The Fourth World War
January 10th 2012, 7:00 pm at The DAAC
From the front-lines of conflicts in Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, Palestine, Korea, and the North; from Seattle to Genova, and the War on Terror in New York, Afghanistan, and Iraq, The Fourth World War is the stories of people around the world who resist the corporate commodification of our lives & the earth. You will be inspired.
Discussion after the movie!
$3 Suggested Donation
Check out the trailer for the movie:
http://vimeo.com/2765825
If A Tree Falls
January 12th 2012, 6:30 pm at The Bloom Collective
The Bloom will serve soup and we’ll all write letters of support to Marie Mason. Soup and letter writing: 6:30 p.m., film @ 7 p.m.
On December 7th, 2005, federal agents conducted a nationwide sweep of radical environmentalists involved with the Earth Liberation Front — an organization the FBI has called America’s “number one domestic terrorism threat.”
IF A TREE FALLS: A STORY OF THE EARTH LIBERATION FRONT is the remarkable story of the group’s rise and fall, told through the transformation and radicalization of one of its members, Daniel McGowan. Part coming-of-age tale, part cops-and-robbers thriller, the film interweaves a chronicle of McGowan facing life in prison with a dramatic investigation of the events that led to his involvement with the ELF.
Ending Corporate Control of Government
January 12th 2012, 7:00 pm at Fountain Street Church
Fountain Street Church and Occupy Grand Rapids present:
ENDING CORPORATE CONTROL OF GOVERNMENT WITH A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
with DAVID COBB
*National spokesman for MoveToAmend.org;
*2004 Green Party presidential candidate;
*Constitutional lawyer.
Compassion in Fashion - Second Annual!
January 14th 2012, 8:00 pm at GVSU - Kirkhof Center
Humane Society of Grand Valley and GV Fashion Club are excited to announce the second annual Compassion in Fashion show!
This year's show will once again feature a cat walk of clothing and accessories made exclusively from non-animal sources (no fur, leather, wool, silk) as offered by local businesses and original pieces from the GV Fashion Club.
Info tables abound!
Our speaker this year is Jill Fritz, Michigan State Director for Humane Society of the United States. She will be speaking about the practice of using animals for cosmetic testing purposes, and what this means for us as consumers. There will also be time to ask questions, and speak with her one-on-one.
We will once again have a raffle of wonderful items from local businesses, and we have added a silent auction as well! All proceeds will benefit West Michigan Critter Haven and Kent County Animal Shelter.
99 Days of Occupation
January 15th 2012, 2:00 pm at Fountain Street Church
99 DAYS OF OCCUPATION!
Snacks solidarity and sledding!
Starting with a special General Assembly, a celebration of OGR and discussion for moving forward.
We're also taking this as a "Homecoming" opportunity to invite all the good folks who were involved in OGR but who left the group for one reason or another... We miss you! Come back for our 99th day of Occupation!
We'll have food and after the discussion, we're occupying the sledding hills!
***
99 days ago, no one would have thought any of this was possible.
as we move forward, we should ask ourselves:
- What have we accomplished?
- How far have we come?
- Where are we going next?
MLK Program featuring Speaker Bakari Kitwana
January 16th 2012, 12:30 pm at GVSU - Kirkhof Center
The GVSU campus community is invited to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Week by attending the MLK Program, featuring speaker Bakari Kitwana.
Bakari Kitwana, journalist and author, will be a keynote speaker during the Martin Luther King Jr. celebration at Grand Valley.
Kitwana will lead the silent march on campus on January 16 and give an afternoon presentation in the Kirkhof Center. He will also be the evening speaker that day at the community event hosted by Grand Rapids Community College.
The author of four books, Kitwana is a senior media fellow at the Jamestown Project, a Harvard Law think-tank; and CEO of Rap Sessions, a company that conducts townhall meetings around the country on difficult topics facing the hip-hop generation. Kitwana’s latest book is 2010Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era.
MLK Commemoration Week Speaker: Michelle Alexander
January 18th 2012, 5:00 pm at GVSU - Kirkhof Center
GVSU is honored to have Michelle Alexander as our special guest for MLK Commemoration Week. Michelle Alexander is a civil rights advocate and attorney.
MLK Commemoration Week Event: The New Jim Crow
January 19th 2012, 10:00 am at GVSU - Cook DeWitt Center
GVSU is honored to host Michelle Alexander, civil rights advocate and attorney, as a featured speaker for the MLK Commemoration Week events. She will discuss her new book, The New Jim Crow.
IWW monthly film series
January 19th 2012, 6:00 pm at IATSE Local 26
This month the Industrial Workers of the World will be showing the film "Land and Freedom." The film is about a young man from Great Britain who goes to Spain in the 1930's to help the Democratically elected Republican Government fight the Fascist's under Franco who were trying to overthrow it. Franco was backed by Hitler and Mussolini. It is also a love story! Great film and it won a couple of awards when it came out in 1995. Discussion will follow. It will be at the IATSE Labor Hall at 931 Bridge St. NW Grand Rapids, mi.
The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them
January 19th 2012, 7:30 pm at Calvin College - Chapel
Wayne Pacelle, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Humane Society of the United States, will kick things off with a public lecture on his new book, The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them. Called The Barnyard Strategist by the New York Times, Pacelle’s journey as the leader of the largest animal protection organization in the United States has taken him everywhere from animal rescue operations, to demonstrations on Capitol Hill, to the sets of The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Ellen Degeneres Show.
Part of the Wake Up Weekend grass-roots celebration of animal-friendly advocacy, art, food, education, music, philosophy, and religion.
CinemAwareness: Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock
January 20th 2012, 2:00 pm at GVSU - Kirkhof Center
As a black woman who was a feminist before the term was invented, Daisy Bates refused to accept her assigned place in society. Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock tells the story of her life and public support of nine black students who registered to attend the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, which culminated in a constitutional crisis – putting a president against a governor and a community against itself. Unconventional, revolutionary and egotistical, Daisy Bates reaped the rewards of instant fame, but paid dearly for it.
Out of the Factory, Into the Field: Cooking as Inspiration for Liberation
January 20th 2012, 3:30 pm at Calvin College - Covenant Fine Arts Center
Whether he’s urban farming in his home city of Oakland, articulating a new politics of food activism, or dishing up greens with Martha Stewart, Bryant Terry is all about re-envisioning cooking as a powerful tool for exposing interconnected forms of human and animal oppression, and inspiring our liberation into more redemptive ways of eating and of being together around the table, around the neighborhood, and around the world. In this, his second Wake Up Weekend appearance, Bryant will bestow upon us the honor of pre-releasing his brand new book, The Inspired Vegan, due out for the rest of the world on January 24. Meet Bryant and get your signed copy hot off the press at a reception following the address that will also feature catered appetizers from the book.
Part of the Wake Up Weekend grass-roots celebration of animal-friendly advocacy, art, food, education, music, philosophy, and religion.
Inspiring Compassion: Putting Our Ethics on the Table
January 21st 2012, 3:00 pm at Calvin College - 106 Gallery
When Nathan Runkle was 15, he founded Mercy For Animals, thereby laying the groundwork for what has become, a decade later, the premiere boots-on-the-ground animal advocacy organization in America. When it comes to exposing the injustices that animals undergo in modern food systems, Mercy For Animals is in a league of its own. Heard about that Norco Ranch investigation that helped to seal a landslide victory for Proposition 2 in California? MFA. How about the investigation of Sparbo Farms that recently resulted in McDonald’s and Target dropping their main egg suppliers? Also MFA. When he’s not appearing on CNN, Nathan and his organization are behind the scenes investigating cruelty and mobilizing the resulting footage into award-winning documentary films such as Fowl Play and Farm to Fridge that are changing the way the next generation thinks about, buys, and eats food.
KINSHIP - An Art Exhibition Of and For Animals Like Us
January 21st 2012, 6:00 pm at Calvin College - 106 Gallery
OPENING RECEPTION: 6-9pm SATURDAY, JANUARY 21st. Curated in conjunction with Calvin's Wake Up Weekend 2011 (an annual animal advocacy event), KINSHIP features the works of 15 concerned, compassionate artists, including: Sue Coe, Jenny Pope, Adam Wolpa, Mike Guyette, Christina Mrozik, Shanna Shearer, Emily Gray Koehler, Kirsten Strom, Brett Colley, Ryan Hill, Tim Oliphant, Margaret Reed, Jenny Schneider, Richard Gibson and Linsey Tankersley.
Occupy Wall Street: Lessons From the Front Lines
January 23rd 2012, 7:00 pm at GVSU - Kirkhof Center
Author, activist and native New Yorker, Sherry Wolf will provide an eyewitness account of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement to discuss how we are living through a period of profound social, political and economic transformation. OWS has become a touchstone for a vast array of grievances. As an active participant in the OWS movement with many years’ experience as an organized leftist, Wolf will challenge students to think through their own preconceived notions of how our society operates and can change. Wolf will explore how this movement came about and is evolving to challenge corporate power and inequality in ways not seen for 40 years.
The Loving Story - Advance Screening
January 24th 2012, 7:00 pm at Celebration Cinema - North
FREE Advance Screening of the HBO & Augusta Films Documentary
Get Tickets Here: www.thelovingstory.eventbrite.com
A heart-rending love story and a racially-charged criminal trial converge in this documentary about Mildred and Richard Loving, a part-black, part-Indian woman married to a white man in Jim Crow-era Virginia in 1958. Thrown into rat-infested jails and forced to leave their home or go to prison because their marriage was against the law, the Lovings fought back and changed history. They were paired with two young and ambitious lawyers who were driven to pave the way for social justice and equal rights through a historic Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia. THE LOVING STORY takes us on a journey into the heart of race relations in America. But, in the end, it is a poignant story of two people who simply wanted to chose who they could love and marry and live in the place they called home.
OGR vs Big Banks
January 27th 2012, 3:00 pm at Monument Park
Occupy Grand Rapids will protest the big banks starting with Bank of America on FRIDAY January 27th. JOIN US in solidarity against these evil corporations that lobby, control, and run our country.
More information soon!
Youth Occupation
January 27th 2012, 7:00 pm at Cook Arts Center
Spoken Word Performances by noted local artists:
Keegan "Seoul" Loye
Azizi Jasper
Cayanne
Duke Greene
BREAKDANCE BATTLE!
Featuring awesome talented youth and mentors from the Cook Arts Center and the Street Dance Academy
Performances start at 7pm, don't be late!
$5 donation
Up From the Bottoms: The Search for the American Dream
February 1st 2012, 6:00 pm at GVSU - Cook DeWitt Center
he Community Reading Project Contextual Presentation will feature a showing of the film, "Up From the Bottoms: The Search for the American Dream." It will contextualize the main topics of the 2012 CRP selection "The Warmth of Other Suns" by Isabel Wilkerson.
"Up From the Bottoms: The Search for the American Dream" tells the story of the massive migration of African Americans from the rural south to the prosperous north during the World War II years and beyond. More information about the film can be found here: http://www.upfromthebottoms.com/
Not Just a Game: Politics and Power in American Sports
February 2nd 2012, 4:00 pm at GVSU - Kirkhof Center
At this inaugural “Intersections” event, John Carlos, winner of the bronze medal in the men’s 200-meter race at the 1968 Summer Olympics, will tell us his story.
Carlos entered the Olympic Games with one thing in mind – to reach the platform in order to send a message. And, along with Tommie Smith, his teammate and winner of the gold medal, the message was sent, reverberating throughout the world. Smith and Carlos raised black-gloved fists crowning bowed heads to humbly reflect the strength of the black power and human rights salutes.
In addition to Carlos, renowned American sportswriter Dave Zirin, will be a part of the program and will show segments of his documentary movie, Not Just a Game: Politics and Power in American Sports. The two will also discuss their recently completed book, The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World.
WMEAC Film Series - Blue Gold: World Water Wars
February 8th 2012, 6:30 pm at Wealthy Theatre
Water is perhaps our most precious, abused resource and is one of WMEAC's driving issues. Join us as we explore "the rampant overdevelopment of agriculture, housing and industry" that is slowly increasing the demand for fresh water "well beyond the finite supply". What can we do to protect our water resources for the future?
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikb4WG8UJRw&feature=channel
Doors at 6:30, film starts at 7pm. Admission is FREE, with a suggested donation of $5. This event will also include a discussion on our local water system and Fifteen to the River, WMEAC's stormwater runoff initiative.
That Takes Ovaries: Bold Women, Brazen Acts Performance
February 10th 2012, 7:00 pm at Wealthy Theatre
That Takes Ovaries!: Bold Women, Brazen Acts is a play co-written by Rivka Solomon and Bobbi Ausubel. The play offers an exciting collection of real-life stories from women and girls about the gutsy, outrageous, courageous things they have done. The stories are multicultural, funny, sassy, and touching true tales of estrogen-powered deeds. The play also includes true stories submitted by our own GVSU campus and community!
8-Week Institute for Racial Healing
February 28th 2012, 3:30 pm at GVSU Meijer Campus
About Through facilitated dialogues and activities, individuals are immersed in a cognitive and affective program of learning, sharing, and processing within a multi-cultural group. Participants examine the inheritance of our history, institutionalized racism, contemporary bias, and ways to be an ally in healing racial divides. This model has been proven to establish profound insights and valuable relationships while providing a support network for continued understanding and resources. The cost is $100 per participant. Financial hardship scholarships are available upon request; please call (616) 846-9074.
Download flier:
www.ethnicdiversity.org/files-2/2012-02-28CommunityInstituteFlier.pdf
Learn more:
www.ethnicdiversity.org/what-we-do/diversityeducation
Naomi Wolf
March 14th 2012, 7:00 pm at Fountain Street Church
Author of seven books, including the New York Times best seller The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf focuses on gender equality, pervasive inequities in
society and politics, the defense of liberty in America and internationally, and body image. She is the cofounder of the Woodhull Institute for Ethical
Leadership, which teaches ethics and empowerment to young women leaders. In Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries, Wolf argues that
breathtaking changes take place when ordinary citizens engage in the democratic system the way the founders intended, through civic engagement.
Lakeshore Region Summit on Race & Inclusion
June 5th 2012, 7:30 am at Hope College
The Lakeshore Region Summit on Race & Inclusion gathers hundreds of individuals to a day-long conference focused on the effects of racism and designed to stimulate a year of action. Join us to learn from nationally-recognized experts in the field and best practices that contribute to creating a vibrant, inclusive region.
West Michigan Pride Festival
June 16th 2012, 12:00 pm at Riverside Park
24th annual Pride Festival - Riverside Park, Grand Rapids
Pre-pride events include Pride at Eve - June 14, 2012 - 8pm - Pride Movie Night, Wealthy Theatre - Friday, June 15, 2012 7pm
