REMAINS AND REBIRTH: An Event Around Katrina

This four part event includes: a screening of the post Katrina documentary Finding Common Ground in New Orleans; a screening of Food, Water Revolution, a short doc about the Iraq Veterans Against the War march in support of the gulf coast; a presentation by New Orleans-based organizer Suncere Shakur; and a question/answer dialogue with the filmmaker Walidah Imarisha and Suncere. More information below or email channelzeromedia [at] gmail.com.

This tour is a fundraiser for the Common Ground Collective.

PLEASE GO TO http://WWW.MYSPACE.COM/CHANNELZERO MEDIA FOR UPDATED INFORMATION!

Roxie Cinema
3117 16th St
12:00 noon
Admission= $8.00

FINDING COMMON GROUND IN NEW ORLEANS

This 24 minute documentary, shown through activist and poet Walidah Imarisha’s lens, looks at the effects that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have had on New Orleans and the surrounding area. Through compelling and often heart wrenching interviews with residents, survivors, activists, volunteers and officials, the landscape of a city devastated by a natural disaster but more by criminal negligence, trying to rebuild comes to light. This film includes exclusive footage shot in the makeshift bus station jail known as “Camp Amtrak” and interviews with officials at the jail about the city’s criminal justice system, or lack thereof. The short documentary is able, through the lens of personal accounts that speak to broader issues and concerns, to capture the pain, the loss and the hope of New Orleans.

Finding Common Ground in New Orleans has been or will be screened in the Women of Color Film Festival, the Sankofa Film Festival, The New Orleans Human Rights Film Festival, the Harlem Film Festival and the Black Lily Film Festival, along others. It has received a Director’s Choice Award during the Black Maria Film Festival, and was the recipient of the PIFVA Winter 2006 Film Subsidy. For more information:
http://www.myspace.com/channelzeromedia (watch a 7 minute version of the film!)

FOOD, WATER, REVOLUTION
In March 2006, Veterans Against the Iraq War organized a march from Mobile, Alabama to New Orleans, LA in support of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Did you see any media coverage of this event? Neither did we. That’s why we’re presenting this video Food, Water, Revolution! that documents the march and makes clear the connection between the U.S. presence in Iraq and the government negligence in responding to the needs of victims of Hurricane Katrina – in one word, capitalism!
Danya Abt: 10 min | color | 2006


SUNCERE SHAKUR

An organizer for over 15 years, Suncere Shakur has worked on issues affecting black communities on a grassroots level. At the age of 14, Shakur helped to form Fatima, a community grocery program. While based in his home town of Washington, DC, Shakur co-founded Café Mawonaj, a grassroots coffee house/meeting space, and MayDay, a housing rights group. He was instrumental in the formation of a chapter of the Anarchist People of Color while in Asheville, North Carolina, and was one of the organizers of the 2004 Regional APOC Conference. Shakur has spent the past 19 months in New Orleans as part of Common Ground Relief, a New Orleans first response team of radicals. He has set up six distribution centers, two free breakfast programs, a Saturday legal clinic, and was an important part in the effort to save the oldest black Catholic Church in America, St. Augstine. He is featured in the short documentary Finding Common Ground in New Orleans.

WALIDAH IMARISHA - A historian at heart, reporter by (w)right, rebel by reason, Walidah helped to found and served as the first editor of the political hip hop publication AWOL Magazine. She was one of the editors of the 911 anthology Another World is Possible. The bad half of the poetry duo Good Sista/Bad Sista, Walidah is also the director of the post-Katrina documentary Finding Common Ground in New Orleans. She does anti prison organizing with the Human Rights Coalition, a group of prisoners’ families and former prisoners and is on the board of the Central Committee for Conscientous Objectors, which does anti militarism organizing work.