Keep Your Eyes on the Prize Screening & Discussion Series
Offered 2/28/10-7/12/10 through the Twin Cities Experimental College
This screening and discussion series is designed for those looking to gain a preliminary understanding of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in combination with a more general discussion of the ideas of anti-racism, pacifism/non-violence, and militancy. We will be viewing Eyes on the Prize in 1-hour increments. Eyes on the Prize is an award-winning 14-hour television series produced by Blackside and narrated by Julian Bond. Through contemporary interviews and historical footage, the series covers all of the major events of the civil rights and Black Power movements from 1954-1985. Series topics range from the Montgomery bus boycott in 1954 to the Voting Rights Act in 1965; from community power in schools to Black Power in the streets; from early acts of individual courage to the emergence of a mass movement and its eventual split.
We hold discussion directly following each screening, which is supplemented by optional readings. While each session is open to all, we would like to encourage people to come consistently in order to have an ongoing discussion that addresses what we’ve cumulatively gained from tracing this history. It should be noted that this course is being led by white activists who are interested in understanding the civil rights movement both as a way of developing anti-racist/solidarity practices and also in order to better understand the historical origins of tactics employed in all forms of justice organizing.
Indigenous Solidarity Activism from Black Mesa to Palestine: A Conversation with Flo Razowsky
Thursday, April 29th, 2010 7:30 pm, Olin Rice 150, Macalester College
This talk focuses on the role of anti-racist solidarity work in indigenous struggles for self-determination. Flo Razowsky will speak with us about her experience as a coordinator for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) based in the West Bank in occupied Palestine, where she organized incoming international volunteers traveling to Palestine to support movements for Palestinian self-determination. Razowsky will reflect on larger questions about the role of outsiders in movements for indigenous sovereignty, drawing connections between her work in the occupied territories in historic Palestine and her experiences as a solidarity activist at Big Mountain-Black Mesa in support of Dine’ (Navajo) communities resisting unjust mountaintop removal coal mining operations and forced relocation policies of the US government.
K. Flo Razowsky is a Twin Cities, MN-based playwright, documentary photographer, writer and grassroots community organizer. Razowsky’s most recent play, Cafe Intifada, showed to sold out audiences in January and February 2009. Razowsky’s photographs and writings can be found in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Canadian-based The Dominion, The Electronic Intifada, the Southside Pride and more. As a grassroots community organizer, Razowsky has supported Indegenous struggles of the Americas, militarized border issues in the US, Ukraine and North Africa and anti-occupation work in occupied Palestine. Sponsored by the Macalester Peace and Justice Committee (MPJC-SDS), Proud Indigenous Peoples for Education (PIPE), Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights (MacSUPER), and Opposition to War & Occupation (OWO)
Minisota Makoce: Occupied Territory with Speaker Waziyatawin
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 5:30 in John B. Davis lecture hall, Macalester College.
This presentation will examine the historical and ongoing occupation of Minnesota and the devastating consequences for both the land and Minnesota’s Original People, the Dakota Oyate (Nation). It will further explore the possibility of a liberated homeland and future for Dakota people in the context of the collapse of industrial civilization.
Waziyatawin is a Wahpetunwa Dakota from the Pezihutazizi Otunwe (Yellow Medicine Village) in southwestern Minnesota. She received her Ph.D. in American History from Cornell University in 2000. Waziyatawin currently holds the Indigenous Peoples Research Chair in the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Her interests include projects centering on Indigenous approaches to decolonization such as truth-telling and reparative justice, Indigenous women and resistance, the recovery of Indigenous knowledge, and the development of liberation strategies for Indigenous communities. Sponsored by Opposition to War and Occupation, Macalester Peace and Justice Committee, Proud Indigenous Peoples for Education, and the Macalester Humanities and Media and Cultural Studies and Religious Studies departments.
Benefit for the Palestine Solidarity Project with Speaker Michael Galvin
Saturday, September 12, 2009, 7:00pm – 9:30pm at Mayday Bookstore, 301 Cedar Ave S, Minneapolis, MN
Join us for benefit for the Palestine Solidarity Project (PSP) with speaker Michael Galvin. Michael recently returned from working with PSP and other solidarity organizations in the occupied Palestinian territories. Come to learn about the current status of the occupation and solidarity activism in Palestine, and also to support the PSP – a Palestinian-led organization that uses nonviolent direct action to help Palestinian communities remain on their land in the face of intimidation, economic strangulation, and a history of forced displacement under the Israeli occupation. Sponsored by Opposition to War & Occupation, Women Against Military Madness Mideast Committee, and the Twin Cities chapter of the Intenational Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.
Watch Kahnesatake: 270 Years of Resistance with OWO this Saturday
2pm May 2nd, 2009 at 1539 Goodrich Avenue, St. Paul
You are invited to join Opposition to War & Occupation (OWO) for a screening and discussion of the 1993 documentary Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance. The film chronicles the crisis in 1990 when the indigenous people of the Mohawk Nation blocked access to reserve land which was being militarily appropriated against their will by the white community of Oka, Quebec. The film captures the initial contact and subsequent Canadian military siege of the land as a view into the continuing struggle by the indigenous people of North America for decolonization, and also its violent repression by armed agencies of the state.
Meeting Resistance Screening & Discussion
Sunday, March 1st, 2009, 7pm at Mayday Bookstore, 301 Cedar Ave S, Minneapolis, MN
Meeting Resistance raises the veil of anonymity surrounding the Iraqi insurgency by meeting face to face with individuals who are passionately engaged in the struggle, and documenting for the very first time, the sentiments experienced and actions taken by a nation’s citizens when their homeland is occupied. Directed by Steve Connors and Molly Bingham, this film explodes myth after myth about the war in Iraq and the Iraqis who participate. Through its unprecedented access to these clandestine groups, MEETING RESISTANCE focuses the spotlight on those fighting in resistance to US occupation, clarifying why the violence in Iraq continues to this day and providing a deeper understanding of both the toll of occupation and the human condition of resistance.
