The SPSCC student group BRICK (Building Revolution by Increasing Community Knowledge) brought social critic and activist Glenn Greenwald to town yesterday for a speech about civil rights and terrorism in the era of the Obama Administration. Greenwald is a regular contributor to Salon.com, and there is more information about his current tour there, and more information about him, and his visit to SPSCC on the BRICK website here.

Greenwald was trained as a constitutional attorney, and practiced as a litigator in New York before giving up on the courts to become a writer. He has written articles for The New York Times, LA Times, Harper's, and other noteworthy publications.

Greenwald talked about popular conceptions of civil liberties and terrorism, and detailed how these are often false. For example, even though the definition of civil liberties is quite simple—it's basically the set of rules that protect people against government intrusion (e.g. freedom of speech, and protection against unreasonable search and seizure)—that a lot of people don't understand what civil liberties are about. When you think about civil liberties, think about the Bill of Rights.

And terrorism, in contrast, is something that people popularly think they know and understand, but in reality, the definition is really nebulous and popularly misunderstood.

The following video is from the Olympia BDS presentation, Wednesday last week, the 4th of August. In the video, David Langstaff, one of the organizers of Olympia BDS, recounts a personal experience and explains why he is organizing for BDS. Thank you David, and to the rest of Oly BDS, for all of your great work.

Olympia BDS

How U.S. Foreign Policy Has Created a Thriving Drug Industry in Central and South America

Meet the Author, William L. Marcy Ph.D.

Friday, March 26, 6 PM at Orca Books
509 Fourth Avenue East, Olympia
(360) 352-0123
Orca Books

On Thursday March 25, from 5 to 7 pm, (Joseph) Dana Visali will be at the Olympia Timberland Regional Library (313 8th Ave. SE Olympia, WA) to present information about Afghanistan, including from recent travel to Afghanistan earlier this month. This will be a power point presentation

Dana has been traveling in Afghanistan with the San Francisco based Global Exchange, and is scheduled to begin returning today (March 15.) The focus of the trip was to study the impact of the war on women and children in Afghanistan, and to also look at the impact of 30 years of war on the environment.

Other topics in the presentation will include how war effects possibility of transitioning to a sustainable society.

Even if you can't be there by 5 pm, please show up for what is likely to be a very informative, interesting and engaging presentation!

The event is free. And Dana will graciously accept donations in order to defray the costs of travel.

for more information, (360) 259-4291

Sponsored by The Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Earlier tonight I had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Alice Rothchild speak at St. Martin's University. Dr. Rothchild spoke about her book, Broken Promises, Broken Dreams: Stories of Jewish and Palestinian Trauma and Resilience. She also spoke about her experience traveling to Israel and Palestine, and her position on the conflict, as a Jew. She discussed the immoral nature of many aspects of the current occupation of historically Palestinian territory. The Doctor spoke of a moral obligation that people of all faiths (or lack thereof) and ethnic backgrounds, but especially Jews, have to speak out about the tragedy of violence, and the criminal policies of Israel, which are doing such grievous harm to both the Palestinian and the Israeli peoples.

For those of you who don't know, I advocate for the idea of our built landscape as an interactive tool for our artists. This Monday (March 3) I will be talking about some aspects of the movement as a part of the Arts Roundtable series held at our downtown library. My desire is to see Olympia help its artists realize our city. I am daily amazed at the amount of artistic talent coursing through Olympia and I think creating our city's expression is integral to establishing our identity as we move toward a further development of our downtown core. Art often treads the fine line between disgust and heart stopping. Art is not just like every other city. Art is not homogeneous.

I&#3've decided to pre-publish the slide show on OlyBlog that I've created for the presentation. This is for those of you who are interested but cannot attend, or those who like to see the outline without the fill.