Voices of Inexperience, Relating War’s Horrors
It’s possible that no cast on or off Broadway these days shares fewer professional stage credits than the young ensemble of “In Conflict,” a sober and very affecting docudrama about veterans of the war in Iraq. Many of the performers in the show, which opened Wednesday night in a Culture Project presentation at the Barrow Street Theater, are still students. Yet inexperience, in this instance, is an asset, part of a strangely harmonious... It’s this double layer of rawness — read more>

$30 can provide nutritional support for an HIV patient for three months- Donate Now to help lift an HIV/AIDS orphan out of poverty.

More than 15 million children around the world under the age of 18 have lost one or both parents to AIDS. By 2010, this number could nearly double. Orphans and other children affected by HIV/AIDS are often deprived of an education and take on adult responsibilities at a very young age. In some of the hardest hit areas, children are becoming the heads of households as soon as their parents die.

The United Nations World Food Program (WFP), in conjunction with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), has implemented an innovative educational program, called Junior Farmer Field and Life Schools, to give these vulnerable children a chance to lift themselves out of poverty.

Junior Farmer Field and Life Schools (JFFLS) are a new kind of school, specifically for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS. The goal of these schools is to empower orphans and at-risk children by teaching agricultural skills – skills that would have been passed down by their parents. In addition, the participants receive a daily hot meal, which helps them focus, as well as take-home food rations, that help feed hungry families.

JFFLS schools have proven to be extremely successful. The knowledge and skills acquired in these schools have enabled children to provide for themselves and their families and to achieve better food security.

Your contribution will ensure that these HIV/AIDS orphaned children receive an education that will allow them to support themselves and their communities for a lifetime.
Sincerely,

Karen Sendelback
President and CEO
Friends of the World Food Program

the Barefoot College is a place of learning and unlearning. It's a place where the teacher is the learner and the learner is the teacher.

Music by Ugandan Queen of Hip Hop - Tshila. This comes from "WILD SOUNDS, expressions in raw truth" by Rising Moon Productions.200 Tshila has finally released her first album and it's called "Sipping From The Nile"... available at www . cdbaby . com/cd/tshila2.

June 29, 2007
Liberty. Democracy. Equality. Justice. Tolerance. Humility. Faith. Princeton University dean Anne-Marie Slaughter says they form the foundation on which America was built. And Slaughter is concerned that we’re losing touch with those values. She spoke about her new book, "The Idea that Is America," June 25 at the Commonwealth Club of California.

How do you improve the living standards of five billion people? With 100 million solutions.

One billion people live in abject poverty. Four billion live in fragile but growing economies. One in seven people live in slum settlements. By 2020 it will be one in three. We don't need to choose between architecture or revolution. What we need is an architectural revolution.

Another of Maya Lin's buildings. Nestled on an eastern Tennessee farm once owned by Roots author Alex Haley is the Langston Hughes Library, a private, noncirculating, 5,000-volume reference collection and reading room dedicated in 1999. The library supports the mission of the Children's Defense Fund (CDF) and its companion organization, the Black Community Crusade for Children. Named in honor of the Harlem Renaissance poet/novelist (1902-1967), the library is used for research, reflection, and inspiration by children's advocates, spiritual leaders, educators, civil-rights leaders, authors, illustrators, publishers, scholars, and college and high school students who come to the 157-acre retreat in Clinton, Tennessee, for training and leadership development.

"I've come to believe that habit is the background against which epiphany happens."

Habit (2001) is the name of Bordowitz's new video work. A sequel to his earlier work, Fast Trip, Long Drop (1993), Habit addresses contemporary AIDS activism and a historically specific autobiographical perspective on living with AIDS.

"I'm sculpting speech acts when I make a documentary," is one way that Bordowitz describes his creative process. "Sometimes I switch the metaphor and I'm not a sculptor, I'm a composer. I'm making music with other people's words." The speech acts and music of Habit include interviews with activists, footage of speakers at political events including the Thirteenth International AIDS conference in Durban, South Africa, personal narratives, and intimate interviews with people significant in Bordowitz's life.

Every Sunday from sunrise to sunset, a temporary memorial is created on the beaches of Southern California. Located just north of the world famous pier at Santa Monica, California and at the Sterns Wharf in Santa Barbara, the Arlington West Memorial, a project of Veterans For Peace, offers visitors a graceful, visually and emotionally powerful, place for reflection.

But Langston Hughes articulated a very different rationale for history --- and a much more radical one. For Langston Hughes, the real purpose of history was to change America --- not just to celebrate it.



Watch the full version of Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech.

In his first book Stride Toward Freedom (1958), King laid out six key principles of nonviolence.

First, nonviolence is not passive, but requires courage. Second, nonviolence seeks to win the "friendship and understanding" of the opponent, not to humiliate him. Third, evil itself, not the people committing evil acts, should be opposed. Fourth, those committed to nonviolence must be willing to suffer without retaliation as suffering itself can be redemptive. Fifth, a rejection of hatred, animosity or violence of the spirit, as well as refusal to commit physical violence. The resister should be motivated by love in the sense of the Greek word agape, which means "understanding," or "redeeming good will for all men." The sixth principle is that the nonviolent resister must have a "deep faith in the future," stemming from the conviction that "the universe is on the side of justice."