Events

Please join us for a multimedia presentation on the history and struggles of the Zapatista movement with very special guest from Chiapas, Mexico, Gloria Munoz Ramirez. Famed author of the recently translated El Fuego y la Palabra (The Fire and the Word), Gloria is probably the closest person to the Zapatistas in Chiapas to have ever come to NYC. Don't Miss this!

Saturday, March 29th, 7:00pm

The Fire and the Word
A History of the Zapatista Movement
Video screening and presentation with the author, Gloria Munoz Ramirez

The film and book "El Fuego y la Palabra" (Fire and Word) is an oral history that recounts from the beginning of the movement of the Zapatista indigenous communities in the state of Chiapas. Their demands are liberty, justice, democracy, land, health, education, and labor rights. The story is told in the simple words of some of the original organizers of the movement. It is an inspiring testimony of hope and resistance. The author, Gloria Munoz, will be coming in to speak about the film and book to provide us with more insight to the compilation of this oral history and the struggles that the indigenous communities in the state of Chiapas have been organizing against.

Gloria Muños Ramirez lived with the Zapatistas for 7 years and wrote a book to share their story that is now available for the first time in English. She will speak about the Zapatista resistance and history. She has worked for the Mexican newspaper Punto, for the German news agency DPA, for the U.S. newspaper La Opinion and for the Mexican daily La Jornada.

Campaign EZLN: The Fire and the Word

The Change You Want To See is happy to host Aaron Gach, co-founder and Director of Operations at the Center for Tactical Magic. Expect an evening of Revolutionary Breakthroughs in Extra-Sensory Perception. Replete with projects, experiments, and anecdotes from the Tactical Magic trenches, this exposition will pull back the curtain on all types of contemporary magic, art, and politics.

Saturday, April 4, 7-9pm (free)

About the Center for Tactical Magic
Inspired by studies with a private investigator, a magician, and a ninja, the Center for Tactical Magic formed as an organization dedicated to the coalescence of art, technology, magic, and positive social change. Working across barriers of art, design, architecture, and community service, the CTM’s collaborations have also involved aquatic biologists, members of the Black Panthers, radical ecologists, and the American Red Cross to name a few. Their activities have sought to cultivate mirth and mischief in all four hemispheres, frequently infiltrating multiple spheres of influence -- social, cultural, and political -- with notions of responsible citizenship through creative action.

Center for Tactical Magic Projects

Please join us Thursday, April 17th for a screening of 500 Miles to Babylon, a compelling film about Iraq under U.S. occupation. Filmmaker David Martinez will be on hand to discuss his experiences in Iraq. Sarah Husain, a representative of the War Resisters League’s Youth and Counter Militarism Project will discuss counter-recruitment campaign efforts in New York City.

ABOUT THE FILM:
500 Miles to Babylon is a one-hour documentary shot in multiple cities in Iraq in 2003-4. Narrated by the filmmaker, using footage shot in Iraq threaded with graphically animated archival sequences to provide historic context, the film addresses the current war not simply as a conflict over petroleum profits or a scheme to fill a company’s coffers, but as part of a larger American imperial project.

Through impromptu interviews, glimpses of daily life, still photographs, and footage of car-bombs, demonstrations, night-time graffiti artists, Sufi rituals, and the celebrations following Saddam’s capture, 500 Miles To Babylon reveals the complex situation in contemporary Iraq through a personal lens. Far from being a simple anti-war movie, 500 Miles illustrates the terrible complexity of a people brutalized by a dictatorship, and the catastrophic results when that system is changed overnight by shortsighted military means.