[URPE] [NYC] Brecht Forum: Saul Landau: A Bush and Botox World / Picture Balata / In the Shadow of the Wall

Mon Apr 2 21:03:24 MDT 2007

P L E A S E     F O R W A R D    W I D E L Y
The Brecht Forum
________________________________________________________________

4/4       A Bush and Botox World- Saul Landau
4/5       Nazis vs. Zapatistas: An Anti-Power Workshop-Nick Cooper
4/6       Picture Balata: Exhibit Opening and Presentation- Young 
Photographers from the Balata Refugee Camp
4/7       Write Makes Might Reading Marathon: New York Writers Coalition
4/9       Ecological and Agricultural  Perspectives on Israel/Palestine: 
Joel Kovel and Hillary Martin
________________________________________________________________

Wednesday, April 4
7:30 pm
BOOK PARTY/FORUM 

A Bush & Botox World

Saul Landau

 Botox promoters promise to wipe away wrinkles, the signs of aging--the 
signs of time passing. Such "eternal youth" potions metaphorically help 
erase the very notion of time itself. In a phony world, increasingly 
dependent on smoke and mirrors, it is no wonder we look at elected 
officials like a cheap circus act. Saul Landau travels in and out of 
America, from the stress-filled cultures of Southern California business 
people and poor towns in Texas, to the wildly booming streets of Hanoi 
and temples of Angkor Wat, to muse on just how low we have sunk. The 
book explores the ironies of a time in which science uncovers the 
genetic code and masters of physics of instant global communication 
technology, while bible thumpers and talkers to Christ advocate medieval 
crusades to spread their order to infidels. Gore Vidal provides a 
scabrously funny introduction to a book by an author he "loves to steal 
ideas from."

 Saul Landau is an internationally-known scholar, author, commentator, 
and filmmaker. Landau has made fifty films on social, political and 
historical issues, and human rights. He has won the Letelier-Moffitt 
Human Rights Award, the George Polk Award for Investigative Reporting, 
the First Amendment Award, the Edgar Allen Poe Award, and an Emmy.

 Suggested donation: $6/$10/$15
No One Turned Away

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Thursday, April 5
6:30 - 10:30:pm
Co-sponsor: Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory

Nazis vs. Zapatistas: The Struggle Against Cooptation
An Anti-Power Workshop with screening of Soma: An Anarchist Therapy

Facilitated by Nick Cooper

 Throughout civilization, oppression has inspired a rich history of 
creative resistance. Over time, though, resistance can harden and create 
new oppressions; systems of power can co-opt the methods and symbols of 
those who resist. Lao Tsu, in the Tao Te Ching, and Subcomandante Marcos 
of the Zapatistas both discover methods of recognizing and avoiding this 
pitfall, arriving at the metaphor of the power of water. Like water, 
oppressed peoples can take innumerable blows, only to later wash over 
their oppressors without weapons or bloodshed.
This 4-hour workshop will examine oppression and the struggles of those 
who have searched for non-oppressive ways to escape it. The workshop 
includes a screening of Soma: An Anarchist Therapy, a look at Brasilian 
therapist Roberto Freire and the anti-authoritarian practice, called 
somatherapy, that he developed incorporating the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, 
the politics of anarchism, and the culture of capoeira Angola.
For more information go to www.nickcooper.com/antipowerworkshop.htm and 
www.somadocumentary.com

 Nick Cooper is a Houston/NYC based musician, artist, volunteer, 
film-maker), activist/journalist and anti-fascist. He has been 
conducting and developing this workshop for several years around the US 
and in Latin America with a wide variety of groups

 Sliding Scale Tuition: $15/$20/$35
No One Turned Away

_____________________________________

Friday, April 6
7:00 pm
EXHIBIT OPENING & PRESENTATION 

Picture Balata
Young Photographers from the Balata Refugee Camp

 Outside the West Bank City of Nablus lies the Balata Refugee Camp. Home 
to almost 25,000 residents living on less than one square kilometer, 
Balata is the most densely populated refugee camp within the West Bank. 
It is here the Picture Balata workshop was started to teach youth from 
the camp about photography.
In April four of the young photographers from the project will tour 
around the US showing their photographs and talking about their lives 
growing up in Occupied Palestine.

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Saturday, April 7
3:00 pm
Co-sponsor: New York Writers Coalition

Write Makes Might Reading Marathon

 In a city full of stories, so much goes unheard, unnoticed or untold. 
The writers in New York Writers Coalition's (NYWC) Write Makes Might 
Reading Marathon describe streets we've never walked, faces we've never 
seen, words we never get to hear. Reflecting the rich diversity of NYC, 
Write Makes Might features a myriad of writers with previously untapped 
talent: among them residents of supportive housing, economically 
disadvantaged and at-risk youth and teens, retired adults, the formerly 
incarcerated, the homeless, and survivors of the World Trade Center.

 NYWC conducts free writing workshops throughout New York City, 
encouraging people from groups that have been historically deprived of 
voice in our society. With more than 600 workshop sessions at 35 
different locations annually, NYWC is one of the largest community 
writing organizations in the country.
NYWC not only creates opportunities for formerly voiceless people to be 
heard, but also provides New Yorkers with a way to listen. NYWC has 
published chapbooks of workshop members' writing and a book-length 
anthology, If These Streets Could Talk, and held numerous public 
readings. Workshop members have had poems, stories and plays published 
and performed. They edit an online literary journal, Plum Biscuit. Their 
writing has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered, WNYC's Brian 
Lehrer Show and Leonard Lopate Show, and on WBAI's Global Movements, 
Urban Struggles and Wake-Up Call. In a generally closed literary world, 
NYWC works to represent all of the City, expands notions of who can be a 
writer, and does it in a supportive and positive environment.

 Suggested donation: $6/$10/$15
No One Turned Away

_______________________________________________________

Monday, April 9
7:30 pm

In the Shadow of the Wall:
Ecological & Agricultural Perspectives on Israel/Palestine

Joel Kovel & Hilary Martin

 Israel began building what it calls the Separation Wall in 2002. Today, 
the Wall is still under construction, and approximately 10% of the West 
Bank is due to lie on Israel's side of the wall. In February of this 
year the United Nations' World Food Program noted that 46% of 
Palestinians are now food insecure or vulnerable, up from 35% in 2004. 
The construction of the wall, and the recent surge in Israeli military 
occupation and activities has exacerbated the problem of agricultural 
sustainability and increasing food shortages.
Joel Kovel will puncture the myth that Israel is a country of advanced 
ecological awareness that has "made the desert bloom." To the contrary, 
it is one of the world's most blighted landscapes. Evidence for this 
will be reviewed, and more basically, the problem will be shown as 
developing from two core aspects of the Israeli project: the underlying 
logic of Zionism and the illegal occupation of Palestine, especially the 
West Bank.
Hilary Martin will speak and present a slide show that examines the 
history and the course of the wall, explaining how it significantly 
disrupts the Palestinian agricultural economy. She will share 
experiences of Palestinian farmers gathered during her visits to the 
Occupied West Bank in 2004 and 2005 to present life on the ground in the 
face of one of the most dangerous new tools of the occupation.

 Joel Kovel is the author of Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single 
Democratic State in Israel/Palestine and the editor-in-chief of 
Capitalism, Nature, Socialism.
Hilary Martin is a vegetable grower with Diggers' Mirth Collective Farm 
in Burlington, Vermont. She serves as a board member for Vermont's Peace 
and Justice Center, and works with Vermonters for a Just Peace in 
Palestine/Israel. In Palestine she worked with the International 
Solidarity Movement and is the co-author, with S'ra Di Santis, of From 
the Olive Groves of Palestine: Vermont Farmers Write Home.

 Suggested donation: $6/$10/$15
No One Turned Away

___________________________________________________

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