Debate Iran Video Posted

Brendan Steinhauser of www.theconservativerevolution.com has just posted the video from our debate on Iran: Confrontation or Reconciliation? on Google video.  For those who missed it the first time you can now view it here.

Andre to Debate College Republican on Iran

Thursday from 6-7pm SIK President Andre Castillo will debate a member of the College Republicans on the topic: "Dealing with Iran: Confrontation or Reconciliation?"  Andre will be presenting the arguments for reconciliation.  The debate will also include a 15 minute question and answer session.

The event will take place in the Student Union Events Center.

Presidential Banquet Speech 06

Delivered by Andre Castillo, May 24th 2006: 

When I was in Palestine, I met a Palestinian named Amr.  He was the same age as me, loved learning, and was an excellent student in high school.  He wrote poetry.  His dream was to go to a university and become a professor.  He had already won a scholarship.  Well, one day during the early part of the Palestinian uprising, he had happened to pass by a protest on his way to school.  As he walked by, Israeli soldiers had decided to break up the protestors by firing at them.  Amr was hit in the head, the arm, and the leg.  He was paralyzed on the right side of his body, which is the condition he was in when I met him in a poor refugee camp called Askar.  His memory has also suffered.  He would tell me, in Arabic through Dinna, that now he can’t go to school, since his memory is so poor now, he can’t work, since he can’t use both arms and legs, and he even can’t get married, since he can’t provide.  He just sits and waits to die.  A fate that has unfortunately befallen many in Palestine.

My experience with Amr stuck with me.  Here is someone the same age as me with almost the same talents and interests, but going the exact opposite way that I’m going.  Something’s not right about that.  Born in poverty, Amr was about to make his way out, make something of himself through education.  But then it was taken from him by no fault of his own.  Now he lives in a constant state of depression, wondering how God could be so cruel.

Amr was just one of many experiences I had in my time in Palestine, one of many victims of injustice I was able to experience first-hand.  I learned something from each of them, about human nature, morality, power. And I felt a tremendous desire to tell people about it. I started with my parents.  That didn’t work out so well.  I was biased.  I wasn’t seeing the whole story.  You need to look at the other side.  I couldn’t believe it.  I was shocked.  This is what I saw!  I knew opinions could be biased, for sure, but apparently my eyes can be biased too.

But what is bias?  This pervasive word that seems to drown any intelligent discourse that doesn’t regurgitate the status quo.  I’ve used the word before, as I’m sure we all have, but when I did I remember it being used to try and get passed distortions of the truth.  But when does it cease to do that, and instead serve to distort the truth itself?  It seems that is what our country has come to, at least on the issue of Palestine.

To say I was disheartened after coming back to California, where the only change I had missed was progressive, new roads, buildings, and knowing the situation I had left in Palestine was regressing, which it still is to this day, was hard to reconcile.  Life is less enjoyable when people are suffering, and you know it.  I wasn’t motivated.  If I learned anything while I was there, it was the sheer power of this “mechanism of evil” as Ilan Pappe called it that was working to destroy the humanity of the Palestinians, as well as the Israelis, as well as us, the Americans.
 
I had come up with one idea while I was there.  After seeing death and carnage, poverty and oppression, I had become a changed man.  Why couldn’t it happen to others?  I spoke with a Catholic priest once, from Michigan, in the town of Birzeit where I stayed.  He told me that when he had come to Palestine he was pro-Israel, that’s it, he thought, end of story.  After three days, three days, of being in the West Bank of Palestine, he realized something was going on.  The good guys weren’t as good as he was led to believe.  The truth was revealed to him.  Now he dedicates his life to bringing people to Palestine to see what he saw.  It works.  Someway or another, the truth will come out, and there is no better way than to see it with your own two eyes.
 
So I thought, how do we get other people, in the United States, to see what I saw here?  Well, for one thing I was already in the process of filming documentaries.  I came up with the idea of a large super-organization that would unite the various (turns out there are over 200) Palestinian-American organizations with branches that covered the media, politics, and more.  Not knowing the extent of the fragmentation of the Arab-American community, or the strength of the opposition to it, I pitched this idea to some friends I had met there, including Dinna.  They called me naïve, and rightly so.  It would take more than an energetic outsider to pull off what I had concocted, if it was even possible at all.  So I scrapped the idea.
 
So fast-forward to the school year.  I become wrapped up in the campus life, and I love it.  I’m meeting a lot of people, they’re really fun and energetic, and most importantly, I don’t have to drive to school!   I take this opportunity to teach my residents about the world around them.  If any of you have been to my hall, you know what I mean.  Everyone has a country name.  Sometimes I even used it as their nickname.  “Yo, Vanuatu, what’s happening?”  “Hey, how was the midterm Bahrain?” and my favorite, “ how you doin, Djibouti.”  Not only was it fun, for me as well as my residents, but they got interested in the world.  After learning some fun facts I started to teach some of them about conflicts in the world.  Genocide, imperialism.  Palestine.  I could reach my residents and teach them the truth of what I saw where there would otherwise be lies, knowledge where there would be ignorance.  I was changing the course of their lives, their beliefs, and their opinions.  And the best part was, I didn’t have to shout to do it.  If I approached people in a reasonable way, at a reasonable time, and with a reasonable expectation, they got it.  It was that simple.  And it was great, but it wasn’t enough.  I needed to find more ways to encourage people to learn about the world.  But it was a glimmer of hope in a sea of despair.

Well one day Corey Jackson, the student leader, came to my hall and talked to my residents about starting new student organizations.  They all got excited and everything, and after it was over Corey turned to me and said “Why don’t your start your own club?”  “Nah….” What would it be about?  Ok…but who would join it?  Ok…but what would we do?  I’ll teach people about the world, with my friends from model United Nations, and we would give talks and show documentaries!  Within days I called up Dinna, Nick, and Shawn.  We were brimming with ideas, and I was excited.  Dinna was excited.  Nick was excited.  Shawn was excited.  Our 5th founding member, Keith, wasn’t so excited, which I guess is why he’s not here now.  But nevertheless, we were excited.  And SIK was born.

Now, we as SIK have accomplished a lot since that day.  Newsletters, tv shows, radio shows, guest speakers, discussions, this banquet.  The director of the Student Union calls SIK the pinnacle of intellectual life on our campus.  I don’t think we could have accomplished more if we tried.  I think everyone deserves a round of applause for that.  This is great news, because we still have a long way to go.  Make no mistake, my plans for change are national, global.  But we can’t win the World Series before we make it out of Opening Day.  We have to start here, at Cal State.  This is our great experiment.  With the help of Corey, Greg, and Anthony, we’ve planted the nucleus, a nucleus which we must help to grow.  The students here are hungry for knowledge.  They want to see the campus life change.  We can see that.  People who we’ve never met until a few weeks ago are excited about SIK.  They’re excited about what SIK means to this campus.  We can bring something here to San Bernardino that has never been done before.  And in a lot of ways, we already have.  From this day on, SIK has only one way to go – up.  It will take a lot of work to do what needs to be done here, but something tells me, you’re up for the challenge.

But no matter how much we grow, and how popular we become, we must never lose sight of our purpose.  Everyday, people like Amr sit in their home, praying that someone, somewhere, will release them from their prison.  Darfur, Pakistan, Iraq, Africa, women, minorities, refugees.  These are the poorest of the poor, the unluckiest of the unlucky.  The victims of the victimized.  Everyday they feel the effects of our policies.  We are on the minds of these people, even if they may not be on the minds of us.  Everything we do here is for a greater purpose.  We’re going to take back the moral center, as Harry Belafonte would say starting with San Bernardino, and we’re going to do it not by force, not by aggression, and not by ignorance, but by knowledge through education.  To quote Abraham Lincoln: “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

Speakers on Iraq in Long Beach

AWARE in Long Beach and Global Voices for Justice present
Three events with Dahr Jamail & Mark Manning

Friday, June 2nd – San Diego
Saturday, June 3rd, 7PM – Long Beach Unitarian Universalist Church -
5450 Atherton St., Long Beach 90815
Sunday, June 4th – Santa Barbara

Dahr Jamail writes for the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times,
Truthut.org and many other outlets. His reports have been published in
The Nation, The Sunday Herald, Islam Online, the Guardian and the
Independent, & his dispatches have been translated into ten languages.
Dahr also reports for Democracy Now!, the BBC, and numerous other radio
stations around the globe and is special correspondent for Flashpoints.
He spent eight months as one of the few independent U.S. journalists in
occupied Iraq. Visit dahrjamailiraq.com.

Mark Manning is an independent documentary filmmaker working on a series
of films about Iraq. In 2005, Manning became the only western unembedded
civilian to enter the city of Falluja just after the siege. He lived
with refugees
there and experienced the war from their perspective. His current
production, “The Road to Falluja,” is a groundbreaking project
documenting the post-9/11 environment that led to a war. The film
conveys the common humanity between two cultures at war and presents a
real path to peace. Visit conceptionmedia.net to learn more.

FRIDAY JUNE 2nd – 7:00pm
Thomas Jefferson School of Law – 2120 San Diego Avenue, Room 200, San
Diego California 92110
Independent journalists Dahr Jamail and Mark Manning discuss the
realities of Iraq, then present Caught in the Crossfire, a short film
about Falluja, and take audience questions. Co-sponsored by The National
Lawyers Guild and the San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice

SATURDAY JUNE 3rd,
Unitarian Universalist Church – 5450 Atherton St., Long Beach, CA 90815
Co-sponsored by the Social Action Committee of the Unitarian
Universalist Church of Long Beach Media sponsored by 90.7 FM KPFK Los
Angeles / 98.7 KPFK Santa Barbara

AWARE Information Fair – 3:30pm
Social justice tables . Food . Facepainting and fun for kids . Art and
merchandise . IzmuddArts henna . Music and poetry throughout the
afternoon by: DJ Jarvis Walters, FreedomInfinite, and Buddha’s Sister &
TheMajicBulletTheory Multicultural cuisine ($5 donation requested)

7:00pm Panel discussing – Peace in Iraq . . . How do we get there? What
can we do? Journalists Dahr Jamail, Mark Manning, and Aaron Glantz along
with activist Muna Coobtee present their views on Iraq.

Aaron Glantz entered Iraq during the early days of the war as the
population’s temperament was changing from from one of gratitude to
Americans for ousting the dictator who had oppressed them to one of
tension and resentment over broken promises, disrespect, continuing
destruction and unprovoked violence toward Iraqi civilians. As an
independent journalist, Glantz went beyond the safety of the heavily
protected Green Zone to get at the truth of life in Iraq under the
American occupation. In his book, “How American Lost Iraq,” we are given
the voices of Iraqis
themselves. What they have to tell us, in Aaron Glantz’s moving and
courageous book, is a truth that all Americans need to hear. Visit
aaronglantz.com for more information.

Muna Coobtee is a Palestinian activist from Los Angeles, CA. She is a
member of the Free Palestine Alliance and serves as its representative
on the Los Angeles steering committee of the International A.N.S.W.E.R.
Coalition. The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition organized the largest mass
demonstrations against the war and occupation of Iraq. Muna is also a
founding member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and a
contributor to “Socialism and Liberation” magazine.

Free childcare available at Long Beach event
(please RSVP to Jeanne 714.357.5424)
$10 donation requested (Students with I.D. $5)
Donate at the door or in advance via PayPal at
http://awarelbc.com/calendar.html

SUNDAY JUNE 4th – 3:00pm
Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara – 1535 Santa Barbara Street, Santa
Barbara, California 93101
Unembedded journalist Dahr Jamail and independent filmmaker Mark Manning
discuss the reality on the ground inside Iraq, then screen Caught in the
Crossfire (a short film about Falluja) and take audience questions and
comment. Co-sponsored by the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara Media
sponsors: 91.9 FM KCSB (Santa Barbara) and 90.7 FM KPFK (Los Angeles) /
98.7 FM KPFK (Santa Barbara)

For more information on all three events, visit
http://awarelbc.com/calendar.html
For questions about Long Beach or Santa Barbara,
call Jeanne at 714.357.5424 or email info@awarelbc.com
For questions regarding San Diego,
contact Marjorie Cohn at 619.374.6923 or email marjorie@tjsl.edu