Downwinders At Risk: Root & Branch Event:

A Free Film Screening and Discussion on Civil Disobedience

From the film "Above All Else"

Co-Sponsored by the Dallas Peace & Justice Center

On Tuesday, January 24th, from 7:00 to 9:00 pm we're taking over Angelika Theater #8 and showing "Above All Else," followed by a discussion on "When is Civil Disobedience Effective?"

THE FILM: “Above All Else”
“In this dramatic, firsthand account of activists on the front line of the climate fight, one man risks it all to stop the tar sands of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from crossing his land. Shot in the forests, pastures, and living rooms of rural East Texas, ABOVE ALL ELSE follows David Daniel, a retired stunt man and high-wire artist, as he rallies neighbors and activists to join him in a final act of brinkmanship: a tree-top blockade of the controversial pipeline. What begins as a stand against corporate encroachments on one man’s land becomes a rallying cry for climate protesters nationwide.”

OUR PANELISTS
Panel moderated by Downwinders' Jim Schermbeck
Panelists include: Mavis Belisle, Peace Activist; Peter Johnson, Civil Rights Activist; Corey Troiani, E. Texas Blockade; and Ron Seifert, Organizer, Tar Sands Blockade.

• Mavis Belisle is one of the most persistent, and consistent, voices for non-violent social change in Texas. Beginning with civil rights work at UT-Austin in the early 60’s to anti-war activity in the late sixties to disarmament and nuclear freeze campaigns throughout the 80’s and 90’s and continuing up until the present day, she has decades of experience in challenging the system using civil disobedience as a tactic, both as a trainer and a participant.
  
  
• Peter Johnson came to Dallas in 1970 as a temporary organizer for the slain MLK Jr’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but stayed to help organize South Dallas residents living around Fair Park. By then he’d already been severely beaten from earlier Civil Rights protests, including the “Bloody Sunday” March to Selma, Alabama. For almost 50 years, Johnson has been a voice of conscience about the use of non-violence in pursuit of social justice.
  
  
• Corey Troiani is a native Texan who started his activist career in 2011 at the University of North Texas fighting hydraulic fracturing in Denton neighborhoods. After graduating, he co-founded a direct action campaign with activists and landowners to stop construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in East Texas. He joined TCE in early 2013, and has worked as a community organizer, field manager, and now Program Director in the DFW office.
  
  
• Ron Seifert is a climate activist from Montana who has been working intimately with land owners along the proposed Keystone XL pipeline route. He also works with environmental justice organizations in the Texas Gulf region to address the disproportionate consequences of the petrochemical industry.

Additional Event Details:
http://2017rootandbranch.org/film-and-discussion-on-civil-disobedience/