Amal considers 9/11

The vision for September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows was born when a small group of family members of those killed on 9/11 became connected after reading each others’ pleas for nonviolent and reasoned responses to the terrorist attacks. Several of these individuals met one another when they participated in the “Walk for Healing and Peace” from Washington, D.C. to New York City in late 2001 organized by Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness (now Voices for Creative Nonviolence).

In January, 2002 four family members traveled to Afghanistan in a delegation organized by Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange to witness the consequences of U.S. military action there and to express their profound concern that high numbers of civilian casualties would increase terrorist recruitment rather than making the U.S. or the world safer. This core group decided to unite in order to strengthen their message and voices.

Peaceful Tomorrows was launched as a project of the Fellowship of Reconciliation – USA in February 2002. Our name comes from a statement made by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.” Dozens more family members joined in the following months. What these founding members shared was a belief that the violence that took their loved ones’ lives could spin out of control, and fear could be manipulated by politicians and the media to justify foreign and domestic policies that would increase violence while decreasing U.S. citizens’ rights and liberties over the years to come.

https://peacefultomorrows.org/

The Broadway Sinfonietta is an all female-identifying, majority women-of-color orchestral collective showcasing the excellence of BIPOC women musicians on Broadway & beyond.

https://www.thebroadwaysinfonietta.com/

Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (YSDT) creates invigorating performance and education programs that expand access to – and promote understanding through – the arts. Founded in 2005 by Samar Haddad King in NYC, YSDT has a repertoire of 30+ original works performed across NYC at venues such as Downtown Dance Festival, Gibney, Harlem Stage, Joyce SoHo,  LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Queens Museum and more; regionally; and abroad in 11 countries across four continents, including festivals such as Nuit Blanche (Belgium), Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival (Palestine), SIDance (South Korea), Spring Festival (Tunisia), Theater der Welt, Theaterformen (Germany) and Theater Spektakel (Switzerland). Since 2011, the company has worked transnationally between NYC and Palestine, and is committed to uniting diverse artists and audiences in the creative process, rooted in  the belief that art should be liberating, transformative, and accessible to all.

https://ysdt.org/

Tuçe Yasak has been following light in NYC since 2008, creating over 100 site-specific light installations for performance in the US and abroad. Yasak received the 2018 BESSIE (…Memoirs of a… Unicorn by Marjani Forte-Saunders at Collapsable Hole and NYLA) and 2019 BESSIE (Oba Qween Baba King Baba by Ni’Ja Whitson at Danspace) for Outstanding Visual Design with her lighting design.She has ongoing collaborations with Raja Feather Kelly / the Feath3r, Ana Maria Alvarez / Contra Tiempo, Ni’Ja Whitson, Nia Witherspoon, Justin Hicks. Among her recent collaborations Hysteria by Raja Feather Kelly at New york Live Arts, The Bridge Called My Ass by Miguel Gutierrez (The Chocolate Factory/NY, Montpellier Dance Festival/France, The Walker Center/Minneapolis, PICA/Portland) Skinfolk: An American Show written by Jillian Walker/ directed by Mei Ann Teo (The Bushwick Starr, NYC), We’re Gonna Die written by Young Jean Lee, directed by Raja Feather Kelly (2nd Stage Theater/NYC) -all three have recently been reviewed on New York Times-, M—ER by Autumn Knight (On The Boards), JoyUS JustUS by Contra Tiempo (national tour), Patch the Sky with 5 Color Stonesby Daria Fain at the Chocolate Factory among many others. Light, movement and architecture intertwine in Yasak’s work to support space-making and story-telling.

http://www.micoluco.com/