1/20 Smithsonian National Postal Museum: Inaugural Peace Ball: http://www.peaceball.org
1/21 Bring the Guard Home: It's the Law. Press Conference at National Press Club Zenger Room at 1:30 p.m., and Launch Party at Busboys and Poets at 14th and V Northwest at 6 p.m.: http://guardhomelaunch.com
1/21 Day of Action for Immigrant Rights, Moritorium on Raids and Deportations, Just and Humane Immigration Reform, Health Care for All, and Worker Justice, Organizaed by the National Capital Immigrant Coalition
1/21 James Yee, former Army Chaplin who served as Muslim Chaplain at Guantanamo, will tell his story at 7 p.m. at George Washington University, exact location TBA. While ministering to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Captain Yee advised camp commanders on detainee religious practices and objected to the cruel and degrading abuses to which the prisoners were subjected. Chaplain Yee's gripping account of his Guantanamo experience and struggle for justice is entitled For God And Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire. This event is co-sponsored by Witness Against Torture and GWU Muslim Law Students Association.
1/25 Text messaging for peace at DC Peace Mural from 3 to 8 p.m. Details.
1/25 Vigil at Walter Reed Hospital. Details.
1/26 The Case of Guantanamo vs. The Constitution at 7 p.m. at Huong Peace Art Mural, 3336 M Street, NW, Washington, DC. An Evening with Center for Constitutional Rights Lawyers. What Can I Do to Shut Down Guantanamo? This evening's event will feature an overview the campaign to shut down Guantanamo as well as speakers from the Center for Constitutional Rights who will address the matter of legal representation of Guantanamo detainees. Participants will learn about the moral and practical consequences of torture and the call to shutdown Guantanamo and other prisons working outside the Geneva Conventions.
1/27 "Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq" an afternoon with Matthew Alexander. Noon to 1:30 p.m. at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies, Lower Level, 3600 N. St. NW, Washington, DC 20007. Matthew Alexander led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006. Writing under a pseudonym for security reasons, Alexander is the author of "How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq."
1/28 Book Party for Witness Against Torture Book at 7 p.m. at Church of the Savior Festival Center, 1640 Columbia Road NW, Washington DC 20009. As Witness Against Torture enters what it hopes will be Guantanamo's final chapter, the 100 Days Campaign (www.100DaysCampaign.org), the grassroots movement shares the story of its work. This book tell the story of Witness Against Torture, charting the efforts of thousands of American citizens who have squarely and thoughtfully confronted the question: what does it mean to be a conscientious American? The book also presents the writings of the detainees and their lawyers, the pleas for an end to cruelty and for the restoration of habeas corpus, and it chronicles the actions required when those pleas fell on deaf ears in the nation's corridors of power: the marches, street theater, civil disobedience, and jailings as WAT brought the campaign directly to the White House, the Supreme Court, the Congress, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, and to parks and street corners across the country. The book also comes with a DVD of six short films detailing various actions which WAT has carried out. Matthew Daloisio, one of the main WAT leaders and the author of the book, would speak about the book, the campaign past and present.
1/28 War, Memory and Representation: The Visual Arts, War and Peace at 7 p.m. at the Institute for Policy Studies.
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To add to or correct this calendar, send an Email to david@davidswanson.org
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And into February...
2/2 An Evening with Howard Zinn: The People's Historian at 6:30 p.m. at Busboys and Poets, 14th and V Streets, NW. Howard Zinn, historian, peace activist and author of must-read A People's History of the United States and many other books, needs no introduction in most circles. When Witness Against Torture marched to Guantanamo in 2005, he said "Those who protest against the horrible practices at Guantanamo represent the best in our country, and want to say to the world that our government and its policies in Guantanamo violate the principles this nation is supposed to represent. It is therefore the responsibility of all of us as citizens, both of the nation and the world, to speak out for human rights."
2/4 Guantanamo's Cost to Our Humanity, an evening with Bush Dissident Ann Wright. Location and time TBA. Ann Wright is a retired 29-year US Army Reserve colonel and a 16-year US diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war in Iraq. A prolific writer and indefatigable resister, Colonel Wright is the author of Dissent, Voices of Conscience: Government Insiders Speak Out Against the War in Iraq. In January 2007, Wright was part of an international delegation of former Guantanamo prisoners, families of current prisoners, US lawyers and human-rights activists marched on the US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to demand that the prison there be closed. The march is a part of Witness Against Torture's International Day to Shut Down Guantanamo.
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