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.

Click for Audio Inmigrantes Unidos

Mission
To unite immigrant community in Shelton,  foster mutual support, and enhance quality of life through education, knowledge, relationships and leadership development.
Click here For More Information about YAYA; The Youth and Young Adult Network of the National Farm Worker Ministry!

On March 30th 2011, Evergreen YAYAs, along with the Evergreen Labor Center, Center for Community Based Learning and Action, and four academic programs, sponsored a panel on farm worker justice. With over 175 people in attendance, the event was a great success and served to raise campus awareness about farm worker justice, immigration reform, and the rights of undocumented workers.Patricia Vasquez represented Inmigrantes Unidos de Shelton and spoke about issues concerning immigrants in the South Sound. Hilary Hacker spoke about the importance of being an immigrant ally and the function of Bridges Not Walls; a coalition of community members in Olympia and Shelton working solidarity with the immigrant communities in our area to promote human rights, economic rights, and civil rights for all people.Arturo Sepulveda, a union organizer with UFW in Eastern Washington, made the long drive along with Jesus and Remaldo Larias, two workers from Ruby Ridge Dairy. The workers report a climate of fear and intimidation at their jobs. They are forced to work overtime which they are not paid for, aren’t allowed lunch or bathroom breaks, and do not have clean water provided to them. Last year Remaldo was fired along with 9 other men for circulating union cards- which a majority of the workers signed. UFW and NFWM have been involved in talks with the owners of the farm that have not yet lead to any resolution.The student response to their speeches was overwhelming and we are now just waiting to hear from the workers how they would like us to support them.- Jenny Lee, Olympia- Washington

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

More information coming soon!

Olympia Boycott Divestment and Sanctions

http://www.olympiabds.org

Bay Area Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid

www.baceia.org/

Global Boycott Divestment and Sanction Movement

bdsmovement.net/

Palestine Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

http://www.pacbi.org/

The Wall was painted by Justin Crawford.

There are many links between the Wall Israel is building in Palestine and the Wall the USA is building in Mexico.  Below are several articles about these walls and the borders articulate.

WE DIDN’T CROSS THE BORDER- THE BORDER CROSSED US

Guitchen Nation, Alaska

Click Map to Enlarge

Feb 27, 2005 — For Palestinians, and according to international law, the West Bank is one unit. However, in the Apartheid realities being carved out on the ground the term contiguous state never applies except in the deceitful rhetoric of disengagement from Israel and its backers in the US and Europe. Analysis of the latest map of the built (and soon to be constructed) Wall and settlement road systems, reveal 47% of the West Bank will be colonized.

http://www.stopthewall.org/

http://stopthewall.org/maps/45.shtml

The Palestine-Mexico border

by Jimmy Johnson on May 3, 2010

from Mondoweiss, www.mondoweiss.net

January’s revelations about the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers assisting with the design and installation of yet another border wall around Palestine, this one placed under the ground, is just the latest development in a series of relationships between: North American neoliberalism, U.S. domestic and foreign drug policy, structural anti-latino racism in the U.S., the Egyptian government, Mexico’s ruling elite and Israel’s military occupation of Palestine. To find connections between various international interests is not surprising but the links between, for example, Mexican classism and President Mubarak’s aversion to democracy are perhaps less known. How the occupation forces action from one and provides tools for the other is a connection worth exploring as is the potential for joint struggle between individuals and communities focusing on seemingly disparate issues amidst broader struggles for justice.

Click link to read entire article: Palestine-Mexico Border article

The Apartheid Wall
Land Theft and Forced Expulsion
2010 Fact Sheet

The Wall is not being built on, or in most cases near the 1967 Green Line, but rather cuts deep into the
West Bank, expanding Israel’s theft of Palestinian land and resources. In total, 85% of the Wall is located
in the West Bank.
When completed, the Wall and its associated regime will de facto annex some 46% of the West Bank, isolating
communities into Bantustans, ghettos and “military zones”.
This means that the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including almost 1.5 million
refugees, will be encircled on only 12% of mandate Palestine.

Click link to read entire Fact Sheet: Wall Palestine Fact sheet

Life on the Line: The Arizona-Mexico Border

Philip Caputo

http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2007/spring/caputo-life-on-line/

www.immigrationimpact.com

Sama-sama/Together

Collaboration Apotik Komik, Yogyakarta, Indonesia and members of Clarion Alley Mural Project, SF CA

conceived/directed Megan Wilson

http://www.meganwilson.com/related/Curatorial/Sama-sama.php

Yogyakarta Indonesia (2003), catalogue cover

The catalogue Sama-sama/Together An International Exchange Project between Yogyakarta-San Francisco is currently available at Intersection for the Arts!! Catalogues are $30/each and all proceeds are going towards earthquake relief for the earthquake that hit Yogyakarta in May 2006 — there are still many people who are needing help with the rebuilding of their homes!!

From catalogue essay by Wilson:
Sama-sama/Together is an international collaboration and exchange project between community arts organizations and artists from San Francisco, California and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. This project, co-sponsored by the Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) and Intersection for the Arts, will feature the first murals to be created in San Francisco by Indonesian artists and the first major exhibition in the Bay Area to feature contemporary alternative work from Indonesia. Designed to foster understanding of contemporary art and culture between the two communities through the creation of new works, as well as through cross-cultural dialogue between participating artists and the public at large, this collaboration is especially timely given the great need for understanding and dialogue between Muslim and non-Muslim countries (Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world). Sama-sama/Together launched in July and August, 2003 as six Bay Area artists from the artists’ collective CAMP (Carolyn Castaño, Carolyn Ryder Cooley, Alicia McCarthy, Aaron Noble, Andrew J. Schoultz, Megan Wilson) traveled to Indonesia, and then in September and October, 2003 as four Yogyakarta artists from the artists’ collective Apotik Komik (Arie Dyanto, Samuel Indratma, Arya Panjalu, Nano Warsono) travel to the Bay Area. All of the participating artists in Sama-sama/Togehter work within similar aesthetics and methodologies – producing work influenced by comics and visual imagery found in the public sphere such as graffiti, advertising, and design. Whether individual artworks, large murals or public art projects, each of the artists individually and collectively make work responding to immediate social and political conditions. Sama-sama/Together provides the opportunity to learn how each culture has influenced and responded to the artwork being created – an experimental exchange that will generate fertile, cross-cultural dialogue amongst the communities of the Pacific Rim. The project encompasses the creation of public works (murals, performances, and installations), joint gallery exhibitions in each location, artists’ talks, and an evening of film/video presentations from each community. In San Francisco, all of the artists will present a gallery exhibition at Intersection (September 10 – October 25, 2003), and the Apotik Komik collective will create new public murals on Clarion Alley, outside of Southern Exposure, on LeBeau Nob Hill Market, Rainbow Grocery, and Sycamore Street, participate in an auction at Intersection, and visit classrooms at Bay Area schools. In addition, a catalogue will be produced to accompany the project.

APOTIK KOMIK is an artists’ collective based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Currently, Yogyakarta does not have an established public art program due to the socio-political climate that existed during the Suharto administration. However, as life has slowly been changing over the past five years, so too has the ability and desire to create public art. They work in public spaces such as empty walls and billboards – alternative spaces outside of the established gallery system. Working with humor and subversion, their work comments on the socio-political conditions of Indonesia. They often use cardboard and house paints, as traditional materials such as canvas and acrylic paints are prohibitively expensive. They also make comic books. Although Apotik Komik started in 1992, they became widely known in 1997 with a show that member Samuel Indratma organized called Apotik Komik that received a great deal of attention from the art community and the media. The overwhelmingly positive support reflected the needed voice that Apotik Komik has provided in Yogyakarta’s arts and greater community.

CLARION ALLEY MURAL PROJECT (CAMP) was established in October 1992 by a volunteer collective of six Mission residents: Aaron Noble, Michael O’Connor, Sebastiana Pastor, Rigo 92, Mary Gail Snyder, and Aracely Soriano. CAMP was directly inspired by the mural cluster in Balmy Alley focused on Central American social struggles. CAMP did not choose a single theme, however, instead focusing on the two goals of social inclusiveness and aesthetic variety. As a result CAMP has produced more than 100 murals on and around Clarion Alley by artists of all ages and all levels of experience, with an emphasis on emerging artists and new styles. Clarion Alley was a key site for the development of the aesthetic that has become known as the Mission School. Many of the artists who CAMP has worked with in the past decade have gone on to become highly regarded locally, nationally, and internationally, including Chuy Jesús Campusano; GIANT; Susan Greene; Maya Hayuk; Heart 101; Cliff Hengst; Marisa Hernandez; Scott Hewicker; Xylor Jane; Chris Johansen; Barry McGee; Ruby Neri; Sirron Norris; Isis Rodriguez; Scott Williams.

INTERSECTION FOR THE ARTS is San Francisco’s oldest alternative art space – turning 38 in June 2003 – and has a long history of presenting new, experimental work in the fields of literature, theater, music, and the visual arts and also in supporting the Bay Area’s cultural community through service, technical support, and mentorship programs. Overall we are a rare organization. We do not have an artistic director because we believe that we can only continue to be a current, relevant, and strong community-based art space if we cultivate not one person’s vision but the vision of all the people who make an investment in the organization. Our mission is vested in the notion that art can provide powerful opportunities for people to exchange ideas and perspectives, encourage us to respond more critically to the world – to begin to reach for a future that is more hopeful, more inclusive, and more tolerant. We currently support and present work in six different program fields: Visual Arts, Literary (the oldest independent reading series in California), Theater, Jazz, Hybrid Project, and Fiscal Sponsorship to over 100 Bay Area artists.

Sama-sama/Together mural, (2003), Rainbow Grocery, San Francisco, CA

Movie Poster from Bioskop Permata

Fertile Ground Community Center and Guesthouse ~ 311 9th Ave SE ~ Olympia, WA 98501 ~ 360.352.2428
curator@fertileground.org
http://fertileground.org

Since 2005, we’ve been serving the Olympia community as a non-profit. We exist to demonstrate sustainable technology and provide meeting space for creation, education and celebration. Our mission is to provide access to resources that enhance the life of the Olympia community.  The site models organic gardening, composting, decorating and remodeling with recycled materials, while providing resources for wellness, entrepreneurship and activism.

We are always looking for partners and collaborators in the adventures of creating a sustainable city. Please see our website and below for current list of opportunities to connect with us.  All of them will bring you satisfaction and connections to the earth, our neighbors and your own creativity

We love to barter here at Fertile Ground.

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

Artist from Rafah, Gaza Strip.  Member of Palestine Artists’ Union, Rafah Branch.

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.

Info on Palestine Youth Center coming soon.

http://pycweb.org/eng/news-det-32.html

MAJED SHALA

http://www.artwfg.ps/cv.php?id_artist=3&op=index

Born in 1960 in Gaza, Shala graduated with a Master of Arts from Scranton University, USA in 2001. Shala’s work has been shown in a number of solo exhibitions, including Suwar min Gaza, in Beirut, Lebanon (2004) and Gaza Hanin il Makan, at the Arts and Crafts village in Gaza (2003). Between 2000 and 2001, he attended Jordan’s Daaret Al Funun academy. His international exhibitions have included in the Middle East ,USA, South Africa, Hungary, Brazil, Amman Jordan, and Qatar. Most recently he has participated in exhibitions in Italy and Norway and also with the United Nations.

WINDOWS FROM GAZA ART GALLERY-For Contemporary Art

http://www.artwfg.ps/home.php

The place is restricted by us. The ideas is crowded by us. So we go together to think how to come out to the “other” and to breath through small windows. We want to say our word in this narrow place “Gaza” through our cultural artistic language to communicate with others. Many details fill the place “Gaza” and we try to make it in new descriptive colors

Naji Al-Ali on Handala

“The child Handala is my signature, everyone asks me about him wherever I go. I gave birth to this child in the Gulf and I presented him to the people. His name is Handala and he has promised the people that he will remain true to himself. I drew him as a child who is not beautiful; his hair is like the hair of a hedgehog who uses his thorns as a weapon. Handala is not a fat, happy, relaxed, or pampered child. He is barefooted like the refugee camp children, and he is an icon that protects me from making mistakes. Even though he is rough, he smells of amber. His hands are clasped behind his back as a sign of rejection at a time when solutions are presented to us the American way.”

Handala was born ten years old, and he will always be ten years old. At that age, I left my homeland, and when he returns, Handala will still be ten, and then he will start growing up. The laws of nature do not apply to him. He is unique. Things will become normal again when the homeland returns.

I presented him to the poor and named him Handala as a symbol of bitterness. At first, he was a Palestinian child, but his consciousness developed to have a national and then a global and human horizon. He is a simple yet tough child, and this is why people adopted him and felt that he represents their consciousness.”

“At first he was a Palestinian child, but his consciousness developed to have a national then a global and human horizon. He is a simple yet tough child, and this is why people adopted him and felt that he represents their consciousness.”

For Further Reading and Reference

http://www.handala.org/

http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Naji/naji.html

http://projectsouarna.wordpress.com/

Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Project-Souarna-mshrw-suarna/119269821417389

Project Souarna (Soo-War-Na) = Our Photos

Project Souarna is a photography program designed to foster youth leadership and creativity. We conduct workshops for displaced youth living in and near al Wehdat refugee camp in Amman, Jordan.

Background:

The U.S. media continually portrays Arabs in the Middle East through one lens; therefore Project Souarna was founded to provide a different lens, one through the eye of a child in the region. Project Souarna focuses on photography because it is a tool that can be employed as a technical skill as well as an opportunity to draw attention to often neglected voices.

Project Souarna began in December 2008 by Aisha Mershani, who wanted to share her skills as a photographer. Through the months the Project Team was assembled, photographer Iman al Dabbagh, artist Susu Attar, educator Mark Gonzalez, photographer April Banks, and the graphic designer Sarah Fakhouri. The Project works on a team mentality, all work equally to share their skills and make the Project the best it can be.

Jordan was chosen as the location due to it hosting the largest refugee population in the Middle East. A large number of the refugee populations are children. Many children attend the facilities of Relief International, housed in various camps around Amman.

Relief International is a co-sponsor of the Project; the facilities used for the courses are located at the Relief International-Schools Online Wehdat Digital Community Center, in Al Wehdat Refugee Camp, Amman Jordan.

Purpose:

The purpose of Project Souarna is to provide refugee youth living in and near al Wehdat refugee camp in Amman, Jordan the opportunity to expand their creative and journalistic skills by way of photography. By teaching photography to youth we are able to catch a glimpse of their reality, create a space for the youth to independently express themselves, and develop an employable skill among youth as a means of economic empowerment.

Sustainability:

The structure of the workshop is sculpted in the spirit of leadership training programs. The purpose of the curriculum is to teach future teachers (students in the workshops), equipping the youth with the tools to continue the program after the end of their training. Our curriculum is built to foster individual creativity and leadership. We seek to encourage youth participation in the organizational process, further influencing their leadership capabilities.

At the end of the project, students in the current course will have the opportunity to carry on the project in the future at the Relief International facilities. RI has agreed to continue to open the space and house the equipment, allowing it to remain accessible to the youth after the workshop. This ensures the momentum from the workshop will not be lost, as access to the materials will remain in the participants’ reach.

Program: Four-Phase Project

Phase 1: Project Souarna began on July 20, 2009. For one month, students participated in an intensive photography course led by professional international photographers and artists. At the end of the workshop on August 12th, the students had their opening for their group photography exhibition at Darat al Tasweer Gallery, the exhibition will stay up until Sept. 12th, 2009. The photos are also exhibited at the Al-Wehdat Sports Club from August 13th, 2009- September 2nd, 2009.

Phase 2: September 2nd will begin the next phase of the Project; instructors will already have left their students to capture their lives and create a narrative to share with the world. During this time four local photographers will assist in guiding the students in their photographic needs. Students will meet weekly with the volunteer photographers to assist in their process.

Phase 3: December 2009 the photographers will reunite with the students in Amman to conduct another class. The winter course will focus on post processing. The independent work of the students will be chosen and exhibited in Amman.

Phase 4: After the initial launch exhibition in Amman, the exhibit will travel to various cities throughout the U.S. and Europe.

http://www.myspace.com/asaroaxaca

Chito, artist from Chiapas, Mexico

Film:  “Zapatistas” by Big Noise Productions

Produced/Directed: Benjamin Eichert, Richard Rowley, State Sandberg
Editors: Media Boutique
Narrators: Edward James Olmos, Daryl Hannah, Geronimo Pratt, Mumia Abu-Jamal

January1, 1994. The day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) comes into effect. A few minutes after midnight in Southeastern Mexico,several thousand Mayan soldiers take over haf the state of Chiapas,declaring a war against the global corporate power they say rules Mexico. They call themselves the Zapatista National Liberation Army(EZLN).

Zapatista is the definitive look at the uprising in Chiapas. It is the story of a Mayan peasant rebellion armed with sticks and their word against a first world military. It is the story of a global movement that has fought 175,000 federal troops to a stand stilland transformed Mexican and international political culture forever.

Featuring Interviews with: Subcomandante Marcos, Noam Chomsky, Comandante Tacho,David and Zebedeo, Mayor Insurgente Ana Maria, Javier Elorriaga, Zachde la Rocha.

http://ncm.birzeit.edu/new/page.php

Background

In 1990 five Palestinian musicians and music teachers conducted a study on the status of music in Palestine. They concluded that there is an urgent need to establish a music school and to fill the huge gap in music education in the Palestinian society.  It took the pioneering group three years of work to get things on the road. During that time the musicians approached Birzeit University to take the project under its umbrella. Although not a university program yet, the project of opening a music school appealed to Birzeit University very much.

In 1993 the Board of Trustees of the University made a formal decision to establish The National Conservatory of Music having the status of an affiliate to the University, and appointed the five establishing musicians as board of supervisors to the project. In October of the same year the first branch of the Conservatory opened in Ramallah with 40 students, three part time teachers, a secretary and a volunteer director, Mr. Ameen Nasser, one of the founders of the ESNCM. A few years later the Conservatory opened two other branches in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and today, there are over 520 students enrolled in the three branches, 41 teachers, and 20 administrative employees.

In September 2004 as a tribute to the invaluable intellectual and cultural contributions to humanity of the late Dr. Edward Said, honorary member of the Board, the name of the Conservatory was officially changed to “The Edward Said National Conservatory of Music.”

Palestinian Children’s Songs
Uploaded by smtvuploads. – Discover new destinations and travel videos.

“El Salvador: I Want My People To Live/El Turno Del Ofendido”

directed by Adrian Carrasco Zanini. Produced by Adrian Carrasco Zanini and AIM-West, 2009.

http://aimwest.info/

This 30-minute documentary follows the story of the FMLN victory in the 2009 Salvadoran presidential elections through interviews with voters, electoral officials, and members of the competing parties.

Seventeen years after laying down their weapons to become a peaceful political party, the former guerillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) won a resounding victory this March in El Salvador’s national elections.

Salvadoran president-elect Mauricio Funes is now set to take office in June at the head of a government of change which includes indigenous politicians and has promised to grant a historic new recognition of the worth and dignity of the country’s original peoples in accordance with international agreements on the rights of indigenous nations.

Thurston Santo Tomás Sister County Association
PO Box 561, Olympia WA 98507 (360) 943-8642

Olympia’s sister city relationship with Santo Tomás, Chontales, Nicaragua, has its roots in the era of the Contra War in the 1980s. It strives to engender peace and heal the effects of U.S. aggression and economic oppression through people-to-people exchanges and community development.

The Thurston-Santo Tomás Sister County Association collaborates with the Committee for Community Development (CDC) in Santo Tomás to help sustain multiple community projects: its intent is to support self-determination and self-sufficiency for the Nicaraguan people. Over the years there have been many delegations between our two communities: working, living, and sharing experience across distances of geography, language, and culture. This is a two-way relationship grounded in citizen diplomacy.

http://imeu.net/news/article006919.shtml

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTIST BIOS

Hitham I. Kayali, This Week in Palestine, Nov 4, 2000

The Israeli occupation has specifically targeted this plant due to its symbol of identity for Palestinians and its economic benefits. Since the second Intifada, more than half a million olive trees have been uprooted from Palestinian lands. Palestinian resistance or sumood means Palestinians producing olive oil although the occupation limits their movement and forbids them from reaching their lands. “Sumood” is Palestinians producing olive oil although the racist Apartheid Wall prevents farmers from harvesting their olives and uproots trees anywhere near it.

From Middle East Monitor:

http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/resources/fact-sheets/566-the-olive-tree-a-symbol-of-palestinian-steadfastness-subject-to-systematic-destruction-

The olive tree: a symbol of Palestinian steadfastness, subject to systematic destruction
Monday, 18 January 2010 17:03 Senussi Bsaikri

The supreme judge in Palestine, Tayseer Al-Tamimi, has denounced what he calls the “repeated crimes of the Israeli occupation authorities against all things Palestinian, be they human beings, stones or trees”. The judge was speaking after dozens of olive trees in the town of Burin, south of Nablus, were destroyed by the Israelis; the trees date back to the Roman period of history. Al-Tamimi has urged the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) to “protect the agricultural land of Palestine which is being seized and destroyed in order to build illegal settlements”. He called upon the organisation to protect the olive trees, which he describes as the historic source of livelihood for tens of thousands of Palestinian families.

Season of terror
Season of Terror The olive harvest season is the most important for a large segment of Palestinian society. The joy experienced at this time is often tempered by fear and anxiety because of increasing attacks on olive groves by colonial-settlers intending to sabotage the harvest.

The suffering of the Palestinian farmers is exacerbated by the actions taken by the Israeli government, which restricts their movements and prevents them by means of the apartheid wall and check-points from reaching their fields. The Israelis subject the farmers to lengthy inspections

The harvest season is usually a time of hectic settler activity, especially by those who live near olive groves owned by Palestinians. On one occasion, a leaflet was distributed by an extremist association urging settlers to cut down the olive trees and attack Palestinian farmers.

The same leaflet regards the olives grown on 900 square kilometres of the West Bank as being contradictory to the rights of the settlers to use the land of what they call Judea and Samaria.

Economy based on the olive tree ~ Economy based on the olive tree.

According to a study conducted by the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture, almost 11 million olive trees were planted in 2007, covering about 914 sq km in total. This constitutes around 45% of the total Palestinian land under cultivation and about 80% of the fruit farms.

Most of the olive groves are rain-fed, with the exception of 24 sq km under controlled irrigation, in the southern provinces and the Jordan Valley. The study says that olives constitute more than 20% of the total agricultural production.

Moreover, olive trees occupy approximately 50% of the cultivated land in the West Bank, with around ten million trees surrounding West Bank cities. In Gaza, the cultivated area totals about 26 sq km, of which about 20.5 are for fruit trees.

Olives provide the main source of income for 10,000 Palestinian families, producing about 153,000 tons, at a productivity rate of up to 174 kilograms per 1000 sq m. About 36,000 tons of oil are produced, 30% of which is consumed locally.

Destruction of tress by the Israeli military and settlers:

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture “a productive olive tree is uprooted [by the Israeli military and settlers] every minute in the occupied Palestinian territories”. In total, one million trees have been uprooted to-date.

According to many official reports, more than half a million trees, 80% of which are olive trees, have been uprooted by the Israeli authorities since the eruption of the first intifada in late 1987. The reason given was that the trees were used as cover by Palestinian fighters; records show, however, that the Israeli Army does not abandon the tactic of uprooting trees during the relatively stable periods.

More than 22 sq km of olive groves have been destroyed since the signing of the Oslo agreement. The argument employed by the Israelis for this has been the construction of bypass roads “in the service of peace”. It has been reported that settlers steal fruit and burn trees, occasionally spraying the trees with chemicals for this purpose.

According to official statistics, the total area of land affected in this way has reached 42 sq km. Around 19 sq km of land are isolated behind the notorious Israeli wall. Amazingly, the military has classified about 15 sq km as “hazardous areas” due to their proximity to the illegal settlements.

It has been recorded that most settlers’ attacks against Palestinians and their farms occur near the towns of Ramallah and Nablus. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture report, about 1100 trees were set on fire by settlers during the first months of 2007. The official records of the Israeli Civil Administration show that 1846 trees were destroyed between January and June 2007. This figure was challenged by the Palestinians who claim that the figure does not include attacks which went unreported.

Uprooting trees on the route of the separation wall:

The separation wall has been one of the primary causes of destruction of large numbers of olive trees. It is well known that the construction of the wall, which will eventually be 460 kilometres long, necessitates the destruction of fertile agricultural land.

A swathe of land 200 metres wide has to be bulldozed in order to build the wall; an additional 50 metres is needed for the construction of settler-only roads. The wall has cut off thousands of acres of agricultural land from the framers; this constitutes the largest percentage of olive farms, particularly in the northern West Bank.

These fields – which are effectively “abandoned” if their owners cannot work them will become barren, making it easier for the government and settlers to seize them to build more colony-settlements. Land owners have no right to challenge and resist the Israeli policies that rob them of their livelihood and source of income for their families.

War and the blockade affecting Gaza olive trees:

The blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip has had a negative impact on agriculture and the olive industry. The olive harvest and olive oil season in Gaza was significantly worse in 2009 due to the war and siege.

The olive production in Gaza has declined by 80% compared to previous years. Four sq km of olive groves were completely destroyed by the heavy armour and bombs used in the war a year ago. The embargo on imports and exports has led to a decline in the production levels of olive groves and olive oil. The owners of olive presses are facing huge difficulties.

According to Mohammad Agha, the Minister of Agriculture in the Gaza Government, the Israelis bulldozed about 130 sq km during the years from 1967 to 2005, mostly olive groves. Agha said that the shelling and white phosphorous rockets and other chemical weapons used in the recent war had a hugely detrimental effect on the fruit yield.

The decline in olive oil production caused prices to rise steeply this year. The owners of the presses face additional difficulties in trying to get spare parts, which often have to be smuggled in due to the blockade.

According to a senior official at the Ministry of Agriculture, the Gaza Strip has produced two hundred tons of oil this year, compared with 1500 produced in normal years. The same official said that 3250 tons are needed for Gaza to meet the requirements of domestic consumption.

War and the blockade affecting Gaza olive trees

Conclusion

It is clear that the extent of the destruction of olive trees by the Israelis is beyond comprehension and can not be justified under any circumstances. However, the international indifference to this spiteful devastation and flagrant violation of Palestinian rights have encouraged the Israeli army and settlers to continue their activities.

The uprooting of more than one million olive trees constitutes an appalling assault on the environment; one that has received no condemnation from the international community, let alone holding the perpetrator accountable for this crime.

Olive Tree was painted by:
Carrie Ziegler:
Carrie Ziegler designed and coordinated the production of the olive tree for the Olympia Rafah Solidarity Mural Project. Carrie is an Olympia artist known for her environmental, social justice and nature oriented art. Her most recent work, The Woodland Trail Community Mural Project, has received great acclaim and transforms an industrial zone along a bike trail into a place of beauty and intrigue. The mural covers over 6000 ft2 of wall and involved over 40 volunteers. Carrie loves working with clients and community groups to create a vision for the desired artwork, then taking that vision and making it a reality that brings beauty and inspiration into people’s lives. She paints both interior and exterior murals in a variety of styles for homes, businesses and community groups. You can view some of Carrie’s murals here  http://picasaweb.google.com/111292559199475830946/MuralsByCarrieZiegler# and can contact  her at myeart@gmail.com.

Darien Brown- Info Coming Soon

Alicia Martinson:
Alicia Martinson has worked as a project coordinator for the Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural Project for over two years. As a student at the Evergreen State College Alicia began working on the project as an intern in the spring of 2008. Alicia has worked on different aspects of the project including fundraising, administration, coordinating interns/volunteers, community outreach, and production. While at Evergreen Alicia focused on political and social studies, studying the relationship between art and activism. She has completed two murals in Minneapolis, MN and has worked in collaboration with Project Director Dr. Susan Greene and many other artists on the artistic vision for this mural. After graduating from Evergreen Alicia worked full time as the lead local project coordinator in Olympia and facilitated the participation of over 40 local organizations.  She is currently working on the next phase of the project, gathering audio files from each organization in order to expand the projects mission and create more opportunities for building change.

List of Tile Workshops and Participants

-2008 Spring Arts Walk

-2008 Mothers Day @ Traditions

-2008 YMCA Eco- Jam Conference

June 13th, 2008 – Tiles painted at McLane Elementary School by 5th grade classes of teachers Steve Eggleston and Hilary Davis, facilitated by Librarian Nancy Hamilton.

June 25, 2008 – Tiles with members of the Olympia Storyteller’s Guild at the Olympia Center.

July 4, 2008 – Fair Trade tile party at my house with friends from Traditions Cafe and Store.

July 18-19, 2008 – Lake Fair tile tabling at Traditions.

July 20, 2008 – Westside Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Religious Education classes -tiles by children and members of the congregation.

July 23, 2008 – Downtown Olympia Timberland Regional Library - some staff and library patrons painted tiles.

July 27, 2008 – educational outreach and tile painting by youth and congregation of the Olympia Friends’ Quaker Meeting.

August 1, 2008 – Mariah Art School, Olympia with students of Diane Gaile.

August 8-9, 2008 – Tile tabling at the Mural site that included members of the Nisqually tribe who came with Boots as well as a board member and the public.

August 15-16, 2008 – Tabling with tiles at the Mural site.

August 22-23, 2008 – Tiles at the Mural site.

August 30-31, 2008 – Harbor Days – table for tiles.

September 11, 2008 – Howard Keck’s 4th Graders do tiles in class at Garfield Elementary School.

December 3, 2008 – Roosevelt Elementary School 4th graders in Julie Mikelson’s room do tiles.

May 26, 2009 – Staff at Traditions paint tiles.

May 27, 2009 – Debra Neid’s 3rd grade students (this is Anna Eggleton’s class) paint tiles at Garfield Elementary. Candy Eggleton came to assist and provided internet information on Rachel and the issues for the kids as they finished tiles.

May 28, 2009 – Small tile painting party, for those who desperately wanted to paint tiles, at Traditions…now, no more tiles forever.

Rough estimate of the number of tiles completed in these sessions: 800+

www.hollygwinngraham.com

As an artist, activist, and performer whose work is international and whose creations are usually directed to issues and causes, it was important to me to honor the work Cindy and Craig Corrie and the Corrie Foundation have done to acheive justice for Palestinians and right resolution for Rachel’s death in Gaza. It was an honor to take tiles into the community and talk with young and old alike about the work, why it was happening, and what was envisioned for the wall itself. I continue my international work as an artist with other groups, and will do so as long as I live and love, through music, theatre, education, and visual art.

Image coming soon

Palestine: One Land, One People, One Destiny

Second Palestinian Popular Conference:  Together, Restoring our National Institutions, Reclaiming our Rights, Empowering our Community

October 29-31, 2010
The Westin Chicago Northwest
400 Park Boulevard
Itasca, IL 60143
(10 minutes from Woodfield Mall; 25 minutes from O’Hare Airport)

http://palestineconference.org/wp/

http://popular.palestineconference.org/about/

The US Palestinian Community Network is a Palestinian community-based network that grew from the first Palestinian Popular Conference that took place in Chicago on August 8-10, 2008, drawing 1000 members of the Palestinian community in the US together to empower our community, unify our voice, and affirm the right of Palestinians in the Shatat (exile) to participate fully in shaping our joint destiny. The USPCN is anchored in the following objectives:

• Self-determination and equality for the Palestinian people
• The right of all Palestinian refugees to return to their original homes, lands, properties and villages (a natural right supported by international law and UN Resolution 194)
• Ending Zionist occupation and colonization of Palestine

The USPCN is an arena where individuals and organizations come together to coordinate and refine strategies, link efforts, plan united actions, and inform one another and the community about their work on behalf of Palestine.

To contact the USPCN, please email us at conference@palestineconference.org.

http://www.johnhalaka.com/

Artist Statement
I consider myself an activist artist whose creative work serves as a vehicle for meditation on personal, cultural and political concerns. I create allegorical images in my paintings and present personal narratives in my films, in order to raise questions, for myself as well as for the viewer, about some of the pressing issues of our time. Over the past couple of years, my creative work has expanded to include documentary filmmaking as one of the languages I employ to convey personal narratives about the construction, expression and perception of identity. The film projects that I am currently working on are a direct extension, albeit in a different medium, of the work I have produced throughout my career. For additional information about my documentary film projects please visit my other web site at sittingcrowproductions.com.

The primary focus of my work over the past two and a half decades can be summarized as an ongoing reflection on the frailty and resilience of the human condition and the persistent search for self-realization in the face of personal and cultural self-delusion. My experiences as an artist of Palestinian descent have shaped my pictorial investigations of cycles of repression and displacement, as well as an exploration of the relationships between desire, denial and instability in the construction and expression of identity. My recent and current work investigates issues of identity construction from personal, familial and political perspectives.

l

http://www.dharmawalk.org/

http://nichirenscoffeehouse.net/directory/U-W.html

http://faculty.washington.edu/kendo/myohoji.html

http://katzjustice.com/DojoDC.htm

INTRODUCTION TO NIPPONZAN MYOHOJI
Nipponzan Myohoji was founded by the Most Venerable Nichidatsu Fujii, known as “Fujii Guruji”. He was born on August 6, 1885 in Japan, and was ordained a Buddhist monk of the Nichiren sect when he was seventeen years old. Until the age of thirty-one years, Fujii Guruji entered into authentic study and practice not only in the Nichiren school, but also in all the major schools of Buddhism.

In the late autumn of 1916, Fujii Guruji undertook the self-imposed austerity of fasting under the waterfall of Momo-o-no-taki in Nara prefecture. Out of this practice, he attained the supreme resolve that the principle of his lifetime practice was to chant Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo, while beating prayer drum and walking. Early in the following year, 1917, he went to Tokyo and began this practice in front of the Imperial Palace, following the traditional footpath of dissemination as a disciple of the thirteenth century Great Saint Nichiren.

The first temple opened by Fujii Guruji was in Northern China, in 1918. In 1923, after the Great Kanto Earthquake shook Japan, he returned to pray to bring true security to the nation by raising the righteous teachings of the Buddha. His temples began to be built in Japan.

In 1930, he left for India and devoted himself in fervent prayer to revive Buddhism in the land of Lord Buddha’s birth. In 1933, Fujii Guruji met Mahatma Gandhi, the founding father of India. Deep spiritual ties developed as Fujii Guruji unreservedly offered spiritual practice in support of the non-violent liberation of India. He returned to Japan in 1938. During World War II, he tried to build Peace Pagodas in which the holy relics of Buddha would be enshrined. He also invited the generals of Japan to join in this Buddha work, with the hope to convert Japan away from war, as a Buddhist country.

Since the nuclear holocaust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Guruji made it his life’s mission to work for abolition of nuclear arms. As an advocate of peace, he tirelessly acted for world peace and built Peace Pagodas to embody the universal spirit of peace which innately exists in the depths of the mind of all peoples. Recognizing his contribution to this end, India conferred upon him the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in 1978. He passed away on January 9, 1986 at the age of 100.

NA MU MYO HO REN GE KYO
Chanting Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo is the essential practice of Nipponzan Myohoji, as well as most other sects of the Nichiren school of Buddhism. The Nichiren school was founded on the teachings of the Great Bodhisattva Nichiren, a Buddhist Monk of thirteenth century Japan. The wars, famines and other natural catastrophes of his time compelled St. Nichiren to search entire collections of Buddhist sutras to know the true will and guidance of the Buddha, to alleviate the severe sufferings of the people. His years of study led him to conclude that the Lotus Sutra unified all other sutras, and expounded the ultimate truth, the source to bring relief to all sentient beings, especially in the distress of the modern era.

The “great stream of relief” flows when we chant Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo, which is the heart and mind of the Lotus Sutra, wherein Lord Buddha revealed his true original nature. This original nature is the Eternally Enlightened Buddha, beyond time, Perfect Wisdom, Consciousness, Universal Compassion, Ultimate Truth. Thus, the chanting of Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo is identical to calling out the Eternally Enlightened Buddha in all directions. St. Nichiren wrote in his Kanjin Honzon Sho: “Sakyamuni Buddha’s merit of practicing the Bodhisattva way (dedicating one’s life selflessly for the salvation of others) leading to Buddhahood, as well as that of preaching and saving all living beings since His attainment of Buddhahood, are altogether contained in the five words of Myo, Ho, Ren, Ge, Kyo, and consequently when we uphold the five words, the merits which He accumulated before and after His attainment of Buddhahood are spontaneously transferred to us all.

The single practice of chanting Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo integrates the dual needs of spiritual dedication for peace within and without. It is the most needed spiritual practice of our time both to establish genuine peace in the world and to awaken true security within our heart and mind.

“Civilization is neither having electric lights, nor manufacturing atomic bombs. It is not to kill human beings, not to destroy things, not to wage a war; it is to become mutually amiable and respectful. What constitutes its foundation is not the establishment of a judicial system but religious faith that seeks gentleness, peace, simplicity and uprightness.” Most Venerable Nichidatsu Fujii.

The Nipponzan Myohoji Temple in Washington, DC, was inaugurated by Fujii-Guruji in June 1974 as the first Nipponzan Myohoji Dojo (place of practice) in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipponzan-My%C5%8Dh%C5%8Dji

From Wikipedia
Nipponzan Myōhōji (日本山妙法寺), founded in 1917 by Nichidatsu Fujii, is a new religious movement that emerged from the Nichiren sect of Japanese Buddhism.[1]

The community reveres the Lotus-Sūtra (jp: 法華経 Hokkekyō) as the highest expression of the Buddhist message. In addition, it is actively engaged worldwide in the peace movement

The Lotus Sutra presents itself as a discourse delivered by the Buddha toward the end of his life. The tradition in Mahayana states that the sutra was written down at the time of the Buddha and stored for five hundred years in a realm of nāgas. After this they were reintroduced into the human realm at the time of the Fourth Buddhist Council in Kashmir. The sutra’s teachings purport to be of a higher order than those contained in the āgamas of the Sūtra Piṭaka, and that humanity had been unable to understand the sutra at the time of the Buddha, and thus the teaching had to be held back.

Nipponzan Myōhōji is known in the west for its Peace Pagodas (Stupas) in many locations around the world. It has also been known for many high profile peace pilgrimages undertaken by its followers. One of the most prominent of these was the 1994-1995 pilgrimage from Auschwitz to Hiroshima by way of Bosnia, Iraq, Cambodia and other countries then experiencing the effects of war. That pilgrimage was known as The Interfaith Pilgrimage for Peace and Life.



Please Click to enlarge

http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=267&Itemid=82

Interview: Joe Sacco  By Laila El-Haddad

Ajazeera.Net

When it comes to the world of cartooning, Joe Sacco is considered a luminary. Sacco, who is hailed as the creator of war-reportage comics, is the author of such award-winning books as

Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde.

His latest work, Footnotes in Gaza, is an investigation into two little-known and long-forgotten massacres in 1956 in the southern Gaza Strip that left at least 500 Palestinians dead. It is a chilling look back at an unrecorded past and an exploration of how that past haunts and shapes the present – including the beginning of mass home demolitions in 2003 in Rafah.

Sacco navigates the fuzzy lines between memory, experience and visual interpretation almost seamlessly all while painting an intimate portrait of life under occupation and in spite of occupation – a life not only of repression and anger but one full of humour and resilience.

My mother narrowly escaped death during the 1956 massacre in Khan Yunis. Yet I struggled to find any information or record of this event as I grew older. Why do you think that is?

I was curious about the same thing.

What led me to this is a UN document referenced in books about the Suez War according to [which] up to 275 [Palestinians] were killed in Khan Yunis and then a few days later, about 111 in Rafah.

These are large mass killings the UN is alleging. And it was a surprise to me that I had read very little about them.

I thought clearly some of the people who lived [through] this must still be alive. Why not go and try to actually make an attempt to gather their stories?

The book speaks a lot to the inexhaustible nature of this conflict. As you state in the book, headlines written 10 years ago could very well be today’s headlines. To what extent do some of the book’s themes - exploitation, massacre, subjugation, occupation, disenchantment, survival – repeat themselves till this day?

I think you see a lot of those elements.

Palestinians are very weary of other Arab regimes. They’re weary of their own government. And I think you see that in the parts about 1956, about the Egyptian army not putting up much up a fight, and even the fedayee basically coming to the conclusion that the Egyptians were using them which is probably the case.

And today, you see the fact that a lot of Arab regimes give lip service to the Palestinian cause but then you see what the Egyptians are doing on the border with the help of the US army corp of engineers; obviously in their mind it’s clear the Egyptian government has thrown in its walk on the side of the blockaders. So yes, there are certain themes that are repeated.

What is your favorite scene?

The feast (Eid al-Adha). I got a break from drawing soldiers and bodies. But it was also such an amazing experience to see. I kind of wanted to throw the Western reader at this.

I almost passed out – it really made me queasy to see all this and I wanted to confront the reader with this.

I want to show everyone’s involved and the beauty of it: the slaughter and kids playing in the blood, the way they divide it [the meat] up and give a third to the poor.

For me that was really an amazing experience actually to something like that and to see how people hang on to their traditions, hang on to what makes them feel like a human being despite everything.

You cite a chilling quote from a 1949 Israeli foreign ministry report predicting what would happen to the Palestinian refugees: that “some will die but most will turn into human debris and social outcasts”.

That seems to have been in some ways a fair prediction, unfortunately.

Look at Gaza today. I mean talk about outcasts – it’s as if it dropped off the map. Cut off from everyone. No opportunity to get out. And let it dry out and fall into the sea as I think [Shimon] Peres [the Israeli president] put it.

Throughout the book, you weave seamlessly between past and present, massacre and house demolitions, as though for the people involved these events exist in the same plane or time frame. What have you learned about how the past influences the present in this case?

In some ways the past is sort of swallowed up by the present with the Palestinians because so much is going on now. Every generation of Palestinians has something that is simply going to stick in their claw, as it should.

All these experiences sort of add up. They don’t get transmitted as a coherent story. But they do get transmitted as bitterness from the parents. And each generation I think picks up that bitterness from the generation before it and has their own bitterness from their own situation to give to their children – and you know what we can’t expect more from people in a way. I think we’d all behave in exactly the same way.

This is not something you can just forget or [say] ‘let’s move on’ [about]. It has to be acknowledged, it has to be talked about. History has to be written not just by the victors, but by the people being victimised.

You were asked this question over and over again in the book: Why 1956 in particular?

Mainly because it seems like a very large event. This is not to downplay anything [else] that happened. But we’re talking about hundreds of people. We’re talking about taking people out of their homes, or shooting them in their homes, or lining them up against the wall or in the streets and shooting them.

I just wondered why this wasn’t a story I’ve been able to read about.

And in the end, you just become attached to getting the story; you go from sort of justifying in your own head why you’re doing it to feeling like you are after something come hell or high water.

And then in a way you become slightly ruthless in your bid to get it and in some ways you begin to lose site of … getting the story in some weird way seems to eclipse the story in your mind.

How so?

I think I’ve written about this in Christmas with Karadzic. You get into this mode of being a journalist so it’s something going off in your head when you get ‘the quote’. It’s your way of distancing yourself.

You’re working to get precise information and line up your facts. It’s almost like being a surgeon. In some way it’s necessary to be cold hearted about how you’re going to get the story, but there is sort of a dehumanising aspect. It was my own commentary on what I was feeling.

Many parts of the book seem non-non sequitur: a heady celebration by seemingly detached Western journalists in Tel Aviv; an Eid al-Adha festivity; the beginning of the Iraq war; checkpoint delays. What was that about?

I think the whole concept of getting the story would be interesting to the reader, because I want to demystify it a little bit and give the reader a sense that they’re travelling along with me trying to find these things out. I want to give the reader a taste of my experiences.

But beyond that, I was there at a very particular time and I think its valuable stuff to record.

One segment that stands out in my mind was of a disgruntled man trying to defend his home from demolition. The caption reads: “For the photographers his house is an image; for the militants, it’s cover; for the internationals, it’s a cause; for the bulldozer operator, it’s a day’s work.”

Yes, exactly. Even me, he sees everyone as kind of a vulture in their own way. And everyone can explain themselves. I could explain my presence there. But to him, it means so much more, and to him if I wrote him up in the story it’s still his home if it gets knocked down, that’s his life, his money. Everything is invested in there. His memories are invested in there.

Do you think the outcome of Operation Cast Lead would have been any different if it happened in 1956?

I would like to think it would be a big deal. But I mean we saw what happened during Cast Lead and what you realise is there were no mainstream Western journalists there. And that sort of says something right away. I mean Gaza to me is a real story but most journalists are based elsewhere.

I think enough images came out that it definitely didn’t make the Israeli version of events seem to add up. Perhaps less so, because I think the mainstream here tries to balance … to be so-called objective.

You’ve said you don’t believe in objectivity as it’s practiced in American journalism. Can you elaborate?

The reason I came to that conclusion is because when I was in high school what I saw on TV news and what I read in the newspapers gave me the impression that Palestinians were terrorists.

And later on I began to understand why. Every time the word ‘Palestinian’ came up on the news it was in relationship to a bombing or a hijacking or something else like that. And that is objective journalism: just reporting what’s going on. ‘This is a fact’ and leave it there. What it meant was that I had no education from the American mainstream media about what was going on there.

I knew nothing about the Palestinians. I didn’t know why they were fighting at all or what they were striving for. It never seemed to come up in the American media.

I want to show things from my point of view because I think it’s more honest in a way to be subjective. Admit your prejudices; admit those points when you feel uncomfortable in a certain situation. Just admit it.

And then beyond all that, I find it very difficult to be objective when to me there is a clear case of a people being oppressed. I’m not sure what objective means in a situation like that. I would rather be honest about what’s going on.

Which means perhaps the oppressed aren’t all angels – but the fact would remain that they are oppressed.

Your detractors say that your portrayals of the Palestinian conflict are filled with distortion, bias and hyperbole.

What I would point out is that I don’t sugarcoat the Palestinians. I don’t sugarcoat their anger, their vitriol. I don’t sugarcoat acts they commit that as far as I’m concerned don’t help their cause. I lay it out.

But what’s important to me is to get the context of the situation. What’s important to me is to tell the Palestinian viewpoint because it’s not told well.

Maybe we see Palestinian talking heads on TV. But what about the people on the street? What are they feeling? And its then you see their humour; you see their humanity; you see them being angry and you begin to understand why.

And I think that sort of journalism does a service.

That’s what I’m trying to get across. I don’t really think of it as biased, I think of it as being honest.

I’d rather put myself in the shoes of someone who’s bombed than someone who’s the pilot – I know all the glory goes to pilots and its very sexy and all that, but ultimately that’s not my interest. My interest is the people who are hurt.

What was the most challenging aspect of writing this book?

The most challenging aspect was the sheer length of time it was going to take. When I realise it’s a very long and involved book I just sort of project myself a few years into the future and say “do I have what it takes to do this? Is this book going to keep my interest?” The length of time is difficult but the book seemed to be worth that sort of time.

The most rewarding?

The rewarding part comes in fits and starts. When you really have something in your mind’s eye and draw it right and I feel like I’m living and breathing it. That’s what’s rewarding – when you can sort of really feel it.

I hope at the very least what this has done is elevated the depths of these episodes to some extent so that people are aware of them and that other scholars or historians will get in on this. As far as the West goes this might be the first attempt to crack this.

There is a section titled ‘memory and the essential truth’. What is the essential truth of this conflict?

Generally speaking, you can fault people for their memory, you can say that all testimony does have problems, and people will put themselves in situations they weren’t [in] or exaggerate or whatever, but the essential truth is that many people were killed, and that’s what it comes down to and the overall arc of everyone’s story always sticks to that essential truth.

It took you six and a half years to complete this book. Why so long?

I would say the last four years were pretty much spent just drawing.

Given what has happened over the course of the past few years, did you feel frustrated in any way that your work may not be relevant to the here and now?

Yes, frustrating on some level but then I’ve stopped thinking of myself as someone who’s going to get something out and make an immediate change. What I do think [about] this book; you’re recording two things: One is something that happened in 1956, and the other is something that happened when I was there in 2003: the home demolitions.

You devote a fair bit of the book to those home demolitions in Rafah, though the main topic of the book is the massacres of 1956. Why?

I was a witness to what happened in 2003 and I think it’s valuable stuff to record.

At the time all the Palestinians were there were asking me: “Why do you care about what’s happened in 1956? What about what’s going on now?”

Well those home demolitions in Rafah aren’t going on anymore and have been overtaken by other events. So now do we just forget the people who had their homes demolished then?

The other important thing is to show that events are continuous. It’s almost like another injection into the Palestinian psyche of what’s going on – another pummeling basically. This is 2003′s pummeling. I’m writing about 1956′s pummeling. And in the midst of today’s pummeling. And I want to show that.

And that’s why I refer to a lot of things that happened in the early 1950′s when there were attacks back and forth and also what happened in 1967 and how people get all that mixed up.

They can never look back at 1948 and just think about that. There is no closure.

How do you decide how to visually interpret the memories being relayed and what, if any, filters to use?

I try to draw in a pretty representational manner. I did have to decide how much violence I was going to show. And my idea was I would show it pretty straight, I wouldn’t try to make it look spectacular or anything like that. Of course I’m a filter on that; I’m drawing; and I think that’s clear, but a film director directs his character and that’s kind of what I’m doing too.

One of your biggest supporters is Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman (Waltz with Bashir; Closed Zone), who has said you’ve had a tremendous influence on him. Who has been your inspiration?

From a writing perspective I’d say Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens with their book Blaming the Victims, as well as Noam Chomsky. Writers like that have helped educate me about what was going on.

In some ways, I felt like I was being thrown through a loop when I was reading their stuff because I never even considered some of the things. It was all sort of fresh and new to me. Some things felt like a punch in the gut mainly because I have never thought of it this way. From a cartooning standpoint, I think Robert Crumb [an American artist and illustrator].

It has been said that you have set new standards for the use of the comic book as a documentary medium. What in your opinion are its advantages and shortcomings?

It’s very labour intensive. Unless you really hone your style to something simple you can’t really talk about what happened just yesterday. I should say I can’t. The advantage is that it’s a very accessible medium people open it up and they are interested right away. How many people would pick something up about an incident that took place in 1956 in Gaza if it was in prose?

It has a certain strength in that it can take you back in time and it can drop you in a place. I can really set the reader right in Rafah or Khan Yunis and I can do it in the 1950s or in the present day. There is an immediate connection with Gaza when you open the book.

How do the people you interview respond to your method?

When I was first in the Palestinian territories, in the early 1990s, I was a little sheepish about things. But what I soon found was that Palestinians have their own hero, the cartoonist Naji al-Ali who told their stories with drawing and he’s revered (Sacco wrote the introduction to A Child In Palestine: The Cartoons of Naji al-Ali). It helped me in a way.

For this book, I was much less self-conscious about what I was doing or how I did it. They could open to the pictures of the Jabaliya refugee camp, and they sort of got it right away. They could see themselves in the drawing.

Pictures are a universal language. There was a direct connection to what I was doing.

What is next for Joe Sacco?

I’m actually finishing up something now – a 48 page piece on African migrants trying to get to Europe and landing in Malta. They are really trying to get to mainland Europe but they end up in Malta. And Malta is where I was born.

I went there I talked to Africans, I talked to Maltese. It has more government stuff than I usually do. And half of it is being printed in the Virginia Quarterly Review.

Laila El-Haddad is a Palestinian freelance journalist currently based in the US. She is co-director of the award-winning short film Tunnel Trade, which first aired on Al Jazeera’s People & Power.

Her blog can be read at www.gazamom.com.

http://breadandpuppet.org

Cheap Art Philosophy

The Cheap Art movement was launched in 1982 by the Bread and Puppet Theater in direct response to the business of art and its growing appropriation by the corporate sector.

With this fact taken into account art becomes:

“political whether you like it or not…”

Cheap Art hopes to reestablish the appreciation of artistic creation by making it available to a wider audience and inspire anyone to revel in an art making process that is not subject to academic approval or curatorial acceptance.

Why? “Because art is food…”, reads the Why Cheap Art manifesto. Cheap Art ranges in price from 5 cents to 50 dollars. Anyone can participate!

Peter Schumann: Puppets, Bread and Art

by Andrew Ryder

Note: This paper was written for a graduate course in puppetry history and theory, co-taught by Bradford Clark.

Peter Schumann views theatre, and all forms of art, as absolutely essential. In 1968, he described theatre (in its ideal form) this way: “Theatre is . . . like bread . . . like a necessity. Theatre is a form of religion. It is fun” (“Bread” 35). Answering an interviewer in New Theatre Quarterly in the 1980s, Schumann was less optimistic about art in our contemporary democratic society. Concerning a trip to Central America, and the excitement and vitality of the work there, Schumann was asked if he thought Bread and Puppet, or any other committed artistic group, could come to have the same kind of significance here in the United States. Answered Schumann:

No, that’s just wishful thinking. Before, all arts wanted to be something real and needed, and have something to do in people’s lives–to be something that people need, in their personal lives and in their communal lives. They used to serve funerals, they used to serve weddings, they used to serve childbirths, and they used to serve a lot of functions. Now all of these functions are taken care of by society in a very commercial and controllable way, so the arts have come to fulfil a sort of elitist function. (“Nicaragua” 3-4)

Peter Schumann has not given up on the possibility of vitality and growth from art, even in this country, however. In the early 1990s, he wrote about the possibilities and challenges of the puppet theatre for a Russian audience, noting that the ideas were not bound by culture. He cites five aspects of puppet theatre which give it life but also cause it to be questioned by the status quo. First, he says, puppetry is free of any kind of seriousness or respect for human constructs of authority or responsibility. It is possible to poke fun at all kinds of targets with a puppet where a live performer might be less accepted. On one level, we simply expect puppets to make us laugh, and often they do. On another, they offer social criticism and hopefully cause the audience to think about the questions they raise.

The next shift or unique element in the puppet theatre as Schumann sees it is an emphasis on action over dialogue; a redefinition of language to include more than just written or spoken words. Puppets must communicate primarily through gesture, even when they are given voices and texts to read. When they do speak, Schumann says, it is not in conventional forms, but in slurs and stutters. Similarly, naturalistic acting style is by no means appropriate for puppet performance. The acting of puppets must be unpredictable, and also unpretentious. Motivations are simple and straightforward, and there is little complexity. On the other hand, the fact that their actions cannot be limited or pinned down quite so easily as can those of human actors, makes puppet “actors” more complex to some audiences.

Puppet theatre is also important because of what it borrows from other disciplines. In Schumann’s theatre, music exists only as music. In the commercial theatre and films, music is used to underscore an action or a visual scene, and is hardly ever utilized on its own merit. Schumann uses all sorts of found instruments and found objects from life in producing the sounds which are common to all of us. The sound ideas do not have to be directly related to a particular visual, but can stand alone as one kind of artistic expression. Along with music, Schumann’s theatre incorporates his own knowledge of and experience in sculpture. He describes his own “puppets” as “socially embedded sculptures” which are most important and easy to understand in the context where they were created. Once again, Schumann’s aesthetic is anti-elitist, and he wants to see sculptures which represent concepts or ideas of simple common sense rather than complex art forms with limiting rules.

These ideas sound much more like the idealistic Schumann of the 1960s. His own aesthetic/artistic/religious ideals are in fact a kind of mixed bag, however. Though he recognizes the problems, he hopes for change. He comments to this effect in the early 1970s: “I think a good man is both a man who is able to be good in detail and a man who wants to learn at least to fly, or to solve all the problems of the world, or to arrange for the second coming” (Taylor 262).

Schumann’s puppet productions, centered around a farm in Vermont and/or New York City, have done a little bit of each since the 1960s. The annual Domestic Resurrection Circus incorporates political satire, dancing, music, a parade, and the all-important sideshows, put on by the volunteers as expressions of their own which are somewhat independent of the group project.

There is a definite challenge in dealing with Peter Schumann simply through descriptions of his work or video recordings. After awhile the lengthy descriptions of the action, even when accompanied by numbers of still photographs, come to emphasize the fact that these are simply plans for action to be elaborated and developed in performance. However, there do seem to be common features.

The first element which appears to be almost universally present in Schumann’s work, particularly that which takes place in large rooms (like churches) or outside, is some kind of huge rod puppet to represent the main character. Whether that character is Jesus with his large hands in some kind of gesture of blessing, or Uncle Fatso, or some other puppet, there is usually at least one puppet which is greater than human-size. These puppets are operated by means of at least one long pole which supports the head, made of either Celastic or papier machi, and a variety of methods for the arms. Usually the arms are controlled independently of each other and the head, either by means of additional rods or direct human manipulation. Often the “arms” themselves are simply draped cloth hanging from the “shoulder” of the head to the hand, supported either by a rod or a performer.

At different periods in his career, Schumann has made more or less use of the individual human performer, but in most cases this performer is “neutralized” by the use of a mask. Again, these are oversized full head pieces, which the actors wear and manipulate as part of themselves. On occasion they may have large hands to accompany the large head.

These puppets remain abstractions. In this way, Schumann finds that they reach a kind of universality in their diversity of interpretation. They find diversity in their practical application as well. Because the puppets are not limited to one very specific character, they can be used over and over again. Schumann’s theatre is really more about characters than it is about telling a complicated story anyway, and the reuse of these identifiable (but flexible) characters adds dimensions to their character. Four examples are offered below.

The first example is the Christ figure. Of course this character comes into play over and over again, particularly in the performances the group puts on at Christmas and Easter each year in churches in New York. In the case of Jesus, it is not so much that this same puppet is used in other productions to add the Messianic resonance, but rather that different kinds of Jesus puppets are used each year to fit in with the particular retelling and political slant of the production.

Uncle Fatso is another important character, who has been used in Schumann productions for years. With his big head and business suit (often performed by a live actor wearing a full- head mask) Uncle Fatso represents the United States and Western capitalism in its greediest form. Robert Hamilton notes in his dissertation that this puppet can be used to represent “the evil landlord, the businessman, President Nixon, President Johnson, and a giant” (373).

Characters in the Bread and Puppet Theatre do not have to be human, either. A bomber becomes a prominent image in several pieces by Schumann at various points in his career, reflecting his own experience of fleeing Nazi Germany with his family in the 1930s, as well as the many bombings of innocent women and children all over the world since then. This airplane may be represented by anything from a huge plane which effects the Crucifixion in “The Cry of the People for Meat” to tiny toys which still suggest the great amount of destruction effected by one little plane and its cargo.

The plane image figures strongly in scenes with the “Gray Ladies,” characters invented early on by Schumann and used over and over again in different contexts. Hamilton groups them with the “idea masks and idea puppets” which are not particularly specific. These women may represent peasants in Central America, the mothers of soldiers in W.W.II, (or any other war), in general the oppressed by society.

Peter Schumann is a fascinating character himself. His wide interests and his dedication to his art give him a strong basis for his often politically-oriented performances. He has made use of a variety of materials and types of puppets over the course of his career. His history in the United States has lasted over 30 years, during which time he has made repeated use of a number of images and characters. Like Schumann himself, however, the puppets continue to change.

His own sense of change is illustrated in his repeated trips abroad, to people who are in need of something to hold onto. These people may be Soviet citizens trying to learn how to live in a republic, Nicaraguan Catholics in tiny village, or any other of a number of places he has visited or taken time to teach (at least briefly). This element of Schumann’s biography is somewhat troubling, because it raises all of the questions about American society which we do not want to face. Why, for example, should Schumann have to go abroad to find people who “need” art? The fact that he continually does suggests to me that he retains hope for the world but has given up on the United States. Even this is probably an over-simplification, for Schumann writes in the February 1994 TDR that he, who has always favored pacifism, is now willing (after seeing Sarajevo first hand) to see the United States send in bombers to save the city. This position is particularly interesting given the bombing sorties of this past week (August 28- September 1, 1995).

The complexities of Peter Schumann and his work can only be suggested in a paper of this length. The production descriptions are important starting places for learning about his career, but there appears to be no substitute for spending the summer at the farm in Vermont, or traveling around the world with his company, and learning by doing.

Works Consulted

Bell, John. “Bread and Puppet Theatre’s ‘Rites of Winter.’” Puppetry Journal 35:4 (June 1984): 5-8, 16.

—. Book Review. Bread and Puppet Theatre by Stephan Brecht. Puppetry Journal 41:2 (Winter 1989): 14-15.

—. “The Bread and Puppet Theatre in Nicaragua, 1987.” New Theatre Quarterly V:17 (February 1989): 8-22.

Blanc, Eric. “A Domestic Resurrection Circus for Frogs.” Puppetry Journal 46:2 (Winter 1994): 10-11.

Brecht, Stefan. The Bread and Puppet Theatre. 2v. The original theatre of the City of New York from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies 4. London: Methuen, 1988.

—. “Peter Schumann’s Bread and Puppet Theatre.” TDR: The Drama Review 12:2 (Winter, 1968): 44-95.

Brown, Helen and Jane Seitz. “With the Bread & Puppet Theatre.” TDR: The Drama Review 14:3 (Fall 1970): 62-73.

Hamilton, Robert Craig. The Bread and Puppet Theatre of Peter Schumann: History and Analysis. Diss., Indiana U, 1978. UMI 7821732.

Munk, Erika. “TDR Comment.” TDR: The Drama Review 12:2 (Winter, 1968): 33-34.

Schumann, Peter. “The Radicality of the Puppet Theatre.” TDR: The Drama Review 35:4 (Winter 1991): 75-83.

—. “Bread and Puppets.” TDR: The Drama Review 12:2 (Winter, 1968): 35.

—. “Five Reasons Why I Support Air Strikes to Lift the Siege of Sarajevo.” TDR: The Drama Review 38:2 (February 1994): 10-11.

—, interviewed by Rosa Luisa Marquez. “The Bread and Puppet Theatre in Nicaragua, 1985.” New Theatre Quarterly V:17 (February 1989): 3-7.

Taylor, Karen Malpede, ed. “The Bread and Puppet Theatre.” People’s Theatre in Amerika. New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1972.

Towsen, John. “The Stations of the Cross.” TDR: The Drama Review 16:3 (1972): 57-70.

Toy, Judith. “Bread and Puppet Theatre Workshop Intensive.” Puppetry Journal 45:3 (Spring 1994): 13-14.

The Puppetry Home Page

http://www.richardcastaneda.com/

Richard Castaneda’s work exhibits the uneasy tension of cultural identity, living within a paradoxical paradigm of what it is to be “Native American” in a pan-American landscape. His personal experiences as a Pima Indian roaming to and from his reservation and observing everything else in between, informs his art and cultural perspective. As a Native artist he is interested in an alternative perspective that divulges misconceived stereotypes that continue to homogenize Native American identity. Through his art he pairs together his positive and negative cultural experiences using a multitude of cynical, humorous, political and even good-natured subjectivity to evoke relevant dialogue and expand conscious cultural awareness. The central focal point of Richard’s explorative work is an intentional interplay between internal and external perspectives of Native American identity as a whole, and tries to address uncomfortable conflicts that divide cultural continuity. He is also at war with the sensationalism of the romanticized “noble savage”, and its dominance over the realities of contemporary Native life.

Castaneda’s various artistic palettes range from formal photography to mixed-media appropriation.  He almost always uses photographic processes in his work and does not confine himself to one medium. He likes to incorporate text and imagery from mainstream media and collage them into his work to add layers of metaphoric and subjective content.
Richard Bluecloud Castaneda earned his Associates of Fine Arts degree in Two Dimensional Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2007, he received his BFA degree in Advertising/Illustration Photography from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco. Richard will receive his MFA degree in Fine Art Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute in May of 2010.

Richard is currently being represented by the Togonon Gallery in San Francisco, California.

http://www.homeysf.org/
What is HOMEY’s?

The mission of HOMEY remains to transform the lives of at-risk youth and community members in San Francisco, inspiring them to not only choose a path of education, self-sufficiency and non-violence, but to also strive towards stability in their physical, mental and emotional well-being. HOMEY fulfills its mission by providing participants with educational resources, leadership development, financial literacy, community organizing, critical thinking skills, and cultural affirmation.

HOMEY seeks to further the work of our social justice, youth-led organizing and continue the political-education and violence-prevention services we offer low income, Latino youth in San Franciscos Mission District and city-wide. The youth we serve are ages 13 to 24 and come from immigrant families, are immigrants themselves. Collectively, we defend our human rights and civil liberties by taking a stance on economic and environmental justice issues that affect us by using and leveraging tools such as the arts, media, community organizing and the reaffirmation of our cultural identity as Latinos and Indigenous people.

HOMEY was founded in 1999 by youth leaders active in the Mission District community-led Community Peace Initiative. Out of this effort, community youth began to take leadership for a number of activities, eventually organizing themselves into HOMEY. They found a fiscal home with the Berkeley-based ICRI, the International Child Resource Institute. Over the last ten years, youth (and adults) inspired by the vision of HOMEY volunteered their time and money to make HOMEY what it is today, with an operating budget of nearly half-a-million dollars and eight staff who have all had first-hand experience with the similar challenges our youth are facing. HOMEYs growth has allowed each new generation of young people to experience the power of affecting change and making the organization their own, but the mission of developing leadership and organizing youth remain the same.

 Egyhop Audio     The intention of this piece is to provide a permanent visual of what our group does every night.  The outreach worker on the bike is anonymous, because the cart and bike speak for themselves about the work EGYHOP does, and are the most easily recognized parts of our organization.  Ask anyone downtown about EGYHOP, and they will tell you that is is a project very unique to our city- it does not exist anywhere else- and that dozens of people depend on us each night for their basic needs. All  of these things are symbolized by the bike and the person riding it, both on the wall and in our continued downtown presence.

Agitprop News: Special Centralia IWW Mural Issus (text below)

http://www.kclabor.org/artcreatenewlabor.htm
Labor Advocate Online

Art Can Help Create a New Labor Movement

The following article is based on a speech by Mike Alewitz, Artistic Director of the Labor Art and Mural Project (LAMP.) It was delivered to the Collective Bargaining Convention (CBC) of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP.) The convention took place in Washington DC, on December 6. 2002.
___________________________________________________

This meeting takes place at a critical juncture in history. The US government stands poised to launch a horrible new war against the people of Iraq. Actually “war” is something of a misnomer – that term implies the capability of both sides to inflict damage. This is really going to be a massive bombing campaign and invasion of a virtually defenseless country.

The war is occurring in conjunction with serious new assaults on working people here at home. It’s going to create some big changes in this country. It’s going to change the labor movement, and force us to confront who we are and where we come from.

We are going to have to relearn some lost traditions. One of those traditions is using art and culture as a method of struggle. Art can help create a new labor movement. As we discuss this tonight, I am going to use slides of murals and banners from recent projects to illustrate these ideas.

The tradition of labor art and culture in the US.

There is a rich tradition of labor art and culture in the US.

When the Paterson silk workers struck in 1913, John Reed, the famous journalist, organized Greenwich Village artists to create the Paterson Silk Strike Pageant. Workers marched from Paterson, New Jersey, to Madison Square Garden. They strode onto the stage, reenacted the strike to a packed crowd and led them in singing strike songs. The pageant told the story of the strikers to the world.

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, known as the Wobblies,) had a cultural life of humor, poetry, song, cartoons and theater that made a lasting contribution to American culture.

When autoworkers staged sit-down strikes in Buffalo in 1937 they formed an orchestra to serenade assembled supporters from the rooftops of the occupied plant. When they won the strike they transformed the orchestra into a brass band and marched through the streets of the city in a victory parade.

The P-9 Strike

More recently, art was utilized when workers of Local P-9, United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) struck the Hormel Meat Company in 1985.

The workers performed brutal, dangerous and repetitive work. They took the bold step of leading an important struggle against concession contracts that galvanized union support from around the country.

I traveled to Austin, Minnesota to attend a solidarity rally, and worked with them to create a glorious mural on the side of their union building – an image that symbolized the strike. The mural was dedicated to Nelson Mandela, who was then imprisoned and being subjected to a vilification campaign by the US government.

Unfortunately, this heroic local was attacked by it’s own international union officials, placed into receivership, and the mural was sandblasted off the wall.

Recent Labor Strikes

In 1989, when the United Mine Workers (UMWA) struck the Pittston Coal Company, artists traveled to Camp Solidarity in Virginia to join the pickets and create music, murals and banners for the strikers. This 100′ long mural of UMWA history highlights a contribution of John L. Lewis. When threatened with federal troops for striking, he pledged that “Bayonets in coal mines will not mine coal.” In that slogan he summed up a too-often forgotten fact – that workers hold the ultimate power in their hands – the power to withhold their labor.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s workers waged a series of defensive struggles: the Eastern Airline Strike, the Daily News Strike, Staley and many others as illustrated by these banners. And while these actions occurred, labor activity of another type was taking place. Immigrant workers were self-organizing themselves and winning important labor struggles.

Immigrant Workers

In 1995, mostly Mexican mushroom workers in eastern Pennsylvania struck the Kaolin Mushroom Company and organized themselves into the Kaolin Independent Workers Union. Artists organized by LAMP traveled to Kennett Square PA, where we created banners and signs to march in the Mushroom Day Parade. Workers carried puppets and used musical instruments to create an exciting public presence, create confidence for undocumented workers, and win the sympathy of the surrounding communities.

Similar organizing efforts took place among other workers. In Southern California, Mexican workers shut down drywall production on construction. Up to 7000 workers participated. They were self-organized.

To rebuild our movement, we must learn from, and address the concerns of millions of immigrant workers. We have to stop thinking of ourselves as Americans and start thinking of ourselves as workers. There are American workers and American employers. There are Iraqi workers and Iraqi employers. American workers have more in common with Iraqi workers than we do with American employers. For example, we have no interest in slaughtering each other.

For their part, U.S. employers have no problem palling around with and promoting Iraqi employers. In fact, that’s how Saddam Hussain and Osama Bin Laden got to where they are today.

The quote on the banner is by Malcolm x. To paraphrase he said “I’m not a Democrat, I’m not a Republican, I don’t even consider myself an American. I am one of the victims of Americanism…”

Unions Don’t Organize Workers

The struggles of these immigrant workers point to another oft-forgotten fact: UNIONS DON’T ORGANIZE WORKERS – WORKERS ORGANIZE UNIONS.

Workers are ready and willing to engage in struggle. They are ready to join unions. Whenever given an opportunity they have responded enthusiastically. They are not apathetic. Workers abstain from elections because they are unwilling to swallow what their “leaders” are feeding them. Look how people responded to Ralph Nader – and even he’s a rich lawyer. He repeatedly had rallies of thousands of students and workers desperate for something different, What if those workers had been given a choice of a clear voice of labor – a labor party or other independent formation?

Workers would respond to organizing efforts as well. But despite the millions of dollars and hundreds of young organizers provided by the AFL-CIO, there has been no significant growth in that organization. Why? It’s not an organizational or financial problem; it’s a political problem.

This portable mural, called “Bureaucracy,” illustrates the point: Most unions function more as dues collection agencies than as social movements. There’s a difference between workers empowerment through organization and simply signing up members.

Workers organize unions when they are inspired to do so. Think of the great periods of union growth. The Knights of Labor didn’t have staff or money. The IWW, which claimed the allegiance of hundreds of thousands of workers, had two staff people. When millions of workers engaged in sit-downs and other forms of militant struggle, when they organized industrial unions in the CIO, they did it themselves.

After the recent elections, [AFL-CIO President] Sweeney explained the failure of their electoral strategy by saying “Bush was too much for us.” How embarrassing! Can you imagine George Bush being too much for anyone?

The Role of Educators

The mural you see was painted at the Highlander Center in Tennessee. Highlander, a popular education center played a key role in the organization of the CIO, and later the civil rights movement in the south. The banner reads “Without Action there is No Education.”

As educators we can play a special role in helping to relearn our movements history. But it needs to be an organic process. This mural is “The Resurrection of Wesley Everest.” I painted it in Centralia, Washington, where a local labor coalition decided they needed a mural project as a way to reach out to immigrant workers. Wesley Everest was an IWW labor organizer lynched in Centralia. He was a great martyr of our movement, yet most workers would have no idea who he was.

When I painted a mural at the Frente Autentico Trabajdore (FAT) in Mexico City, union leaders asked me to portray Lucy and Albert Parsons. Albert Parsons was one of the Haymarket martyrs – anarchists framed up and executed for their role in the eight-hour day movement. Lucy, along with Albert, was a leader of the labor movement in Chicago. She was also an early feminist an outstanding revolutionary leader throughout her life. Mayday, the international working class holiday, is in commemoration of the Haymarket events.

The Mexico mural was part of a cross-border project. I painted a similar mural in Chicago shortly thereafter – it was a celebration of the Teamster strike victory over UPS. At a large rally of the strikers, I asked the crowd if anyone knew who the figures were. Nobody knew. We have been robbed of our history. As educators we can help to bring it back. And we can bring it to life through action.

Historic Program

There is a history to our movement – we don’t have start all over again. That’s Marx and Engels on that banner. We don’t have to be afraid of them. We don’t have to be afraid of the ideas of socialism or anarchism. It’s part of our history.

This is the backdrop from the founding convention of the Labor Party. We haven’t succeeded yet, but it is critical to promote this idea. Until the last 50 years, the labor movement had a position of independent political action. The idea that you should support the employers candidates, the Democratic or Republican candidates, is a new idea. That concept has always pretty much been rejected by the world working-class movement. Voting for your boss doesn’t work. It hasn’t, and it won’t.

A World in Crisis

Today we face a renewed period of political and economic crisis. There are 800 million hungry people in the world. There are 40 million people infected with HIV. According to a recent UN report, we could solve the basic problems of food, clean water and health care for those millions. Know what it would take? 4% of the combined wealth of the richest 225 people in the world.

Would the wealthy even notice if it was gone?

Instead, congress has voted 150 billion to wage war – just for this year. It was a virtually unanimous bipartisan decision – with no questions asked. Next year the budget will increase from 329 to 400 billion. There will be an additional 38 billion for so-called Homeland Security.

These vast resources will come out of the pockets of working people – especially the poor.

Artists and Workers Form One World Without Borders

The gluttony of the employers has no limit. But workers have become a larger, more compressed and more international class. We have the power to stop the warmakers.

“Artists and Workers Form One World Without Borders” was painted as an act of solidarity in 1998 in Baghdad. It illustrates the basic foundation of the labor movement since the industrial revolution: the primary weapon of our defense is solidarity.

Unfortunately, our national union leaders have been quiet at best and jingoistic at worst in regards to Bush’s war plans. They refuse to recognize that the war is against both Iraqi and American workers.

The labor movement must take the lead in this struggle, and we must fight to get the AFL-CIO to take on that task. If the AFL-CIO does not transform itself, it will be replaced by other organizations that workers will create.

Artists and intellectuals can and must play a special role in helping to inspire and rebuild a militant new labor movement. Art can be a powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressed.

New Book by Paul Buhle and Mike Alewitz
Foreword by Martin Sheen

Agitprop News: Special Centralia IWW Mural Issue

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

source:lamp@igc.apc.org  Thu Oct 30 12:15:01 1997

LaBOR aRT & MuRAL PRoJECT
AGITPROP NEWS
Special Centralia Mural Issue
10.30.97

In this issue:
1.  Mural Depicts Labor's View
2.  Muralist Was Activist Before Artist
3.  Tender Feelings
4.  American Legion Anti-Mural Resolution
5.  Challange to Debate

1.  MURAL DEPICTS LABOR'S VIEW OF 1919 STRIFE

The Chronicle, Page 1

RECALLING A SAD DAY
By Sharon Michael

The scaffolding is up and work is in progress on the Centralia Union
Mural Project commemorating the Armistice Day 1919 events known to some
as the Centralia Massacre and to others as the Centralia incident.

Union members, business people, community residents and educators are
among those who see the events of Nov. 11, 1919 as a part of the city's
history that should be shared. Those events left four American
Legionnaires and a union man dead,

A year ago they formed the Centralia Union Mural Project to raise money
for the mural that is going up on the upper level of north side of the
Centralia Square Antique Mall overlooking Washington Park and the
Sentinel -- a statue honoring the four Legionnaires who died the same day
as Industrial Workers of the World  organizer Wesley Everest.

The Sentinel was unveiled on Armistice Day 1924. The mural honoring
Everest is scheduled to be dedicated Nov. 9.

Business owner and committee member Kathleen Campbell thinks the mural
will be a good thing for Centralia. "It should be, if anything, a way to
give us a perspective on history -- a healing process, I hope. It's part
of our history.

"It's a historical event. It happened -- not only here, but in Everett
and several other places," she added. "We've got to get over our
paranoia."

Campbell, also president of Destination Centralia, said the union mural
is one more of the series of historical murals that attract tourists to
downtown Centralia. The 16 completed murals depict early transportation,
industry and pioneers that are part of history of the early settlement
and development of the region.

Among those who oppose the union mural are Legionnaires from Grant
Hodge Post 17 and others across the country. A resolution condemning the
"installation of the IWW mural in Centralia," was passed at the American
Legion state convention in the spring, and at the Legion's national
convention in September.

The resolution says the IWW "used violence as a tool to further their
cause and agenda" and "did plan to ambush members of Grant Hodge Post
17, The American Legion.

"A group of labor officials, college professors, and current members of
the local IWW are planning to install a wall mural in downtown
Centralia, Washington, to tell labors' side of the story and honor the
1919 IWW assassins," states the resolution.

"We figure this is something that has stayed in the background since
1919 and it should stay in the background," said Don Bradshaw, commander
of Winlock Post 101. "It's not going to heal this community."

"You're going to hear one hell of an outcry from vets, even union
members," predicted Bradshaw. "It will divide the community at the very
least, or you'll get someone hurt again. Vets will go out of their way
to deface it. It will stir up hate and discontent."

"They're depicting the person who instigated the shooting," said Dean
Hendrickson, also of Winlock Post 101. "He was the shooter. I don't
think they should be portraying him as a martyr. I don't think it's
right."

But Hendrickson says the American Legion doesn't think it can stop the
union mural project. "There's nothing we can do about it, but we object
to it," he said.

Bill Henry, co-chair of the union mural committee and member of
Operating Engineers Local 612, said he anticipated hate calls about the
project. "I was expecting the worst."

But that hasn't happened. "People were calling telling me that it was
about damn time the story was told," he said. "There's only been one
side of the story told. There's a story of labor's side that's never
been told."

"One of the vets called me up and was kind of irate about the mural
project. He didn't even know they had a monument in the park," Henry
added.

He said the union mural should spark controversy. "We felt if we get a
mural up and people looked at it and walked away, we didn't do our job."

Henry said he believes looking history in the eye is a good way to way
to prevent the same mistake twice from being made again, but "somebody
had done a good job of suppressing this.

"Prominent people were involved. Lynching was murder with no statute of
limitations," he explained.

Henry's great-grandfather was one of the jurors in the Wobblies' trial
held in Montesano. According to Henry, he thought the defendants were
innocent, but he feared for their safety. "He felt if they were not in
protective custody, they would be killed anyway," Henry recalled.

American Legion members were invited to participate in the mural
project, but "nobody showed up," Henry said.

 "Many, many lives were damaged by this. Wesley's family -- they've
spent their whole life waiting for someone to tell the rest of the
story," said Helen Lee, mural committee co-chair. Lee is also director
of The Evergreen State College Labor Center and president of the
Thurston-Lewis County Labor Council.

Lee's uncle, Russell Carothers, Sr., was a life-long member of the
American Legion and a member of the citizens committee that investigated
the incident at the time. "My uncle said when all was said and done, it
was everybody's fault.

"Russ said there was an atmosphere of fear in the air," Lee recalled.
"Everyone just got back from the war. He said lots and lots of people
carried guns. The Legionnaires came down the street looking for a
fight."

Lee said in those years just after World War I there was a bias against
newcomers. She said Centralia was a small, insulated community and the
Wobblies were feared as much because they were foreigners or outsiders
as for their unionism.

Actions against Wobblies took place in Kelso, Longview and other small
towns in Southwest Washington during that time, she added.

But times have changed. "Business is promoting the revitalization of
Centralia and (business people) are very much a part of promoting this
mural project," Lee said.

"(Committee members) all had different views of the world, but we came
together to put together this mural," she said. "My most optimistic self
hopes the mural creates an incredible amount of discussion and healing
in this town."

"We have ambitious hope for this mural," Lee admitted. "We're not
interested in creating another martyr, but it does tell the other side
of the story. Beyond Wesley Everest, we wanted the mural to say
something about the future."

2.  MURALIST WAS ACTIVIST BEFOR HIS ART CAREER

The Chronicle, Page 1

By Sharon Michael

Mike Alewitz was a political activist long before he became an artist.
His art is an extension of his politics.

The internationally known muralist is in Centralia to paint a mural
honoring Wesley Everest, an Industrial Workers of the World organizer
killed by a mob following a 1919 Armistice Day clash between union
members and American Legionnaires.

The larger-than-life painting will go on the side of the Centralia
Square Antique Mall. It depicts Everest rising from his grave with
clenched fists raised above his head. Alewitz says the resurrection of
Wesley Everest represents the resurrection of labor.

Alewitz calls his work "agitprop art -- a school of art out of the
Russian revolution. It's using art in an organic way in social struggles
people are involved with," he explained. "It's an instrument of
education, enlightenment and inspiration.

"It's very much a teaching thing. It's not what most art is in our
society," he added. "In our society we believe art comes from individual
genius. I don't believe that."

Alewitz has bachelor's and master's degrees in fine art and has taught
art as an adjunct professor for nine years in East Coast colleges and
universities. But his political education and experience as a working
man preceded his art education and infuses his work.

In 1967, when he was still in high school, he was active in the
anti-Vietnam War movement. He was chairman of the Student Mobilization
Committee at Kent State University when Ohio national guardsmen shot and
killed four student demonstrators on campus. Later, he was a leader of a
national student strike and a member of the Anti-War Coalition. In the
early 1970s he organized GIs in Texas.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s he worked on the railroad and as a
machinist. After that he worked as a sign painter until 1985 when he
"started doing art."

Today, Alewitz is artistic director of the Labor Art & Mural Project at
Rutgers University's Labor Education Center.

His work can be found on public and union buildings in Nicaragua,
Mexico, the Ukraine and Belgium, as well as Washington, D.C., New York,
Chicago, Denver, Seattle, Yakima, Los Angeles and Oxnard, Calif.

 Over the years, Alewitz has been involved in abortion rights, women's
rights and environmental protection issues, as well as labor organizing
efforts.

The Centralia Union Mural Project appealed to him because it "flowed
out of what I was doing."

Alewitz' most recent project was a Teamster-sponsored mural painted in
Chicago in celebration of the union's successful strike against United
Parcel Service.

Alewitz sees the Teamster resolve as the beginning of the
"revitalization of the labor movement."

"There is something going on," he added. Alewitz said most strikes in
the last 20 years have been lost by the unions, but more importantly,
the UPS strike was the first time union organizations had gone to bat
for workers on the "lowest rung. This was fought and won by
part-timers," he explained.

Alewitz believes the Wobbly mural will get national attention and be a
boost to labor. "Let's announce to the world we're back," he said.

But he understands some people won't get the political message in his
art and others will disagree with it. If the mural causes just a few
people to question their assumptions about what happened in 1919 and
what is happening to working people today, he said that will be a step
in the right direction.

"It's an aspiration and that's how it starts," Alewitz observed.

3.  FEELINGS STILL TENDER, THOUGH EVENT WAS LONG AGO

The Chronicle, Page 1

By Sharon Michael

Events that happened nearly 80 years ago in Centralia are still the
source of dissension in some quarters today.

World War I veterans and Industrial Workers of the World union members
clashed during the 1919 Armistice Day parade that drew nearly 1,000
people to downtown Centralia. Four veterans and an IWW organizer, who
was also a veteran, were killed that day.

Legionnaires Warren O. Grimm, Ben Casagranda, Earnest Dale Hubbard and
Arthur McElfresh were killed by gunfire when shooting erupted during an
Armistice Day parade through downtown Centralia.

Later that evening, IWW member Wesley Everest died at the hands of a
mob. He was hanged from the Mellen Street Bridge and shot.

No one was ever arrested for Everest's murder, but eight IWW members --
known as Wobblies -- were convicted of second-degree murder for the
killing of the four Legionnaires.

Although many historians would come to support the Wobblies' claim that
Legionnaires planned to attack the union hall during their parade,
Legionnaires and other local people alleged union members fired into the
parade without provocation, thus instigating the assault on IWW
headquarters.

In the days, months and years following the killings and the trial of
the IWW members, the community fell into two camps: those who believed
the attack was planned by the Legionnaires and those who believed it was
provoked by the IWW.

Later, a third faction developed -- those who believed the two groups
shared the blame for the incident.

But a view apparently shared by most local residents was that the
incident and its aftermath weren't events the community wanted known,
and for decades there was a conspiracy of silence.

Now, just a few days short of the day's anniversary, those who know the
1919 incident are still divided into three camps, and some still believe
talk of events of that day will open old wounds and make the city look
bad to outsiders.

But there are others who want the story told, and those who believe the
community can learn from its history and benefit from sharing the story.

3.  Legion Resolution

SEVENTY-NINTH NATIONAL CONVENTION OF THE AMERICAN LEGION
ORLANDO, FLORIDA
September 2-4 1997

Resolution No. 140: Oppose The Installation of the IWW Mural
Submitted by: Americanism As Amended

WHEREAS, The International Workers of the World (IWW), also known as
Wobblies, used violence as a tool to further their cause and agenda; and

WHEREAS, The Centralia Chapter of the IWW did plan to ambush members of
Grant Hodge Post #17, the American Legion; and

WHEREAS, On November 11, 1919, during the Armistice Day parade, in
Centralia, Washington; members of the IWW chapter did open fire on and kill
(4) Legionnaires, including the Post Commander, and wound (3) other
Legionnaires; and

WHEREAS, a group of labor officials, college professors, and current
members of the IWW are planning to install a wall mural in downtown
Centralia, Washington to tell labors' side of the story and honor the 1919
IWW assassins, now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, By The American Legion in National Convention assembled in
Orlando, Florida, September 2, 3, 4, 1997, That The American Legion
condemns and opposes the installation of the IWW mural in Centralia,
Washington.

4.   A  Challange to Debate

To the Editor:

I read with amazement the comments of Don Bradshaw of American Legion
Winlock Post 101 regarding the Centralia Union Mural Project.

In his remarks to the Chronicle, Bradshaw states that the murder of Wesley
Everst has "...stayed in the background since 1919 and should stay in the
background."  He goes on to addthat "It will divide the community at the
very least, or you'll get someone hurt again.  Vets will go out of their
way to deface it.  It will stir up hate and discontent."

Is Mr. Bradshaw aware that threatening to hurt someone or defacing the
mural is against the law?  Does he have knowlege of such a plan?  Is the
American Legion planning violence against the workers of this town who are
promoting the mural project, the way they planned violence against the IWW
in 1919?

Who are "the vets" that he is talking about?  Veterans like Wesley Everest,
who organized against the carnage of the world wars?  The tens of thousands
of Vietnam Vets, sick of being used as cannon fodder for corporate profits,
who marched and organized to be brought home from Southest Asia?

The Ressurrection of Wesley Everest is a gift to this town and the entire
world from the working people of Centralia.  We expect the authorities to
protect and defend it as the valuable contribution to culture that it is.
Any attempt to deface this work is against state and federal law.

Of course,  Mr. Bradshaw is free to disagree with the goals of labor or the
creation of this art.  With that in mind, I challenge him to a public
debate.  Let him come forward and defend his ideas. Surely a veteran like
Mr. Bradshaw will have no fear of public scrutiny.

Mike Alewitz
Muralist

ARTISTS AND WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE...
YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT BAD TASTE!

LaBOR aRT & MuRAL PRoJECT
Labor Education Center
Rutgers University
Ryders Lane & Clifton Avenue
New Brunswick, NJ  08903
Phone: 732-220-1472   -   Fax: 732-296-1325
Email: lamp@igc.apc.org   -   Website: http://www.igc.apc.org/laborart
Subscribe to AGITPROP NEWS at this address
Spanning the Globe to: ORGANIZE  -  AGITATE  -  EDUCATE  -  INSPIRE
Mike Alewitz, Artistic Director

=================================================================
  NY Transfer News Collective   *   A Service of Blythe Systems
           Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
              339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012
  http://www.blythe.org                  e-mail: nyt@blythe.org
=================================================================

nytrad-10.31.97-20:47:41-24347

Centralia Mural To Mark Labor Fight

AP

CENTRALIA – For decades, the ugliness of events at the 1919 Armistice Day parade here muzzled residents into a tight-lipped silence.

Tensions between the town’s American Legionnaires and members of the Industrial Workers of the World union erupted into violence that day.

When it was over, four Legionnaires had been killed by gunfire; one union member – Wesley Everest – had been hanged in a lynching; and eight other union members were imprisoned. A Tenino, Thurston County, farmer and posse member also died, accidentally shot by another vigilante.

The four Legionnaires are commemorated by a statue in George Washington Park downtown. The only memorial to Everest’s lynching is his headstone in a small cemetery north of Centralia.

“The monument in the park does not really convey what most people consider to be an accurate view of what took place,” said John Regan, co-owner of Centralia Square Antique Mall and the Centralia Factory Outlet Center near Interstate 5.

So this summer, Everest and other IWW members – known as the Wobblies – will be honored in a downtown mural.

The community’s silence on the events of Nov. 11, 1919, was breached in 1983 when Peter Hendrickson, program administrator for the Centralia School District, began creating local history materials about them.

Before then, Hendrickson said, “it was an unspoken taboo that this was not an appropriate topic because it was so sensitive.”

But that has changed. In 1994, the Lewis County Historical Museum had an exhibit marking the event’s 75th anniversary.

And now there’s the mural.

Bill Henry, business representative of Local 612 of the International Union of Operating Engineers and co-chairman of the mural project, said his great-grandfather, William Inmon, served on the 1920 jury in Montesano, Grays Harbor County, that sentenced eight Wobblies to lengthy prison sentences.

Two years later, Inmon and two other jurors submitted affidavits that said they believed the defendants were innocent, but that they had convicted them of lesser charges to save them from execution.

The mural “will finally tell the history that has been suppressed,” Henry said.

“When you scrape back some of this history, you see people with real convictions and beliefs, and the kind of character to take a stand,” Regan said. “We want to make a statement. From my point of view, it’s communicating honestly about what took place.”

The mural, 30 feet wide and 25 feet high, will be painted on the back wall of Centralia Square Antique Mall. The mural group intends to commission Mike Alewitz, a New Jersey-based labor muralist.

Brian Dow, a member of Local 2127 of the Carpenters Union, is enthusiastic about the mural.

“What happened back in 1919 is somewhat overdue for being put out there,” Dow said. “It’s Centralia history. It’s not going to hurt anything, and it’s good when people talk about things.”

Copyright (c) 1997 Seattle Times Company, All Rights Reserved.

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.

www.breakthesilencearts.org

BTS works across movements- using culture to create alliances as well as perceptual ‘ruptures’ or ‘disturbances’ wherein people have the opportunity to see connections that they had not seen before, and to imagine new possibilities. BTS works in partnership with a wide range of organizations, from mental health programs in Gaza, to environmental organizations, to organizations providing material aid, to those organizing non-violent resistance. Our ultimate goal is to use culture as an organizing tool to bring people together across movements. Our cultural products are then used by activists and organizers in their work to touch and move people.

This mural, “Our Roots Are Still Alive” was painted by BTS upon returning from its inaugural trip to Palestine in 1989.  Each image in the mural contained a story.  One story is about the book the girl is reading under the tree.  It is by Ghassan Kanafani, whose books were banned by Israel in 1989.  Kanafani was assassinated in Lebanon on July 8, 1972.  Below you can see and hear writer and critic John Berger reading one of Kanafani’s short stories “Letter from Gaza.”

“Our Roots Are Still Alive” was located on 21st Street and Mission in San Francisco.  In 2000 after the second Intifada began this mural was increasingly attacked and the owner of mural the site threatened with bodily harm. The city refused to consider it a hate crime and so the mural was covered with panels of wood.  The plan and hope is to be able to uncover it in a future world.

VIDEO (note: Video takes about 10 seconds to load)

John Berger gives a moving reading of Ghassan Khanafani’s “Letter from Gaza”
In an address to the inaugural Palestine Festival of Literature (2008)

Film: Perry Ogden
Photographs: Stefano Massimo & Rula Halawani
Title Cards: Yves Berger

More videos at http://www.palfest.org/video.html

http://www.freepeltiernow.org/welcome.htm

Peltier audio

Leonard Peltier

An innocent man, Leonard Peltier was wrongfully convicted in 1977 and has served over 30 years in federal prison despite proof of his innocence�also despite proof that he was convicted on the basis of fabricated and suppressed evidence, as well as coerced testimony.

The United States Courts of Appeal have repeatedly acknowledged investigative and prosecutorial misconduct in this case but, by their decisions, have refused to take corrective action. A model prisoner, Leonard Peltier also has been denied fair consideration for parole and Executive Clemency. This is clearly an abuse of the legal standards of American justice.

INCIDENT AT OGLALA

IBDAA- To Make Something Out of Nothing

Image by Jos Sances, http://www.josart.net/

From  Wikipedia with additions:

The Ibdaa Cultural Center is a grassroots community-based project in the West Bank‘s Palestinian Dheisheh refugee camp. The name, “Ibdaa,” (ابداع) is translated from Arabic as “creation” or “creative ability” – “To Make Something Out of Nothing.” Since being founded in 1994, Ibdaa Cultural Center, with  long-time partner the Middle East Children’s Alliance, has served more than 1,200 children and youth annually and provides employment and income for more than 70 families in the refugee camp.

The mission of the Ibdaa Cultural Center is to create a positive atmosphere for children and youth in the refugee camp to assist them in developing competence, creativity and leadership skills through a range of social, cultural and educational activities.

The Ibdaa Cultura Center strives to empower children and instill the confidence and discipline necessary for them to overcime the obstacles of their difficult conditions while simultaneously educating the international community about the Palestinian refugee issue.

Ibdaa strives to empower the children, youth and women in Dheisheh camp, instilling in them confidence and strength while also educating the international community about Palestinian refugees.

Through art, dance, music, media, education, and sports, Ibdaa helps children and teenagers to share their experiences and dreams for the future with each other and with people around the world. Every activity at Ibdaa incorporates the values of democratic process and respect for human rights, providing a secular, humanist, and coeducational experience for Dheisheh’s children, youth, and women.

Ibdaa has become one of the most successful community organizations in Palestine, playing a vital role in the community’s survival and vitalization – particularly after the Intifada started – by organizing events, art projects, and emergency activities. Ibdaa’s extraordinary achievement is due to the successful integration of grassroots work in Dheisheh and the solidarity work in the international community. Ibdaa’s alliance with activists and organizations around the world goes beyond a traditional relationship based on financial support. Ibdaa has forged a strong relationship with its supporters in the areas of education and advocacy.

Ibdaa currently serves over 1,500 children, youth and women each year and provides income to 70 families in the Dheisheh camp through employment and income generation projects.

A thirty minute documentary released in 2002 and entitled “The Children of Ibdaa: To Create Something Out of Nothing” focuses on the Ibdaa Cultural Center’s children’s dance troupe. The children’s performance expresses the history, struggle, and aspirations of the Palestinian people, specifically the right to return to their homeland. http://www.cinesmith.net/children_ibdaa.htm

The documentary producer, S. Smith Patrick, interviews the dance troupe’s refugee camp children, ages 10 to 14, to explore the history of displacement from their villages in historical Palestine, the physical and emotional stress of life in a refugee camp, and how they mix politics and dance.

The video documents the dance troupe during their United States tour sponsored by Ibdaa’s long-time partner the Middle East Children’s Alliance, and in Dheisheh refugee camp. The video culminates in a visit by the children to their grandparents’ demolished villages from which they were expelled in 1948. The members of Ibdaa bring the Palestinian story to Western audiences through performance of the traditional debke dance, preserving Palestinian culture in a creative and non-violently method while addressing the brutal political reality of their lives in a refugee camp.

The film has won dozens of awards and been screened internationally.^[1]

The Children of IBDAA from Global Information Services on Vimeo.

The Children of IBDAA from Global Information Services on Vimeo.

http://www.shovrimshtika.org/index_e.asp

Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran Israeli soldiers that collects testimonies of soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories during the Second Intifadah. Soldiers who serve in the Territories are witness to, and participate in military actions which change them immensely. Cases of abuse towards Palestinians, looting, and destruction of property have been the norm for years, but are still excused as military necessities, or explained as extreme and unique cases. Our testimonies portray a different and grim picture of questionable orders in many areas regardind Palestinian civilians. These demonstrate the depth of corruption which is spreading in the Israeli military. While this reality which is known to Israeli soldiers and commanders exists in Israel’s back yard, Israeli society continues to turn a blind eye, and to deny that which happens in its name. Discharged soldiers who return to civilian life discover the gap between the reality which they encountered in the Territories , and the silence which they encounter at home. In order to become a civilian again, soldiers are forced to ignore their past experiences. Breaking the Silence voices the experiences of those soldiers, in order to force Israeli society to address the reality which it created.

Until today, Breaking the Silence interviewed hundreds of soldiers who served in the territories, and continues interviewing soldiers daily. These interviews are published on this website, in testimonial booklets, through different media outlets, and also through lectures and tours to Hebron. The testimonies are published with minimal editing and with complete confidentiality, in order to protect the soldiers and to encourage them to speak.

We demand accountability regarding Israel’s military actions in the Occupied territories perpetrated by us and in our name.

Participant information coming soon.

Participant information coming soon.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31315139@N03/?saved=1

Born in Gaza City in 1971, Plastic artist and free lance photographer
Basel is a painter, photographer and video artist. He attended in 2000, 2001 and 2003 the summer Academy of Arts of Darat al Funun-Khalid Shoman Foundation in Jordan, run by Syrian-German artist Marwan Qassab-Bashi; and completed an arts course at the Gaza City YMCA in 1995. In 2003 he was awarded the Charles Asprey Award for Palestinian artists, was short listed for the A.M. Qattan Foundation’s Artist of the Year Award, and spent one month art residency in Bangalore – India.  Magoussi participated in a number of local and international solo and group exhibitions, and teaches art at the Jabalya Rehabilitation Center for deaf and dome children. General observer for the games program of the UNRWA summer camps 2007.

Winner of the bronze price for the best photo from the Union of Arab photographers – Europe, Germany 2008  Maqousi is a founder of “Windows from Gaza for Contemporary Art”
www.artwfg.ps

http://artwfg.ps/cv.php?id_artist=2&op=index

The Hip Hop Crew DAM at a show at Baladna Association for Arab Youth, in Haifa, Israel.

DAM http://www.dampalestine.com/

http://www.myspace.com/damrap

Da Arabian MC’s Suhell Nafar, Tamer Nafar, Mahmoud Jreri DAM is the first and leading Palestinian Rap Group. It is composed of Tamer Nafar, 27, his younger brother Suhell, 23, and Mahmoud Jreri, 24. The group has been performing together since the late 90s. Tamer, who had been performing Rap since 1998 with his brother, was first contacted by Mahmoud Jreri. Mahmoud was writing his own lyrics so they quickly decided to join forces and the group was born in 1999. All three members of the group were born and grew up in the slums of Lod, a mixed town of Arabs and Jews, 20 km from Jerusalem.

DAM’s music is a unique fusion of East and West, combining Arabic percussion rhythms, Middle Eastern melodies and urban Hip Hop/Rap

The lyrics of DAM are influenced by the continuing Israeli – Palestinian conflict as well as by the Palestinian struggle for freedom and equality. DAM also draw their influence from such controversial issues as terrorism, drugs and womens rights.

Musically they take their inspiration from both Hip Hop artists (Nas, 2Pac, Mos Def, IAM, NTM, Saian Supa Crew, MBS etc.) and Arabic music (Marcel Khalifa,Kazem Saher,George Wassouf, Majda al Romi etc.)

Baladna Association for Arab Youth

http://www.momken.org/baladna/en/aboutus_en.php

From Baladna’s Website:
Who We Are:
Baladna, Association for Arab Youth, is a developmental and capacity building agency for Arab-Palestinian youth in Israel.

Baladna aspires to provide the ideas, resources, and practical tools for youth activism in the Arab community in Israel, at the same time offering Arab youth a non-partisan, comfortable forum in which to nurture individual and collective identity. We work to strengthen and enable Arab youth’s understanding and application of the principles of democracy and gender equality, pluralism and tolerance, in conjunction with discussion and debate concerning the history, grievances and culture of Palestinians in Israel, the Occupied Territories, and the Diaspora.

Baladna’s Achievements to date:

Asia Aamer is the daughter of Hani and Munira Aamer.  The Aamers are surrounded by the Occupation Wall or Apartheid Wall on four sides.  Break the Silence Mural Project, Anarchists Against the Wall, Black Laundry, Flowers Against the Occupation and the Women’s Peace Service worked with the Aamer family and painted this mural.  Asia is very interested in art and began attending art school in 2008. Asia was able to participate in the Olympia Rafah Solidarity Mural Project by sending a digital image, as travel is prohibitive due to expense and travel restrictions placed on Palestinians.

Click link below for essay/research article about the Aamer Family Mural called “Up Against the Wall”.  Funded in Part by the Palestine American Research Center.

Up_Against_the_Wall



The Ramallah based Mojat Fan (ArtWAVE) project, undertaken by a group of Palestinan artists from all over historic Palestine, celebrated a successful first workshop series and exhibition this week. A group of twenty emerging Palestinian artists gathered to forge connections, create collective work, and experiment with art as a context and form for communication across barriers. The group hosted a final street-art performance live simultaneously in Ramallah and Haifa, linked together by internet connection.

ArtWAVE was coordinated by Ayed Arafah of the International Academy of Art Palestine and Rosi Greenberg from Brown University. Ayed and Rosi developed the workshop based on their work with several organizations last summer and their assessment of what would benefit emerging artists in Palestine today. Unaffiliated with any one organization, the project was made possible through the generous support of the Art Academy, Brown, and many culture and arts organizations in Palestine (full list below).

The organizers aimed to create spaces for communication between Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and Palestinians living in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Organizers believe that art depends on the context in which the artist creates it, so it is crucial for Palestinian artists who share an identity to be able to exchange views on their environment and share in artistic production. “Instead of depending on America or Europe or Israel, we need to depend on each other as Palestinians,” said Ayed Arafah. “The idea of mojat fan isn’t politics–it’s art as resistance, art as a way of developing more understanding of identity and of the responsibility of artists in our society.” For many participants, ArtWAVE was a first experience working with Palestinians from the other side of the Green Line, as Israel’s formalized system of separation largely prohibits most contact.

Workshop Summary and Results:

Over the course the four-day workshop, emerging Palestinian artists (of a range of experiences and preferred medium, aged 17 to 35) from Acca, Bethlehem, Bet Hanina, Haifa, Hebron, Iqrit, Jenin, Jerusalem, Kufr Yassif, Nablus, Nazareth, and Ramallah came together at the Hallaj gallery of the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Arts.

On the first day of the workshop, participants shared in introductions, group-building, and discussions on the context and meaning of individual Palestinian identities in different areas. The group visited the Qattan Foundation, the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, and the Young Artists Forum to introduce the emerging artists to the range of orgnizations available in Ramallah and to forge connections between artists and organizations for possible mutual support in the future. In the evening, each participant presented his or her work to the group.

On the second day, the workshop began with individual participants’ presentations of their artwork, which was inspiring and appreciated by all. This was followed by a presentation by Alam Massad on his work and thoughts on the responsibility of the contemporary artist to bring the public into the world of art in more creative ways. Renowned artist Khaled Hourani followed, speaking about his work and the history of Palestinian art, as well as the importance of process rather than just product in artistic production. The participating artists worked together to conceptualize and design a series of windows which had been discarded in building construction but retrieved for this project. The artists then visited the Mahatta gallery for a short presentation and tour of the gallery’s latest exhibition.

The window designing project was aimed to be a momentary expression of the conversations on identity and separation at that point in the workshop. One piece consisted of two artists (one living in Deheishe refugee camp, originally from Qastina village, the other living in Haifa, originally from Iqrit village) sitting on either side of their window and speaking with one another as they painted on the glass, scraped the paint off, and finally opened the window together. Another pair placed their plain window on red-painted stones overlooked the rolling Palestinian hills, an expression of separation from place, violent events, and large-scale inaction. One artist painted both sides of her window with outlines of buildings, while another pair decided to place their empty window on a top floor of a building in construction. Another two artists tied up and painted their windows to express restrictions and barriers. One window broke halfway through the design process so the artists carefully taped the shards of glass together, leaving the window fragile and vulnerable, creaking as it broke further over the course of the day.

On the third day of the workshop, several new artists arrived from Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Acca while the majority of the ’48-based artists returned home to their work and other responsibilities. The new artists presented their work to the group and then the group began designing concepts for the final project (explained more below), assisted by Academy director Dr. Tina Sherwell. The group returned to the Mahatta gallery for a presentation by renowned artist Vera Tamari on the Birzeit University Virtual Gallery, which all said was a very helpful new resource for their work. Artists then participated in a discussion on the relationship of art to politics, prepared by Femke Nordink and Katerina Mrazkova, volunteers with the International Academy who will be curating an exhibition on the same topic in October.

On day four of the workshop, participants met with artist Rana Bishara for a presentation on the meaning and form, process and product of her artwork. Following the presentation, artists continued to plan for the final project and discussed ways to continue connections in the future.

Final Exhibition:

Participants decided that the final exhibition of the work would consist of a mural painted half at the Fattoush restaurant in Haifa and half at the Mahatta gallery in Ramallah, connected live over the internet to seem whole. In both locations simultaneously, artists painted their half of the mural as they were filmed and projected onto the wall in the other location. The piece created a window between Haifa and Ramallah, speaking about separation and connection and using art as a form of resistance against physical barriers.

Rather than design the mural before the event, the artists decided to invite friends and passers-by to a small coffee-cup of paint, with which they could add color to a blank canvas. The work began with one black line drawn from the middle of the canvas, half in paint and half virtually. Then all participating artist began painting with one another, the live and projected people blending with one another as the painting spread on the canvas. As they painted, artists remained in contact through skype and cell phone connections. In Ramallah, the painting turned out very full of color, whereas in Haifa there was more fragmentation, more white space at first. “Maybe they understand there more about their identity, they’re more sure and able to claim it, while we’re struggling to have a whole picture of ours,” said one participating artist in Haifa. “It doesn’t matter if they look exactly like the same mural. It speaks to the fragmentation.” The two halves of the painting will be sewn together and installed in an art gallery in Jerusalem.

Future Plans:

Participating artists have committed to maintaining connections with one another after the workshop and exhibition. A Facebook group, listserv and website are being created for ArtWAVE artists to be in communication with one another about future exhibitions and projects. A series of monthly workshops may also be planned to continue to bring together emerging artists from all over Palestine to develop their work together. The workshops took place in Ramallah due to the severe restrictions on movement imposed on Palestinians with West Bank ID cards, but the artists hope to find creative ways to move future workshops to other locations or use virtual connections.

Sponsors and Thanks:

The International Academy of Art Palestine generously sponsored ArtWAVE through donations of materials and gallery space. The project was also sponsored by the Brown University International Scholars Program and Creative Arts Council. Ayed and Rosi especially thank Khaled Hourani for his generosity in time, resources, and advice- this project would not have been possible without him.

On behalf of the entire ArtWAVE group, Ayed and Rosi would like to thank Khaled Hourani, Tina Sherwell, Alam Massad, Rana Bishara, Vera Tamari, Mahamad Saleh Khalil, Hamdan Bahboh, Iman Najem,  Hafez Omar, Misbah Deeb, Sahar al-Khateeb, Femke Nordink, Katerina Mrazkova, the Mahatta Gallery, the Art Gallery of Um El-Fahm, Baladna Association, Young Artists Forum, Qattan Foundation, Fattoush Restaurant, Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, International Academy of Art Palestine, Brown University, and all participating artists.

Artist from Rafah, Gaza Strip.  Member of Palestine Artists’ Union, Rafah Branch.

http://www.awalls.org/

History and Articles:

anarwall Booklet_EN

About AATW

Who We Are

Anarchists Against the Wall (AATW) is a direct action group that was established in 2003 in response to the construction of the wall Israel is building on Palestinian land in the Occupied West Bank. The group works in cooperation with Palestinians in a joint popular struggle against the occupation.

Since its formation, the group has participated in hundreds of demonstrations and direct actions against the wall specifically, and the occupation generally, all over the West Bank. All of AATW’s work in Palestine is coordinated through villages’ local popular committees and is essentially Palestinian led.

Why We Resist

It is the duty of Israeli citizens to resist immoral policies and actions carried out in our name. We believe that it is possible to do more than demonstrate inside Israel or participate in humanitarian relief actions. Israeli apartheid and occupation isn’t going to end by itself – it will end when it becomes ungovernable and unmanageable. It is time to physically oppose the bulldozers, the army and the occupation.

A Brief History

In April 2003, three years into the Second Intifada, a small group of mostly anarchist Israeli activists, already doing various political work in the Occupied Territories formed Anarchists Against the Wall. The group was established around the formation of a protest tent in the village of Mas’ha, where the wall was nearing and would leave 96% of the village’s land on the “Israeli” side.

The camp, formed by Palestinian, Israeli and international activists was composed of two tents on the village’s land which was slated for confiscation. A constant presence of Palestinian, Israelis and internationals remained for four months. During which, the camp became a center for information dissemination and a base for direct-democracy decision-making. A number of wall related direct actions were planned and prepared at the camp – such as the July 28, 2003 direct action in the Village of Anin. In that action Palestinians, international and Israeli activists managed to force open a gate in the wall in spite of being attacked by the army (See Haaretz article ).

Late in August of 2003, with the wall around Mas’ha nearly completed, the camp moved to the yard of a house in which was slated for demolition. Following two days of blocking the bulldozers and mass arrests, the yard was demolished and the camp ended, but the spirit of resistance it symbolized was not demolished.

In 2004, the village of Budrus began its struggles against the wall and AATW joined their daily demonstrations. Through its persistence in community mobilization, struggle and popular resistance, the village of Budrus was able to achieve significant victories.

Without appealing to the Israeli courts, utilizing only popular resistance, the village succeeded to push the path of wall almost completely off its land.

Budrus’ success inspired many other villages to build a popular resistance, which is perhaps an even greater success. For a good part of the year, almost every village to which the construction of the wall reached rose up against it. AATW joined every village that called for its participation.

More recently our actions have been centered in and around the village of Bil’in, northwest of Ramallah, where most of the village’s agricultural land is to be effectively confiscated by the wall and an expanding settlement.

Our Role in the Struggle

The mere presence of Israelis at Palestinian civilian actions offers some degree of protection for against army violence.

The Israeli army’s code of conduct is significantly different when Israelis are present and violence, while still severe, is significantly lower. Even though many Israeli activists have been wounded at the demonstrations, some of them seriously, it is the Palestinians who have paid the highest toll. To date, 18 Palestinian demonstrators have been killed in demonstrations against the wall and thousands have been wounded.

The army and the Israeli government try to put an end to Palestinian popular resistance using every form of repression, and to prevent Israeli activists from joining this struggle. Under the occupation’s law it is possible to indict people for simply participating in a demonstration. In the course of the last several years, AATW activists have been arrested hundreds of times and dozens of indictments were filed against them.

The legal repression by the Israeli authorities is just another front for the Israeli authorities to try and crack down on resistance.

In order to keep activists out of jail and continue the struggle, AATW is now faced with mounting legal expenses for its defense in the Israeli court. The cost for legal representation has exceeded US$60,000 and is constantly rising.

Funding

AATW does not receive funding from any state, government or association. We rely on donations from people all over the world that would like to see us continue to support the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

Photo by Mats Svensson

http://www.swedishwire.com/opinion/4719-israel-is-guilty-of-colonialism-and-apartheid

‘Israel is guilty of colonialism and apartheid’

FROM Counterpunch

http://www.counterpunch.org/svensson04152008.html

Apri1 15, 2008

To Create Something from Nothing

The Making of a Palestinian State

By MATS SVENSSON

Mavivi comes from South Africa and is for the first time in Gaza to speak with women’s organisations, students, civil servants and political fractions. For 18 years she was part of the struggle against apartheid.

There are those who never understand despite having seen everything and having access to all knowledge. And there are those who only need a few hours to understand. Mavivi belongs to the second category.

I saw when Mavivi cried for the first time. Mavivi had then been in Gaza for less than 24 hours. During a day, she had spoken to 30 representatives from several women’s organisations. She stands outside the hotel and looks out over the Mediterranean when she spontaneously exclaims, “South Africa was a picnic compared to the situation here.”

24 hours later, she cries openly for the second time. She has spoken with doctors, architects, teachers, everyone who tries to create a tolerable situation for the masses inhabiting the Gaza Strip. Again she compares South Africa with Israel/Palestine–”apartheid was stupidity, but here one has sophisticated the stupidity.”

But it is when she cannot keep her tears back for the third time that many should have had the opportunity to listen to her. She stands and leans against the wall in Abu Dis. Presses on it as if she would like to tear it down. The wall that soon will shut out 29,500 people from Jerusalem forever. She says, “Someone has taken the cheese (Palestine) and left the holes (Ramallah, Hebron, Gaza, Nablus, Jenin, Bethlehem, Qalqiliya), but the holes are empty and someone thinks that one can create something out of nothing. Who believes that?”

Mavivi spoke about creating something out of nothing, from a few scattered, empty holes something grand shall be established. Mavivi needed five days to understand and make statements that should touch us all. Mavivi speaks about empty holes, holes that have been enclosed with high walls inside of which one keeps people using the most sophisticated supervision systems. To her, the despised South African “homelands” appeared like small paradises.

Mavivi was on the Gaza Strip three years ago in December. That was before the Israeli settlers had left Gaza, before one had carried out a free and fair election in Palestine. Since then, it has become worse for most people.

* There are today 149 settlements with 450,000 settlers on occupied territory, 30,000 more than when the settlers left Gaza.

* The world has rejected the democratically held election. Palestinians did not understand that one should have voted for the ones that one wanted to get rid of.

* The wall is longer than three years ago and has dug deeper into occupied territory.

And today we are on our way to create something out of nothing.

We work with and support nation building. Each diplomatic actor with self-respect begins work with the same blind enthusiasm. The kind of job that builds on very much belief and some good judgment. As a Nordic diplomat said a little while ago, “I have to believe this, it is my job.”

While the international community with the most educated civil servants works to realise the dream of supporting the creation of a state built out of nothing, without borders and people crammed into ghetto-like environments without Palestinian de facto control, territory after territory disappears and ends up on the wrong side of the wall. Ma’ale Adumim, a settlement with 28 000 settlers, may be the most obvious one. It is the settlement that all diplomats in Jerusalem with some interest of the surroundings outside the work place cannot miss.

Each weekend, diplomatic plated cars pass by the gigantic settlement on the way down to the Dead Sea. The wall is being built at a furious speed while we rub our skin with the soft, black mud and let the mud dry in the strong sunlight, the skin stings slightly but pleasantly. I swim together with settlers from Ma’ale Adumim and later tell Muhammed in Abu Dis how it feels to float around in the Dead Sea. It is a long time ago since he was able to be there. When I return a few hours later, the wall has become somewhat longer. Ma’ale Adumim, which previously did not exist in our modern history, is soon completed. People live there with access to water, swimming pools, olive groves outside the window, schools, clinics and perhaps most importantly–access to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv just 60 minutes away. Many live in Ma’ale Adumim and work in Tel Aviv. It is cheaper that way, because the land is free.

If you stand in Ma’ale Adumim and look south, you see Abu Dis which is soon completely enclosed on three sides–a densely populated suburb to Jerusalem with open fields down towards the Dead Sea. Now almost everything is gone, gone forever. The wall will surround Abu Dis on three sides. Ma’ale Adumim and the wall around Abu Dis are establishing new facts on the ground.

Most people who have some insight of these facts seem to think that it is very wrong. The UN, other international as well as Israeli and Palestinian organisations seeking peace, each week take large numbers of visitors into the present Mavivis apartheid. The guides tell engaging stories and the visitor reacts with strong feelings, similar to Notre Dame in Paris or the pyramids in Cairo. Reacting to the grandiose lunacy.

We know it all. We have seen it all. The whole international collective is horrified. We wonder how it is possible. Young and old from different political alignments and religious groupings experience the same thing, feel the same powerlessness before the historical course of events.

Are we all part of a new faith movement. A belief that we can create something out of nothing. Turn water into wine. That one can shut one’s eyes from reality, that one can pass by Ma’ale Adumim as if it never happened and that all of the people in Abu Dis who recently had access to a normal life with basic rights, now shall be satisfied with nothing. As long as one gets a state. Mavivi from South Africa would probably call this religious fanaticism.

A humble question to the international community is in what way the good intention of international development cooperation’s concentration on nation-building will help the people in Abu Dis?

Mats Svensson, a former Swedish diplomat working on the staff of SIDA, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, is presently following the ongoing occupation of Palestine.

Ibrahim Burnat of Bethlehem, Palestine

Detail of installation

What you view in the clouds are the clouds
To find yourself in the view of some pigeons
I hold still over my homeland.

http://www.gcmhp.net/

OUR VISION

A Palestinian society that respects human rights and in which people live in dignity, free of oppression, and feel that their well- being is promoted.

OUR MISSION

To develop GCMHP as knowledge- based institution to enhance the capacity of the community in dealing with mental health problems based on the principles of justice, humanity, and respect for human rights.

OUR STRATEGY

To develop the mental well- being of Palestinian community through working with three major target groups: children, women, and victims of organized violence and torture.

The main objective s of GCMHP are to:

• Empower vulnerable groups in the society, especially women, children and torture survivors.
• Develop loc al human resources through mental health training programs.
• Provide humane and high quality community- based mental health services.
• Promote principles of democracy and human rights in the Palest inian society.
• Combat the stigma attached to mental illness in the Palestinian society.

Familiarize the international community with the conditions of Palestinians to gain support and solidarity as well as respect f or human rights in Palestine in order to enhance mental health of Palestinians.

A Jordanian_Palestinian photojournalist & reporter based in Gaza strip\Palestine,Covering the Palestine and Israel since 2006 to date

http://www.lightstalkers.org/eman-mohammed

http://www.machsomwatch.org/en

MachsomWatch, in existence since 2001, is an organisation of peace activist Israeli women against the Israeli Occupation of the territories and the systematic repression of the Palestinian nation. We call for Palestinian freedom of movement within their own territory and for an end to the Occupation that destroys Palestinian society and inflicts grievous harm on Israeli society.

www.newprofile.org

http://coalitionofwomen.org/home/english/organizations/new_profile

http://www.shministim.com/

Right Side of Leaf Image: Drawing: “Born Soldier”  by Itzik Rennert.

Left Side of Leaf Image: Photograph: “Towards Tomorrow” by A. Ettinger.

New Profile is a young and visible organization, the outgrowth of our belief that there is a need to question the deep-seated influence of militarism on Israeli society. The movement, comprised of feminist women, men and youth, is a volunteer grassroots organization. Our name, New Profile, reflects the long-range aim of our organization: to change the Profile of Israeli society from a militarized society of war and might, to an actively peacemaking community in which the rights of all its citizens are protected and promoted equally, and the human rights of all people residing inside and outside Israeli borders are respected.

New Profile is the first political movement in Israel to identify de-militarization as a top priority. We have set before ourselves several goals. We focus on de-militarizing education. We do ongoing advocacy promoting demilitarization through lectures, the media, and conferences and other events. We support the right to resist the draft, conscientious objection and refusal to serve in the Occupied Territories for all men and women. We work with women whose lives have been damaged by militarization, such as victims of sexual harassment in the military, or of exploitation by the Ministry of Defense.

Rigo 23 has exhibited his work internationally for over 20 years, placing murals, paintings, sculptures, and tile work in public situations where viewers are encouraged to examine their relationship to their community, their role as unwitting advocates of public policy or their place on a planet occupied by many other living things. Rigo 23’s works live both as artworks and as thoughtful public interventions.

He has created installations for the Lyon Biennale and the Shenzhen/Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture. His sculpture of Tommie Smith and John Carlos was installed on the campus of San Jose State University in 2005.

http://www.gallerypauleanglim.com/Gallery_Paule_Anglim/Rigo_23.html

Tommie Smith/John Carlos sculpture to be unveiled at SJSU on Oct. 17, 2005

“Magav in Weimar” Israeli border police parked in front of the German national theatre and the statue of Goethe and Schiller.  January 2008

http://ronen.dvarim.com/

Art and Activism in Israel: An Interview with Ronen Eidelman

http://inicios.es/2008/10/28/art-and-activism-in-israel-an-interview-with-ronen-eidelman/

P.M.: Your blog’s name is Medinat Weimar, which is also a project you’ve been working on for a long time and that this year has been finally launched: a (movement for) new Jewish state in Germany. It sounds to me like a big caricature of the situation.

R. E.: In Medinat Weimar I’m both completely serious and at the same time don’t really mean what I’m saying. This is the great freedom of creating a political movement as an art project. The questions and issues that the project rises (Antisemitism, Zionism, the nation state today, etc.) are very serious and need to be discussed, but we need to find new ways to approach these topics.

P.M.: I like very much one cite from your article “Israeli Art and the state of exception” where you say: “Art is the most radical of spaces, a place where the rule of law is suspended”. Maybe that’s the reason why it can be used to show these problems from a new perspective? Do you really think the rule of law is suspended in contemporary art?

R.M.: Something I wrote for the Medinat Weimar site:

Political acts are tolerated more if they are executed under the autonomy of art. Art is very confusing for the authorities and therefore it is left alone. If you are out on the street and would decide for example to burn a trash can, and would stand around and then the police would come and say: “What are you doing?” and you would say: “Oh we are artists, we are doing art, and this is a metaphor for blah blah…” Then the police would probably say: “Oh, you should ask for permission”. And you would you start some negotiation and it probably would be okay, maybe you might have to pay a fine, but, there would be no violent interaction or conflict taking place. Yet, if you were to be doing exactly the same act and the police would ask you: “What are you doing?” and you would just say: “Oh we are demonstrating against blah blah…” You would probably be arrested on the spot and there would maybe even be violence involved. It just shows that art has this autonomy and its place in the structure of these liberal democracies we live in. It’s an understood agreement that we need artists, that we need these crazy people, but then they should stay in their autonomies together, in their galleries and their museums and within their own discussions, and with their own journals.

The artists can do whatever they want and they can be as radical as they like, talking about post-Marxist revolution, or whatever they wish to talk about. We even give them funds, because it’s really good, because then we know where they all are. But as soon as the artists start walking out of the ghetto and say: “Oh no we are not happy in our ghetto, we want to go out and we want to touch society”, then the authorities would say: “You could do it on our terms and we will give you a nice allowance and then you could go to the migrant’s neighborhoods, where you can do a nice project and we might even give you a nice feature on TV” that says: “Look, there is some nice public art, look at these cute students from all over the world”, and then you have to do it on their terms. But what happens if one says: “No, we want to do it on our terms, we really want to touch society, we want art to touch life, and we don’t want it to be a separated autonomic thing”, then it turns into a political act and you’ll be repressed.

http://www.qattanfoundation.org/qcc/en/index.asp

Most of Gaza ’s children face extremely arduous and difficult circumstances that severely affect their daily lives, and often prevent them from pursuing any meaningful process of individual self-development. On a piece of land generously contributed by the city’s municipality, the Foundation thus began building the Qattan Centre for the Child in Gaza City, an independent children’s library and information centre aimed at improving the cultural, social, educational, recreational and psychological environment for a large section of the Gaza Strip’s child population, without social, physical, religious, sexual or racial discrimination.

The Centre aims to achieve its goals through a first-class library and information service for children up to the age of 15, as well as to their parents, carers and teachers.

Bil’in is a Palestinian village that is struggling to exist. It is fighting to safeguard its land, its olive trees, its resources… its liberty.

http://www.bilin-village.org/english/

“Bil’in Habibti” is a documentary by Shai Pollack that documents Bi’lin’s nonviolent struggle against the Israeli occupation and the building of the wall which has cost the village much land, resources and lives.

http://www.claudiusfilms.com/

Photo: Lisa Nessan http://freckle.blogs.com/

BUSBOYS AND POETS in Washington, DC hosted a March 6 screening of “Bil’in Habibti” (“Bil’in, My Love”), a full-length documentary about the nonviolent struggle in the West Bank village of Bil’in against construction of the Israeli separation wall. The event was sponsored by Interfaith Peace-Builders, Nonviolence International and the American University Council on Middle East Studies.

“One thing we tend not to hear about is the widespread efforts of nonviolent resistance in Palestine,” noted American University Professor Joseph Groves. “There’s a question I commonly hear, and that is ‘Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?’ My response? They’re everywhere. Two of them are here tonight.”

Groves introduced Shai Pollack, the film’s Israeli writer and director, and Mansour Mansour, a Palestinian who came to Bil’in as a nonviolence coordinator and trainer, as “an Israeli and a Palestinian Gandhi.” Briefly explaining the film, Mansour said, “This is how we live and how we practice our normal lives, but the core of the movie talks about the nonviolent resistance in Bil’in.”

The film opens in early 2005 to the scream of a chainsaw as Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers cut the branches of olive trees. The owner of the grove, a Palestinian man later identified as Wagee, rushes over, shouting, “Why? Why the olive trees?” The trees have been in his family for literally hundreds of years and remain one of the few sources of income left for his family. The IDF soldiers ignore Wagee’s cries and forcibly contain him and his family inside their home, where they watch through the iron bars of their windows as their orchard is destroyed.

This destruction was declared necessary by the IDF to make space for the West Bank separation wall. Bil’in is located four kilometers (2.4 miles) east of the 1967 internationally recognized border between Israel and Palestine. According to “Bil’in Habibti,” however, even though “the International Court in The Hague declared the barrier route illegal, the government goes on building, claiming the route is only temporary and when peace comes the barrier will be removed. In fact the government fills the annexed area with new settlements and creates an irreversible situation.”

About half of Bil’in’s land was lost in this “security” land grab, after which Israeli developers immediately began constructing government-subsidized high-rise apartments in a new neighborhood of the West Bank settlement called Mattiyahu East. The village of Bil’in fell victim to a confluence of economic, political, strategic and religious goals.

And so the men, women and children of Bil’in organized. The Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall directed the grassroots resistance that held weekly peaceful protests against the wall’s construction. Pollack, a member of several Israeli activist groups, was an ever-present figure, camera in hand, tracking the development of the nonviolent protests.

His film presents the people of Bil’in as thoughtful and passionate objectors to the new wall and the arbitrary punishments inflicted by the IDF. Side by side with Israeli and international activists, the people of Bil’in used creative tactics of civil disobedience by crossing the arbitrary “no pass zones,” attempting to dismantle the illegal barrier, chaining themselves to trees to stop the bulldozers, and even erecting their own fence.

The protests invariably were met with harsh tactics: tear gas, rubber bullets, sound bombs, beatings and arrests. In a nonviolent campaign, however, such a response is expected. Explained one young protester from Bil’in, “You aim to get hit so the whole world will see you are hit. When it is your nonviolence against their violence, you win.”

The protests gained national and international media attention. Bil’in was even featured in an Israeli Channel 1 news report that was critical of the IDF’s handling of the situation and the emerging details about the suspicious real estate development in the neighboring Israeli settlement.

After a year of protests, “Bil’in Habibti” ends with no resolution. Even as the campaign goes on, the wall is almost complete, the village’s legal case is tied up in Israeli courts and there is no guarantee that the struggle of the villagers of Bil’in will afford them any justice or measure of peace.

Following the film Pollack described the post-film developments. In a hard-fought legal battle, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled the separation wall was unnecessary for security reasons and the route must move one kilometer to the west, returning half of Bil’in’s confiscated lands. However, even though the real estate developments in Mattiyahu East were found to be constructed without building permits from the Israeli government, they were allowed to stand because settlers were already occupying some of the buildings.

It has been a painful, long-term campaign to reclaim half of what had been stolen, Pollack said. And yet, compared to the tens of villages enduring the same struggles which rarely receive coverage in the media, he noted, the events of Bil’in are a success. The community has pledged to continue the campaign, but for now the taste of success is bittersweet—for in Palestine, even victory comes with loss.

http://www.aidsrilanka.info/wst_page6.html

The Butterfly Peace Garden

Since 1996 the Garden has provided a sanctuary in the Batticaloa war zone. Recognized worldwide, it is a unique counseling and recreation center that provides psychological support to children traumatized by war.

Most of the children who come to the center suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety. Many of these same children are missing limbs due to encounters with land mines. The counselors or “animators” at the garden offer children emotional healing, ethnic reconciliation with other children, and peace, probably for the first time in their young lives.

For additional information about The Butterfly Peace Garden visit: http://thestupidschool.ca/bpg/index.htm

The Butterfly Peace Garden (BPG) is a non-governmental organization established in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka in 1996. Since that time the BPG has provided counseling and support to children traumatized by civil conflict in the region. In late 2004 the BPG also became a centre for helping victims of the tsunami which devastated the Batticaloa area. The BPG and its staff have been supported by a variety of local and international agencies and charities, including the governments of Canada and the Netherlands, WarChild International and Ashoka International, which named BPG co-founder Paul Hogan a fellow in 2003.

Children are brought to the BPG each day from surrounding villages in groups that are mixed with respect to gender and ethnicity (e.g. children from Tamil and Muslim villages). A typical program cycle runs one day a week for nine months and involves activities drawn from a range of visual, dramatic and musical arts. Activities are conducted by adult animators skilled in one or more artistic discipline, who have in many cases experienced psychological wounds similar to those of the children who come to the BPG. The BPG has for several years served as a model for innovative and effective programs for war-affected children, families and communities.

By Andrew Ford Lyons

You’re watching your kid play soccer. It’s a chilly weekend morning and you may be upset at the lost sleep involved in getting up and getting him there. The grass is green and the net, goal posts, striping are new and unscarred from previous play; their maintenance secured through a school district budget that generally passes grudging voter approval every two years. You see the mix of parents, some of them groggy, some of them slightly too excited by the impending competition. And it’s all incredibly normal.

What if the infrastructure for everything in the above scenario simply didn’t exist? What if there wasn’t a dew-covered green field behind the local elementary school that was open to all for community activities, funded by tax payers and maintained by salaried groundskeepers? What would it take for that scene to play out in in a refugee community in the Southern border town of Rafah, Gaza?

Avid soccer fans pose for photo during a game in Gaza. (John Harvey)

http://www.gazalife.org/Ramadan_Tournament/Home.html

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=122114859440&v=wall

Every year, community members in the Yebna neighborhood of Rafah find out. Amid the ongoing brutal siege and blockade conducted by the Israeli occupation forces and the often violent struggle between internal political factions comes the third annual Ramadan Soccer Tournament, organised by the Rachel Corrie Sports Initiative in Rafah.

It isn’t easy. People in this community are still reeling from a savage December 2008 military assault. They are part of a captive population of 1.5 million people who face a grim and grinding daily fight to prevent social collapse and cultural extinction. The soccer pitch is not grass. It’s on packed, dry, tan earth. The temperatures can be somewhat hotter than what some of the soccer parents you know might be comfortable with. And matches can potentially be called off on account of curfews or air attack as opposed to foul weather. Throwing a soccer tournament in the midst of these conditions becomes itself an act of resistance against forces both from the outside and inside that work to divide and crush. The demand for some amount of normalcy itself becomes revolutionary.

“Our playground, called the ‘Unity Youth’ playground, is not the only one in the area,” says Adnan Abu Sa’ud, co-founder of the Rachel Corrie Sports Initiative. “But what makes it distinct other than its location [near the Egyptian border where Israeli bulldozers had flattened neighborhoods of homes and effectively tried to maintain as a no-man's land] is that young people from different political colors come almost every day not to talk about politics but to practice sport with each other. Other playgrounds attract only those who are affiliated to a certain political line. As a matter of fact the daily activities as well as the annual tournament manifests a social and sportsmanship bond, so to speak, amongst the people of our community.”

Each year, a vital international community raises funds to keep the Ramadan Soccer Tournament going and to make the soccer field available year-round. From London’s Friends of Yibna sister-city project to  the Rachel Corrie Foundation in the US to neighborhood soccer clubs and individual donors around the world, supporters are reaching out to make the tournament a reality.

The Rachel Corrie Foundation, a 501(c)3 charitable organization, acts as the sponsor through which donations can be sent either online or by mail, and the money raised to fund the tournament is spent in Gaza with the oversight of a Patriot Act–approved NGO, the Union of Health Work Committees.

Tournament and sports initiative co-founders Khaled Nasrallah and Adan Abu Al Sa’ud chose to name the event after their friend Rachel Corrie, the Olympia human rights activist with the International Solidarity Movement who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah in 2003. “Rachel came among us and joined us in our struggle for justice as Palestinians,” Khaled said. “She did not think in terms of this faction or that faction. In the spirit of Rachel Corrie we hope to provide more than an event, but also a place for all the people of Rafah, regardless of faction. This tournament will provide a place for all community members–especially the heavily affected youth population in Rafah–to participate as Palestinians. It is truly a place to re-establish community.”

The culture of resistance in Palestine is what can make even the ordinary revolutionary. In Gaza no matter the destruction visited upon them, the people continue to survive and rebuild to the best of their abilities. Fortunately, this ordinary soccer tournament provides an extraordinary way for us outside Gaza to help.

To find out more about the Rachel Corrie Ramadan Soccer Tournament, visit www.gazalife.org.

Suliman Mansour is one of the leading Palestinian artists. Born in the Palestinian village of Beir Zeit in 1947, Mansour is a co-founder of the Wasiti Art Center in Jerusalem (Now director of the Center). He is also a member of the “New Vision” artist group, which focuses on the use of local material in artwork. Mansour is a cartoonist, art instructor, and author of two books on Palestinian folklore. He won the ‘Nile award’ at the 1998 Cairo Biennial for his series of clay panels “I am Ismail”, and the Palestine Prize for the Visual arts in 1998.

His first one artist show opened in Ramalla, Palestine, during the  Intifada in 1981 at Gallery79.   It only lasted four hours when suddenly the Israeli army closed both the show and the Gallery and later made it illegal to use red, green, white, and black – the colors of the Palestinian flag.

Suleiman Mansour  creates “emblems of decay” that are “dry, cracked and distorted,” reminding us of dispersion, waste, pain and death. Ismael, son of Abraham and Hagar, the subject of his masterpiece, is the revered ancestor of the Arab people. Below the figures on a broken slab are roses symbolic of the martyrs killed during the current uprising in defense of their homes.

http://www.artwfg.ps/artist.php?class_id=1&id_artist=1

Windows From Gaza For Contemporary art

We are a group of young plastic artists who connect through mutual ideas, one geographical entity and a constant love of art. And because we believe in team work, and mutual thinking to develop the creative movement of plastic arts,  we always thrive to discover and explore the new and modern aspects of it to figure out how to use it to serve our ambition and talent. We try to do that through constant meetings, holding art affairs, exhibitions and galleries both locally and internationally, and workshops through which we communicate and present our thoughts.

We had many contributions locally and internationally so each one of us has his/her own unique and original vision which reflects our mutual culture, artistic understanding, and persistent attempts to communicate who we are and what we do to  The Other.

WHY?

The place narrows to smother us. The ideas crowd in our minds, and we try to think together: how can we express our reality? “Windows From Gaza ” is our window of self-expression through which we  portray the images we see in this narrow place “Gaza” using  the universal language of art .

Siege and closure are a great daily suffering for people in Gaza which lead to complete paralysis in all life aspects, and definitely the cultural and artistic life has also been damaged as a result to this persistent suffocating situation.

Young artists in Gaza suffer from lack of art supplies, shortage of sponsoring institutions, as well as the deteriorated economics  affecting the society as a whole, especially that they need to purchase highly expensive art supplies.

These factors among others, made us as a group think seriously of looking for support to train young and professional artist and enhance their performance through “founding the first digital studio in Palestine” which we can publish all over the world to help the Palestinian artist put forward his/ her ideas and artistical vision, to give them the chance to get out of today’s hard reality and support them to face the siege wall imposed upon Gaza by letting the world hear our voice though artistic activities locally, nationally and internationally.

The Studio

The idea of “studio” comes to contribute to developing and trimming the artists’ performance in order to produce modern artistic works such as: video art, digital photography and constructive works, by conducting workshops to train them and enhance their performance technically and artfully, hosting well known artists to share their experiences and knowledge of modern Palestinian plastic arts movement. So this studio be a lasting assembly for local artists which enriches the communication and interaction among them.

The “studio” also aims to exhibit the experiences and products of artists to local audience, artists and the culture movement and the Arabic and international audiences through cooperation with several artistic Arab and international institutions.

Objectives of “the studio”:

1. To train, enhance and develop the performance of young and professional artists in visual modern arts.
2. To build a solid relationship between the young artists and the local, national and international societies.
3. To contribute into bringing up a generation of young artists who are interested in practicing and developing  a profession of modern arts.
4. To preserve the Palestinian artistic identity and enhance it with a modern impression.
5. To found the first digital studio that specializes in modern visual arts in Palestine.

Participant information coming soon.

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.

Gaza artist, survivor finds power in paint
Eman Mohammed, The Electronic Intifada, Aug 3, 2009

Palestinian artist Ziad Deeb next to an image that he made of his family members killed during Israel’s attacks on Gaza last winter. (Eman Mohammed)

From the entrance of the house, one can observe the whole tragedy. On 6 January 2009, an Israeli artillery shell landed in the front yard of the Deeb family home in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. A large, wide hole in the ground and two missing walls are all that remain. Sitting in his wheelchair in the corner, Ziad, 22, is the last survivor of the Deeb family. He lost both legs during the attack, and 10 relatives were killed including his father, grandmother, brothers, nieces and nephews.

Ziad choose a different and unlikely way to mourn. He was a graduate of Gaza’s College of Fine Arts when Israel’s winter invasion began. When it was over, he started drawing — on wood, on the walls of the city streets, in front of destroyed government buildings, and public squares.

Ziad explained that his art is “the best way I can express myself.” He added that, “It took me only seconds to look around and see my family members drowning in their own blood. I didn’t hear the explosion, it was only a loud whistling sound, and dark smoke blocked my vision. But I could smell the strong odor of blood and when I tried to move myself I saw my legs ripped apart. Then the smoke became less and I saw everyone around me was dead and I thought I was too.”

Ziad says that memories of the massacre inspire him “to keep painting more and more, I believe this is the only thing that can’t be taken away from me and my disability can’t be an obstacle.” He adds that “as weird as it might sound, this ugly memory urges me to go further with my arts. If I can’t be heard, my paintings can be seen. I draw for peace, now that’s how much I believe in the power of colors, paintbrushes and art itself.”

Mohammed Deeb, 33, Ziad’s uncle was only few meters away when the attack occurred. Ziad now lives with his uncle who helps him to move around and tries to help him live something like a normal life. Mohammed expressed his admiration of his nephew’s courage stating that, “He survived a catastrophe. I have no idea how he got this strength, but I do believe God gave him patience and creativity to overcome such a difficult ordeal. His art is unique in Gaza.” He added with teary eyes that, “He is special, there is no doubt about that.”

In spite of the tragedy, Ziad still enjoys spending time with his friends and playing the oud and other musical instruments. As his uncle explains, “they took his family’s life but they couldn’t take the life out of him.”

Ziad showed his excitement for new art projects and exhibitions he is planning to participate in by starting new techniques of wood-based carvings copied from paper paintings in color and black and white. He explained that “I have dreams to pursue, if not for myself, then for the memory of my family. They are in a better place, I just know this for a fact. Losing them caused me wounds that can never heal but I won’t allow the sadness to defeat me. In the end that’s what it takes to make great art, to never be defeated.”

Eman Mohammed is a Jordanian-Palestinian freelance photojournalist and reporter based in the Gaza Strip since 2005.

Rana Bishara was born in Tarsheha, the Galilee in 1971. After her BA in painting, women’s studies and philosophy at Haifa University, she received her MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, USA.

Rana Bishara’s body of work includes sculpture, installation, and performance art. Her artwork deals with issues such as the Palestinian Nakba, the Israeli occupation and a sustained critique of bias in the Western media’s depiction of the Palestinian struggle for liberation. She teaches visual art at the Honors College.

She has exhibited in the Middle East, Europe and the USA. Her work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Fine Arts and Darat Al Funun in Amman, Jordan; and the Art/Omi International Arts Centre, New York. She lives and works in Jerusalem.

Wishah is a dance group working towards presenting shows based on the artistic inheritance of music and songs of both  Arab and Palestinian dimensions.  Established in 2003 upon and initiative of Mohammad Ata and a group of enthusiastic amateur dancers who worked diligently to present dance in a new artistic frame (www.wishahtroupe.com)

Wishah holds  the belief that dance is a form of spiritual and cultural education.  The  group seeks to preserve and enrich the cultural legacy as well as the beauty of life in Palestine.
In the past six years，the troupe has toured 45  times in other parts of the world performing
for over 30,000 audience members.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11658356@N07/1157631737/

Vera Tamari was born in Jerusalem in 1945. She studied fine arts in Beirut, ceramics in Florence, and completed her M.Phil in Islamic Art and Architecture in Oxford University. Since 1974 she has participated locally and internationally in shows with the League of Palestinian Artists, of which she is a member. She also participated in a number of group exhibits in Jordan, Stockholm, Sharjah (Biennial ’99) and the United States, where Tamari participated in “Forces of Change: Women Artists from the Arab world” exhibit in the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C. in 1994. Solo exhibits include Palestine (at the Sakakini in 2000) and Jordan. Tamari is also a founding member of the “New Vision” artists group, which was established during the first Intifada, and of the Wasiti Art Center in Jerusalem. She is also a member of the Sakakini General Assembly. Tamari is currently a lecturer on Islamic Art and Architecture at Birzeit University.

http://www.art.net/~samia/pal/palart/vera/vera.html

www.bogsideartists.com

Tom Kelly, his brother William, and Kevin Hasson are the three men who created and painted all of the twelve murals that form the internationally acclaimed
The People’s Gallery® Their artwork represents the Bogside, its history, its spirit and its people; and many thousands of people come to Derry each year to hear the history of the ‘troubles’ and to see the celebrated street of murals in the Bogside. Painted from photographic material these are the most authentic renditions possible of the events depicted and acclaimed by many critics and writers as “art of the highest order”.
The murals of The People’s Gallery stretch in a line the entire length of Rossville Street in the Bogside area of Derry that experienced the worst of the troubles throughout the long conflict. Their unique gallery of murals was envisioned and created by the three men universally acclaimed as The Bogside Artists. As their spokesman Tom explains; “A  wound must be cleaned out and examined before it will heal. It is the unexamined wound that festers and finally poisons. Our work shows the wounds.” (words from Bishop Desmond Tutu) This determination to tell their own story is what drives Tom, Kevin and William. They bear living witness to a prolonged period of social conflict that will be remembered always.

www.whoprofits.org

The Occupation Industry Research Project

This database reflects an on-going grassroots investigation effort by activists in The Coalition of Women for Peace, a leading Israeli feminist peace organization, dedicated to ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights and reaching a just peace in Israel/ Palestine. In exposing companies and corporations involved in the occupation, we hope to promote a change in public opinion and corporate policies, leading to an end to the occupation.

Along with various political, religious and national interests, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights is fueled by corporate interests. Israeli companies and multinational corporations lead real estate deals, develop the Israeli infrastructure and settlements in the Palestinian occupied territories and the Golan Heights, contribute to the construction and operation of an ethnic separation system, including checkpoints, walls and roads, design and supply equipment and tools used in the control and repression of the civilian population under occupation.

Currently, we focus our attention on three main areas of corporate involvement in the occupation: The Settlement Industry, Economic Exploitation and Control of Population. At this stage in our project, we are not investigating the vast industry of military production and arms trade. The information we provide on the exploitation of Palestinian labor and production is also very limited. Other organizations (Kav LaOved, Adva Center, and The Alternative Information Center) have investigated these fields of involvement in depth, and wherever necessary, we show a link to their publications.

Coalition of Women for Peace

coalitionofwomen.org

The Coalition of Women for Peace brings together independent women and 10 feminist peace organizations who work relentlessly for peace and justice. Founded in November 2000, after the outbreak of the Second Intifada, the Coalition today is a leading voice in the peace movement.

The Coalition is committed to the struggle to end the occupation; to the full involvement of women in peace negotiations; to an end to the excessive militarization of Israeli society; to equality, inclusion, and justice for Palestinian citizens of Israel; to equality and social justice for all inhabitants of Israel.

In addition to supporting the work of its member organizations, the Coalition carries out its own activities – mass rallies, campaigns and educational activity. It runs outreach and advocacy programs within Israeli society, and activities which involve solidarity and cooperation with Palestinian women in the occupied territories.

The Coalition has a broad international reach. It is networked with peace organizations in over 200 cities around the world, and members of the Coalition frequently represent the Israeli peace movement in international forums. On several occasions, demonstrations held in Israel have been supported by (or inspired) solidarity actions in over 150 locations worldwide, many of which were covered extensively in the media.

http://www.commongroundrelief.org/

Common Ground Relief’s mission is to provide short term relief for victims of hurricane disasters in the gulf coast region, and long term support in rebuilding the communities affected in the New Orleans area. Common Ground Relief is a community-initiated volunteer organization offering assistance, mutual aid and support. The work gives hope to communities by working with them, providing for their immediate needs and emphasizes people working together to rebuild their lives in sustainable ways.

Common Ground Relief rose out of the immediate crisis created by Hurricane Katrina when tens of thousands of residents lost their homes, their possessions and their way of life. In the Lower Ninth Ward where approximately 14,000 people lived and 4,800 homes were located, this devastation represented the loss of a community where over 54% of the residents had lived at 25 years and roots in the neighborhood had resulted in the highest percentage of African American home ownership of any city in the United States. The loss of these homes represented the disappearance of a family’s major asset, economic livelihood and, as a result, their future.

This Image is not completed yet and will eventually express the global movement for justice through boycott, divestment and sanctions.

Global Boycott Divestment and Sanction Movement

http://bdsmovement.net/

BDSMovement.net is born out of the need to offer all those interested and active in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement a shared space for information, analysis, exchange of ideas and experiences. This website is overseen by the steering committee of the Palestinian BDS National Committee and has been adopted as a tool of the ICNP (International Coordinating Network on Palestine) to support efforts of networking and coordination.

Since the Unified Palestinian call for BDS, launched in July 2005, BDS initiatives have been multiplying all over the world. Building and strengthening a global BDS movement has become a core aim for many involved in today’s solidarity work for Palestine. As well as the growth of diverse actions on the ground, an increasing number of websites are taking up the issue. This site aims to give an overview of the Palestinian calls for BDS, the myriad local initiatives and resources online, related background information and analysis to inform and guide visitors and activists.

The site is updated by a range of Palestinian and global BDS activists and is a continual work in progress. As the movement develops, new interactive tools and spaces will be added. The only editorial policy we follow is adherence to the Unified PAlestinian Call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions issued on July 9, 2007.

Bay Area Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid

http://www.baceia.org/

The Bay Area Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid (BACEIA) is a grassroots effort to engage people in boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) work. We are asking people to take our pledge to boycott Israeli goods, support the Palestinian fair trade economy, and stay in touch with us as we work locally to end Israeli apartheid.

Olympia Rafah Solidarity Mural Project

http://www.olympiabds.org/

Olympia BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) is a grassroots network of community members in Olympia, WA, joining the call by Palestinian civil society for a non-violent, global movement of boycott, divestment, and sanctions of Israel, until it meets the requirements of human rights and international law.

In answering to the Palestinian Call, we stand with Desmond Tutu, Naomi Klein, Elvis Costello, Richard Falk and many, many others. The failure of elected officials to hold Israel accountable for its atrocious actions forces global civil society to act, for a non-violent solution and justice for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

www.voicesofpalestine.org

We are a Seattle, Washington based community group with strong ties to Palestine. Most of our group’s members are US citizens who either have relatives in Palestine or generally sympathize with the Palestinians and what the illegal Israeli occupation is causing in their communities.

We work together on many events including fund raisers, demonstrations, public debates, educational seminars, and many other types of educational activities to bring awareness into the general public about the severity of the situation in Palestine and how we can help in bringing justice and peace to the Palestinians.Through education and public awareness, Voices of Palestine will advocate for the Palestinian cause, its refugee problem, and fight the Zionisim movement’s drive to block the Palestinians from their rights. We believe that political participation and education will help resolve this problem. We will do everything within our means to bring this issue closer to the American public’s minds and help provide a platform for it to be discussed.

http://www.lasmadresproject.org/ (link not currently working.  For more info use one below)

http://hispanic7.com/transforming_tragedy_into_art.htm

“I am compelled as an artist and more importantly as a resident of our borderlands, to make visible the hidden narratives that are unfolding todos los dias, every day in our backyard.”

 

The sculptural installation¡±The Mothers; Las Madres¡± standing vigil is an artist¡¯s response to the human suffering and ongoing death of migrants coming across the Mexican/American border in search of work in El Norte. Each Mother figure represents over 1000 men, women and children who have lost their lives crossing the desert. The sculptures are made from discarded migrant clothing reclaimed from the desert and then blended with Sonoran plant material. The sculpture’s distressed surfaces speak to the physical and psychological experience of the arduous journey and its effect on the people. The organic nature of the materials used to sculpt The Mothers; Las Madres also reflects the impact of this historical migration on the fragile surface of the desert environment itself.

Until Las Madres was installed, there was no Memorial in the area to the estimated 3000+ people who have died crossing the desert in the last decade, no public altar to visit to pay our respects, no way to acknowledge thousands of people who have no voice. As artists, we hope that ¡°Las Madres, No Mas Lagrimas¡± Project can address this need and help fill the void.

Countless mothers wait behind, praying ceaselessly for safe passage for their husbands, sons & daughters as they make their perilous trek through the desert, mothers who know that many of their children won¡¯t make it and will literally die trying. The Mothers; Las Madres also calls to our attention to the growing wave of undocumented female immigrants traversing the Mexican border into the United States, an untold number of mujeres many of whom are madres crossing the desert with families in tow. Embracing them is the divine feminine spirit of the earth itself that gathers the prayers of the sick and dying and bears the endless tears of these Mothers.

The Mothers; Las Madres takes the issue of immigration out of the realm of politics and brings it back into the heart, reminding us of our common humanity, that we are all familia with shared concerns. Seen enmasse, The Mothers; Las Madres have a powerful impact on the viewer. The Mother figures personify the wrenching exodus of the people from their native lands, and the archetypal quest for a better life for one¡¯s family.

Inspired in large part by the growing amount of clothing and other personal items belonging to men, women and children left behind in the desert,  “Every thread that embodies the figure(s) came from jeans the artist and colleagues have collected primarily from washes in desert lands between Amado and Arivaca – the same jeans that migrants have left behind. “ Tucson Citizen, 9/05, the Mothers Project was conceived in August 2004 and installed on campus in November 2005.

Las Madres is part of Pima Community College¡¯s award winning Sculpture on Campus Program and has been extended through 2008. The public is welcome to visit Las Madres at Pima Community college¡¯s main (east side) campus at 8181 East Irvington Road (east of Pantano) in Tucson.

students.washington.edu/sjpal

Students for Justice in Palestine, University of Washington is a group of students dedicated to promoting the principles of justice, human rights, liberation, and self-determination for the Palestinian people. Our dedication to the rights of the Palestinian people stems from our belief of the equality of all people. We do not endorse any specific plan or solution to the problems of the area, including the Israeli occupation and apartheid system that has managed to dominate the region. We condemn the racism and discrimination underlying the policies and laws of the state of Israel, as we reject any form of hatred or discrimination against any religious, racial, or ethnic group. We work to and educate the public through non-violent events, and we may co-sponsor any other event that is in accordance with our principles.

*******************************

Record!

I am an Arab

And my identity card is number fifty thousand

I have eight children

And the nineth is coming after a summer

Will you be angry?

Record!

I am an Arab

Employed with fellow workers at a quarry

I have eight children

I get them bread

Garments and books

from the rocks..

I do not supplicate charity at your doors

Nor do I belittle myself at the footsteps of your chamber

So will you be angry?

Record!

I am an Arab

I have a name without a title

Patient in a country

Where people are enraged

My roots

Were entrenched before the birth of time

And before the opening of the eras

Before the pines, and the olive trees

And before the grass grew

My father.. descends from the family of the plow

Not from a privileged class

And my grandfather..was a farmer

Neither well-bred, nor well-born!

Teaches me the pride of the sun

Before teaching me how to read

And my house is like a watchman’s hut

Made of branches and cane

Are you satisfied with my status?

I have a name without a title!

Record!

I am an Arab

You have stolen the orchards of my ancestors

And the land which I cultivated

Along with my children

And you left nothing for us

Except for these rocks..

So will the State take them

As it has been said?!

Therefore!

Record on the top of the first page:

I do not hate poeple

Nor do I encroach

But if I become hungry

The usurper’s flesh will be my food

Beware..

Beware..

Of my hunger

And my anger!

by Mahmoud Darwish

1964

www.quitpalestine.org

• As queers, we are part of an international movement for human rights that encompasses the movement for Palestinian liberation, and all other liberation movements. We are also part of the growing international movement seeking active ways to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine

Like all people of conscience, we in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities are deeply concerned about the use of our tax dollars to support the violent, repressive and racist regime in Israel. Our money – nearly $8 million per day!– is funding the indiscriminate murder and wounding of Palestinian civilians, the destruction of Palestinian homes, the construction of exclusively Jewish settlements and the closure of the occupied territories, which threatens the health, safety and economic stability of the entire Palestinian population.

As queers, we are part of an international movement for human rights that encompasses the movement for Palestinian liberation, and all other liberation movements. We are also part of the growing international movement seeking active ways to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine.

We demand:Ø That the U.S. Government immediately end all financial and military aid to Israel.

Ø That the Israeli Government end its racist policies of harassment and exclusion of Palestinians.

Ø International protection for the Palestinian people.

Ø That all displaced Palestinians be granted the right to return to Palestine.

Ø An end to the construction of Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories.

Ø An end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Ø Complete Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories.

Ø An end to investment in Israel, including:

1. Divestment of university and other holdings in Israeli corporations and corporations doing business with Israel.

2. Divestment by the investment community.

3. Divestment by the cities we live in of their holdings in corporations doing business with Israel.

4. A total boycott of Israeli products.

www.palestineinformation.org

• The Palestine Solidarity Committee — Seattle supports Palestinians in their struggle for the fundamental right of self-determination.  PSC works for an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. We support the provision of full human rights to all Palestinians living as minorities or refugees anywhere in the world and the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to their homeland.  We also support the right of the Palestinians themselves to determine the kind of state they will live in.

  Towards this end, we try to influence the United States government to change its policies with regard to the Middle East.  We call for an end to US military and economic aid to Israel while Israel violates international law by engaging in a consistent pattern of gross and systematic human rights abuses against Palestinians.  We urge the US government to condemn these abuses and exert pressure on Israel to remove Israeli settlers from all occupied territory, return confiscated land, end the occupation, allow Palestinian self-determination in the formation of a state of their choice, and give full political, civil, social, and economic rights to all Palestinians living within Israel.

  PSC strives to build a local and national movement in solidarity with Palestine in order to accomplish our goals.  We work to educate the public, the media, and our governmental representatives about Palestine and the role of the US in supporting the Israeli occupation.  We also work to build ties between our community and Palestine through material aid projects, delegations and sister-city/village/camp associations.

  PSC is dedicated to the process and the goal of achieving peace and justice for all people.  We believe that cultural diversity and understanding among cultures are critical elements in attaining global justice and survival.  As individuals in a multi-cultural group, we seek to increase our personal understanding and appreciation of each other’s diverse cultures and to build that tolerance and empathy into our work at a structural level.  We are a non-hierarchical, grassroots, democratic organization and we welcome new members who share our goals.

www.repohistory.org

• REPOhistory began in Manhattan in 1989 as a study group of artists, scholars, teachers, and writers focused on the relationship of history to contemporary society. It grew into a forum for developing public art projects based on history and a platform for creating them. For the past ten years REPOhistory’s goal has been “To retrieve and relocate absent historical narratives at specific locations in the New York City area through counter-monuments, actions, and events”. The work is informed by a multicultural re-reading of history which focuses on issues of race, gender, class and sexuality. We choose to create public art because we wanted to expand the audience for art by going outside the confines of the museum and gallery structure. By choosing to create work with strong, alternative social commentary we are drawing on a tradition in art that is often ignored; the legacy of the Berlin Dadaists, Russian Constructivists, the New York Photo League and contemporary organizations like Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D), Group Material and Grand Fury.Through 6 major public projects and many smaller events, REPOhistory has continued to pursue this goal as an artist/scholar cooperative, along the way adding to its goals “to raise questions about the construction of history, to provide multiple viewpoints that encourage viewers to think critically, to explore how histories and their interpretations affect us today, and to engage with specific communities in order to facilitate their efforts to construct their own public histories”.

  We believe that the arts are important to all aspects of society. The relationship between art, culture and society is often confused, vague and ambiguous. In the USA it has sparked the “Cultural Wars” of the 1980s and the early 1990s. Even today there are many members of the US Congress and Senate who want to abolish the National Endowment for the Art and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The arts will always be controversial. Societies change and the arts can be a powerful way of expressing these changes. However, the arts are essential for helping individuals find their place within society and for shaping a collective cultural identity.

www.precitaeyes.org

Collaborative Mural in Jayous Village, West Bank, Palestine

• As an inner city, community-based mural arts organization, Precita Eyes Mural Arts Association seeks to enrich and beautify urban environments and educate communities locally and internationally about the process and the history of public community mural art. We maintain a deep commitment to collaborating with the various communities we serve. Our dedication to collaboration guarantees that creative work produced is accessible, both physically and conceptually, to the people whose lives it impacts. We intend to bring art into the daily lives of people through a process which enables them to reflect their particular concerns, joys and triumphs.

• Precita Eyes Mural Arts Center, established in 1977 and currently located in San Francisco’s Mission District, is a multipurpose community based arts organization that has played an integral role in the city’s cultural heritage and arts education. One of only three community mural centers in the United States, the organization sponsors and implements ongoing mural projects throughout the Bay Area and internationally. In addition, it has a direct impact on arts education in the San Francisco Mission District by offering four weekly art classes for children and youth (18 months through 19 years) and other classes for adults. These classes and community mural projects enable children and youth to develop their individuality and confidence through creative activities and to experience unifying, positive social interaction through collaboration.
• Depending on which of the centers during almost any day of the week, one could find a lot going on. Volunteers helping out with various duties and projects, a group of professional muralists collaborating on a portable mural; an intense planning session for a new monumental mural project; a slide presentation to a group of educators or public school students and that’s just our Mural Arts & Visitors Center on 24th Street.
• More than 20,000 students and tourists have walked from Precita Eyes as the starting point for the mural tours encompassing more than 80 murals in an eight-block walk. Precita Eyes is alive with purpose and ideas, and it is continually evolving to meet the needs of the individuals, young and old, that pass through its doors.

• Though we predominantly serve the Mission District with our murals and programming, we have also collaborated on projects serving Bernal Heights, South of Market, Tenderloin, Bay View, and Outer Mission neighborhoods, as well as international projects in Russia, Germany, Spain, and Brazil. Individuals we serve include residents, muralists, artists, tourists, students, and youth, especially low-income and under-privileged people.
• This collaboration reflects the very heart of Precita Eyes’ concerns and interest in art and how it interacts with/within the community around it. As a community-based mural organization, we believe that it is our mission to not only enhance the urban environment, but also to reach out to educate the community at large. We seek to do this by bringing art into the everyday lives of neighborhoods and communities in a way which is meaningful to them. We share a deep commitment to making artworks accessible, both physically and conceptually, to viewers from diverse backgrounds who may not be regularly exposed to the arts.

http://www.kstrom.net/isk/art/basket/pomohist.html

“Among our people, both men and women were basketmakers. Everything in our lifestyle was connected to those baskets. Our lives wre bound the way baskets were bound together.” Susan Billy, Ukiah Pomo, master weaver, teacher The map above shows Pomo communities that had been re-federalized (recognized as reservations) in the early 1990′s, when Veronica Velarde Tiller compiled the massive modern-day American Indian Reservations and Trust Areas (1996) under a U.S. Economic Development Administration grant. Not all have re-achieved federal status yet; those are not shown on this map (which is adapted from Tiller). “The word ‘Pomo’ which some believe is derived from Poma, the name of a particular village, was given to us by anthropologists at the turn of the century. Because of similarities of our basketry and culture, anthropologists conveniently saw us as one group. Actually, there are more than 70 different tribes within what is known as Pomo country. We originally had 7 different languages, but only 3 are still spoken. In terms of basketry, though, there is a commonality in our weaving — the shapes, materials, and techniques we use.” — Susan Billy There is another commonality, that stems from interactions with Europeans. It is well-known that the Mexican-Spanish establishd a string of missions along the California coast in the early 18th century. Indians were rounded up militarily, forced to live in mission dormitories (that kept men and women separated) and do forced labor for the church and for Mexican land grant-ranchers. About 2/3 of all California Indians were killed off in less than 100 years of this, from European diseases and hard labor. Like most Northern California tribes, the Pomo were less affected by this except for occasional marauding roundups, because the string of missions ended just north of San Francisco. Costanoan and Wappo tribes formed a partial buffer to Spanish incursions. But the Pomo were invaded during the 18th century by Russian fur-traders, whose brutal ways were also carried out along the coast of Alaska among Aleut, Yuupik, Tlingit and other northwest coastal tribes. Indeed, through the center of Pomo Country (today comprising the California counties of Mendocino, Lake and Sonoma) runs the river still called the Russian River, after these depredations. The Russian fur trade was regularized in 1799 when one company received a monopoly charter from the Czar. In 1812 the Russians established a permanent base at Fort Ross on Bodega Bay, which was the main source of the fur animal they sought: the now nearly-extinct sea otter. Bodega Bay was the most important seacoast site for summer Pomo habitation. They sought the abundant clams, fished, and got seal and bird eggs from offshore rocks. The Russian exploitation from this base, the southern limit of their fur empire in 1812-1841, was almost entirely of the Pomo peoples. The Russian method was to attack a village and kidnap all the women and children. The women were used as whores and domestics, children, and older women made to work fields. They were hostages for the men’s forced labor: bringing in furs, meat and fish food supplies. All worked the hides. Women and children were tortured and killed to enforce compliance. The Pomo (and much further north, the Tlingit) were the only groups to mount a concerted resistance to this brutal exploitation. Here’s a cleaned-up, genteel tourist version. Especially noteworthy is their genteel mention of “intermarriage with Native women” their way of describing rape. Mostly this resistance was individual and small group efforts — sabotages and occasional attacks on overseers, escapes — though it helped to unify the linguistically diverse people, who were never one unified tribe. (The Pomo languages, though referred to as dialects, are not mutually intelligible.) But by the time the Russians abandoned this outpost and the Americans began to arrive with the discovery of gold in 1848, Pomo population had been reduced by murder, debilitating labor and especially by diseases, just as was the effect further south, of the Spanish Catholic mission system. Pomo people traditionally were what has been described as “the moneyers” of north-central California. There were two kinds of trade items that served as money, that is as items of more or less standard trade value. (The value became greater the further these items were from their source.) Money was beads. Mostly from Bodega Bay came the clamshell beads seen around the edges of both baskets, above, flat, button-like disks which took on a luster and polish with years of handling. For trade, these were kept in strings, made to careful widths and exact diameters, so the number of bead-disks on a string could be measured, as well as counted. The Pomo had an elaborate numbering and arithmetic system — base 20 and units of 400 — to keep track of their value, which varied by diameter, thickness, and fineness of polish. The second kind of money-beads, which were controlled by the southeastern Pomo, were made of a grey-white-buff mineral called magnesite, a deposit of which was at White Buttes, near Cache Creek. When fired, these turn beautiful banded shades of pink, orange, buff, often with bits of melted quartzite and other minerals adding to the complex shadings. These were made into tapered cylinders (and sometimes round beads). While the clamshell disks were traded in values based on strings, magnesite beads were valued much higher and traded individually — Pomo people called the clamshell disks “our silver” and the magnesite ones “our gold.” when telling Americans about it.
	Interestingly, the name for magnesite in all Pomo languages was “po”. No one seems to have wondered if there was a sacred meaning or story, and if this had something to do with the fact that almost all the Pomo communities called themselves by a name that had this word in a suffix. Elder, band chief and tribal historian William Benson (1860-1930) was one of the few Pomo men to make fancy baskts. His spendid oriole feather basket has already been shown. Here is an unusual fine coiled basket just 5″ in diameter with an unbaked magnesite base that Benson made sometime between 1900 and his death in 1930.
A short time before his death, in 1930, Benson told some California historians the story of a little-known U.S. Army massacre of Pomo people in 1850, which has remained buried in an obscure California history journal of 1931. This seems to have been the first massacre of nearly all of peaceful village’s inhabitants conducted by the U.S. Army — a kind of warm-up for later, better-known infamies such as the dawn massacre of Black Kettle’s Cheyenne band at Sand Creek, in 1864, Nez Perce and Walla Walla, in the 1870′s. It occurred on Clear Lake, the largest freshwater body in California. (On the map, it’s in the orange area of Lake County, with a great many Pomo rancherias designated by alphabet letters clustered around it.) Two abusive Americans, Charles Stone and Andrew Kelsey, had captured and bought hundreds of Pomo, forcing them to work as slaves on a large ranch they had taken over in 1847 from Mexicans. Perhaps it was to these two that the mule train of slavers was taking the Pomo children to be sold, as Elsie Allen describes on her page. Slavery was illegal in California after the U.S. acquired it by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, that ended the U.S. war with Mexico in 1848. But that applied only to Blacks, not to Indians. Here’s an account of the Army rounding up slaves for ranchers. Americans enslaved Indians in California wherever they found them, for forced mining and agricultural labor. Here’s Benson’s description of what led to the massacre: “About 20 old people died in the winter from starvation. From severe whippings, 4 died. A nephew of an Indian lady who was forced to live with Stone (as his whore) was shot to death by Stone. When a father or mother of a young girl was asked to bring the girl to his house [for sex] by Stone or Kelsey, if this order was not obeyed, he or she would be hung up by the hands and whipped. Many old men and women died from fear or starvation.” One day in early 1850, Shuk and Xasis, who had been working the cattle herds, lost one of Kelsey’s horses. Afraid of their inevitable punishment (they would be whipped to death), they met in council with all the enslaved people to decide what to do. “All the men gathered at Xasis’s house. Here they debated all night. Shuk and Xasis wanted to kill Stone and Kelsey. They said they would be killed as soon as the white men found out their horse was gone.” 5 Pomo men were assigned to strike first. They killed both Stone and Kelsey. The people fled to the hills, expecting the American soldiers to come. They planned to meet these troops in peaceful council and explain the conditions of brutal slavery that had led to what they had done. In May of 1850, a detachment of Army regulars led by Capt. Nathaniel Lyon entered the Clear Lake area to punish the Indians for the killings. Unable to find the band of slaves who had fled, they attacked a small Pomo village, Badonnapoti, on an island on the north side of the lake — later called Bloody Island by the Pomo. This island was formerly the sacred ceremonial site of a complex of towns around the northern part of Clear Lake. Men, women, and children, unable to flee, were massacred by the U.S. Army there. On their way home, the troops continued their bloody actions, massacring every Indian group they encountered — mostly Pomo groups. This just isn’t in the history books, even good ones, I found it when researching for these pages. Perhaps historians were embarassed that most of their info would have come from California newspapers, like these headliners from Eureka’s Humboldt Times: “Good Haul of Diggers,” “38 Bucks Killed, 40 Squaws and Children.” “Band Exterminated!” One — The Northern Californian which covered it differently, told of “Indiscriminate massacre of innocent Indians — Women and children butchered” covering the details of the brutal Bloody Island slaughter with hatchets and axes of 188 peaceful men, women and children in their villages. The youthful editor, western short-story writer Bret Harte, then had to flee ahead of a lynch mob, which smashed his printing press for daring to tell the truth about it. Here’s an account of one of the masacres. Bloody Island seems to have set a precedent for similar Army massacres of encampments in the Plains and settled farming villages among the Navajo. These better-known events mostly took place after the Civil War. The massacre and round-ups of the Pomo took place before it, just 1 year after the U.S. took control of California, after its victory in the Mexican war. Here’s a detailed account by Russ Imrie (who runs the California Costanoan Tribal website) on how the law was used to enslave California Indian people.In 1851-52, a treaty commission visited California and signed 18 treaties with most California tribes, which would have reserved about 8.5 million acres for the original peoples. Under the pressure of ranchers and miners, who flooded California with the discovery of gold there in 1848, these treaties were never ratified by Congress. They “accidentally” got lost in the archives of the U.S. Senate. Instead, 4 small reservations — Hoopa Valley, Round Valley, Tule River and Smith River, and a few small “rancherias” were established, whose purpose was more in the nature of internment camps, to get the Indians out of the way of the flood of American whites. The brutal nw invaders hunted Indians for sport. Here’s an account of a sport-hunt by whites of northern California Natives that ends in a rape. Meanwhile, the Pomo, especially those in the fertile, well-watered lands at the south of their country, were rounded up in what descendants describe as “death marches” and interned at Fort Bragg to the north, and Covelo, (Round Valley). You can read some of this genocidal history in background sidebar — Legacy of Nome Cult — to a detailed invstigation story of recent killings at Round Valley and the trial of traditionalist Bear Lincoln. In a sidebar, local racism and tribal splits (caused by missionary inculcation of militant Christian hostiilty to traditional culture) indicated that The Indian Wars Are Not Over. Thorough reportage and historical investigation by a northern California newspaper, the Albion Monitor. A followup on the case is a long interview with Edwina Lincoln: Outlook OnLine: Edwina Lincoln-Part 1 Many Pomo escaped from these internment camps and made their ways back to their own traditional village lands, somewhat corresponding to the sites today of the tiny federally-recognized reservations shown on the map. Of course all of this caused even more cultural disruption — in a very short period. The Pomo could not always return to their traditional villages, because these wre often on the best locations in the area, and had been taken by whites — so the escapees tended to resettle on the isolated outskirts — usually poor, arid land. Nor were they free any longer to follow their traditional lifeway of winter in a village site, traveling in summer to fish and clam at the sea or lakeshore. Game was almost gone, and many traditional gathering sites for acorns (a staple food) and seed grains were now inaccessible, either because taken and cleared or because the people were afraid to go there. But a culturally unifying, preservative, and hope-inspiring factor entered the picture in 1871. This was the Bole Maru (sometimes called Bole Hesi) religion. “Bole” means roughly “spirits of the dead”. Bole Maru was a dream-dance or ghost dance. It came from the Nevada Paiutes, just as — a generation later — the Plains Ghost Dances from the Paiute prophet Wovonka that touched off the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890 did. The source in 1870 was Wovonka’s father, who had the same sort of visions, which people of the Plains were not interested in until things got much worse for them, a generation later. The Pomo and Wintu who held Bole Maru most strongly, wove these into the disrupted traditional religion which the elders distinguished by calling it saltu hesi, rather than bole hesi, where instead of the spirits of the dead (boli), spirits of nature (saltu) were invoked. In those older times the dead died naturally, and the ceremonies preserved and fructified the land only in the natural way. Now there were massacres, diseases, death marches, forced internments; the land was invaded, being ripped up by miners, plowed under by farmers, fenced by cattle ranchers and built upon for cities. The old ceremonies did not have to deal with those things. The leader of the Bole Maru, the first dream dancer and doctor, was Cache Creek Pomo Richard Taylor, brother to Sarah Taylor, the grandmother who raised California’s foremost basket weaver, doctor, and cultural preservationist, Mabel McKay (1907-1993). In a recent biography of her by Gregg Sarris, the title is Weaving the Dream, emphasizing these two elements of great cultural importance (and the fact that she dreamed basket designs; the baskets themselves had power through those designs). The Dream-Ghost dances aroused hope that led to practical survival actions. Pomo people began to try to buy land. In 1878, a group of Northern Pomo people bought 7 acres in Coyote Valley. In 1880, another Northern Pomo group bought 100 acres along Ackerman Creek (now known as Pinoleville). In 1881, Yokaya Rancheria was financed by central Pomo people. (Ukiah, California, the hostile white market town, is named after this band.) Yokaya rancheria was not lost, it is the longest-held communally-owned property in California, or perhaps all the U.S. Yokaya was omitted from the refederalizations (see below) of 1983, as if in punishment for its long ability to exist without U.S. government help. In 1882 Potter Valley, Sherwood, and Yorkville Rancherias were privately purchased by groups of Pomo people, for their own land base. How did they do it? The Pomo did not have a money economy, although they had a sharp, clear understanding of numbers, including large numbers, and as the former moneyers or mint of central California shell and magnesite bead coinage, they had a good abstract grasp of money as a concept. But they didn’t have any. Their method was collective work and pooled resources. Men and women worked in trade for land from ranchers who had huge land grants. And they also sold the one thing white people wanted: their finest baskets, especially the feathered ones. Thus at the end of the 19th century, a substantial mini-industry in basket production for collectors, souvenir takers and museum hounds was undertaken. Perhaps this 19th-century canoe-shaped basket — a foot long, decorated with extra-large abalone pendants — was made for such sale (a collector gave it to the Brooklyn Museum, no maker identification). This was the period during which some Pomo men — like Benson — turned their hands to learning the craft of very fine basket production from their wives and grandmothers. Their rough basketry baby cradles were still needed of course, but most of their ingenious basketry fish traps could no longer be used — they couldn’t go to most of the traditional fishing places. Survival depended on getting money to buy land. Fine art baskets were the only possibility beyond the very low wage labor of farmhand, ranch hand, and domestic servant, which sometimes actually paid nothing but permission to build a house on the rancher’s property. Baskets for survival and land — the efforts, of course, also helped to keep the finest and most elaborate parts of the basketry art alive, for it was these largest, finest baskets that the collectors most wanted, and traders were willing to pay for. Basketry had truly become a survival art, in a new way. But knowing about shell money, exchange rates, and valuations of strings of shells against all sorts of other items doesn’t clue you to mortgage payments and land taxes. Mostly what the Pomo were able to raise by these intense communal work efforts was mortgage downpayments on artifically high-priced patches of unwanted land — their own land — sold back to them as bankers’ swindles. High interest and high land taxes imposed on what could not really be a money economy (because the Pomo really had very little opportunity to raise much cash) caused the loss of virtually all this communally-purchased land except for the Yokaya rancheria by the early 20th century. By the turn of the century, more than 2/3 of all remaining California Indians — who had been pushed onto small rancherias to get thm out of the way of immigrants — had lost these small patches of land, and were landless. In 1906, the 18 treaties of 1851-52 (reserving 8.5 million acres) which the Senate somehow “lost” wre accidentally found. So Congress authorized an investigation of the California Indians’ situation, and public reaction eventually supported the passage of annual appropriations to purchase land for landless Indians. Some 54 rancherias were established as federal reservations, almost all of them small areas of land around an existing impoverished settlement. Those lands were often the undesirable, arid, isolated ones no one else wanted. On quite a few, no one (including no Indians) actually did live for many years — they worked at wage labor in towns, and the San Francisco Bay area. For the Pomos, land was purchased in Lake, Sonoma, and Mendocino counties (i.e. little pieces of their own land was bought back yet again). The Pomos, in the 20th century, took a strong early role in legal actions to try to achieve some kind of rights, and to maintain their land in very hostile-to-Indians territory. In 1907, Ethan Anderson (Eastern Pomo) won a court case that gave non-reservation Indians the right to vote — a right they didn’t get in some states until the 1960′s. Some time before World War I, Lake County Pomo parents challenged local school districts, which would not admit Indian children (who were taken from their families — if caught — and sent to distant BIA boarding schools). Though the case was won, the California school board exercised a then legal option to establish separate public schools for Indian children. As has been mentioned on Elsie Allen’s page, Pomos of th California Indian Brotherhood undertook and financed legal actions against the segregated schools (1923), and discriminatory service in Ukiah public businesses (1948). They were ahead of everyone else — other Indians, other, much larger minorities — in these actions. In the early 1950′s, for the U.S. government it was “termination time”, a move seen by all Indians as another land grab, since it would remove reservation land from its protected federal status. In California, the Rancheria Act of 1958 said that all rancherias (reservations) would be offered the choice of termination or not. The BIA went on a campaign to sell the idea to tribes to vote to terminate themselves. The BIA promised the Pomos (and others) that if they voted to terminate, the BIA would make road improvements, bring in water and electricity and generally bring the infrastructure of these isolated, arid, impoverished lands up to the same conditions as the surrounding white lands. The alternative — as most everyone saw it — was they would be terminated anyway, so the Pomo rancherias reluctantly voted to terminate themselves, so that their lands might be improved to a point where they could support themslves in a money economy. Terminations continued through the 1960′s. The inevitable result was the loss of most of the small bits of land that had been rancheria-reservations. The BIA did not make the improvements in water, power, transportation, etc., that might have enabled some of them to compete, as farmers, with whites around them, and of course the terminated lands wer vulnerable to tax loss, improvident or subsistence-mandated sales, too, as with any allotted lands. In some cases, the BIA sold these lands and distributed the (small) amounts of money realized. Several Pomo bands successfully sued to reverse their terminations. The largest such lawsuit was filed in the early 1980′s by Tilly Hardwicke, a member of the Pinoleville Pomo (Mendocino county). It became a class action, representing 17 similarly-situated terminated rancherias. Victory in 1983 restored federal reservation status — but not the lands lost in the interim — to 17 rancherias (including many but not all Pomos). Pinoleville (located in what its tribal council calls “the verdant California wine country”) theoretically has 99 acres, but only 55 is owned by Indians, the rest is now owned by whites. “Though still quite small, Pinoleville figures prominently in the larger struggle for Indian rights and recognition,” the tribal council says proudly. “The tribal government currently employs 5 tribal members. Given the small rancheria population (70) and workforce (15 adults), this qualifies it as a major employment source.” The band is currently investigating how it might tap into the rich tourists who currently cruise the wine country, for its major economic development effort. Scotts Valley of Lakeport regained reservation staus, but had in the terminated period lost all its land. Two rooms in a tribal member’s home “offer community facilities”. The General Council says: “Clear Lake State Park and Lake Mendocino offer recreational opportunities. The rancheria, however, has as yet no capability to prosper from this generated tourism.” Potter Valley with 200 tribal members has only 10 acres left. These were the people rounded up on death marches to Covelo in 1850, who escaped from Round Valley back to Potter Valley in 1856. The 10 acres is what remains (after termination) of the 96 acres they had before it. There are 3 wells, a pumphouse, and a ranch house (that now serves as tribal office). Goals are land base and providing housing for tribal members. Coyote Valley — whose people were death-marched to Fort Bragg, then interned at Round Valley, bought land in the 1870′s and 80′s as near as possible to their old homesites. This was lost to mortgage foreclosure in 1928. 101 acres was purchased under the 1909 act for landless Pomo, but no one lived there because there was no water and the soils were poor, until the hard times of the late 1930′s Depression, when some families built houses and maintained small gardens. In 1949, the Army Corps of Engineers planned a dam there, and by 1957, the last families had to leave. In 1976, they individually won re-federated status (but no land) in a federal court case. 58 acres was later purchased in Redwood Valley. The tribe has entered into a gaming agreement with the state, submitted to the BIA for review. The band has a 5-year lease on the Army Corps of Engineers Interpretive Center at Lake Mendocino, where it presents programs for tourists. Middletown in Lake county opened a casino in 1994. They have 100 acres close to Santa Rosa with a workforce (adults) of just 3 people. Sulphur Bank/Elm Indian Colony has 50 acres. They are currently trying to regain ownership of their traditional land on 54-acre Rattlesnake Island, located very close offshore from their Clear Lake shoreland. The band says: “This has been sacred ground for centuries. The island continues to serve as an important source for many foods and medicines of value to the tribe. In the past, owners have not always allowed the tribe to conduct ceremonies or gather herbs. Rattlesnake Island is currently for sale, and the tribe, with the aid of California Legal Services, is exploring options for acquiring the title.” In May, 1970, the Pomo occupied Rattlesnake Island, to prevent Boise Cascade from developing a condo on the burial grounds and sacred ground there. Indians of All Tribes, who were occupying the abandoned federal prison island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay at the time, sent a delegation to meet with the Pomos on Rattlesnake Island. Here’s a description, written by Mohawk poet Peter Blue Cloud, in a little book, Alcatraz Is Not an Island (Wingbow Press, 1972, long out of print): “The Pomo Indians at Clear Lake are witnessing the destruction of their sacred lake. The waters are no longer clear but murky, as they became polluted from the wastes of the thousands of homes, resorts, and new subdivisions. Gas-powered boats race all over the lake. Bulldozers are eating at the base of sacred Mt. Konoceti to create more housing, mountainsides are being stripped to provide gravel. Neat plots of plastic grass and shrubs are being laid out in a Disneyland nightmare. “At Sulphur Banks Rancheria, the El-Em Band of Pomos have watched the rape and destruction of their lands since the coming of the whiteman. Very close to their homes is a small lake of sulphur-infested waters left by a mining company. It is a pit hundreds of feet deep which lies above the level of Clear Lake less than 200 feet from the shore [contaminating the lake by seepage]. All around this contaminated water, lies a stripped and barren land, plundered for mercury, to supply two world wars. Very few things grow here. “A hundred feet offshore from Sulphur Banks is Rattlesnake Island, ancient burial ground and village site of the El-Em Pomo. It is a rocky island, thickly overgrown. It has always been a part of their lands. “Boise Cascade, the giant lumber and subdivision monster, suddenly appeared on the scene to say Rattlesnake Island was theirs, and that they were going to subdivide it. May 1, 1970, the Pomo Indians moved onto the island and stated their intention to stay.” That was 1970; 26 years later, they’re still trying. 4900 people IDed themselves as Pomo in the 1990 census. The following are currently-recognized (federal reservation) rancherias whose populations are entirely (or substantially) Pomo: Mendocino County: Hopland, Guidiville, Pinoleville, Coyote Valley, Redwood Valley, Sherwood Valley, Manchester/Point Arena, Potter Valley and Round Valley (Little Lake band). Sonoma County: Cloverdale, Dry Creek, Stewarts Point, Lytton. Lake County: Robinson, Upper Lake, Big Valley, Elem/Sulpher Bank, Scotts Valley, Middletown; Glenn County Grindstone. There remain others — Yokaya has been mentioned — which still seek re-federalization. The land bases of thse tiny, scattered sites vary from 0 to 177 acres and populations from 15 to about 400. Probably about 2/3 of tribal members do not live on tribal land.

Arist Bio from:

“East/West Convergences” Exhibit, Jan-Feb 2010, Features Arabic, Lebanese & Syrian Artists”

After she left her career as an interior designer, Nouha Sinno set off on a journey of self-discovery that began with a desire for free expression, unrestricted by any boundaries. She had always been taken by the enchanting concept of Arabic language as art, and as a result her work is a reflection of her years contemplating the visual beauty of Arabic culture, from Islamic tiles and geometry to architectural motifs and calligraphy. Her art pays tribute to her love for the language. “I am grateful,” she says, “for the rich legacy of beauty and elegance that is the Arabic alphabet.” This collection of her work is reveals intricate lines and colors that coalesce into abstract rendition of Arabic words and their meaning. Her rich compositions speak of her memories as an Arab Muslim woman, born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, where she graduated from the Lebanese University of Fine Art as an interior designer. She worked as such in her country before she moved to Southern California in 1984, escaping the civil war there. Nouha Sinno has participated in several group shows in Beirut, Bahrain, Seattle and Los Angeles.

From:

Encyclopedia of Arab American artists

By Fayeq Oweis

Click here to see the video about Gaden Shartse Monastery in Exile

Gaden Shartse Monastery VIDEO

http://www.gadenshartsecf.org/

Welcome to the website of Gaden Shartse Cultural Foundation. The foundation is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit public benefit corporation. It was established in 2006 with the mission to help preserve and share the ancient Tibetan traditions and culture. Since the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950, much of this rare and ancient culture has been destroyed.  We feel that this rich culture, once hidden and preserved behind the Himalayan mountains, has much to offer the world at large. It is our mission to not only help preserve this precious culture, but to share it’s ancient wisdom with the people of the United States.  To do this we have partnered with Gaden Shartse Monastery and Thubten Dhargye Ling Buddhist Center to help host the Sacred Earth and Healing Arts of Tibet tours here in the USA.

www.mecaforpeace.org

The Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) is a nonprofit humanitarian aid organization based in Berkeley, California. We support children and families in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon through:

• Direct aid including food, medicine, medical supplies, and clothes as well as books, toys and school supplies. Since 1988, we have sent more than $17 million in aid to children in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon
• Financial support and professional assistance to community organizations in the West Bank and Gaza that help meet Palestinian children’s needs, including clinics, kindergartens, counseling centers, libraries; accessible parks and playgrounds; sports teams, and dance, music and art programs
• Educational and cultural programs in the US to increase understanding about the lives of children in the Middle East and the impact of US foreign policy on people in the region
• University scholarships for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank
• 

http://indigenousdelegation.wordpress.com/

The Indigenous Youth Delegation to Palestine is a project of a collective of grassroots groups in the U.S. and Palestine: Seventh Native American Generation (SNAG), 7th GIV, Palestine Education Project, Huaxtec, MECA. We are committed to connecting Native and Xicano youth in the U.S with youth in Palestine by creating a forum for us to reflect together and bridge our struggles. This first-ever cross-continental exchange is an opportunity for youth to learn first hand from each other by sharing tools of empowerment and education. Our journey to Palestine is part of an on-going process of connecting the shared experiences of Indigenous peoples across the world.

http://www.ijsn.net/home/

http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

Jewish Voice for Peace members are inspired by Jewish tradition to work together for peace, social justice, equality, human rights, respect for international law, and a U.S. foreign policy based on these ideals.

JVP opposes anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, and anti-Arab bigotry and oppression.  JVP seeks an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem; security and self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians; a just solution for Palestinian refugees based on principles established in international law; an end to violence against civilians; and peace and justice for all peoples of the Middle East.

http://ittp.org/

About International Trauma Treatment Program

The International Trauma Treatment Program (ITTP) is a community-supported non-profit organization that trains practitioners to treat complex trauma inflicted by torture, war, and natural disasters. ITTP seeks to break these cycles and restore victims’ physical and psychological health through treatment and education.

The goal of the International Trauma Treatment Program is to undermine the use of torture through establishing an international network of practitioners who fight torture by transforming torture victims into survivors. Practitioners from war zones who participate in our program become prepared to treat, and to train other practitioners to treat, trauma survivors in their home countries. We thereby seek to leverage our resources by creating a snowball effect that greatly increases the number of practitioners worldwide that fight torture. The International Trauma Treatment Program was founded in 1998 as a not-for-profit corporation in the State of Washington for the purposes of providing communications between the various human rights groups in Olympia, Washington, and to provide in-depth training for professionals from countries experiencing war, organized violence, or other forms of political oppression. The origins of the International Trauma Treatment Program date back to the mid 1980’s, when our current Clinical Director and founder, Dr. John R. Van Eenwyk, helped to establish the Marjorie Kovler Center for the Treatment of Survivors of Torture, in Chicago.

www.freedomarchives.org/

8000 hours of audio and video recordings documenting social justice movements locally, nationally, and internationally from the 1960s to the present. The Archives features speeches of movement leaders and community activists, protests and demonstrations, cultural currents of rebellion and resistance. This oral history is in a searchable database. You can download programs and clips. Internships and training programs are available.

COINTELPRO

A new video documentary from Freedom Archives

COINTELPRO may not be a well-understood acronym but its meaning and continuing impact are absolutely central to understanding the government’s wars and repression against progressive movements. COINTELPRO represents the state’s strategy to prevent movements and communities from overturning white supremacy and creating racial justice. COINTELPRO is both a formal program of the FBI and a term frequently used to describe a conspiracy among government agencies—local, state, and federal—to destroy movements for self-determination and liberation for Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous struggles, as well as mount an institutionalized attack against allies of these movements and other progressive organizations.

COINTELPRO 101 is an educational film that will open the door to understanding this history. This documentary will introduce viewers new to this history to the basics and direct them to other resources where they can learn more. The intended audiences are the generations that did not experience the social justice movements of the sixties and seventies.

Interviews in the video include:

• Muhammad Ahmad (Max Stanford)—Founder of Revolutionary Action Movement and professor at Temple University.
• Bob Boyle—Attorney representing many activists and political prisoners targeted by COINTELPRO.
• Kathleen Cleaver—former leader of the Black Panther Party, now Professor of  Law at Emory and Yale Universities and an expert on COINTELPRO.
• Ward Churchill—just-removed Professor at the University of Colorado who has written extensively about COINTELPRO.
• Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz—Long-time Native American activist and educator.
• Priscilla Falcon—Long-time Mexicana activist and professor whose husband was assassinated for his leadership in the Chicano struggle.
• Geronimo Ji-Jaga Pratt—former leader of the Black Panther Party who was falsely imprisoned for 27 years in a COINTELPRO case.
• Jose Lopez—Director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago and long-time advocate of Puerto Rican independence.
• Francisco ‘Kiko’ Martinez—long-time Chicano/Mexicano activist and attorney.
• Lucy Rodriguez—Puerto Rican Independentista and former Political Prisoner.
• Ricardo Romero—long-time Chicano/Mexicano activist and Grand Jury resister
• Akinyele Umoja—African American History scholar at Georgia State University.
• Laura Whitehorn—radical activist and former political prisoner who was targeted by the federal government.

Trailer for COINTELPRO

http://www.oweis.com/

Fayeq Oweis is an Arab American artist, educator, and linguist. He received his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies with Concentration on Arabic and Islamic Studies focusing on Creative & Visual Arts from the Union Institute and University. Oweis is currently teaching Arabic Language and Culture at Santa Clara University and has taught for over three years at San Francisco State University. Oweis works on contemporary Islamic art and Arabic calligraphic compositions and has participated in a number of exhibits in California, Minnesota, Washington DC, and Florida. He designed the exterior entranceway murals and the calligraphy of the dome at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. He also co-designed and directed the first Arabic/Islamic mural in San Francisco, and he was a lead artist for the Palestinian Cultural mural honoring Dr. Edward Said at San Francisco State University. Oweis is a board member of ZAWAYA, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting Arabic art and culture. He has written a number of articles and gave numerous presentations on Arab American Artists, Arabic Calligraphy, and Islamic art. He is the author of “Encyclopedia of Arab American Artists,” a book featuring 100 Arab American visual artists.

http://ellenogrady.com/

Ellen O’Grady is a painter, author, and activist who uses art and conversation as tools to share information, break down barriers and create change. Her first book, Outside the Ark, is the culmination of almost eight years of living and working in the West Bank and Gaza. In OTA, O’Grady interweaves personal observation, reportage and illustration to offer an unsentimental narrative that illuminates life in Palestine. Following publication she brought the work to over 150 US audiences from New York to Oregon in a slide show/storytelling presentation. O’Grady is currently working on her second book.

http://www.drooker.com

Eric Drooker is a painter and graphic novelist,

born and raised on Manhattan Island.

He’s the award-winning author of Flood! A Novel

in Pictures, and Blood Song: A Silent Ballad.

He designed the animation for a film to be released September 2010,

Howl,  based on the epic poem by Allen

Ginsberg, who collaborated with Drooker on the

book Illuminated Poems.

His paintings appear on covers of The New Yorker,

and hang in numerous collections.

http://www.birthrightunplugged.org

Birthright Unplugged offers opportunities for people to gain knowledge through first-hand experiences and to use that knowledge to make positive change in the world. The organization began, in part, as a response to fully-funded, Jewish-only trips to Israel and as a rejection of the notion of a “birthright” for Jewish people to the land of Israel/Palestine. Israel has denied Palestinians the internationally recognized right of return for refugees, instead creating a “Law of Return” that extends citizenship benefits to any person of Jewish heritage, thereby excluding millions of Palestinians from living in the land in which they were born.

Over the past several years, we have focused our work in order to support for Palestinian led non-violent campaigns of all kinds that seek to pressure Israel to comply with international law. We support our participants’ involvement in human rights-based and justice-oriented efforts, including contributing to the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. This movement is a direct response to the 2005 call from Palestinian civil society and is modeled after the ultimately successful boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against South African apartheid.

http://www.btpolympia.org/

Books To Prisoners (BTP) is a Seattle-based, all-volunteer, nonprofit organization that sends books to prisoners in the United States.  BTP believes that books are tools for learning and opening minds to new ideas and possibilities.  By sending books to prisoners, we hope to foster a love of reading and encourage the pursuit of knowledge and self-improvement.

Founded in the early 1970s and sponsored by Left Banks Books, BTP receives 600 to 800 requests for books each month. Volunteers work two evenings a week opening letters, finding books in our collection that correspond to the request, and wrapping and mailing parcels.  Because of continuing backlog of requests, prisoners sometimes wait up to six months to receive their books.

Prisoners request a variety of books.  Most prisons accept paperback books only.  The most popular requests are dictionaries, thesauruses, African American history and fiction, Native American studies, legal material, GED materials, and languages (particularly Spanish.)  Other common requests include fiction, vocational-technical manuals, politics, anthropology, art and drawing, psychology, and health and fitness.

http://www.olympiafor.org/

Since 1976 the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) has been working in the greater Thurston County area and beyond to create peace, social justice and nonviolence locally and worldwide.  We organize at the grassroots and carry out a variety of activities to inform and activate people.  Specifically, the Olympia FOR produces newsletters and TV programs, conducts weekly peace vigils, and sponsors speakers, workshops and other events.  We are part of our regional network, the Western Washington FOR, the national FOR, and the International FOR. Nationally and internationally, the FOR began at the very beginning of World War I and has opposed all wars from World War I onward.  Much more information is posted in the menu item at the left, About Olympia FOR.