INSIDE PEACE TO SCREEN AT CARTER LIBRARY MAY 18
INSIDE PEACE TO SCREEN AT CARTER LIBRARY MAY 18
Award-winning Documentary Following the Lives of Inmates in the Peace Education Program to Make Atlanta Premiere
Discussion with the Filmmaker Following Screening
Atlanta, GA – Inside Peace, a powerful and timely documentary film that focuses on the lives of several inmates both inside a Texas jail as well as on their daily challenges post-release, will make its Atlanta premiere at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum Theater on Thursday, May 18, at 6:30 pm. The event is free and open to the public, and will also feature a discussion following the screening.
A hit on the film festival circuit and recipient of numerous festival awards and honors, Inside Peace was shot inside Dominguez State Jail, a men’s correctional facility in San Antonio, Texas, and is the directorial debut of Cynthia Fitzpatrick, a veteran TV editor whose credits include The Sopranos, Sex and the City and Six Feet Under. The documentary is distinguished by the remarkable emotional candor and transformation of its subjects as they participate in the Peace Class offered at the jail.
As the inmates featured in Inside Peace soon discover, the Peace Class represents an entirely new direction in their healing and rehabilitation, based on qualities each person already has within oneself. Not only does the film highlight the inmates’ metamorphoses while serving time, it also chronicles their lives after their release, squarely confronting the gritty challenges they encounter once they’ve returned to their lives on the “outside.”
“I felt it was important to show how finding peace within helped the inmates as they re-entered their lives,” notes Fitzpatrick, noting that they continue to thrive.
“Peace initiatives are a key element of The Carter Center, so the themes offered in Inside Peace align beautifully with its mission,” notes Cindy Mommer, co-organizer of the event, adding they are “excited to share the documentary with the local audience.”
The Peace Class is based on the Peace Education Program, which is presented in a variety of settings, including correctional facilities, veterans’, senior and community centers, and is offered in 73 countries and in 27 languages, with numerous programs currently offered in the U.S.
Locally, Atlanta started its first PEP at the Atlanta Men’s Transitional Center in January 2013 and is currently ongoing. The Atlanta PEP Team is still in contact with the original participants since their release; all are doing well in terms of establishing families and finding and retaining employment.
For more information on the Inside Peace, please visit www.insidepeacemovie.com
For more information on the Peace Education Program: www.tprf.org
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WE ARE ALL PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS: Fight Trump’s American Health Care Act (AHCA)
Atlanta leaders Stacie Fox (Planned Parenthood Southeast), Janel Green (GA Alliance for Social Justice), and attorney Gerald Griggs (GA Alliance for Social Justice), hold press conference, rally, and march against the House vote on Trump’s American Health Care Act (AHCA). A crowd of more than 500 Georgians gathered to march and say, “We are all pre-existing conditions. We will hold our elected officials accountable.”
EVENT HOST
Georgia Alliance for Social Justice
SUPPORTING PARTNERS
Planned Parenthood Southeast
Georgians for a Healthy Future
The Health Initiative
Georgia Equality
SURJ Atlanta.
Better Georgia
Metro Atlanta Democratic Socialists of America
Progressive Salon of Decatur
One Billion Rising Atlanta
Posts for Peace and Justice
Feminist Women’s Health Center
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WRFG Presents Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Thursday, May 4
Award-winning investigative journalist, author and co-host of Democracy Now!!, Amy Goodman will speak on Thursday, May 4 at 1st Iconium Baptist Church 542 Moreland Ave SE, Atlanta 30316 at 7pm.
Tickets are $10.00 at the door or through wrfg.org.
#DemocracyNow! is an independent, daily global news hour hosted by Goodman & Juan González. The program is heard weekdays from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. on WRFG 89.3 FM.
#AmyGoodman began her journalistic career in 1991 by covering the #EastTimor independence movement. After she and fellow journalist, Allan Nairn witnessed a massacre of Timorese demonstrators, they were badly beaten by Indonesian occupying soldiers.
In 1996, she co-founded “Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report” at radio station WBAI in NYC. Twenty-one years later, it is broadcast on 1408 stations around the world as well as on television and the internet.
In Sept. 2016, Goodman and her crew traveled to Morton County, North Dakota to cover the months-long struggle led by Native people to stop the construction of the #DakotaAccess Pipe Line.
The non-violent actions of thousands of indigenous men and women along with many supporters, calling themselves “Water Protectors,” had remained a “non-story” to corporate media.
Democracy Now!’s film footage of private security personnel pepper-spraying and siccing attack dogs on a group of Native elders as well as Goodman’s own arrest on criminal trespass charges and later riot charges brought worldwide attention to Standing Rock.
Goodman is on a 60 city tour entitled “Democracy Now! Covering the Movements Changing America.” She will be talking about the grassroots activism challenging the status quo.
All proceeds from the May 4 program will benefit #WRFG 89.3FM, Atlanta’s independent, #CommunityRadio station since 1973.
For more information, go to wrfg.org or our Facebook page, WRFG 89.3 FM.
#noDAPL
Link to the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1740151266285502/
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Palestinian Amal Nassar–Stories of Resistance April 24-26 in Atlanta
Be inspired by AMAL NASSAR from
THE TENT OF NATIONS
A STORIES OF CREATIVE and NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE IN PALESTINE
and what you can do
April 24-26, 2017 in Atlanta
MONDAY APRIL 24 AT 7:00PM
Rita Ann Rollins Building, Room 102
Candler School of Theology, Emory University
1531 Dickey Drive, Atlanta
Sponsored by Emory for Students for Justice in Palestine, Candler Creation Keepers, and Candler Social Concerns Network
TUESDAY APRIL 25 AT 12:00 NOON
The Women’s Research and Resource Center
Spelman College in the Camille Olivia Hanks Cosby Academic Center,
350 Spelman Lane, Atlanta
Sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine
WEDNESDAY APRIL 26 AT 12:00-2:00PM
Presbytery Joining Hands for Justice in Palestine-Israel
invites you to be our guest for Lunch:
Villa International Atl anta
1749 Clifton Rd NE, Atlanta, GA 30329
RSVP NECESSARY: please text or call Fahed 404-441-2702 or email him fabuakel@gmail.com
SPONSORED BY JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE-ATLANTA, INTERFAITH PEACE BUILDERS, JOINING HANDS FOR JUSTICE IN ISRAEL AND PALESTINE, AND FRIENDS OF THE TENT OF NATIONS
Amal Nassar is a Pediatric Physiotherapist for Respiratory Diseases at children Relief Bethlehem. She and her family members began the Tent of NationsProject on their farm just six miles from the city. Her grandfather purchased the land during the Ottoman Empire, and has registered the land under the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate and the Jordanian period. They have been working to secure registration of their farm since 1991 in the Israeli Military and then in Supreme Court. Until this moment, there has been no decision on what to do with the Tent of Nations appeal. In the meantime, they establish “facts on the ground” by planting trees and offer the farm as a place to gather and gain greater understanding of the current struggle there. The marker just outside the farm says, “We refuse to be enemies” in three languages. Come hear Amal share these incredible stories of resistance. http://fotonna.org/
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‘The Resistance’ That Doesn’t Resist War
Alaa Al-Marjani / Reuters
Simultaneously with Trump’s Inauguration, the liberal “opposition” announced the beginning of “The Resistance” against Trump’s openly racist and xenophobic reign. Most notably, “The Resistance” protested in airports against Trump’s ban of immigrants from seven Muslim nations. I myself participated in such demonstrations.
Trump’s administration otherwise got off to a rocky start, with courts shooting down both of Trump’s attempts at the Muslim ban, with the White House in seeming disarray, with the failed attempt to repeal and replace “Obamacare,” and with Trump and his band of misfits becoming the butt of endless jokes. All of this helped pull Trump’s poll records down to record lows for this time in an Administration. But then, something happened – Trump bombed Syria on April 6. And, incredibly, he was cheered on by Republicans and Democrats alike, his polls shot up, and “The Resistance” was mute if not supportive of Trump’s “act of courage.” Trump the monster was now legit because he committed a monstrous act. Incredible!
But, of course, Trump had done a lot of bombing before his popular April 6 attack on Syria. Thus, less than two weeks before this particular bombing of Syria, he bombed Mosul, Iraq, killing nearly 300 people in what the LA Times described as “one of the largest attacks on civilians in recent memory.” Indeed, by some reports, Trump had killed around 1000 civilians in both Iraq and Syria in just the month of March alone.
Trump has also continued Obama’s policy of aiding and abetting Saudi Arabia in its one-sided, genocidal war upon Yemen, the poorest nation on earth, putting 7 million people at risk of imminent starvation.
In truth, at least judged by their actions, or inactions more specifically, the folks who make up “The Resistance” don’t care about Trump’s massacres of civilians in foreign lands, just as they didn’t care about Obama’s. But then, 70 civilians are killed in Syria by chemical attack, and now everyone cares. Indeed, they care so much that they applaud Trump for launching 59 Tomahawk missiles — named, of course, in honor of the tens of millions of Native Americans the U.S. slaughtered — in an action which, by all accounts, accomplished nothing but inflame tensions in an already tense region of the world. In addition, Trump’s bombing itself killed 9 civilians, including 4 children. And, Trump was applauded for his aimless, lethal attack on Syria even though no investigation has taken place into who actually carried out the chemical attack.
The U.S. government and its compliant media ― who have lied us into nearly every war in memory ― said that Assad carried out the attack, and so it must be true. As a refresher, here is a partial list of the wars we have gotten into over the years and the lies which preceded them: Vietnam War (Gulf of Tonkin lie); First Gulf War (lie about Kuwaiti babies being thrown from incubators onto the floor); Second Gulf War (lie about WMDs); and destruction of Libya (lies about “black mercenaries” and Viagra-fueled rapes). Literally, millions have died based upon lies told by our government and “free” press.
However, that we have so often been tricked into war, and that the chemical attack suspiciously happened just one day after Trump said that we had to accept the idea of Assad as President of Syria were simply not fair game for comment. And those who have noted such pesky truths, and who have consequently asked for proof – for example, military veteran and Democratic Congressperson Tulsi Gabbard ― have been pilloried for daring to merely ask questions.
Of course, what we also dare not speak of is the U.S. massive use of chemical weapons in numerous theaters. Just to mention Vietnam, for example, conjures up the image of a country drowned in Agent Orange and Napalm by the United States, with babies continuing to be born with horrible birth defects as a result, and with the U.S. unwilling to help or compensate these victims. The U.S. also has used, and continues to use to this day, depleted uranium and white phosphorous in battle, causing a spike in birth defects and cancer rates, most notably in places like Fallujah, Iraq which now has cancer rates exceeding those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the nuclear bombing.
And yet, just after Trump bombed nearly 300 people to death in Mosul, most Americans, including those in “The Resistance,” were easily convinced about the rightness of U.S. military action in response to the death of 70 people in Syria. That the first, much larger group was killed by bombs and the smaller by chemicals seemed the difference for people, but innocents are dead just the same in either case. Trump “the liar” is now Trump “the bomber,” and so all is well again, we are told, in the American Republic. But things are not well at all.
That an unpopular President can improve his ratings just by bombing another country – at least if we are told that that country is deserving of such a bombing – while that same President’s massacring of civilians throughout the world is simply ignored, demonstrates that the American Republic is no more. We now live in the seat of a cruel, remorseless Empire which needs no credible justification for the violence it decides to rain down on the world. Who, I would ask, will save the world from us?
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com
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