At what point does civil disobedience tip into terrorism?
At what point does rule of law turn into tyranny?
This Sunday, February 21st at 5:00 PM, the Salt Lake Acting Company is hosting a political forum prior to a showing of “Too Much Memory,” a modern-day interpretation of the classic tale of Antigone that focuses on the issues surrounding the role of civil disobedience in today’s political sphere. The panel and participants will discuss the role of civil disobedience in our modern discourse, and the boundaries and limitations of the rule of law in general. Tickets are still available for the 7:00 show to follow the discussion.
Panelists will include Rocky Anderson, former Salt Lake City Mayor and founder of High Road for Human Rights; Tim DeChristopher, founder of Peaceful Uprising and environmental activist and civil disobedience advocate; Rebecca Hall, Economic Justice Coordinator for the Utah Domestic Violence Council and career activist and advocate for social and environmental justice; Marshall Thompson, Iraq veteran and activist who received the Gandhi Peace Award from the Gandhi Alliance for Peace for walking the length of Utah for peace. The discussion will be moderated by Troy Williams, Public Affairs Director for KRCL, and executive producer of RadioActive.
SLAC is located at 168 W, 500 N in Salt Lake City. The discussion is open to the public.
Friends of Peaceful Uprising are offered a special discount rate to see Too Much Memory! Call SLAC and tell them you are a friend of PeaceUp, and get your tickets for $15!
Visit Salt Lake Acting Company’s website to learn more:
PANELIST BIOS:
ROCKY ANDERSON, founder of High Road for Human Rights, served as Mayor of Salt Lake City from 2000-2008. Before serving as Mayor, he practiced law for 21 years and was listed in Best Lawyers in America, served as Chair of the Utah State Bar Litigation Section, was Editor-in-Chief of Voir Dire legal journal, and, through his advocacy, expanded protections for consumers, investors, patients, and incarcerated people.
He served as President of the boards of the Utah affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, Citizens for Penal Reform (which he founded), and Guadalupe Education Programs, and as a board member of Planned Parenthood Association of Utah and Common Cause of Utah.
An outspoken human rights, government reform, and environmental advocate, Rocky was named by the Human Rights Campaign as one of the top ten straight advocates in the United States for GLBT equality and is the recipient of the Sierra Club Distinguished Service Award, the EPA Climate Protection Award, the Respect the Earth Planet Defender Award, the National Association of Hispanic Publications Presidential Award, The Drug Policy Alliance Richard J. Dennis Drugpeace Award, the Progressive Democrats of America Spine Award, the Air & Waste Management Association Richard Beatty Mellon Stewardship Award, the League of United Latin American Citizens Profile in Courage Award, the Morehouse College Gandhi, King, Ikeda Award, and the World Leadership Award for environmental programs. Rocky was named by Business Week as one of the top twenty activists in the world on climate change and served on the Newsweek Global Environmental Leadership Advisory Committee.
TIM DECHRISTOPHER became known as Bidder 70 after his act of civil disobedience disrupted a BLM oil and gas auction in December of 2008. He has since helped to start Peaceful Uprising, a group dedicated to demanding a livable future through empowering nonviolent action to stop climate change. He was also one of the founders of the Citizens’ Candidate initiative, which used a Craigslist help-wanted ad to recruit progressive candidate John Weis to replace Jim Matheson. Tim now faces two federal felony charges for his act of civil disobedience, and he goes to trial on March 15th in Salt Lake City.
REBECCA HALL, J.D., PhD, is the Economic Justice Coordinator for the Utah Domestic Violence Council. After graduating from U.C. Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law in 1989, she represented low income families for seven years in the area of housing law and in anti-discrimination cases. After years of experiencing how the structured patterns of race, class and gender deformed the possibilities of justice through the legal system, it became urgent for her to go back to the study of history of the law and its relation to the creation and maintenance of systems of oppression. She received her Ph.D. at U.C. Santa Cruz in history in 2004, was a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow at U.C. Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender, and relocated to Salt Lake City in 2007 after being invited by the law school to be a visiting professor. Her academic research is in the area of historical formations of racialized gender, legal history and current legacies of slavery. She is an activist in the issues of social justice and climate justice, is a member of Salt Lake City’s Human Rights Commission and Peaceful Uprising.
MARSHALL THOMPSON After returning from a one-year tour as an Army journalist in Iraq in 2006, Marshall set out to walk the length of Utah for peace. He met many wonderful people along the way. In 2009, he was the recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award from the Gandhi Alliance for Peace. He is married to Kristen Olsen and they have two children, Eliza, 4, and Peter, 2.
MODERATOR BIO:
TROY WILLIAMS is the public affairs director of KRCL and the executive producer of RadioActive. He is the co-writer of THE PASSION OF SISTER DOTTIE S. DIXON and the director of the forthcoming short film, Eco-gnosis. His article, ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Kill’ will be appearing in the forthcoming anthology, New Queer Agenda, published by NYU Press. Troy blogs at www.queergnosis.com.
SLAC, 168 W 500 N, SLC, 84103. Tel: 801.363.7522
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