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Attend an important conference organized by the Latino coalition against Domestic and Sexual Violence. (more…)

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Come join the residents of the Indianapolis Peace House on Wednesday, July 30 for a gathering of our neighbors. Stop in any time from 5 to 8 pm to enjoy free entertainment, live music, food, and the company of the Indianapolis community. The house is located at 1421 Central Avenue, Indianapolis IN 46202.

What: Open House @ Indianapolis Peace House
When: 5-8 pm, July 30th
Where: 1421 Central Ave.
Cost: Free
Info: peacehouse.info@gmail.com

The Peace House is a program of the Indianapolis Peace Institute, founded by the Plowshares Collaborative of Goshen, Manchester, and Earlham, Indiana’s historic peace colleges.

There are 13 college students living at the Peace House, from 9 different colleges and universities and pursuing studies in everything from Art Therapy and English to Criminal Justice and Theology. The goal is to learn peace through action.

Each of the students is a full-time intern for local organization promoting peace in Indianapolis. And there are some awesome internships: working at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Exodus Refugee Center, and Big Car Gallery, to name a few. One of them is even working here at Provocate.org writing these event blurbs.

The philosophy behind this open house is that community is a lot bigger than the 13 people in the house. It’s about friends, neighbors, co-workers, people you meet at Kroger, and people you don’t know at all. It’s about the people who inspire you and teach you. And it’s about people outside your demographic—people who challenge your ideas.

That’s why the Peace House has invited the whole city of Indianapolis to their open house. They declare:

“You are our friends, neighbors, co-workers, random acquaintances, and even a few friends we haven’t met yet. You’re people we admire, people who believe in peace, and people who challenge us. In short, you are our community. When we get to know you, we create a space for peace.”

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John Clark is of the belief that arts organizations, small businesses, and community groups will be the engines that redefine relations between Indianapolis and the world. As you eat your plate at an Ethiopian restaurant, see if he has any grounds for his opinion. (more…)

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You don’t have to break the bank by going to the IMA’s summer film series - this film fest is free. View the projects that students from the first annual Campecine Youth Academy have been working on for the past six weeks. Documentaries and animations made in Indianapolis by Latino youth bear alternative names - varriomentaries and issuemations - to reflect the language blending that their bilingual makers experience.

Themes include current social issues, from race relations in Indianapolis to local and national immigration policy reforms to teen pregnancy, ICE Raids, and education.

From the press release:

The Campecine Youth Academy is a six-week program [of the Latino Youth Collective and FIRME Productions] that trains youth in “on-the-job” action research using new media technology. The program employed 27 youth for 20 hours a week and engaged students in a process called Youth Participatory Action Research, a process that engages young people in
(1) identifying a community issue of concern to them, and
(2) investigating its causes and potential solutions through the use of advanced media technology and inquiry methods. Youth then use the results for education and community action.

Sounds like one way to do a lot of good in the community, and the public gets to bear witness to it all. Added bonus: the event is bilingual! So practice your rusty Spanish - o alternativamente, ensaye un poquito el inglés.

At the IMA, in DeBoest Hall
Saturday from 1-4 pm
Free and open to the public.
http://campecine.com/

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A year and a half in the making, so many numbers that will thrill autistic savants, sweeping predictions about the future of the Indiana economy, recommendations about new ways of thinking about trust and civil society … this will be big summer blockbuster for policy wonks. Check back here for sneak previews.

(more…)

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The Indiana Department of Education is partnering with Indiana Black Expo to figure out how to increase cross-cultural understanding and to help all children succeed in school. (more…)

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The conference objectives are to further research in contrastive/intercultural rhetoric and intercultural discourse … that’s academic talk for the critical task of figuring out how we manage to communicate with each other in spite of our differences, and how we can do better. (more…)

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We assume that immigrants coming to the US with and without proper authorization are blessings to their home countirs: after all, remittances are one of the main sources of foreign exchange for Mexico and most Central American countries. But a closer look at villages and towns that now have almost no one of working age, that have most of their kids growing up in families whose parents are working up North … the blessing is mixed. Learn how this affacts us in Indiana. (more…)

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No one makes movies like the Indianapolis-based Latino Youth Collective, which puts digital cameras and sophisticated editing software in the hands of kids so that they can show how they view their lives. See some examples of their work at the Indianapolis Museum of Art when this enormously creative group of high school and college students puts on Campecine 2008 (Campecine = campesino + cine). The varriomentaries (their word for documentaries) deal with gangs, the voicelessness of undocumented immigrant kids, and teen pregnancy. If you are lucky, they will show their wildly imaginative “Loz Invenzivlez,” all but guaranteed to make your head burst in flames.

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To hear critics of US health care reform talk, Canada is a hellhole of socialized medicine, with Canadians sneaking across the border to get treatment their government forbids. Most Canadians ask “You talking about us?” We should ask: “What can we learn from our neighbors? (more…)

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