Monday evening a coalition of peace and social justice groups, including the Washington Peace Center, wishing to foster greater understanding between faith traditions and stopping an illegal and immoral military strike on the nation of Iran will be protesting outside the Christians United for Israel Conference at the DC Convention Center. Join us to protest the right-wing conference, and raise awareness about preventing war with Iran and the importance of respecting world religions.

In short, reproductive justice is the ability to decide how to control our sexual lives and to choose when and how we build a family, if we do.  From forced sterilization, to unequal access to healthcare, to significant barriers in adopting, and more, reproductive justice is not a reality for queer and trans communities, but something important for which we must fight. A workshop about the different aspects of justice and barriers to it, as well as a discussion about how we can change things.Facilitated by Emily.

 For location, email malachykilbride@yahoo.com 

Wednesday, July 23 morning vigil at "The Unthinkable Two," houseboat of
Congressman Gary Ackerman, main writer of H.Con.Res.362 from 7AM-8AM. Tell
him that in this time of national distress, blockading Iran is not only
wrong, it's unthinkable, too!  For more information, call (202) 882-9649 or (202) 870-0607

Gender 340: Experiences - The final installment will focus on our lived experience in a world of binaries, how we reconcile multiple identities and our relationship to identity-based movements (i.e. transfeminism), how we experience validation and invalidation of these multiple identities, our changing senses of who people are and our sense of who we think they want to be. Facilitated by Jake & Cyrus

THE WARRIOR

By Jack Gilhooley, directed by Kevin Murray featuring Marietta Hedges with Mary Lechter

Theater of the First Amendment

The Washington Peace Center teams up with The U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation for a special speaking engagement!

 Norman Finkelstein is a famous author of many books, including "The Holocaust Industry" and "Beyond Chutzpah."

Norman G. Finkelstein received his doctorate in 1988 from the Department of Politics, Princeton University, for a thesis on the theory of Zionism. He's currently an independent scholar. 

Critical Mass  6:00 PM Baker Park (Frederick, MD), riding in Critical Mass to the location.

-Wingnut Dishwashers Union
-Michael Jordan Touchdown Pass
-plus a couple dozen of our friends breathing fire and flipping out
-More fun!?

THE WARRIOR

By Jack Gilhooley, directed by Kevin Murray featuring Marietta Hedges with Mary Lechter

Theater of the First Amendment

Waltzes, jigs, soft rock, and some smooth R&B. Formal attire recommended, but not required. Optional, risk-free, but super-fun match-making game comes included.  A benefit for the Wanda Alston Center.

Critical Mass  6:00 PM Baker Park (Frederick, MD), riding in Critical Mass to the location.

-Wingnut Dishwashers Union
-Michael Jordan Touchdown Pass
-plus a couple dozen of our friends breathing fire and flipping out
-More fun!?

Taking seriously the trauma of colonial late-capitalism on all non-normative bodies and behaviors, this workshop is structured as a peer-facilitated dialogue, with the goal of collectively brainstorming how we might cultivate accountable, healthy relationships to our notions of "madness" as they relate to our struggles for queer and trans liberation within our many, varied communities, prioritizing self care and personal autonomy. Mapping "madness" onto the current North American colonial landscape requires a sense of how multiple socially engineered traumas interlock to produce the linked oppressions of psychiatrization, psycho-pathologization, disability, racialization, oppositional sexism, homo/transphobia, poverty and incarc eration. Part historical analysis, part focused brainstorm, and part resource sharing, this workshop attempts to construct a safe space in which to think through the idea of "madness" as a social process, a personal experience and a site for community building. This workshop aims to historicize madness alongside queerness or non-gender-conformity. It also endeavors to function as a strategizing session, specifically to think through how we can frame coherent opposition to the incarcerative racialized, classed and gendered violence of psychiatry without reinforcing the "mad" and "not mad" binary in our struggle for autonomous self-realization and access to appropriate resources and services for trans and non-gender-conforming folk. The workshop will aim to strategize coalition building between trans and queer movements, disability activism and psych-survivor organizing, asking: who have we made room for in our movements, and who have we left out? Presented by Griffin, a member of the Icarus Project and has previously collaborated with them for projects in New York, and currently works at a drop-in for psychiatrized folks and with DAMN 2025, a radical cross-disability coalition, in Toronto.

THE WARRIOR

By Jack Gilhooley, directed by Kevin Murray featuring Marietta Hedges with Mary Lechter

Theater of the First Amendment

For those who believe that the Constitution still matters, and that the ringleaders of this criminal adminsitration must be held to account, the last weeks have brought some very good news.  First, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had dropped her opposition to impeachment.  Now, it has been announced that the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by John Conyers, will hold a preliminary hearing on impeachment next Friday, July 25! Please join the Washington Peace Center, CodePINK DC, and the pro-peace and justice community for our 3rd Impeach For Peace Picnic on Sunday at the Grassy Knoll by the Washington Monument, on the National Mall between 14th and 15th Streets. We'll have rock music and fiery rhetoric, please bring signs, banners, blankets. There will even be a photographer on top of the Washington Monument to capture all the action as we spell a giant IMPEACH with our bodies and blankets! We will be joined by DC indy rock legend Phil Duarte (aka Philvis) for sounds of rock, rage and justice.

THE WARRIOR

By Jack Gilhooley, directed by Kevin Murray featuring Marietta Hedges with Mary Lechter

Theater of the First Amendment

We are charmed and excited with amazing music. For specific artist descriptions visit our websites. A benefit for Different Avenues.  

Screaming Queens: A documentary about transgenders and transvestites fighting police harassment at Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco's Tenderloin in 1966, three years before the famous riot at Stonewall Inn bar in NYC. Watermelon Woman: While doing research for a movie about a forgotten African-American actress, black video-store clerk Cheryl (writer-director Cheryl Dunye, playing herself) discovers that her subject shared a secret love affair with a white female director. In a stroke of intergenerational coincidence, Cheryl soon finds herself in love with a white woman.

Join us for a conversation about histories of queers and trans communities in DC and their relationships and resistance to gentrification and displacement. Topics of conversation will include gay clubs closed in Southeast and opened in Shaw, policing and public safety, housing, grassroots organizing and more. Facilitated by Darby from New Avenues for Youth, presented in collaboration with Different Avenues.

This workshop will feature a panel from HIPS and others to discuss various factors that contribute to different levels of substance use while addressing the specific lived realities and needs of substance using communities. Utilizing a harm reduction model, we will discuss ways to support each other with respect to empower self-determination and health. Bring candy to benefit HIPS.

For location, please e-mail queerandtransjuly@gmail.com 

A reflection on the past month's events, what we've learned and where to go from here. 

Welcoming Reception for the Hibakusha survivors on Monday, August 4, 6:30 pm. The reception is at the Mott House, 122 Maryland Ave. NE, on Capitol Hill near the Supreme Court. We will greet Mr. Akinori Hara, Hiroshima survivor, and Ms. Yasuko Ota, Nagasaki survivor. We also will be presenting the annual Josephine Butler Nuclear Free Future Award to local activists Joe and Rose Marie Flynn, and there will be light refreshments after the program.

Sixty-three years ago, over Hiroshima, Japan, at 8:15 am, (7:15 pm in Washington, DC) the United States dropped the bomb that brought the world into the nuclear age. This year, for the first time, this annual commemoration will be held at the World War II Memorial on the National Mall. Join speakers, musicians, activists against nuclear annihilation, and our honored Hibakusha guests (Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb explosions) to acknowledge the awesome responsibility of that event, consider our role in it and in the subsequent arms race that still threatens the continued existence of life on Earth today, remember those innocent victims who perished in the conflagration, and reflect on ways we can work to make sure it never happens again.n

Wednesday, August 6th
At Franklin School Shelter
925 13th St., NW
(At 13th and K Sts, NW)
At 7:30 PM
In Dining Hall

Last week some residents had been told not to return to Franklin on August 1st. It was determined that this would’ve caused some of them to be put out with nowhere to go. The Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless called a meeting at franklin on Tuesday, July 29th. They gathered affidavits from some of those who would’ve been adversely affected by this decision and filed them with the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH). When DHS heard about this, they reversed their decision to put the men out.

Please join Reverend Phil Wheaton, the DC Hiroshima/Nagasaki Peace Committee, and our honored delegation of Hibakusha guests for a service of awareness and reflection considering the lessons of the tragedy, and what we can do to make sure the bomb over Nagasaki, sixty-three years ago, is the last time atomic weapons are ever used on Earth.
After the service (9:30 pm), there will be a short candlelight procession to the White House, and a vigil through the moment of the explosion (10:02 pm Eastern Daylight Time).

Come to the Girls Rock! DC Camper Showcase
 
Girls Rock! DC, an entirely volunteer-run collective, is holding the DC Metro Area's first all-girl rock camp from August 11-15, 2008!  We'll have instrument instruction on electric guitar, electric bass, drums, keyboards, turntables, and vocals.  Campers will form bands, write an original song and perform at DC's 9:30 Club on Sat. Aug 16. 
 
Don't miss your chance to see DC's newest young rockers take the stage!
 
Saturday, August 16, 11:00am-1:00pm
Early show at the 9:30 Club: 815 V St. NW, corner of 9th and V.
 
For tickets and more info: www.girlsrockdc.org or info@girlsrockdc.org.

Food, music, crafts, and fun

for the whole family