Oakland Screening: Life and Debt

Friday, April 20 at 7:30 pm

LIFE AND DEBT
Presented by Ashley Sabin

This eye-opening documentary about Jamaica is a tapestry focusing on the stories of individual Jamaicans whose strategies for survival and parameters of day-to-day existence are determined by U.S. and other foreign economic agendas. The complexities of international lending, structural adjustment policies, and free trade will be understood in the context of the day-to-day realities of the people whose lives they impact. The film opens with the arrival of vacationers to the island. We immediately begin to understand the profound contrasts behind the scenes of the breathtaking natural beauty of the island. The legacy of the country's colonial past and its present-day rising unemployment, sweeping corruption, increased illiteracy, increased violence, prohibitive food costs, dilapidated hospitals, increased disparity between rich and poor characterize Jamaica as much as its physical beauty. The Jamaica of tourists is well known. Now have a look at the Jamaica of Jamaicans.

Before and after the film, everyone's invited to our Humanist Tea House.

$5 donations are accepted.