Please note changes in the Program- see below

Resource Center for Nonviolence

Annual Dinner and Program

Sunday October 23, 2011

Presentation on our New facility, and Dr. Stephen Zunes, professor of Politics, University of San Francisco, will speak on the Arab Spring and its ramifications for U.S. policy in the Middle East

At First Congregational Church, 900 High St., Santa  Cruz

Gather 5:30p.m.; Dinner 6:00p.m. – Vegetarian Cuisine

Advance Reservations Required for the dinner: call Now 831-423-1626 or email rcnvinfo (at) gmail (dot) com

Program 7:00p.m. NO advance reservations needed for the Program portion of the evening.

We are very sorry that due to circumstances beyond our control, Ahmed Salah has had to cancel his visit to the United States. Ahmed is well and he is deeply involved in the tumultuous events still embroiling his country, but he won’t be speaking at our Annual Dinner and Program on October 23rd. In his place we will be making a presentation about and having discussion of the Resource Center’s new facility. Dr. Stephen Zunes will also speak about the Arab Spring and its ramifications for US policy in the Middle East. We hope we can still count on your participation and support. If you want to cancel your reservation, please just let us know.

We will also welcome special guests from Greenfield and King City, where activists are engaged in organizing for more inclusive and representative government. As a central part of this effort, activists have chosen as their first project a youth leadership development project. A special collection will be taken to support their modest start-up budget of $10,960. Tax deductible contributions may be made to RCNV or to CAUSE (Coastal Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy.) 100% of your donation by check or cash will support this youth leadership initiative. Thanks for any support that you can give to this important initiative.

Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he chairs the program in Middle Eastern Studies. He serves as a senior policy analyst for the Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies, an associate editor of Peace Review, and chair of the academic advisory committee for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. Professor Zunes is the author of scores of articles on Middle Eastern politics, U.S. foreign policy, international terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, strategic nonviolent action, and human rights. He is the principal editor of Nonviolent Social Movements, the author of the highly-acclaimed Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism and co-author (with Jacob Mundy) of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism and Conflict Irresolution.
Advance Reservations Required for the dinner: call Now 831-423-1626 or email rcnvinfo (at) gmail (dot) com

Poster for upcoming film "Occupation Has No Future."

“Occupation has No Future!”
MONDAY May 2nd 7pm
Live Oak Grange

Film & Discussion with Special Guest Speaker David Zlutnick, filmmaker

Part of the ReelWorks Film Festival.  Click here for more info and a complete schedule of films!

OCCUPATION HAS NO FUTURE.
A film by David Zlutnick, 2010, 84 min

In the Fall of 2009 a group of US veterans and war resisters traveled to Israel/Palestine to meet with their Israeli counterparts in an effort to strengthen connections and share experiences. Occupation Has No Future uses this trip as a lens to study Israeli militarism, examine the occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, and explore the work of Israelis and Palestinians organizing against militarism and occupation.

Through conversations with Israeli conscientious objectors, former soldiers, and Palestinians living under occupation, Occupation Has No Future creates a survey of the current atmosphere in the State of Israel and the West Bank. The film explores the Israeli social environment that creates such heightened militarism and leads to attitudes of fear, exclusion, racism, and ultimately aggression; and examines the consequences of Israeli policies both for the Palestinian people as well as for Israeli civil society.

Additionally, this documentary looks at the Israeli anti-militarist movement and those Israeli youth refusing conscription, refusing orders, and choosing to partner with a growing grassroots Palestinian campaign of civil disobedience to defeat the occupation. Honest about the extremely daunting challenges, Occupation Has No Future ultimately tracks the hope of a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians to live together, free from occupation, with peace and justice.

Speaker: David Zlutnick, returning filmmaker

Sponsors: Peace and Freedom Party, USLAW (labor against war), RCNV & Palestine/Israel Action Committee. For more information, call 831-423-1626.

Unfortunately, the Study Group on Mazim’s book has been canceled.  Please check back for possible future reading and study groups.

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh teaches and does research at Bethlehem & Birzeit Universities in Israeli occupied Palestine. He previously served on the faculties of the University of Tennessee, Duke and Yale Universities. Qumsiyeh is president of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People and coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements in Beit Sahour. His most acclaimed book is “Sharing the Land of Canaan: human rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle.” His new book “Popular Resistance in Palestine” reviews Palestinian nonviolent civilian resistance to displacement and occupation dating back to the beginning of the 19th century until today.

“Popular Resistance in Palestine: A history of Hope and Empowerment”
7:30 pm at 404 King Street, Santa Cruz, near Walnut
Reading/Discussion of Mazin Qumsiyeh’s book by the same name. See previous post about the April 2 event above for more info about Dr. Qumsiyeh. You are welcome to attend any one or all three of the sessions.
$5-$10 sliding-scale suggested donation.
RSVP’s requested: 831.457.8003 or kenncruz@pacbell.net

Special Screening of “Miral” to benefit the Middle East Program of the Resource Center for Nonviolence, Sunday April 10, 11:00 a.m., Del Mar Theatre, 1124 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz $10-$25 suggested donation.
From Julian Schnabel, director of “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” “Before Night Falls” and “Basquiat,” comes “Miral,” the visceral, first-person diary of a young girl growing up in East Jerusalem as she confronts the effects of occupation and war in every corner of her life. Schnabel pieces together momentary fragments of Miral’s world-how she was formed, who influenced her, all that she experiences in her tumultuous early years-to create a raw, moving, poetic portrait of a woman whose small, personal story is inextricably woven into the bigger history unfolding all around her.The film shows a starkly human search for justice, hope and reconciliation amid a world overshadowed by conflict, rage and war.
Miral’s story, which shifts sinuously through layers of time and emotions, begins with the woman who will become her teacher. Hind Husseini (HIAM ABBASS, “The Visitor,” “Amreeka”), who in 1948 turned her father’s home into the Dar Al-Tifel Institute, an orphanage and school for Palestinian children. What would you do if you found 55 orphans wandering the streets in the middle of a war-torn city? For Hind, the answer was to protect them, draw a line around them and make a safe haven where they could not be harmed, and where they could learn in safety and begin to imagine a more peaceful world.
In 1978, years after Hind starts the school, a 5 year-old girl arrives at the Institute in the wake of her mother’s tragic death.This is Miral (FREIDA PINTO, “Slumdog Millionaire”), and this is her story. She will grow up sheltered inside the protective walls of Dar-Al-Tifl, but then at the age of 16, on the cusp of the Intifada, Miral is assigned to teach at a refugee camp where she is awakened to the anger and struggles that seem to be her legacy.When she falls for a fervent political activist, Hani (OMAR METWALLY, “Munich,” “Rendition”), Miral is drawn into a personal dilemma: to choose a path of violence or to follow Mama Hind\’s hard-fought belief that education is the only way to pursue lasting peace.
The screenplay is by Rula Jebreal, based on her semi- autobiographical book of the same name.The producer is Jon Kilik. Francois Xavier Decraene is the executive producer.This film is a French-Israeli-Italian-Indian Co-Production of Pathe, ER Productions. Eagle Pictures and India Take One Productions, with the participation of Canal + and Cinecinema. RATED PG-13.

For more information about the film screening, call 831-423-1626, www.rcnv.org,  For more info on the film: www.miralmovie.com

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh when arrested by Israeli soldiers at Al Walaja in May 2010.

“Popular Resistance in Palestine: A history of Hope & Empowerment”

Meet & hear Palestinian author & activist Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh

3 events on Saturday April 2!

12:00 noon Book-Reading
Resource Center for Nonviolence
515 Broadway, Santa Cruz

Militant Nonviolence & the Palestinian Struggle
2:30 presentation at SubRosa, a community space.
703 Pacific Avenue

7:00 p.m.* United Methodist Church
250 California Street, Santa Cruz

* Several speakers have been invited to share the platform and to represent Israel’s interests but their participation is not yet confirmed. The evening will not be a strict debate format, but a frank and clarifying exchange of views to help people in this community better understand what is happening, what is at stake and what is possible as we observe or examine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Viewpoints will galvanize around the following topic:

“Given the current turmoil in Egypt, the impasse in making progress towards a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the prominent role that the US government plays in the Mid East region, what should be the priorities of US Middle East policy and why?”

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh (pictured above when arrested by Israeli soldiers at Al Walaja in May 2010) teaches and does research at Bethlehem & Birzeit Universities in Israeli occupied Palestine. He previously served on the faculties of the University of Tennessee, Duke and Yale Universities. Qumsiyeh is president of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People and coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements in Beit Sahour. His most acclaimed book is “Sharing the Land of Canaan: human rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle.” He published an activism handbook on his web site qumsiyeh.org. Qumsiyeh’s main interest is media activism and public education, having been published in and interviewed in print and on TV and radio extensively (local, national and international) including the Washington Post, New York Times, Boston Globe, CNBC, C-Span, and ABC. He also regularly lectures on issues of human rights and international law. His new book “Popular Resistance in Palestine” reviews Palestinian nonviolent civilian resistance to displacement and occupation dating back to the beginning of the 19th century until today.

Dr. Qumsiyeh’s “rather complex background” — born a Christian Palestinian in the Bethlehem area, exposed as a boy to the harsh realities of Israeli military occupation, trained in biology & teaching in US Colleges & Universities, field research in Israel & Palestine, extensive experience in civil society & nonprofit organizations, & leadership in nonviolent organizations & movements in the occupied West Bank — helped Qumsiyeh “come to understand the importance & the centrality of a pluralistic solution to the simmering conflict in the Land of Canaan.” Qumsiyeh’s electronic human rights newsletter” has made him the most important chronicler of contemporary popular resistance in Palestine, brilliantly evoking the spirit of Jesus, Gandhi, Edward Said, Rachel Corrie and many others, to tell the unvarnished truth about Palestine and Zionist settler colonialism, with a focus on ‘history and activism from below.’

Sponsored by Middle East Program of Resource Center for Nonviolence 831.423.1626 rcnv.org and the Palestine Israel Action Committee http://palestineisraelactioncommittee.com