Mural at Water Filtration System at Jabaliya Elementary School
Jabaliya Refugee Camp, Gaza Strip

The MAIA Mural Brigade (Maia means Water in Arabic), organized by Break the Silence Mural and Arts Project, brings together a national team that includes: activists, trauma therapists, muralists, filmmakers, The ESTRIA Foundation’s Water Writes Project and Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural Project and Afaq Jadeeda (New Horizons)  to create collaborative murals with Palestinian youth and artists.  The murals are located at schools in the Gaza Strip where water purification systems installed by the Middle East Children’s Alliance are providing clean drinking water to 30,000 children.

The Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA),  Berkeley CA, has worked for 25 years to provide on-the-ground humanitarian aid to children in the Middle East.  MECA’s MAIA Project  was launched in response to a vote by the Student Parliament at the UN Boys’ School in Bureij Refugee Camp, Gaza.  The students were given the opportunity to choose one thing they most wanted for their school: They chose to have clean drinking water. The water crisis in Palestine continues to worsen particularly in Gaza where desalination plants were bombed in Israel’s Operation Cast Lead assault in 2008/2009.

Working in partnership with community organizations in Gaza MECA’s MAIA Project has provided clean water to 14 large UN schools in Palestinian refugee camps and to 13 kindergartens in refugee camps, towns, and villages. The systems are funded by grassroots organizing efforts in the USA.

The MAIA Brigade painted 8 murals at 8 of MECA’s Filtration Systems. These are just a few here.  To See more photos: Click-MAIA MURAL More information and our blog:www.Maiamuralproject.org

Beit Hanoun Kindergarten, Funded by Alice Walker

New Gaza School for Boys, Gaza City

Students from UNRWA Summer Camps

Rachel Corrie Kindergarten, Rafah

To See more photos:  Click-MAIA MURAL

Come out n Celebrate the Completion of 5 of the 10 Water Writes Murals hosted by the Estria Foundation! Muralists who traveled to Hawaii, Palestine, and the Philippines will share their videos, photos, and stories.

The MAIA Mural Brigade brought several groups, institutions and projects together including: Break the Silence Mural And Arts Project; the Middle East Children’s Alliance; The Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural Project and the Estria Foundation.

MAIA Mural Brigade is honored to be one of ESTRIA Foundation’ s WATER WRITES Projects.

This is the first report-back from MAIA MURAL BRIGADE!

Club 21 @ 2111 Franklin Street, Oakland, Califas

Saturday, August 20 · 2:00pm – 8:00pm

Stay Tuned for more!

MAIA MURAL PROJECT

A Tale of Two Cites goes to Gaza!!

To make your tax deductible donation:

Causes on Facebook

Break the Silence Mural Project (Via our Fiscal Sponsor PEACE DEVELOPMENT FUND)

The MAIA MURAL PROJECT will be a series of collaborative murals focusing on environmental justice, specifically water or ‘maia’ in Arabic.  We will work with youth and artists in Gaza to paint murals at sites of water purification units that the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) is installing at UNRWA schools and kindergartens. The quality of water in Gaza has been eroded, particularly in the Israeli assault of 2008-9, creating a severe health hazard to which children are most vulnerable.  In addition we will work on two large-scale public murals that will address the issues of the universal right to water and international solidarity.  To read more about this humanitarian crises please see: http://www.mecaforpeace.org/project/maia-project.

The MAIA Mural Project joins the ESTRIA Foundation’s Water Writes Project and will be the 10^th mural in a series of projects in 10 cities around the world in 10 focusing on the universal right to water.  The project is also sponsored by MECA, Break the Silence Mural Project, the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice and the Gaza Community Mental Health Programe.

The MAIA Mural Project is the Gaza part of “A Tale of Two Cities- The Olympia-Rafah Mural Project” located in Olympia WA.  These projects make connections between struggles and movements for social justice around the world.

You will be able to see our work as it unfolds on our blogs, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.  We will also be uploading video and interviews with our Palestinian partners, giving you a real sense of what we are experiencing and whom we are working with.  This extensive documentation will become part of a growing global conversation about resources, water, solidarity, cross-movement building and non-violent resistance to oppression.

Pre-Registration Now Open!
Click here to reserve your place.

The conference includes two days of networking, panels and workshops at The Evergreen State College in Olympia. Panelists will address the current situation in Israel/Palestine, strategies for justice and peace, the growing international campaigns for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and cross-movement building. Local and national organizers will facilitate workshops to educate, motivate and provide tools for community organizing.

 

Alice Walker

Solidarity in Action Featuring
Keynote Presenter: Alice Walker

Scheduled workshops and events include:

• Human Rights and Strategies for Justice in Palestine/Israel
• Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Campaigns & Grassroots Organizing
• Organizing with the Olympia Rafah Solidarity Mural Project
• Cross Movement Building
• Social Networking as an organizing tool
• Report Back on Trial in Israel by the Corries
• Celebration with music and dancing Sat. evening in Downtown Olympia
• Buffet lunch on Saturday included in the cost of registration

Travel and Lodging information:

• Click here for Olympia hotel information.
• Click here for transportation from SeaTac airport.
• Click here for information about public transportation in Olympia.
• Click here for a map of the Evergreen State College.
• Click here for more information on the City of Olympia.

Co-sponsorship Opportunity
If you or your organization is interested in co-sponsoring this years conference, please contact Becca Pilcher. Co-sponsorship opportunities are available at the following levels. Download the co-sponsorship form here.

• Friend of the Foundation: $50.00 – $150.00 (Your name will be listed in the Conference Program.)
• Partner in Peace: $150 – $350.00 (A black & white ad for your company will be placed in conference program, seen by up to 300 people.)
• Ally in Action: $350 – $600.00 (The above perks plus one free ticket for the entire weekend including Alice Walker at the Washington Center.)
• Harbinger of Justice: $600.00+ (The above perks plus an ad placed on the RCF website and in the Washington Center program viewed by up to 1000 people OR 2 Free Tickets to the full conference including Alice Walker.)

If you have a video camera – Please let us know or come down and help us document this event- THANKS

ORSMP’s own Hilary Hacker has been nominate to win a Students In Service Award!

All you have to do is VOTE for me and PLEASE spread the word through any networks you have… email, facebook… etc.

Hilary and ORSMP and Antioch would appreciate it sooo much!  $5,000 for Hilary, $2,500 for Antioch, and $2,500 for the Olympia Rafah Solidarity Mural Project!

Check out this clip I created in order to document the community work that I’ve done since beginning grad school at Antioch University  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS_tggyP-U0.  It’s only 3 minutes!

You can VOTE and view my profile at http://www.serviceawards.org/applicant/193/Hilary_Hacker.aspx.  Please leave comments under the comments tab.

You can also find Hilary on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/?ref=hp#!/hilhack or hilhack4paz@gmail.com.

Below is a link to the in-progress  Catalogue of the mural participants that Hilary is working on.  She designed and laid it out.

http://www.axmag.com/data/201010/U5810_F8953/index.html

Here is a video of Hilary’s work

Asia Aamer’s image in the mural.

The Itisapartheid www.itisapartheid.org  Collective and Stop the Wall http://www.stopthewall.org/  want to announce the winner of the Israeli Apartheid Video Contest.

Expert Panel Prize: Road Map to Apartheid
Palestinian Popular Jury Prize:  Confronting the Wall (there were showings and voting in the
West Bank and Gaza)
Global Jury Prize:  Ali Wall (from internet voting)
Overall Prize:  Road Map to Apartheid

You can see the films on our website www.itisapartheid.tv .
Road map to Apartheid:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPvwj6t_B_Q
Ali Wall: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahap7fXRP10
Confronting the Wall:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4z06MlgdzQ

AUDIO PROGRAM UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Click on Image to enlarge and print

Live Audio Files on Extension Numbers:

050- Black Student union

068- Baladna and DAM

021- KOWA                                                

069- Break the Silence

031- Books to Prisoners 076- Anarchists against the wall

037- Pastors for Peace

077- Gail Trembly

051- POWER

080- Ibdaa

055- Asia Aamer

096- Leonard Peltier

103- EGYHOP

112- Assembly of Revolutionary Artists of Oaxaca

Extension Numbers for Download

Mural Audio Key for Download

The Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural Project, co-produced by Break the Silence Mural and Arts Project and the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice, was made possible by  the collective effort of more than150 groups and individuals–from local to global, from Olympia, Washington to Rafah, Palestine, from Turtle Island to Latin America to Sri Lanka and Indonesia to  Derry, Ireland to Tel Aviv, Israel.

This multi-media project aims to build relationships across movements, cultures and great distances.  It honors those who have lost their lives striving for liberation, and seeks to strengthen and make more visible the efforts of some of the many organizations and individuals who dare to imagine a different world.

Please Click on Image to see Entire Image

THE MURAL SPEAKS- Video #1

THE MURAL SPEAKS- Video #2

May 8th 2010, The Mural Speaks

The Olympia Rafah Solidarity Mural Project was formally dedicated and celebrated with music, dance, spoken word, poetry and tasty snacks.  Hundreds gathered on the corner of State and Capital streets to hear the mural speak as each image was introduced.  The event was the finale to the People’s Assembly, a meeting of grass roots organizers in Olympia, and takes its place as a cross movement building tool that will inspire thinking and action.  The mural has an audio component and for the cost of a local cell phone call one can enter an extension number for each image and hear related poetry, information, history, interviews, etc.

http://www.nakbainhebrew.org

Zochrot ["Remembering"]

To commemorate, witness, acknowledge, and repair

Re-posting Eli Cohen St. in al-Majdal (Ashqelon), “Al-Ustaz (The Teacher) St., al-Majdal until 1948”

Zochrot ["Remembering"] is a group of Israeli citizens working to raise awareness of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948.

The Zionist collective memory exists in both our cultural and physical landscape, yet the heavy price paid by the Palestinians — in lives, in the destruction of hundreds of villages, and in the continuing plight of the Palestinian refugees — receives little public recognition.

Zochrot works to make the history of the Nakba accessible to the Israeli public so as to engage Jews and Palestinians in an open recounting of our painful common history. We hope that by bringing the Nakba into Hebrew, the language spoken by the Jewish majority in Israel, we can make a qualitative change in the political discourse of this region. Acknowledging the past is the first step in taking responsibility for its consequences. This must include equal rights for all the peoples of this land, including the right of Palestinians to return to their homes.

Position Paper on Posting Signs at the Sites of Demolished Palestinian Villages

by Eitan Bronstein

The Zionist collective memory exists in both our cultural and physical space. Many monuments and road signs point out the loss of Jewish soldiers in wars, yet no indication of the destruction of Palestinian life may be found at all on our cultural and geographical landscape. The heavy price paid by the Palestinians — in lives, in the destruction of hundreds of villages, and by being uprooted from their homes — receives no public recognition. Demolished Palestinian villages are never commemorated, their names often Hebraicized and bestowed upon the new settlements established in their place. These villages are invisible spots on Israel’s landscape; only the obstinate sabra bushes serve as their silent monuments.

Palestinian pain, too, is illegitimate; all expressions of pain are considered hostile and threatening. Israel regards its Arab citizens’ grief as a threat to Jewish existence here and now. In past years Palestinian awareness of the political importance of collective memory and public commemoration of the Nakba (“disaster”), in opposition to Israeli Independence Day, has risen and become more visible. Visits to demolished villages now take a more central role in shaping the identity of Palestinian citizens of Israel, yet these are made unobtrusively and without demands that the state officially recognize their suffering.

Zionist collective memory also prevents Jews from acknowledging their part in the destruction, from accepting responsibility and, consequently, from achieving real reconciliation with the Palestinians. The Jewish people have not taken and do not take any action aimed at acknowledging their part in the Palestinians’ suffering. Any possibility for such action is immediately rejected out of fear that recognition of injustices committed will oblige the Jews to leave Israel. This paranoia is both derived from the Jewish “victim complex” and reinforces it.

Posting signs at destroyed Palestinian villages is part of a larger effort to bring civil and national equality to the country. Physically marking these villages and holding public discussions on the Palestinian Nakba may encourage a more ethical discourse and reveal both the victims and the initiators of the hardships. The act of making the destroyed villages visible is intended to set in motion a process of catharsis within the Jewish public, as well as serve as an expression of humanity.

Though mainly symbolic, posting signs is an act fundamentally connected to the past, as it constitutes recognition of the moral debt that is owed for the injustices committed in the creation of the Jewish state. The catastrophe that occurred to the Palestinians with the destruction of more than 400 of their villages demands some kind of consideration on the part of the historical victors. Simply erecting a sign that tells the story of a demolished village with dignity is recognition of the wrongs committed and the tragedy.

A sign’s existence has both aesthetic and material character. It cannot be ignored on the landscape. It is a physical monument, giving its viewer a new, more critical perspective on the reality in which he or she lives. As long as razed Palestinian villages remain uncommemorated on the Israeli landscape, their existence in the past and their destruction is repressed. Each new sign will change the experience of driving down Israel’s roads and walking on its paths. Signs erected over the ruins of Palestinian villages will represent a challenge to written history inscribed on the landscape.

Signs posted at demolished villages will invoke the question of a Law of Return for Palestinian refugees. The signs will place the question of the Palestinians’ right to return on the public agenda by testifying to that which existed here, to that which cannot be ignored forever. Jewish recognition of the ongoing refugee problem and determined striving towards an agreement on the issue of return are keys to real reconciliation between the two peoples. Without a fair solution to the problem of return, the conflict can never be resolved.

Posting signs at villages integrates the past, present and future and between the ethical, aesthetic, and political. This is taking action upon the landscape in the hope of rediscovering and remodeling it, creating a renewed landscape that will reveal the traces of what has refused to be wiped out, in spite of so many efforts. In a more just society, the politics of landscape oblige society to morally account for its past wrongdoings, an obligation whose visual expression must be exposed in the light of day.

We are a group of Israelis who aim to raise awareness to the tragedy and suffering of the Palestinian people, particularly among the Jewish population of Israel. Posting signs at demolished Palestinian villages is one way to advance this goal, but is only one element of an expansive effort to commemorate the Nakba in Hebrew. Calling attention to the Nakba in Hebrew — at schools, universities, and in other public arenas — should be an objective of all who desire mutual recognition and peace between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. At a time when the word “mahsom” (roadblock) is so ubiquitous that young Palestinians are unaware that it’s a term belonging to the occupation, let alone a word in Hebrew, it is appropriate that Israelis think and speak of the Nakba as a way to begin to understand Palestinian suffering.

In addition to posting signs, we also suggest creating children’s games on the subject of the Nakba, organizing study tours of villages that were destroyed (including training tour guides for this purpose), manufacturing maps that include these villages, creating a database and documentation of the demolished villages, and organizing exhibitions, among many other possibilities. This will all be carried out in clear and simple Hebrew.

Highest priority for posting signs will be on public spaces such as Canada Park (built on the ruins of Emaus, Yalu, and Beit Nuba, which were destroyed in the 1967 war), in cities (such as on Ibn Gvirol Street in Tel Aviv, which borders Sumeil), and by major roads, mainly in locations where remnants of the destruction still exist today.

We seek to apply ourselves to these challenges: to commemorate and talk about the Nakba in Hebrew so that our language will be more peaceful and just; to witness what was wiped off the face of the earth in order to understand our neighbors’ pain and loss; to acknowledge the Palestinian catastrophes of 1948 and 1967 and, thereby, attempt to mold a peace-seeking Jewish-Israeli consciousness.

The Mural Speaks


The Olympia Rafah Solidarity Mural Project

Saturday, May 8th 2010

@ The Mural Site, Corner of State & Capitol

In coordination with the People’s Movement Assembly

6-10pm

Evening’s Agenda
6:00pm: Gathering at the Mural
Food & Beverages
DJ Turtledove

7:00pm: Grupo Quetzalcoatl de Olympia!

7:30pm: Live Music
Southern Skies (Olympia)
AudioPharmacy (San Francisco)

8:30pm: The Mural Speaks!

An Introduction to the Mural Audio Components
With Live performances by Project Participants

Books to Prisoners

Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES)

Garden Raised Bounty (GRuB)

Gateways for Incarcerated Youth

Indigenous Youth Delegation to Palestine (San Francisco)

Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies)

Inmigrantes Unidos

Movimiento Estudantil Chicano de Azatlan (MEChA)

Olympia Movement for Justice & Peace (OMJP)

Parents Organizing for Welfare & Economic Rights (POWER)

SafePlace

Stonewall Youth

The Rachel Corrie Foundation

The Olympia Rafah Sister City Project

AND MORE!

10pm: Possible surprise guests!

This event is free of charge and open to the public! We will be gathering in front of the mural and are looking forward to this being a bridging of communities!

To volunteer please email hilhack4paz@gmail.com

The Mural Speaks event will be the finale to The People’s Assembly: Collaboration, Networking and Solidarity, a gathering of Olympia’s grassroots organizers to discuss the US Social Forum and other strategies moving forward in the struggle for social justice. For more information, visit http://omjp.net.

The Olympia Rafah Mural tells a tale of two cities linked through tragedy – Olympia WA and Rafah Palestine and is expected to be the largest public art project highlighting the experiences of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation. The ultimate goal of the Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural Project (ORSMP) is to use art, culture and technology in innovative ways to increase the strength and visibility of the movement for social justice not only in Palestine and Israel, but also in the U.S. and throughout the world.

The 4,000 square foot mural/interactive project is the collective effort of Olympia locals, as well as over 150 artists, activists and social justice organizations from Olympia to the Bay Area, across the USA to the West Bank and Gaza in Palestine. Viewers can use a cell phone to call and hear a specific artist/group introduce themselves and talk about the meaning of their contributions to the mural. Some artists have included poetry and/or music to add cultural favor to the image and the audio soundscape.

The Olympia-Rafah project has successfully articulated the importance of creating cross-movement partnerships and highlighted the impact of transgressing boundaries. The project continues, and with each completed phase, more fully illuminates and strengthens a shared quest for justice and equality across continents, cultures and causes.

For more information visit http://olympiarafahmural.org/

If you’re interested in making a contribution to the mural project join our cause: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/452391/89099776?m=9e4cc0c7&ref=mf

The Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural Project (ORSMP) is hosting a community painting day, Sunday, July 26th, 12:00-5:00 pm, at the mural site on the north side of the Labor Temple Building in downtown Olympia, corner of State Street and Capitol Way North. No experience is necessary and community members of all ages are invited to help lay the first brushstrokes of summer 2009!  Parents must accompany and supervise their children. Volunteers are welcome for a few minutes or a few hours to help prepare the mural background and should come in clothing appropriate for painting.