Solidaridad Colombia

Thursday, September 26th
7pm - Hitchcock Center for the Environment, Amherst

Sean Donahue will discuss the escalation of the civil war in Colombia, and the increase in state repression under the new government of President Alvaro Uribe. He will discuss Barrancabermeja, a city under the control of right wing paramilitaries, as a model of Uribe's vision of Colombia. He will describe how labor organizers, feminists, GLBT rights activists, and others continue to organize for progressive change under seemingly impossible conditions. He will also discuss the political and social dimensions of Colombia's looming economic crisis, and address the role of the U.S. in the war and the economic crisis.

Sean Donahue, 28, of Lawrence Massachusetts, is Co-Director of New Hampshire Peace Action. He is a poet, healer, and nonviolence trainer, and has been active with School of the Americas Watch and Massachusetts Earth First! He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1996 with honors in Literature and Creative Writing. He has written and spoken extensively on U.S. policy toward Colombia. He recently returned from Bogota and Barrancabermeja with a delegation of "prisoners of conscience" organized by Witness for Peace and School of the Americas Watch -- his second trip to the country. He is currently waiting to hear whether he will be prosecuted on federal charges stemming from a civil disobedience action at the School of the Americas (re-named the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), based at Fort Benning in Georgia, this past April.