QPIRG McGill and Tadamon! present :
OUT AGAINST THE OCCUPATION!
A FUNDRAISER FOR THE SANAYEH RELIEF CENTRE IN BEIRUT
Wednesday, August 30 2006
Doors at 9 pm, Performance 10 pm
Club Lambi 4465 blvd. St-Laurent (coin Mont-Royal)
Pay What You Can/Suggested Donation: 5-20$
The bombs have stopped falling but the work is far from over. Over a month has passed since Israel invaded Lebanon and implemented its program of collective punishment against the Lebanese people. Now a cease fire has been declared, but Lebanon has been left in ruins, with nearly a thousand dead, a million more displaced, homes, roads and public works destroyed. For 34-days Israel’s blockade prevented international aid from reaching the Lebanese people. Some 94 roads and 77 bridges were destroyed in Israeli air strikes, and the main roads to Syria were rendered impassable. There have been country-wide fuel shortages making hospitals unable to function normally. Out Against the Occupation takes its lead from Arab LBTG organizations such as Helem Beirut and Aswat in Palestine in condemning this violence and commit our energy to bringing relief and solidarity to the people of Lebanon.
FEATURING
Screenings:
A Public Service Announcement from Electronic Lebanon
From Beirut to… those who love us : a video by Beirut DC film and cinema collective
Poetry:
Trish Salah
Speakers:
Nay from ASWAT (a Palestinian Gay Woman’s Group) talks about negotiating a queer Arab Identity while resisting occupation and Israeli apartheid.
Tadamon! member reports back from Beirut.
Performance:
Radical Drag by Osama Bin Thuggin (Condoleza Rice and Dick Cheney like you’ve never seen them before…)
Drag Performance by Farah Abdill
Dj’s Leila P., Dima, Kandis and more laying down beats from Hip Hop to Arab Pop!
*** Translation available (English, French and Arabic)
*** Club Lambi is NOT wheel chair accessible
About the Performers and Presenters:
Nay is a Palestinian activist who has worked with the Palestinian-Israeli Women’s Coalition for a Just Peace, against the apartheid wall and an active member of Aswat, the Palestinian Gay Women’s Group. She worked and volunteered in Sawa, a Palestinian women’s center in Jerusalem. She and another member of Aswat initiated the first Palestinian lesbian email list, which later became Aswat. Nayrouz moved to Toronto, two years ago, to do her masters degree at York University, on issues of queer movements and identity, specifically around Salaam, the Muslim queer community in Toronto.
Osama bin Thuggin is a tough-talking, soft-hearted Palestinian whose loves include shawarma, hip-hop, and Leila Khaled. Combining revolutionary politics and music, Osama’s drag, once described as ballsy (pun intended), unsettles the conventional paradigms afforded Arabs and gets you to shake your hips, all at once.
Farah Abdill is a performance artist and a member of 2110 Center for Gender Advocacy and Solidarity Across Borders.
Trish Salah is a Montreal-based writer and a doctoral candidate in English at York University. She currently teaches at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute and in Sociology at Bishop’s University. She is a former editor of FUSE magazine and her first book of poetry Wanting in Arabic was published by TSAR in 2002. Among other things she works on issues of Palestinian solidarity, transsexual, transgender and sex workers’ rights.
About the Sanayeh Relief Centre:
The Sanayeh* Relief Center is a grassroots group working with refugees in central Beirut, in coordination with the media center in Beirut. Composed of groups who were on the ground on the first day of Israeli military aggression on Lebanon and wholly volunteer organized and operated, Sanayeh provides vital humanitarian aid and support for thousands of internally displaced Lebanese. Sanayeh also also disseminates much needed information, and mobilizes politically against the complicity of the “international community”.
* Sanayeh Relief Center, Beirut, Lebanon:
www.sanayehreliefcenter.blogspot.com
* Samidoun Coalition, Beirut, Lebanon:
www.samidoun.org
