Thursday September 5th @ 7pm ET

The just concluded DNC was an occasion for speeches, postures and positions on the inside, and large protests, marches and rallies on the outside. Thousands of people gathered in Chicago’s Union Park and the streets to make their voices known on the pressing topics of concern to the ordinary citizens of the country. No topic was more important though than the concern to stop the war in Gaza and above all to stop the US weapons shipments that fuel and perpetuate the massacre of innocent civilians. Inside the convention, the speakers and luminaries were not impervious or unaffected by the war and a number of positions were taken and promises made.

But at the moment to embrace the Palestinian voice and have a Palestinian Speaker, they balked — none was permitted.

What was the reaction in the street to the promises made by the politicians and luminaries? What was the response of the hundreds of Palestinian and other Arab Americans and allies among the thousands of demonstrators in Chicago? We’ll hear from MAPA’s own Brian Garvey and Keith Harvey and have a chance to discuss the convention, the protests, and how we see the next 7 weeks of the campaign, what we can expect and what we can do.

Speakers:

Keith Harvey  is the Regional Director for the Northeast Region of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a position he has held since 1992. The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker Peace and Social Justice multi issue organization, working on Peace, Economic justice, Immigrant rights and Healing/Criminal Justice issues in the US and overseas. Keith has used popular education methodologies to facilitate many different workshops, such as non-violence trainings (Help Increase the Peace program), Criminal Justice history, and International Debt and the IMF/World Bank. Before coming to AFSC, Keith spent nine years in low and moderate-income property development and management. Keith recently sat on the Cambridge Friends School Board of Trustees, chaired the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute Board of Directors, sat on the Philadelphia Planning committee for the US Social Forum, and worked with the MA Poor Peoples Campaign coordinating committee.

Brian Garvey is the incoming Executive Director of Massachusetts Peace Action. Brian served as assistant director for five years after joining MAPA as a volunteer.  He initially joined MAPA’s protests of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s red carpet treatment at MIT and Harvard, even as he pursued a criminal bombing campaign in Yemen.  As assistant director, Brian co-led the Raytheon Antiwar Campaign, the national Yemen peace coalition, the War Industries Resisters Network, and the Twin Existential Threats/ Climate and Nuclear Disarmament United campaign.  He has also led MAPA’s communications, fundraising, and internship programs for the past year to two years.

Keith and Brian recently returned from the Democratic Convention in Chicago where along with Lee Casstevens, MAPA intern, they set up a 75 yard banner representing through its length the size of the US military budget in relation to domestic spending programs and the military budgets of other nations.