An Evening with Award Winning Photojournalist Zoriah
Thursday, August 26
7:00 PM
Mercury Cafe
2199 California St, Denver
$10-20 suggested donation

Join ArgusFest at a special event with the award-winning humanitarian photojournalist Zoriah.  His work includes powerful images of the worlds largest disasters and conflicts including war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine, famine in Africa, and the 2004 tsunami in India. He has remained independent so that he has the freedom to cover stories that are sometimes overlooked by the advertising-driven media.

In 2008 a television crew from the show “In Harms Way” followed Zoriah to the Gaza strip where he shot images of the Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation. It was one of the only times I had ever seen American television present the Palestinians and their struggle in a fair light.

Also in 2008, Zoriah was embedded with the Marines in Iraq where he took photos of some dead American soldiers after a suicide attack. The U.S. military stripped him of his embed and he was forced to leave Iraq. Zoriah felt that it was important for us back home to see the reality of war. At the time he had taken more images of dead American soldiers than any other U.S. journalist and he may still hold that record. You can read about this incident in the NY Times Article http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/world/middleeast/26censor.html

More recently Zoriah has worked covering the Haiti earthquake as well as the BP oil spill. He will be sharing some of his latest work and answering your questions. Don’t miss this opportunity to see one of the most dedicated and artistic photojournalists working today.

Because Zoriah is independent he needs our help to keep working so if you can make a donation towards his work he would greatly appreciate it. In the age of PR and perception management we need people like Zoriah to give us truth now more than ever.

Zoriah’s websites are:

http://www.zoriah.com
http://www.zoriah.net

Local fishermen, now working on a BP cleanup crew, inspect a
beach area after a new batch of oil washed ashore.

This is quite possibly the best video I’ve  ever seen on YouTube. First as Tragedy, Then as Farce is a talk by Slavoj Žižek that challenges what I believe is one of the most fundamentally flawed assumptions in society today, that capitalist charity can ever overtake the destruction created by capitalism in the first place. An article from the November 2001 issue of the satire paper The Onion reads “70 Percent Of The World Could Use An All-Star Benefit Concert“. It was of course meant to be a joke but is actually quite truthful and what’s not funny is that number is rising exponentially thanks to so-called “free-market capitalism”. Žižek does a brilliant job here of explaining how charity and ethically-branded consumerism is keeping this unsustainable system on life-support prolonging it’s long term damage. I must warn you though, it’s not for the weak-minded. His ideas will be very uncomfortable for many.

Requiem for Detroit
Thursday, June 24
7:00 PM
Mercury Cafe
2199 California St, Denver
$5 suggested donation

a vivid evocation of an apocalyptic vision: a slow-motion Katrina that has had many more victims. Detroit was once America’s fourth largest city.

Built by the car for the car, with its groundbreaking suburbs, freeways and shopping centres, it was the embodiment of the American dream.

But its intense race riots brought the army into the city. With violent union struggles against the fierce resistance of Henry Ford and the Big Three, it was also the scene of American nightmares.

Now it is truly a dystopic post-industrial city, in which 40 per cent of the land in the centre is returning to prairie. Greenery grows up through abandoned office blocks, houses and collapsing car plants, and swallows up street lights.

Police stations and post offices have been left with papers on the desks like the Marie Celeste. There is no more rush hour on what were the first freeways in America. Crime, vandalism, arson and dog fighting are the main activities in once the largest building in North America. But it’s also a source of hope.

Streets are being turned to art. Farming is coming back to the centre of the city. Young people are flocking to help. The burgeoning urban agricultural movement is the fastest growing movement in the US. Detroit leads the way again but in a very different direction.

Burma VJ
Monday, March 29
7:00 PM
Hooked on Colfax
3215 E. Colfax Ave, Denver
$5 suggested donation or 1 hour volunteer

2010 Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary Feature

Armed with pocket-sized video cameras, a tenacious band of Burmese reporters face down death to expose the repressive regime controlling their country. In 2007, after decades of self-imposed silence, Burma became headline news across the globe when peaceful Buddhist monks led a massive rebellion. More than 100,000 people took to the streets protesting a cruel dictatorship that has held the country hostage for more than 40 years. Foreign news crews were banned, the Internet was shut down, and Burma was closed to the outside world. So how did we witness these events? Enter the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), aka the Burma VJs. Compiled from the shaky handheld footage of the DVB, acclaimed filmmaker Anders Ostergaard’s Burma VJ pulls us into the heat of the moment as the VJs themselves become the target of the Burmese government. Their tactical leader, code-named Joshua, oversees operations from a safe hiding place in Thailand. Via clandestine phone calls, Joshua dispenses his posse of video warriors, who covertly film the abuses in their country, then smuggle their footage across the border into Thailand. Joshua ships the footage to Norway, where it is broadcast back to Burma and the world via satellite. Burma VJ plays like a thriller, all the more scary because it is true.

Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign
3500 Lorain Avenue # 501A
Cleveland, Ohio 44113
info@economichumanrights.org
www.economichumanrights.org

Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 5, 2010

Contact: Jeff Rousset, Communications Director, 845-642-8145, jeffppehrc@gmail.com
-OR-
Cheri Honkala, National Organizer, 267-439-8419, cherihonkalappehrc@gmail.com

March to Fulfill the Dream

Historic march and caravan led by poor people goes from New Orleans to the U.S Social Forum in Detroit

NEW ORLEANS, LA – On April 4th, 2010, Easter Sunday and the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, poor people and their allies will unite with the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) to advance Dr. King’s dream of ending poverty. The March to Fulfill the Dream will visit dozens of cities between New Orleans and Detroit, the site of the US Social Forum 2010, to highlight the urgent need for affordable housing and healthcare in the United States. Housing, healthcare, and jobs are human rights according to the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, endorsed by the U.S. in 1948. Continuing the legacy of Dr. King’s 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, which was cut short by his assassination, the tour is part of a larger strategy to unite poor people’s groups and their allies from across the country to build a diverse nonviolent movement to end poverty.

The PPEHRC caravan will visit many cities, including historic cities from the Civil Rights movement, for which Dr. King became the famous spokesperson. Each stop will include marches, demonstrations, and speak-outs led by poor people from the local cities, dramatizing the plight of today’s swelling numbers of the poor. Among the stops is Marks, Mississippi, where Dr. King launched the original Poor People’s Campaign in 1968 with a march and caravan to the nation’s capital.

“Dr. King’s dream is as relevant today as it was during his lifetime. More people than ever before are living in poverty surrounded by an unprecedented concentration of wealth and abundance. We are organizing to finally realize the dream of racial equality and economic justice in the United States,” said Viola Washington of New Orleans, a Katrina survivor with the New Orleans Welfare Rights Organization, a PPEHRC member group.

People in the U.S. are experiencing the worst recession since the Great Depression, with record numbers struggling for jobs, housing, and healthcare. More than 6 million Americans have been unemployed for 6 months or more, “the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948,” according to a recent New York Times article. A record three million homes were foreclosed in 2009, with millions more expected to follow this year. Over 45 million Americans have no health care. Billions are spent on wars abroad while citizens at home lack basic social services.

“We don’t expect the changes we need to come from Washington or Wall Street, so we are building a mass movement to fight for the healthcare, housing, and jobs we need,” stated Khalilah Collins of Women in Transition, a PPEHRC member group in Louisville, Kentucky. “We are developing leaders from the ranks of the poor to create solutions ourselves and build a sustainable system.”

The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is a national coalition of over 125 grassroots anti-poverty groups, most of which are led directly by poor and homeless people. It is the nation’s largest anti-poverty organization that is led directly by the poor.

The March to Fulfill the Dream and the U.S. Social Forum (USSF) will connect poor people and anti-poverty groups from across the country with a special focus on education and leadership development. Every March event will promote dialogue among poor and disenfranchised people about the economic crisis and community-based solutions. “Organizing and education together can help us turn this recession into an opportunity for creative transformation,” said Larry Bresler, PPEHRC’s National Director.

The caravan, and the USSF itself, where more than 20,000 people representing progressive groups from across the U.S. and the world will gather, will provide spaces for poor people and their allies to further develop the analysis and strategy to build the movement and challenge the structures that cause poverty.

“All major social movements in history have been led by those most affected by problems. The Civil Rights, American Revolution, and Women’s Suffrage movements were all led by those most oppressed by injustice. The crisis in our economic system gets fixed when poor people are organized to lead the fight,” said Cheri Honkala, National Organizer of PPEHRC.

PPEHRC member groups have helped move homeless families into abandoned buildings, and are coordinating food distribution drives to help feed growing numbers of hungry people in both urban and rural cities. The coalition is running a national Zero Evictions and Foreclosures campaign to address what it sees as a national housing epidemic. As part of its “Programs of Survival” people are trained to resist foreclosures by using nonviolent civil disobedience to stay in their homes when other options have failed.

“There’s no more time to sit back and hope for politicians to help us. They help the banks and abandon the poor,” said Marian Kramer of the National Welfare Rights Union and Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, both PPEHRC member groups. “The present economic catastrophe calls for a wave of nonviolent civil disobedience to sweep over this nation and win the basic human rights we need to survive.”

The Most Endangered
Activist in America
Cheri Honkala
Thursday, March 18
7:00 PM
Mercury Cafe
2199 California St, Denver
$10-$20 suggested donation
for the Poor People’s Economic
Human Rights Campaign’s
“March to fulfill the Dream”

She has been called the most endangered activist in America. Cheri Honkala has been arrested over 200 times while demonstrating, committing civil disobedience and organizing for the human rights of America’s poor and homeless.

Cheri has lived on the streets as a single mother and knows intimately the daily struggles to obtain the most basic of necessities when your poor and homeless. Cheri will be talking about her life as a frontline activist for the poor as well as the upcoming “March to Fulfill the Dream”, a multi-racial march and caravan led primarily by poor and homeless, which will begin on April 4th in New Orleans and end on July 22 in Detroit. The march will be a continuation of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last dream of a world without poverty.

Getting fit is far more psychological than it is physical. Some spiritual grounded in concrete flesh.

Today I did 30 minutes on the stationary bike, 30 minutes on the treadmill and 1000 meters on the rowing machine of death.

2.17.10 FOOD LOG

I didn’t write down what I ate today but it wasn’t anything bad. I did have some wine and champagne will visiting with friends.

If you want to understand the global economic system this film is a must see. It specifically deals with the work that women do and how it is measured (or not measured) in the present day economic system. In examining this issue Marilyn Waring also gives us a critical look into the distorted logic that drives the world today.

Fierce Light
Wednesday, February 24
7:00 PM
SAME Cafe
2023 E. Colfax Ave, Denver
$5 suggested donation or 1 hour volunteer

The 2006 murder of friend and fellow media-activist Brad Will in protest-torn Oaxaca, Mexico, is the impetus for Ripper’s journey, which takes him to the flash points  of spiritual activism around the world, including Montgomery, Alabama; Robben Island, South Africa; Andrah, India; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and South Central Los Angeles, where a months-long protest against the razing of a vital community garden provides a highly dramatic spine for the wide-ranging film.

En route, Ripper encounters a number of eloquent icons, including American Civil Rights legend Congressman John Lewis, actor turned activist Daryl Hannah, Nobel prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Pulitzer Prize Winning Author Alice Walker, Buddhist peace activist monk Thich Nhat Hahn, famed tree sitter Julia Butterfly Hill, and dharma punk, Noah Levine, South Central Farmers; Visionaries.

Ripper discovers what Paul Hawken (author “Blessed Unrest”) describes as the largest global movement in history - thousands of individuals and organizations connected by a shared commitment to compassionate, positive action.

Alice Walker calls it “a human sunrise” - Ripper calls it “Fierce Light.” With stunning cinematography, a compelling soundtrack, and dramatic stories of resistance and transformation, FIERCE LIGHT: When Spirit Meets Action reveals what is possible when human beings, faced with a world in crisis, rise to their absolute best.

Coca-Cola
Monday, February 15
7:00 PM
Hooked on Colfax
3215 E. Colfax Ave, Denver
$5 suggested donation or 1 hour volunteer

A searing indictment of the Coca-Cola empire and its alleged kidnapping, torture and murder of union leaders trying to improve working conditions in Colombia, Guatemala and Turkey.