Dahr Jamail to speak at UU Church in San Diego | Friday, November 13 2009
7:30 PM to 9:30 PMFirst Unitarian-Universalist Church of San Diego
4190 Front Street
San Diego, CA 92103
 Matters of Controversy
Presents
The New GI Resistance
With Special Guest
Dahr Jamail
Independent Journalist & Author
Friday Nov 13, 2009 7:30pm
Join us for a heavy but hopeful presentation about the growing number of GIs who have laid down their weapons and turned their experiences into powerful testimony for non-violent alternatives to war.
"I was trained to blow shit up. We weren't there to rebuild anything."
-Drew Cameron, Iraq War Veteran
Soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have tough truths to tell, and it has been well demonstrated that the establishment media does not want to broadcast these. Given the lack of an outlet for anti-war voices in the corporate media, many contemporary veterans and active-duty soldiers have embraced the arts as a tool for resistance, communication and healing. They have made use of a wide range of visual and performing arts - through theater, poetry, painting, writing, and other creative expression - to affirm their own opposition to the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
We will present a short film about the Combat Paper Project, called "Iraq, Paper, Scissors," by filmmaker Sara Nesson.
Iraq as a Living Hell
In late 2003, weary of the overall failure of the US media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, Dahr Jamail went to the Middle East to report on the war himself. So began Dahr Jamail's Mideast Dispatches http://dahrjamailiraq.com
Since then, he has become world renowned for documenting the human cost of the Iraq war: the everyday violence and terror, the deterioration of the healthcare system, the shortages of clean water and the resulting rise in sickness, the lack of jobs and economic opportunity, the refugee crisis, and the detention and torture of civilians and resistance fighters. Through his uncompromised reporting and news photos, Dahr reveals a map of Iraq's misery and resistance, politics and everyday survival in the face of overwhelming military destruction. His website offers a forum where readers discover realities of the war not found in the conventional press.
Dahr has spent a total of nine months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent US journalists in the country. Dahr has also has reported from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan,. He has also reported extensively on veterans' resistance against the war. Dahr uses the DahrJamailIraq.com website and his popular mailing list to disseminate his dispatches.
Dahr currently writes for the Inter Press Service, Le Monde Diplomatique, and many other outlets. His stories have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald in Scotland, Al-Jazeera, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, and the Independent to name just a few. Dahr's dispatches and hard news stories have been translated into French, Polish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic and Turkish. On radio as well as television, Dahr reports for Democracy Now!, has appeared on the BBC and NPR, and numerous other stations around the globe. Dahr is also special correspondent for Flashpoints.
Dahr's reporting has earned him numerous awards, including the prestigious 2008 Martha Gellhorn Award for Journalism, The Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship, the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, and four Project Censored awards.
Warrior Writers has created exhibits that showcase artwork by members, and photographs taken by soldiers in Iraq. It is a largely self-supporting endeavor wherein the funds generated from the sale of books and artwork help sponsor veterans to travel around the country, reading from and displaying their work, as well as funding other workshops. It has now grown into< |