#398 Oscar Noms Celebrating Nonviolence - February 16, 2018
Oscar Nominations Celebrating Nonviolence The five 2018 Academy Award nominations for short live action films have four that will be of particular interest to our community. Three of the five are dramatizations of actual events featuring nonviolent bravery facing down violent circumstances. DeKalb Elementary: Based on a recorded 911 call in August of 2013, this dramatized an event we covered at the time it was in the news in “Handling School Shootings with Nonviolence and Humanity.”
Photos -- Left: A film scene of the mentally ill man with a gun in the school; his Medicaid had run out, so he was off his medication. Middle: A film scene of the actress playing Antoinette Tuff. Right: Antoinette Tuff, the heroine from the actual event. My Nephew Emmett: The story of Emmett Till is told from his uncle’s perspective. The November 1955 brutal murder of 14-year-old Emmett was publicized to raise outrage against lynching. It was a major event in the Civil Rights Movement. Watu Wote/All of Us: Tensions have been high between Muslims and Christians in the area around the Kenya/Somali border. When a group of Al Shabaab gunmen hijacked a bus full of both Christians and Muslims, the Muslims immediately moved to protect the Christians under threat, and refused to separate into groups so the Christian “infidels” could be shot.
Photos -- Left: A Muslim teacher stands up to someone threatening to shoot him, asserting that it is the gunman who is hurting Islam. Right: A Muslim woman displays fortitude as the gun is pointed at her; she had earlier placed the hijab on the Christian woman cringing on the right in order to protect her from the gunmen. Additionally, “The Silent Child” is a fictional drama about a deaf child portraying the importance of learning sign language while facing the challenge of hearing parents who don’t understand.
Latest CLN Blog Post: Amnesty International’s Blind Spot In response to Amnesty International (AI) yet again offering a plea for abortion as a “human right” – this time opposing protective laws in Poland – Julia Smucker comments on the problems with their case. AI wants an exception for abortion for “fetal deformity” without consideration of what this does against disability rights, and they have an unrealistic understanding of who abortion-ban laws target. CLN has a history of opposing AI’s pro-abortion stance, starting with our petition drive when the leadership was pushing to change the organization from abortion-neutral to abortion-defending; AI’s decision-making process, along with the decision they came to, was cause for concern.
Quotation of the Week Dorothy Day May 14, 1971 letter to Philip and Daniel Berrigan All the Way to Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day edited by Robert Ellsberg, page 377 We are aghast at the continuing and spreading warfare in the world— the waste of human life, and at home too with abortion used to save the resulting consequences of our acts from suffering, from the cross we impose upon them. The educated Blacks have called our national policy genocide, and perhaps their attitude is the correct one. What a way to deal with poverty and “overpopulation.”
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