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Brooklyn For Peace, the borough's largest and most active peace and justice organization, held its Sixth Annual Brooklyn Peace Fair at Brooklyn College on Saturday, May 15. Keynote speaker and special guest was Father Roy Bourgeois, the founder of the School of the Americas Watch, and nominee for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, who thrilled the audience with his personal journey which began as a Vietnam War veteran, to his current stature as leader of an international movement to build opposition to U.S. policies in Latin America.
Hundreds of Brooklynites as well as folks from other boroughs and states, attended. Dozens of organizations set up tables in the Student Union Building to promote their activities and recruit members. Other vendors sold their wares from buttons to t-shirts to yoga classes. Workshops were held on various topics ranging from "Keeping Up With the News on Afghanistan and Iraq" to "Forging Connections with Youth in Darfur" and more. See the complete program (PDF).
The Fair was held at two locations on the sprawling Brooklyn College campus. The Brooklyn College Student Center hosted the Keynote Address as well as information/resource tables and workshops. Meanwhile, at Roosevelt Hall kids made their own peace buttons while artists and musicians entertained the Fair's guests in the Brooklyn College Arts Lab, home of the after-school teen program of the Brooklyn College Community Partnership. The array of performers — singers, poets, rappers, as well as dancers — inlcuded iLL-Literacy, (from California's Bay Area, a hip-hop, spoken word, funk ensemble,) Raging Grannies, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, the New York Samba School, the Last Internationale, Geo Safari, Veronica Nunn, Dave Lippman, Spiritchild and Stephanie Rooker. Groups of high school students took over the stage with hip-hop and spoken word to close out the performance space.
Workshops addressed a broad range of international and local issues. The Israel Palestine Committee of Brooklyn For Peace screened two films by young film makers about Youth Voices from Palestine. Students from the Brooklyn College Community Partnership read from letters written by New York immigrants detained at Monmouth and Passaic County Jails and facilitated discussion about immigrant detainees. Other topics included the Darfur Crisis; Nuclear Zero; HIV 101; Afghanistan and Iraq; Conscious Social Documentary Photography; Dialogue between Israelis, Muslims and Jews; Playback Theater; The Health Care Professions and Torture; Poetry against War; and We Are Not Your Soldiers.
This year's Brooklyn Peace Fair was dedicated to Evelyn Abelson and Portia Waldon, both well-loved Board members of Brooklyn For Peace who passed away since the 2008 Fair. Brooklyn For Peace celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2009 and continues reaching out to new communities, to continue the work for peace and justice with this year's Peace Fair.
Matt Weinstein and Edward McWilliams
Brooklyn For Peace
See photos
Photo credit to Matt Weinstein and Sam Koprak.
High resolution photos available upon request
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