Solidaridad Colombia |
In November through December of 2003, Jim Harney
spent six weeks travelling throughout Argentina. The Argentinians he met share
not only what "free trade" looks like from their perspective,
but also how they are adapting to the collapse of the official economy by
creating communal gardens & kitchens, popular assemblies, and worker-run
factories.
US citizens in particular bear a responsibility to hear the testimony of the
Madres (Mothers) of those "disappeared" by the US School of the
Americas (SOA) graduates and to understand that someone else pays the difference
for our "bargains" at the mall.
Jim's incisive commentary
and haunting images create an immediate sense of the reality being described
and his skills as a facilitator enlarge conversation. Piercingly political,
heartfully beautiful, profoundly awakening, Jim’s presentations take
us to people we begin to feel we know.
Jim Harney works as an Artist in Residence for
Posibilidad, a Bangor, Maine-based
nonprofit that prioritizes engaging people in conversation around the
excluded of society. He gives presentations on corporate globalization and
its impact on the poor.
During the '80's Jim lived with the poor in El Salvador. He ran with peasants
dodging machine-gun fire and hiding in tunnels when A-37 jets dropped bombs.
He witnessed gunfire and killings at the funeral of Archbishop Romero. He
shared his experiences in Central America throughout the US and Canada. He
lived with the Communities of Population in Resistance in the hills of Guatemala.
After each journey into Central America, Jim returned and gave presentations
that opened up possibility for profound discussion. His photography, engaging
storytelling and group facilitation skills quicken discussion that allows
people to speak from the heart; in ways that often surprise them.
Jim stresses the importance of dealing with corporate globalization and its
exclusion of the poor. The power of his stories revolves around people
engaged in redefining power in their own lives.
In 1998, he traveled twice to Acteal, Chiapas, Mexico where he interviewed
survivors of a December 22, 1997 massacre that took the lives of forty-five
people, mostly women and children. In December 1999, he photographed protestors
in Seattle opposed to the World Trade Organization and traveled around
New England giving presentations on "globalization from the bottom up".
In March 2001, Jim traveled to Colombia with a Witness for Peace delegation
of 100 US citizens and stayed on by himself for another two-and-a-half months,
visiting 4 areas where intense violence occurs. His photos from that journey
are extraordinary and have travelled across the US to be exhibited on college
campuses, in public libraries, places of worship, community centers, etc.
In early 2003 Jim visited Iraq and he then finished the year in Argentina,
adding these stories & images to his deepening analysis and witness
of global resistance to corporate globalization.
His photos and narratives unmask economic violence and open discussion about
the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the World Trade Organization
(WTO), the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the proposed Free Trade Area of
the Americas (FTAA).
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Reports sent by Jim from Argentina:
http://www.posibilidad.org/FromArgentina.htm |
| Argentinian Madre (mothers of the disappeared) |
View several of Jim's photographs taken in Colombia
in 2001 at:
http://www.posibilidad.org/Columbia%20Pics/thumbnails.html
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| We
hosted photojournalist Jim Harney of
Posibilidad here in Western MA for a week Fall of 2002. |