November 19, 2008

‘Dignity and Justice for All of Us’
OWU to celebrate human rights with a week of special events

Image courtesy of United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

Ben Goodrum ’09, president of OWU’s Amnesty International, says a week’s worth of special events will be held on campus to commemorate the import event. The theme of this year’s Human Rights Day is “Dignity and Justice for All of Us.”

Kicking off this year’s OWU celebration will be the screening of Once in Afghanistan, which tells the story of women Peace Corps vaccinators in Afghanistan in the late 1960s. The screening will be held at 7 p.m. December 2 at The Strand Theatre, 28 E. Winter St. Click here to read more about the event.

“Documentaries like Once in Afghanistan give audience members an opportunity see real-life events through a lens that often challenges the viewer’s presumptions and offers insight on unfamiliar subjects,” Goodrum says. “Once in Afghanistan will probably be another great example of how people have helped each other, and in the process discovered that their similarities are far more important than their differences. Stories with themes about humanity and us-them dynamics cannot be told enough.”

In addition to the screening, the following events also are scheduled as part of OWU’s Human Rights Celebration. The celebration will culminate December 10, Human Rights Day.

• December 2: Performance art piece on women’s rights, at noon inside Hamilton-Williams Campus Center.
• December 3: Hunger Banquet to raise awareness about poverty and hunger, at 6 p.m. in the Benes Rooms. Admission is $5 or three canned goods per person. As people enter, they will be given slips of paper that identify their socio-economic class. The type and quantity of food they are given to eat at the banquet will reflect their status and help to bring world hunger into sharp focus.
• December 4: “Live from Death Row,” featuring a conference call with Renaldo Hudson, a former death-row inmate now serving a life prison sentence; a talk by exonerated death-row prisoner Darby Tillis; and a presentation by Julien Ball of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, at 7 p.m. in the Benes Rooms.
• December 6 and December 7: The Shape of Water, a documentary about how five women in Brazil, India, Jerusalem, and Senegal have responded heroically to “environmental degradation, archaic traditions, lack of economic independence, and war,” at 3 p.m. each day in the Benes Rooms.
• December 9: Small Fortunes, a film about the impact of microcredit in emerging countries, presented by the Student Initiative for International Development, at 7:30 p.m. in the Beeghly Library AV Center.
• December 10: Human Trafficking Teach-In with Kathleen Davis of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and ethicist Yvonne Zimmerman of the Methodist Theological School in Ohio, at 6:30 p.m. in the Benes Rooms.

For more information about Human Rights Day, visit http://www.un.org/events/humanrights/2007/.

– Cole Hatcher