[pjw] REPORT BACK/LINK: Sarah Mirk Guantanamo event + Iraq sign upgrade

[Peace and Justice Works]

Iraq Affinity Group supporters:
Happy Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday. Let's hope the remembrances this 
year remind everyone of King's strong activism against war which became 
more passionate just prior to his death.

Tuesday night's livestream event with author/editor Sarah Mirk went very 
well. Sarah talked about the prisoners and their stories, the policies 
that perpetuate the ongoing use of illegal detention, the various artists 
who contributed to her book "Guantanamo Voices: True Accounts from the 
World's Most Infamous Prison," and the process of creating the book. It 
was refreshing to hear how passionate she is about the issue unlike many 
journalists who pick a story and then move on to the next thing. Using the 
"screen share" function, she showed panels from the graphic nonfiction 
book, explaining how much more powerful the comics format can be than the 
written word. She was also able to show some photographs that were used as 
reference for the drawings.

Host Theresa Mitchell gave an overview of the history of US imperialism at 
the beginning, then made use of her years of radio skills facilitating 
questions for guests to make the Q&A session deep and meaningful.

Overall the event is 90 minutes long and can be found here at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn97R4zeakU . (There were 44 views at the 
end of Tuesday's event, there are 53 right now.)

Thanks to Amnesty International Group 48 for cosponsoring. Their point 
person and another community organizer joined me, Theresa and Sarah for 
the 1/2 hour "after show" zoom call which provided a mild replication of 
what we could have done with casual conversation had the presentation been 
done in real life. (Remember real life?)

---

Side note about tonight's Friday Rally marking 30 years since the "Gulf 
War." I made a sign 10 years ago saying "20 Years Too Long: US Out of 
Iraq." Each year after that I added a new number in the style of an old 
style scoreboard, until last year's 29th anniversary. In this photo I 
posted to the website:

http://www.pjw.info/30years_upgrade.jpg

you will see that sign was very well worn from use. So I made a new 20 
years later sign and flipped the "2" to a "3" to mark this week's 
inauspicious anniversary.

Peace
dan handelman
Peace and Justice Works
   Iraq Affinity Group
   PO Box 42456
   Portland, OR   97242
   (503) 236-3065  (Office)
   iraq at pjw.info
   http://www.pjw.info/Iraq.html