activism

Just added!
Activists from the radical environmental group Earth First! will speak at The Sanctuary For Independent Media (3361 Sixth Avenue in North Troy) at 7 PM on Wednesday, June 30, 2010.  They will be presenting the Earth First! Journal Roadshow, featuring a program about the international ecodefense movement called “Earth Nightly News” followed by a multimedia presentation on the history of Earth First! (which is celebrating 30 years on the front lines of ecological defense).

The Sanctuary for Independent Media and Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace welcome filmmaker Joe Stillman and Iraq Veterans Against the War co-founder Jimmy Massey for a screening of the new documentary "From Mills River to Babylon and Back... The Jimmy Massey Story."

Former Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey, a 12-year Marine veteran, served in Iraq in 2003. He witnessed—and in some cases participated in—the killing of innocent civilians. The Iraqis “were just doing their normal routines,” he says, “and they were getting frickin’ blasted for it.” He began to speak out to his superiors and was eventually diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. He won an honorable discharge in December 2003

TROY — A handful of people, from teenagers to those old enough to collect Social Security, listen attentively as Branda Miller shows how to edit a digital movie. Assembled in the basement of an old church, the students are not only interested in the process of making movies. They also want to use the skills. Each has a documentary project waiting in the wings.

Places like the Sanctuary for Independent Media wear their politics proudly, and many of the projects featured have a leftist slant and tap an activist vein.

"There is a growing awareness that whatever you are addressing, labor issues, civil rights, media has got to be your second issue," said Miller, a founding member of the Sanctuary, as she showed off the downstairs gallery.

The Sanctuary has presented an array of events such as a documentary on Buddhist nun Robina Courtin, who stuck around afterward for a Q&A; University at Buffalo art professor Steve Kurtz, who was investigated on bioterrorism charges surrounding his Critical Art Ensemble, and Troy filmmaker Jim DeSeve, whoe "Tying the Knot" is about same-sex marriage.

Other recent events have featured Middle Eastern scholar and former Iranian ambassador to the United Nations Mansour Farhoung and a performance of Afro-Cuban music by the Billy Bang Quartet.

On Wednesday December 3, , we welcome video/web artist and all-around culture jammer Frank Lopez of Submedia.TV (coming to us from Vancouver, BC)! His work includes the post- Katrina music video "George Bush Don't Like Black People" (downloaded over one million times and counting) and the vlog "It's the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine" (which highlighted the Wafaa Bilal incident last spring). He'll be presenting "Ground Noise & Static," a powerful documentary filmed in the midst of the protests at last summer's 2008 political conventions.

7PM Show - followed by a Q&A discussion

Admission by donation ($10 suggested)

PLUS.....BYOB Bye Bye Bush afterparty with best of the Anti-Bush Era Videos

wear some anti-bush clothing

About Ground Noise & Static

In November, one or the other of the corporate candidates will
win, and then, as always, it will be what the people do, not the
politicians, that counts.

Eliza Gilkyson has built a reputation as one of the most original and influential folk artists of our time over the course of 13 albums (most recently, "Beautiful World" on Red House Records).

Robert Jensen, whose book “All My Bones Shake: Radical Politics in the Prophetic Voice” is forthcoming on Soft Skull Press, is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin who has written extensively about foreign policy and U.S. power, as well as race and gender.

After a successful series of community events in Austin to raise these crucial issues, the two are performing and speaking in a few cities this year. $10.