Event Description:

This is a worthy cause and If you oppose it, I welcome the discussion of opposing views. NO WEAPONS, please. Take Action to End the US War and Occupation in Iraq!

The Declaration of Peace is a nationwide campaign to establish by September 21, 2006 a concrete and rapid plan for peace in Iraq, including:

• a prompt timetable for withdrawal of troops and closure of bases
• a peace process for security, reconstruction, and reconciliation
• and the shift of funding for war to meeting human needs. 
  

Visit the declaration-of-peace website

Notes:

If this plan for peace is not created and activated by Congress by September 21, the International Day of Peace, Declaration signers across the U.S. will engage in nonviolent action in Washington, D.C. and in communities throughout the nation.

A National Call for Congressional Visits
Register for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience taking place locally and in Washington, DC for the Week of Action, September 21-28

Week of Action Plan: September 21-28

From September 21-28, just days before Congress adjourns for the fall elections, Declaration signers will take action and support a comprehensive peace process by taking part in nonviolent action, marches, rallies, demonstrations, interfaith services, candlelight vigils and other creative ways to declare peace at the U.S. Capitol and in cities and towns across the country. Sign the Declaration of Peace

The Declaration of Peace campaign will continue after the September actions if no comprehensive plan to end the war is in place. Nationally coordinated nonviolent activities will continue until the United States withdraws from Iraq and supports a comprehensive peace process.

More than 180 antiwar, peace, and justice organizations are participating in the Declaration of Peace movement. Sign The Declaration of Peace ? and take tangible, nonviolent action to end this war and to declare a new era of peace and justice.

Event Website:
declarationofpeace.org

Event Description:

This month, the Progressive Action Alliance is teaming up with the Houston Institute for Culture for the 4th Friday Flicks event, on Sep. 22, and it's FREE.  There are two short movies ("The Other Side" and "Oaxacan Hoops") scheduled for that date.  Both are on the topic of immigration and globalization.  See below for descriptions of the movies.

We'll have refreshments before (starting at 6:30 PM) and after the movies shown on on Sep. 22 only, along with a discussion afterwards.  The complete schedule and descriptions of HIFC movies is listed below.

FILM EVENTS


Houston Institute for Culture
and the Havens Center Present

Topical Films and Discussions

Free and Open to the Public

All films 7:00pm (unless otherwise noted)

Havens Center - 1827 W. Alabama, Houston, Texas 77098

Immigration and Globalization
Cosponsored by Nuestra Palabra

Friday, September 22
-The Other Side
-Oaxacan Hoops

Saturday, September 23
-North of Ojinaga
-Pavements of Gold
-Mexico City: The Largest City

Sunday, September 24
-A World Without Borders: What is Happening with Globalization
-Cochise County USA: Cries from the Border

[Film Descriptions] Listen to Nuestra Palabra, Tuesdays, 7:30 - 8:30pm, on KPFT, 90.1FM


Indigenous Peoples and Environment
Cosponsored by People of Earth

Friday, October 6
-Drumbeat for Mother Earth - Persistent Organic Pollutants Threatening Indigenous Peoples
-Huicholes and Pesticides

Saturday, October 7
-Pavements of Gold
-Ecuador: The Indigenous Woman

Sunday, October 8
-In the Light of Reverence - Protecting America's Sacred Lands

[Film Descriptions] Listen to People of Earth, Thursdays, 11am – 12noon, on KPFT, 90.1FM


Consumerism and Sustainability

Thursday, November 16
-Affluenza

Friday, November 17
-The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream

Saturday, November 18
-The Power of Community - How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

[Film Descriptions]


Religion, Culture and Politics in Mexico

Sunday, October 29
-Darkness into Light: Following the Spirit

Sunday, December 10
-Guadalupe: Mother of all Mexico

[Film Descriptions]


Films cosponsored by KPFT, 90.1FM



Stay tuned; more film dates to be announced

-Argentina - Hope in Hard Times
-This Land is Our Land: The Struggle for Land in Brazil
-Approach of Dawn: Portraits of Mayan Women Forging Peace in Guatemala
-Hidden in Plain Site



FILM DESCRIPTIONS


Sexism and Discrimination

Thursday, September 14, 7:00pm

Havens Center Kids' Digital Story Project Debut "Talking About Sexism", 2006, 10mins

Middle School Children who are part of the Havens Center After-School Program produced a 10-minute digital story about sexism. They spoke with women in the community, including City Councilwoman Sue Lovell and Katrina survivor Mama Suma.

The soundtrack to the digital story will be aired on Houston radio stations in the fall and a DVD of their project will be distributed to area schools for classroom consideration of this important topic.

Who's Counting: Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics, 1996, 52mins
Produced by The National Film Board of Canada

Marilyn Waring is the foremost spokesperson for global feminist economics, and her ideas offer new avenues of approach for political action. With persistence and wit she has succeeded in drawing attention to the fact that GDP has no negative side to its accounts - such as damage to the environment - and completely ignores the unpaid work of women. "Why is the market economy all that counts?" Ms. Waring asks?

In 1975, when she was just 22 years old, she was elected to the New Zealand parliament. She was re-elected three times and eventually brought down the government on the issue of making New Zealand a nuclear free zone. When she was chairperson of the Public Expenditures Committee, she perfected what she calls the "art of the dumb question." Ever since she has challenged the myths of economics, its elitist stance, and our tacit compliance with political agendas that masquerade as objective economic policy.


Immigration and Globalization
Cosponsored by Nuestra Palabra

Friday, September 22, 7:00pm

The Other Side, 2001, 27mins
Directed by Chris Walker; Produced by Television Trust for the Environment

Over the last century, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans have crossed the border to the United States in pursuit of permanent jobs, and a better life. But in the new millennium, that journey has become increasingly dangerous, and the costs are starting to outweigh the benefits.

This program reveals the devastating impact of Mexican-US migration. The people who attempt to cross suffer horribly and frequently die. The families and communities left behind are disabled and their languages and cultures are being destroyed. The Other Side tells the story of the villagers who have had enough - and now are trying to make sure their children will no longer have to migrate to realize their dreams.

Oaxacan Hoops, 2002, 20mins
Directed, Produced and Edited by Olga R. Rodriguez

Oaxacan Hoops explores how basketball, one of the most revered sports in the United States, has helped many Zapotec Indians living in Los Angeles build community, keep traditions alive and maintain a connection to their villages in Mexico.

The film opens in the mountains of the Sierra Norte, in the state of Oaxaca, where we find out how basketball became a cultural tradition for Zapotecs, the largest of 16 indigenous groups in the state and among Mexico's shortest people. The film crosses paths with "The Other Side," taking us to Los Angeles, where thousands of Zapotecs have gone looking for work. It is here that the biggest Oaxacan basketball tournament outside of Mexico, the Oaxaca Cup, takes place.


Saturday, September 23, 7:00pm

North of Ojinaga, 2004, 24mins
Directed by Rommel Eclarinal

Two young immigrants - a Chinese woman and a Mexican man - are smuggled across the U.S. border from Mexico and abandoned in the vast unforgiving Texas desert.

Pavements of Gold, 2001, 27mins
Directed by Steve Bradshaw; Produced by Television Trust for the Environment

Urban poverty is one of the biggest challenges facing the world in the 21st century. In 1950, three hundred million people were living in urban areas; by 2001 that figure had increased to 2.85 billion, or almost half the world's population. And the flow of rural migrants arriving in the world's mega cities shows no signs of slowing down. "It is a trend which cannot be stopped," says Anna Tibaijuka, the executive director of the UN Center for Human Settlements, "even in the developing countries..."

With the backdrop of Lima, Peru, this program examines the enduring magnetism of big cities and asks whether the migrants who have moved here now feel that city life is the answer to their dreams.

Mexico City: The Largest City, 2004, 26mins

This program defines Mexico City's globalization in terms of winners and losers, examining how, in the world's largest metropolis, immigration challenges are linked to poverty and population influx from surrounding rural areas. Contrasting the city's high-tech facilities and fashionable neighborhoods with its sprawling slums and their struggling inhabitants, the program outlines the relationship between foreign investment and the worldwide need for cheap labor, which Mexico and its indigenous peoples readily supply. Glimpses into a tech-savvy youth culture and the persistent Zapatista movement reinforce the capital's nickname: City of Contrasts.


Sunday, September 24, 7:00pm

A World Without Borders: What is Happening with Globalization, 2000, 26mins

As globalization gains momentum, industrialized and developing countries are, to a greater or lesser extent, becoming increasingly similar, with middle-class luxury and abject poverty coexisting side by side. This program explores the repercussions of globalization as well as a growing resentment toward the G8 countries and nongovernmental organizations. Concerns over third-world debt, environmental degradation, biodiversity, the concentration of power, and the future of democracy are aired by globally oriented young adults who are poised to inherit a world without borders, or rules.

Cochise County USA: Cries from the Border, 2005, 69mins (for discussion purposes we will view an except of the film)
Directed by Mercedes Maharis

Mercedes Maharis, a Mexican American resident of southeast Arizona, documented the activity of immigrants and anti-immigrant groups, as well as humanitarian organizations working to prevent deaths in the Arizona desert. A migrant trail for thousands of immigrants passes through Cochise County. The film reveals the dangers immigrants face, as well as related border issues of human and drug trafficking.

The film, which anti-immigrant activists point to as evidence for increased border protection, features interviews with Cochise County residents and officials, Border Patrol officials, "civil defense" organizers, civil rights activists and immigrants, and documents treacherous border crossings in the Arizona-Sonora desert.


Indigenous Peoples and Environment
Cosponsored by People of Earth

Friday, October 6, 7:00pm

Drumbeat for Mother Earth - Persistent Organic Pollutants Threatening Indigenous Peoples, 1999, 54mins
Directed by Joseph Di Gangi, PhD, and Amon Giebel; Produced by Indigenous Environmental Network and Greenpeace

Many scientists and tribal people consider persistent toxic chemicals to be the greatest threat to the long-term survival of Indigenous Peoples. "Drumbeat for Mother Earth" explores how these chemicals contaminate the traditional food web, violate treaty rights, travel long distances, and are passed from one generation to the next during pregnancy causing cancer, learning disabilities, and other serious health problems.

Indigenous Peoples' connection to Mother Earth places them on a collision course with these chemicals. Continued survival within a contaminated environment means making life and death decisions that could alter whole cultures, diets, ceremonies and future generations.

Huicholes and Pesticides, 1994, 27mins
Directed by Patricia Diaz-Romo

The indigenous Huichol people of Mexico consider themselves responsible for keeping the flames of life burning, and maintaining the forces of nature in balance. Paradoxically, as this documentary describes, they are also the primary victims of a disastrous environmental health crisis: their exposure to dangerous chemical pesticides, which are responsible for more than 1,500 deaths per year. In this film, doctors, anthropologists, and the Huichol people themselves describe this tragedy. The practitioners of subsistence agriculture for centuries, the Huichols' insertion into a market economy has led them to work as fieldworkers for multinational agribusiness concerns based in Mexico.

The film explains the pervasive use of pesticides there as an example of the exportation of environmentally and medically dangerous industries to the Third World, where low wages and lax enforcement of labor and environmental laws allow for the maximization of profits at catastrophic costs to the local population, especially for the marginalized indigenous populations, already suffering from the effects of poverty and malnutrition.


Saturday, October 7, 7:00pm

Pavements of Gold, 2001, 27mins
Directed by Steve Bradshaw; Produced by Television Trust for the Environment

Urban poverty is one of the biggest challenges facing the world in the 21st century. In 1950, three hundred million people were living in urban areas; by 2001 that figure had increased to 2.85 billion, or almost half the world's population. And the flow of rural migrants arriving in the world's mega cities shows no signs of slowing down. "It is a trend which cannot be stopped," says Anna Tibaijuka, the executive director of the UN Center for Human Settlements, "even in the developing countries..."

With the backdrop of Lima, Peru, this program examines the enduring magnetism of big cities and asks whether the migrants who have moved here now feel that city life is the answer to their dreams.

Ecuador: The Indigenous Woman, 1997, 57mins

Isolated in jungles, or crowded into large cities, Latin American Indians constitute the most exploited sector of society. This program traces the harsh life of indigenous women from several tribes, including the Otavalan, Puruha, and Quechua of Ecuador, from pre-Columbian times to the present. Topics discussed include rape as an ongoing practice; labor exploitation; the effects of acculturation; and racial and sexual discrimination.


Sunday, October 8, 7:00pm

In the Light of Reverence - Protecting America's Sacred Lands, 2001, 73mins
Directed by Christopher McLeod; Narrated by Peter Coyote and Tantoo Cardinal; Produced by the Sacred Land Film Project of Earth Island Institute

Across the United States, Native Americans are struggling to protect their sacred places. Religious freedom, so valued in America, is not guaranteed to those who practice land-based religion. Every year, more sacred sites - the land-based equivalent of the world's great cathedrals - are being destroyed. Strip Mining and development cause much of the destruction. But rock climbers, tourists, and New Age religious practitioners are part of the problem, too. The biggest problem is ignorance.

"In the Light of Reverence" tells the story of three indigenous communities and the land they struggle to protect: the Lakota of the Great Plains, the Hopi of the Four Corners area, and the Wintu of northern California.


Consumerism and Sustainability

Thursday, November 16, 7:00pm

Affluenza, 1997, 56 mins
Produced by John de Graaf and Vivia Boe; A Co-Production of KCTS-Seattle and Oregon Public Broadcasting; Hosted by Scott Simon

"Affluenza" is a groundbreaking film that diagnoses a serious social disease - caused by consumerism, commercialism and rampant materialism - that is having a devastating impact on our families, communities, and the environment. We have more stuff, but less time, and our quality of life seems to be deteriorating. By using personal stories, expert commentary, hilarious old film clips, and "uncommercial" breaks to illuminate the nature and extent of the disease, "Affluenza" has appealed to widely diverse audiences: from freshmen orientation programs to consumer credit counseling, and from religious congregations to marketing classes.

With the help of historians and archival film, "Affluenza" reveals the forces that have dramatically transformed us from a nation that prized thriftiness - with strong beliefs in "plain living and high thinking" - into the ultimate consumer society.


Friday, November 17, 7:00pm

The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream, 2004, 76mins
Directed by Gregory Greene. Produced by Barry Silverthorn.

Since World War II North Americans have invested much of their newfound wealth in suburbia. It has promised a sense of space, affordability, family life and upward mobility. As the population of suburban sprawl has exploded in the past 50 years, so too has the suburban way of life become embedded in the American consciousness. Suburbia, and all it promises, has become the American Dream.

But as we enter the 21st century, serious questions are beginning to emerge about the sustainability of this way of life. With brutal honesty and a touch of irony, The End of Suburbia explores the American Way of Life and its prospects as the planet approaches a critical era, as global demand for fossil fuels begins to outstrip supply. World Oil Peak and the inevitable decline of fossil fuels are upon us now, some scientists and policy makers argue in this documentary. The consequences of inaction in the face of this global crisis are enormous. What does Oil Peak mean for North America? As energy prices skyrocket in the coming years, how will the populations of suburbia react to the collapse of their dream?


Saturday, November 18, 7:00pm

The Power of Community - How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, 2004
Directed by Faith Morgan; Written and Produced by Faith Morgan, Eugene "Pat" Murphy and Megan Quinn

The independent documentary was inspired when Faith Morgan and Pat Murphy took a trip to Cuba through Global Exchange in August, 2003. That year Pat had begun studying and speaking about worldwide peak oil production. In May, Pat and Faith attended the second meeting of The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, a European group of oil geologists and scientists, which predicted that mankind was perilously close to having used up half of the world's oil resources. When they learned that Cuba underwent the loss of over half of its oil imports and survived, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, the couple wanted to see for themselves how Cuba had done this.

During their first trip to Cuba, in the summer of 2003, they found what Cubans call "The Special Period" astounding and Cuban's responses very moving. Faith found herself wanting to document on film Cuba's successes so that what they had done wouldn't be lost. Both of them wanted to learn more about Cuba's transition from large farms and plantations, and reliance on fossil-fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers, to small organic farms and urban gardens. Cuba was undergoing a transition from a highly industrial society to a sustainable one. Cuba became, for them, a living example of how a country can successfully traverse what we all will have to deal with sooner or later, the reduction and loss of finite fossil fuel resources.


Religion, Culture and Politics in Mexico

Sunday, October 29, 7:00pm

Darkness into Light: Following the Spirit, 2003, 56min
By Patricia Lacy Collins and Robert S. Cozens (San Rafael Films), narrated by Edward James Olmos

To understand the role of public devotions in Mexican life today, one must understand what they have cost. From the 1840s until the 1990s, successive Mexican governments have sought to control and frequently to suppress the religious life of the people. Suppression became particularly bitter following the Constitution of 1917. In a country with almost 90% of the population professing the Catholic faith, how could this be? Following the Spirit, the third documentary in the Darkness into Light series, brings the story of the spiritual journey of the people of Mexico to the present time. It traces a long- standing friction between church and state that resulted, in the 19th and 20th centuries, in somber and bloody repression of religious and human rights in Mexico. Leading historians paint a broad canvas of multiple struggles little known outside of that country.


Sunday, December 10, 7:00pm

Guadalupe: Mother of all Mexico, 2003, 56min
By Patricia Lacy Collins and Robert S. Cozens (San Rafael Films), narrated by Edward James Olmos

Each year ten million people visit the shrine of our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The histories and miracles of our lady of Guadalupe come alive as Mexican scholars and pilgrims on the road tell the wondrous stories behind their devotion to their spiritual mother.

Guadalupe, Mother of All Mexico suggests the strength of pre-Christian life and seeking. Such ancient, impressive sites as Teotihuacan and Monte Alban were built by human hands in cultures that had no beasts of burden. In pre-Christian times, the Mexicans tell us, "there was always a mother, but never like the Virgin Mary." In 1531, she was received by people of the western hemisphere as Our Lady of Guadalupe, the beloved "Madrecita."



PAST FILMS

Event Sponsor:
Houston Institute for Culture

Event Contact Name:
Mark Lacy

Event Phone Contact Information:
713.521.3686

Event Email Address:
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Event Website:
www.houstonculture.org/film

Event Fee:
Free!