Save the Date! PeaceWorks 2008 will be held October 17-19 in Olympia, Washington at The Evergreen State College!

Peace Works 2008 Update- Call for Volunteers

Greetings from the Rachel Corrie Foundation! Our recent Peace Works Conference 2008 planning meeting resulted in a working theme, more solid timeframe, and a clear set of considerations regarding our audience and program.

We are now loosely planning around the dates of October 17th-19th. The working theme that we agreed upon is “Dual Occupations: Sovereignty and Freedom from  Iraq to Palestne.”

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Hi Peace Works friends!

My name is Ashley, and I am the new Peace Works intern at the Rachel Corrie Foundation. Nice to meet you!

I’d like to give you the opportunity to help us shape Peace Works 2008. Our local Peace Works planning meeting on November 5 concluded with consensus to hold Peace Works in Fall 2008 in order to bring in big-name speakers, coordinate logistics, and build on the energy of the beginning school year. There was strong support for a conference, formatted similarly to the initial Peace Works of 2006. We discussed a number of ideas at that meeting, and I think they provide a good grounding vision.

To build off of these suggestions and to finalize our theme, I’d like to invite your feedback on the following questions:

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The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice is beginning now to plan Peace Works 2008. Peace Works ‘06 was a successful international conference; Peace Works ‘07 was two theatrical events… what will Peace Works ‘08 be? Please join us to help develop ideas and a vision for this exciting event scheduled for next spring.

Peace Works Planning Discussion
Monday, November 5th
7:00pm
Traditions Cafe
5th and Water Street, downtown Olympia

The Peace Works mission:
Peace Works will provide a forum for exploring the meaning and practice of justice and peace as they affect the social, economic, political, environmental, and spiritual aspects of people’s lives. It will proceed with the understanding that all people share not only human rights, aspirations, and needs, but also the foibles of fear, aggression and domination. With this in mind, we will explore our own hearts first as we work outward to the world community. Striving for fundamental social change and a just society, we will focus on individuals and groups who work on local, national, and global levels to resist oppression, inequality, and war. We will analyze war, racism, poverty, global economic inequality, oppression of women and other forms of injustice. But we will also strive to formulate and communicate a hopeful vision of a world community that responds constructively to its inhabitants’ rights, aspirations and needs.

This is a gallery of images taken during the Rachel corrie Foundation’s PeaceWorks 2006 conference, the first of the annual series put on by the foundation.

In April of 2006 hundreds of people came to Olympia, WA, from around the world for The Rachel Corrie Foundation’s inaugural Peace Works event. The two-day conference in April followed pre-conference activities and events and focused on the struggle in Palestine and Israel. The two-day conference in April followed pre-conference activities and events and focused on the struggle in Palestine and Israel.

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“This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore. I still want to dance around to Pat Benetar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop.”

In April of 2006 hundreds of people came to Olympia, WA, from around the world for The Rachel Corrie Foundation’s inaugural Peace Works event. The two-day conference in April followed pre-conference activities and events and focused on the struggle in Palestine and Israel.

The foundation plans to conduct annual events to analyze war, racism, global economic inequality, oppression of women, and other forms of injustice, and to formulate a hopeful vision of a world community that responds constructively to its inhabitants’ rights, needs and aspirations.

Video

The following films were produced from the first annual Rachel Corrie Foundation Peace Works - April 2006, courtesy pdxjustice.org.

PART 1
Diana Buttu - “From Occupation to Enclosure: Fragmenting the Palestinian State”
Diana Buttu is a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer. In 2000, she left North America to move to Palestine in order to assist with the then “peace” negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel as one of the PLO’s legal advisors. With the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising against Israel’s occupation (and the breakdown of negotiations) Diana decided to remain in Palestine.

PART 2
Amira Hass - “From Occupation to Enclosure: Fragmenting the Palestinian State”
Amira Hass lives and works in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. In 1993 she became the first Israeli reporter to live in Gaza, reporting on the Israeli occupation for Ha’aretz, an Israeli daily newspaper, which is available in English translation through their website. Amira Hass received the International World Press Freedom award for her work in the Gaza Strip. Her time there also resulted in her first book, Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land under Siege. She is also author of Reporting from Ramallah : An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land. She spoke, along with Palestinian-Canadian lawyer, Diana Buttu, on the topic “From Occupation to Enclosure: Fragmenting the Palestinian State.”

Photo Album

These are a selection of photos from the Peace Works conference, held at South Puget Sound Community College, in Olympia, WA: See photos here.

Conference in the Press

• “Palestinian activists gather in Corrie’s hometown” by Simone Sagovac for the The Arab American News
• “Journalist describes daily life for Palestinians” by Diane Huber for The Olympian