This past weekend, Peaceful Uprising was invited to attend and present at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival by our amazing friends and allies at Finding the Good. We all piled into carpools, loaded up our crew of larger-than-life puppets and headed out to Nevada City California to participate in the film festival!
This was the first time Peaceful Uprising has taken the Climate Trial on the road, and it was fantastic! We arrived in the late afternoon on Friday and quickly huddled with the young and talented actors – some from Nevada City and some from Finding the Good, including our friend Alec Loorz (from Kids vs. Global Warming) that had also been invited to the festival. A read-through of the script was followed up with everyone getting to try on their puppet costumes, and then we were ready for the two performances the following day.
On Saturday we watched Tom & Debra Weistar’s amazing 15 minute video “Defending a Livable Future” in which many Finding the Good students participated and which followed Tim DeChristopher and Peaceful Uprising from Tim’s trial in February 2011. The film was highly moving, and perfectly set the mood and stage for our performance of the Climate Trial immediately afterward. The experience was truly empowering — read more about the Climate Trial experience and watch a full recording of it here.
The second performance was later that day on the street, (where street theatre is meant to be!) and again, a large crowd was drawn with multiple people expressing that watching Peaceful Uprising’s Climate Trial was the most “moving” and “inspiring” event of the festival.
We closed out the weekend with Peaceful Uprising running a workshop on the “History of Civil Disobedience – from MLK to OWS”, which was extremely powerful for both the presenters and the participants.
Although we didn’t get to see many films between all the workshops, performances, meetings and more – the weekend was truly a powerful experience that gave all of us at Peaceful Uprising, and hopefully a lot more folks, a large dose of inspiration, joy and resolve that reminds us all why we’re in this fight — and what unique, creative action and personal presence Peaceful Uprising brings to the movement.
Civil Disobedience Workshop "Violence Spectrum" Exercise
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