Rebuilding Haiti (YP Discussion Group)

Rebuilding Haiti (YP Discussion Group)

The World Affairs Council, Young Professionals invite you to our fortnightly discussion group:

Wednesday, 2 March 2011 | 7:00 p.m.

Madison's Grill, 1109 SE Madison St. (Map)

It has been more than a year since the earthquake that devastated Haiti. The return of Duvalier briefly pushed Haiti back into the news cycle, but accounts of the recovery have been scarce. Has there been significant progress in the last year? Has the U.S. and rest of the international community done enough to help? How does a country with so many political, economic, and environmental issues rebuild itself?

Soil Not Oil: Climate Change, Peak Oil, and Food Justice

2011 International Speaker Series
February 23, 2011 - 7pm at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Portland, OR

Vandana Shiva

Environmental Activist

Vandana Shiva is one of the world’s most respected environmental activists and feminists. A trained physicist, she received her PhD. at the University of Western Ontario, and since the 1970s, has been a vocal figure in the conservation movement.

Shiva is a leader in the International Forum on Globalization, along with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin. She addressed the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, 1999, as well as the recent World Economic Forum in Melbourne , 2000. In 1993, Shiva won the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award). In 2010, she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize for her commitment to social justice. The founder of Navdanya (“nine seeds”), a movement promoting diversity and use of native seeds, she also set up the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology in her mother’s cowshed in 1997. Its studies have validated the ecological value of traditional farming and been instrumental in fighting destructive development projects in India.

Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India ’s leading physicists. She holds a master’s degree in the philosophy of science and a Ph.D. in particle physics

She is the author of many books, including Water Wars: Pollution, Profits, and Privatization (South End Press, 2001), Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (South End Press, 1997), Monocultures of the Mind (Zed, 1993), The Violence of the Green Revolution (Zed, 1992) and Staying Alive (St. Martin's Press, 1989).

Single tickets for Vandana Shive are on sale through the PCPA box office and Ticketmaster.

Borderless: Migration, Globalization, and Changing Communities

In this time of cataclysmic change in our country and our world, it is important to ask not just how to get the economy back on track, but what kind of economy we want. In 1983, Benedict Anderson wrote Imagined Communities, a book about the origins of the modern nation-state and the powerful identification with nations for which millions have fought and been willing to die. Elliott Young will lead a discussion about the ways in which local communities in the twenty-first century need to think in new ways about the relationship between migration and globalization, and their effects on Oregon communities.

Elliott Young was born in New York City and has been migrating westward ever since. He has conducted research and done community development work in Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Ecuador. Young has been a professor of Latin American and borderlands history at Lewis & Clark College in Portland since 1997.

Sponsored by Oregon Humanities (formerly Oregon Council for the Humanities).


Wednesday, March 2, 2011 6-7 p.m.


Gregory Heights Library
7921 N.E. Sandy Blvd.
Portland, OR 97213
503.988.5386
http://www.multcolib.org/events/conversationproject.html

Egypt: What Comes Next? (YP Discussion Group)

Egypt: What Comes Next? (YP Discussion Group)

The World Affairs Council, Young Professionals invite you to our fortnightly discussion group:

Wednesday, 16 February 2011 | 7:00 p.m.

Madison's Grill, 1109 SE Madison St. (Map)

Now that Mubarak is out, where does Egypt go next? The democratization process is not yet complete, as the military is now in control. Are the Egyptian military's promises of real political reform trustworthy? Do autocrats all over the world need to be nervous? What is the role of the U.S. in the transition? How will this alter U.S. foreign policy in regard to democracy promotion and interactions with autocrats?

Peter Hessler at Powells

Peter Hessler at Powell's
Tuesday 2/15
7:30 pm

Peter Hessler is one of the best writers on China in the west. After a Peace Corp tour took him to Central China, he moved to Beijing and wrote a trilogy of books on life in Modern China. He is coming to Powell's to talk about the last book, Country Driving. This is a great opportunity for all China Hands.



Full details here: http://www.worldoregon.org/events/registration/peter_hessler.php