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For Immediate Release: Novemeber
12, 2002
Media Contact: Suellen
Bilow (415) 557-4282
Catherine King (415) 557-4211
San
Francisco Public Library Presents
Inspiring stories from Human Rights Defenders
Harry Wu, Sister Dianna Ortiz, Van Jones
In Person: Saturday Dec 14 at SF Main Library
San Francisco - Harry Wu, Sister Dianna Ortiz and Van Jones will be guest speakers
during a special program, "Inspiring Stories from Human Rights Defenders," on Saturday, December 14 at 3:00 pm, in San Francisco Main Library's Koret Auditorium,
100 Larkin Street, Civic Center. This public program, co-sponsored by
Amnesty International and the Center for Justice and Accountability,
coincides with the anniversary of the December
1948 signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The program
will be followed by a reception in the Latino/Hispanic Community Meeting
Room.
Van Jones, Sister Dianna Ortiz and Harry Wu are among 51 human rights defenders
from around the world whose portraits and inspiring stories also are
included in "Speak Truth to Power," an exhibition of powerful black-and-white photographs taken by Pulitzer Prize-winning
photo- journalist Eddie Adams. The exhibition opens at San Francisco
Main Library's Jewett Gallery earlier in the week on December 12 and
continues through February 23, 2003.
The opening program will feature inspiring stories of women and men around the
world who stand up to oppression at great personal risk in the nonviolent
pursuit of human rights.
- Sister Dianna Ortiz, an American nun tortured by Guatemalan security forces, is the executive director of the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC).
- Harry Wu survived two decades in Chinese prison camps. As director and one of the founders of the Laogai Research Foundation, he is the foremost critic of the Chinese Laogai labor camp system.
- Van Jones is the National Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, an organization that challenges human rights abuses in the U.S. Criminal system.
Human rights issues - from nuclear disarmament to children in war, from environmental activism to religious self-determination and sex-slavery - are examined in the exhibition text through biographical stories about each of the defenders written by veteran human rights leader Kerry Kennedy Cuomo.
The exhibit is based on the book, Speak Truth to Power by Kerry Kennedy Cuomo
with photographs by Eddie Adams. The traveling exhibition, organized
by Nan Richardson of Umbrage Editions in New York, debuted in September 2000
at
the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and has traveled
to other venues including Boston Public Library, Columbia University, Northwestern
University's
Dittmar Memorial Gallery, the National Civil Rights Museum in
Memphis and most recently the Toledo Public Library. Following its showing
at San Francisco
Public Library, "Speak Truth to Power" will travel to the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego and then internationally
through 2006.
All programs and exhibitions at the Library are free of charge and open to the
public.
The San Francisco exhibition of "Speak
Truth to Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World" and related programs are supported by the Friends & Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library.
For more information, please call (415) 557-4277.
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