and the failure of the United States Senate to act.

More information: ABC News

In 2013, Lewis became the first member of Congress to write a graphic novel, with the launch of a trilogy titled March. The March trilogy is a black and white comics trilogy about the Civil Rights Movement, told through the perspective of civil rights leader and U.S. Congressman John Lewis. The first volume, March: Book One is written by Lewis and Andrew Aydin, illustrated and lettered by Nate Powell and was published in August 2013, the second volume, March: Book Two was published in January 2015 and the final volume, March: Book Three was published in August 2016.

In an August 2014 interview, Lewis cited the influence of a 1958 comic book, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, on his decision to adapt his experience to the graphic novel format. March: Book One became a number one New York Times bestseller for graphic novels and spent more than a year on the lists. 

On July 17, 2020, Lewis died at the age of 80 in Atlanta, Georgia.

More information: Vox

When you see something that is not right,

not fair, not just, you have to speak up.

You have to say something; you have to do something.

John Lewis

JOAN BAEZ, COMMITMENT & CIVIL RIGHTS IN SITGES

Joan Baez

Today, Claire Fontaine & The Grandma have gone to Sitges to listen to a legend of music and a great human rights activist, Joan Baez. They love her songs, many of them are considered hymns, and they admire her activism in defence of human rights around the world.

Claire and The Grandma don't live disconnected of the real situation of their day-by-day in their country which is suffering a terrible repression of a state that doesn't respect human and civil rights and attacks free speech and cultural difference.

Listening to Joan Baez is an incredible opportunity to take enough force to go on, to resist under this regime of repression, and also a wonderful way of remembering the fight in a favour of the civil and human rights along the last decades, a strong struggle reflected in the lyrics of her songs and in the beauty of her unforgettable voice.

Before going to Sitges, The Grandma has studied her Ms. Excel course.

Chapter 7. Cell Format (II) (Spanish Version)

Joan Chandos Baez (born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist whose contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest or social justice.

Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing over 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish and English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages. Although generally regarded as a folk singer, her music has diversified since the counterculture era of the 1960s, and encompasses genres such as folk rock, pop, country, and gospel music.

Although a songwriter herself, Baez generally interprets other composers' work, having recorded songs by Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers Band, the Beatles, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen, Woody Guthrie, Violeta Parra, the Rolling Stones, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and many others. On her past several albums, she has found success interpreting songs of more recent songwriters, including Ryan Adams, Josh Ritter, Steve Earle, Natalie Merchant and Joe Henry.

More information: Joan Baez

She began her recording career in 1960 and achieved immediate success. Her first three albums, Joan Baez, Joan Baez, Vol. 2, and Joan Baez in Concert all achieved gold record status.

Songs of acclaim include Diamonds & Rust and covers of Phil Ochs's There but for Fortune and The Band's The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. She is also known for Farewell, Angelina, Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word, Forever Young, Here's to You, Joe Hill, Sweet Sir Galahad and We Shall Overcome.

Claire Fontaine & The Grandma in Sitges

She was one of the first major artists to record the songs of Bob Dylan in the early 1960s; Baez was already an internationally celebrated artist and did much to popularize his early songwriting efforts.

Baez also performed fourteen songs at the 1969 Woodstock Festival and has displayed a lifelong commitment to political and social activism in the fields of nonviolence, civil rights, human rights and the environment.

Baez was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 7, 2017.

Baez was born on Staten Island, New York, on January 9, 1941. Joan's grandfather, the Reverend Alberto Baez, left the Catholic Church to become a Methodist minister and moved to the U.S. when her father was two years old. Her father, Albert Baez (1912–2007), was born in Puebla, Mexico and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where his father preached to -and advocated for- a Spanish-speaking congregation.

Due to her father's work with UNESCO, their family moved many times, living in towns across the U.S, as well as in England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, and the Middle East, including Iraq.

Joan Baez became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career, including civil rights and non-violence. Social justice, she stated in the PBS series American Masters, is the true core of her life, looming larger than music.

More information: DW

The opening line of Baez's memoir And a Voice to Sing With is I was born gifted, referencing her singing voice, which she explained was given to her and for which she can take no credit. A friend of Joan's father gave her a ukulele. She learned four chords, which enabled her to play rhythm and blues, the music she was listening to at the time. Her parents, however, were fearful that the music would lead her into a life of drug addiction.

When Baez was 13, her aunt and her aunt's boyfriend took her to a concert by folk musician Pete Seeger, and Baez found herself strongly moved by his music. She soon began practicing the songs of his repertoire and performing them publicly. One of her very earliest public performances was at a retreat in Saratoga, California for a youth group from Temple Beth Jacob, a Redwood City, California Jewish congregation. A few years later in 1957, Baez bought her first Gibson acoustic guitar.

Her true professional career began at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. Following that appearance, she recorded her first album for Vanguard, Joan Baez (1960), produced by Fred Hellerman of The Weavers, who produced many albums by folk artists.

The War Is Over! Rally, May 1975

From the early-to-mid-1960s, Baez emerged at the forefront of the American roots revival, where she introduced her audiences to the then-unknown Bob Dylan, and was emulated by artists such as Judy Collins, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, and Bonnie Raitt.

Baez's distinctive vocal style and political activism had a significant impact on American popular music. She was one of the first musicians to use her popularity as a vehicle for social protest, singing and marching for human rights and peace.

Pete Seeger, Odetta, and decades-long friend Harry Belafonte were her early social justice advocate influences. Baez came to be considered the most accomplished interpretive folksinger/songwriter of the 1960s. Her appeal extended far beyond the folk-music audience.

In 1980, Baez was given honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees by Antioch University and Rutgers University for her political activism and the universality of her music. In 1983, she appeared on the Grammy Awards, performing Dylan's anthemic Blowin' in the Wind, a song she first performed twenty years earlier.

More information: ThoughtCo

Baez also played a significant role in the 1985 Live Aid concert for African famine relief, opening the U.S. segment of the show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has toured on behalf of many other causes, including Amnesty International's 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope tour and a guest spot on their subsequent Human Rights Now! tour.

In 1993, at the invitation of Refugees International and sponsored by the Soros Foundation, she traveled to the war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina region of former-Yugoslavia in an effort to help bring more attention to the suffering there. She was the first major artist to perform in Sarajevo since the outbreak of the Yugoslav civil war.

On April 4, 2017, Baez released on her Facebook page her first song in twenty-seven years, Nasty Man, a protest song against US President Donald Trump which became a viral hit.

In 1956, Baez first heard Martin Luther King, Jr., speak about nonviolence, civil rights and social change which brought tears to her eyes. Several years later, the two became friends, with Baez participating in many of the Civil Rights Movement demonstrations that Dr. King helped organize.

Martin Luther King, Jr. & Joan Baez

In 1958, at age 17, Baez committed her first act of civil disobedience by refusing to leave her Palo Alto High School classroom in Palo Alto, California, for an air raid drill.

The early years of Baez's career saw the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. become a prominent issue. Her performance of We Shall Overcome, the civil rights anthem written by Pete Seeger and Guy Carawan, at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom permanently linked her to the song.

Baez again sang We Shall Overcome in Sproul Plaza during the mid-1960s Free Speech Movement demonstrations at the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, California, and at many other rallies and protests.

Her recording of the song Birmingham Sunday (1964), written by her brother-in-law, Richard Fariña, was used in the opening of 4 Little Girls (1997), Spike Lee's documentary film about the four young victims killed in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.

In 1965, Baez announced that she would be opening a school to teach nonviolent protest. She also participated in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches for voting rights.

Highly visible in civil-rights marches, Baez became more vocal about her disagreement with the Vietnam War.

Baez was arrested twice in 1967 for blocking the entrance of the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California, and spent over a month in jail.

More information: Nasty Man by Joan Baez

Baez was instrumental in founding the USA section of Amnesty International in the 1970s, and has remained an active supporter of the organization.

In 1976, she was awarded the Thomas Merton Award for her ongoing activism.

In 1989, after the Tiananmen Massacre in Beijing, Baez wrote and released the song China to condemn the Chinese government for its violent and bloody crackdown on thousands of student protesters who called for establishment of democratic republicanism.

In a second trip to Southeast Asia, Baez assisted in an effort to take food and medicine into the western regions of Cambodia, and participated in a United Nations Humanitarian Conference on Kampuchea.

On July 17, 2006, Baez received the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Legal Community Against Violence. At the annual dinner event, they honored her for her lifetime of work against violence of all kinds.

In 2015, Baez received the Ambassador of Conscience Award. 

Joan Baez & Bill Shipsey visit Carme Forcadell in prison

In 2016, Baez advocated for the Innocence Project and Innocence Network. At each concert, Baez informs the audience about the organizations' efforts to exhonerate the wrongfully convicted and reform the system to prevent such incidents.

In December 2005, Baez appeared and sang Swing Low, Sweet Chariot at the California protest at the San Quentin State Prison against the execution of Tookie Williams. She had previously performed the same song at San Quentin at the 1992 vigil protesting the execution of Robert Alton Harris, the first man to be executed in California after the death penalty was reinstated.

Baez has also been prominent in the struggle for gay and lesbian rights. In 1978, she performed at several benefit concerts to defeat the Briggs Initiative, which proposed banning all gay people from teaching in the public schools of California. Later that same year, she participated in memorial marches for the assassinated San Francisco city supervisor, Harvey Milk, who was openly gay.

On Earth Day 1999, Baez and Bonnie Raitt honored environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill with Raitt's Arthur M. Sohcot Award in person on her 55 m-high redwood treetop platform, where Hill had camped to protect ancient redwoods in the Headwaters Forest from logging.

In early 2003, Baez performed at two rallies of hundreds of thousands of people in San Francisco protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as she had earlier done before smaller crowds in 1991 to protest the Gulf War.

More information: The Guardian

In August 2003, she was invited by Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle to join them in London, UK, at the Concert For a Landmine-Free World.

In the summer of 2004, Baez joined Michael Moore's Slacker uprising Tour on American college campuses, encouraging young people to get out and vote for peace candidates in the upcoming national election.

In August 2005, Baez appeared at the Texas anti-war protest that had been started by Cindy Sheehan.

On June 25, 2009, Baez created a special version of We Shall Overcome with a few lines of Persian lyrics in support of peaceful protests by Iranian people. She recorded it in her home and posted the video on YouTube and on her personal website.

On March 18, 2011, Baez was honored by Amnesty International at its 50th Anniversary Annual General Meeting in San Francisco. The tribute to Baez was the inaugural event for the Amnesty International Joan Baez Award for Outstanding Inspirational Service in the Global Fight for Human Rights.

On November 11, 2011, Baez played as part of a musical concert for the protestors at Occupy Wall Street. Her three-song set included Joe Hill, a cover of the Rolling Stones' Salt of the Earth and her own composition Where's My Apple Pie?

Joan Baez has been a strong defender of the Catalan independence movement due to its non-violent nature. On July 21, 2019, she described Catalan independence leaders as political prisoners. A few days later, on July 26, 2019, she visited former President of the Parliament of Catalonia Carme Forcadell in prison.

More information: Catalan News

I think music has the power to transform people,

and in doing so, it has the power to transform situations 

-some large and some small.

Joan Baez