Members of the Youth Media Project’s Global Broadcasting Team hosts this broadcast to share stories from their recent trip to cover the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Melbourne, Australia. Production Team alumnae Carmen Gallegos and Dolna Smithback host, presenting the pieces they produced on assignment in Melbourne; guests Eliot Fisher and John Braman stop in for a discussion about the Parliament and interfaith issues; and Judy Goldberg joins the discussion, laying out her vision for the future of the Youth Media Project.
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Audio Revolution hosts Shawnelle Chavez and Gabe Rima welcome the Santa Fe Indian School’s Spoken Word team into the studio at KSFR, just back from their international trip sharing songs and poems in the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Spoken Word Team guests Ariel Antone, Santana Shorty, Clara Natonabah, and Nolan Eskeets talk about their experiences and perform their work. The Santa Fe Indian School Spoken Word Team is a group of indigenous youth writers who are nationally recognized for their performances of poetry that incorporates Native languages and philosophies. The youth are coached by teacher and writer Tim McLaughlin.
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Youth Media Project’s Audio Revolution partners up with Santa Fe High School Student Wellness Action Team (SWAT) members Ariana Maestas, Chloe Wolff, Ashly Ramirez, and Renatta Portillo to shine a spotlight on DWI, youth drinking, and current New Mexico DWI legislation. Guests include SWAT team coordinator Phil Lucero and Senator Peter Wirth. Show hosts Chloe Wolff and Renatta Portillo take listeners through a cascade of teen and adult voices on topics such as youth and drinking, why youth choose NOT to drink, as well as a panel discussion with SWAT members and Senator Wirth about current DWI legislation for the 2010 State Legislature session; spearheaded by Senator Wirth. Audio Revolution ends the show with some serious AND playful narratives by Monte Del Sol Charter School’s Radio Arts students Ethan Parrot, Paul Van Sickle, Toby Winkler, and Lexie McAvinchey.
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As John mentioned in the previous post, I ended up helping the Parliament’s Jenny Douglas realize a video project that materialized during the conference itself: an official message from the conference attendees (representatives of the world’s religions) to the leaders discussing climate change in Copenhagen. It was an interesting challenge to complete it on such a short timeframe (we basically just had part of one day, before we were getting on the plane back to the US). Here is the version of the video I was working on with Parliament Council Executive Director Rev. Dirk Ficca in the clip in John’s last post (below):
The Parliament staff is constantly having to find a balance in such a diverse interfaith organization in which everything is being accurately represented. They are stuck between the secular world, much of which is (rightly) suspicious of the ways religions have been cynically used to repress and oppress, and those in religious communities (particularly more extreme or fundamentalist) who are skeptical of different faiths trying to find points of commonality and collaboration. We saw a very literal illustration of this in-betweenness of the Parliament by interviewing the few protestors who showed up outside to decry the conference–a small group of Evangelical Christians and another of atheists.
So, as you can see in the behind-the-scenes footage in the previous post, Rev. Ficca struggles to make sure that the Parliament and the religions it includes are accurately represented: he suggests that the Bhuddist monk might go near the end, since his message is a little more universally understood to a potential predominantly secular audience of scientists and politicians at Copenhagen. The most important change he wanted made in the cut of the video above was to remove a “theologically problematic” statement by one of our spirited interview subjects: Rev. Ficca said it could cause trouble to include Sikh filmmaker Valarie Kaur’s assertion that “all religious faiths preach…oneness.” While I understood his concern (especially as the video was to “represent the views” of the Parliament itself), it was a shame to have to elide that small piece, because I couldn’t find a really elegant way to do that, so it breaks up the flow of her passionate speech somewhat:
You’ll also notice in this final version that a brief message from Dr. Stephen Perkins has been added near the end (right after Valarie Kaur). You can see Rev. Ficca introduce the video to Dr. Perkins at the end of the behind-the-scenes editing footage below. Upon watching the video, Dr. Perkins suggested that the message seemed a bit too wishful and needed to communicate the power that religious communities have — that they are ready to take action to help realize the political leaders’ goals, and that there will be consequences for the leaders if they do not accomplish what needs to be done at Copenhagen. The Parliament Council staffers suggested that Dr. Perkins himself would be a good person to deliver that particular sentiment, so we went out into the hall and shot him then and there.
It was definitely an enlightening experience to see the kind of decisions that Rev. Ficca decided had to make for political considerations rather than artistic ones, which was more the direction I was coming from. Seeing that on the ground made me have a little more empathy for the nation’s leaders gathering at Copenhagen, where this video was to be delivered to the media by Martin Frick, from the Global Humanitarian Forum. Those leaders are constantly having to manage perceptions, while speaking to so many different audiences at the same time — international, national, members of different political parties and different media outlets. Still, seems like right now they need to wake up and rise above all that to do the right thing.
Can the world’s religions agree on a definition of God, let alone share a theology of the oneness of the Earth? Like it or not, conversations at the Parliament of the World’s Religions (PWR) turned toward the urgency of the Copenhagen talks that began today. The Melbourne event might be a remote extravaganza Down Under, but it wasn’t one without awareness of world politics. In the midst of everything else unexpected for Youth Media Project, the Parliament’s media liaison guru, Jenny Douglas, turned to Team Santa Fe to cobble together a short documentary. The hope was that Martin Frick, the esteemed climate change scientist on hand here as a keynote, might carry with him to Copenhagen a compelling message from Parliament participants.
Titled “Our Call to Copenhagen,” Eliot Fisher’s fabulous 4-minute documentary features a dozen of the most diverse representatives of the world’s most populous religions, and even – in the case of a pair of indigenous Swedish reindeer herders – perhaps the least populous. In gratitude to Eliot and YMP for heroic efforts, PWR has offered to post a story about Eliot’s work on their website. Thanks to Dirk Ficca and Jenny Douglas!
But before we get to the film itself, there is always the process. PWR’s Douglas worked the halls of Melbourne’s vast Convention Centre to corral subjects for short interviews. Two questions: “What would you like to see happen in Copenhagen?” and “How does your spiritual tradition inform your understanding of climate change?” On the trail of answers, Eliot and crew ascended to the heights of a presidential suite in one of Australia’s most posh hotels, then zipped around in a taxi for an impromptu rendezvous with an Aborigine elder. After about 15 interviews, one thing was certain: whether it is the esteemed Yale scholar or the dynamic Sikh filmmaker or the placid Zoroastrian elder, everyone expects some action in Copenhagen.
But before the film flies to Europe, it has to fly at home in Melbourne. See the clip below for a bird’s eye view of executive decision-making by Dirk Ficca, head of PWR, in the crucial final moments of editing.
On Saturday, I had the wonderful pleasure of interviewing Dr. Sakena Yacoobi of Afghanistan. She wore a black head covering and a dress covered with beautiful, colorful beaded embroidery.
Dr. Yacoobi founded the Afghan Institute of Learning, an Afghan women-led NGO that has helped provide teacher training to women to help support the education of young boys and girls. She wanted the outside world to know that the people of Afghanistan (especially children and women) are tired of war, which hasn’t let up for thirty years. She stressed that life is a struggle, continually returning to this point.
Her passion as she spoke was tremendous and moving. She strongly believes that “education is the key to real survival.” She went on: “When they [women] ask questions, there is power.” The access to this safe education is what her institute tries to provide. She is strongly rooted in her faith, which inspires her desire to help the people around her. In fact, she told me that it is her faith that gets her through each day. Every morning, she prays to God before leaving the safety of her home and goes into the streets, where many are killed daily.
Her strong voice got quiet when she told me what the lack of security does to the people of Afghanistan. As I asked her to expand on what she described, I realized that I was dreading the answer she would give. She told us about women in a constant state of fear: when they went to the market, to school, or anywhere. “A woman, when she leaves, has to say goodbye to her family because she doesn’t know if she is going to be killed.”
I remembered what had come to mind during Dr. Yacoobi’s powerful keynote speech at the conference’s opening ceremony on Thursday. At the time, I had wondered how many people were thinking about what I was: President Obama’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to her country.
I was almost shut down by a guy from Bali earlier today. I asked him what religion he was from and he said that religion should not be the question, but the answer. People should keep their religion very close and intimate to them without sharing it with the world, because when the world realizes what religion they belong to they are profiled and judged right off the bat. It doesn’t matter if the person was good or bad; now they are condemned for praising their God.
As I walk the streets of downtown Melbourne, Australia, I ask myself what is it exactly that I am looking for at the Parliment of World Religions? I don’t know, at least not yet. I realize that I don’t know what the hell I am supposed to do. I didn’t know how much this conference would overwhelm me. I just find myself lost, confused in this tossed salad of religions (the jetlag doesn’t help the case either). You chismosos at home might be asking yourselves, why am I so confused? Well let me tell you.
The Parliament of the World’s Religions is basically what the name says it is…a place where people from different religions sit down and talk about world issues, and look at ways to solve them. This conference is held every five years and seeing people talking to each other like they did today seems pretty positive. However, has it changed anything in the world so far?
Today is December 4, 2009 and the first day of the conference has come and passed by. I guess I got some good material to create a radio piece that will share this experience with others, and I know for a fact I have met passionate world religious leaders. But, right now I don’t feel so accomplished. A least not yet. All I know is that I will be discovering something very powerful about my self in the next few days. I’ll keep you posted on that. For now, I will leave you with a thought. At one of the workshops I attended this morning, a white woman with sparkly blue eyes touched her chest and asked for forgiveness from the indigenous peoples at the panel. Joe, an elder from Cochiti Pueblo back home in New Mexico said that the only way to progress is to forget the past.
Thursday night was the opening ceremony. The jetlag had set in and I could barely keep my eyes open. On Friday morning Carmen and I experienced something that made the world feel very small (in a good way). We went to breakfast at a little cafe near the hostel where we are staying. It was good food but coffee in this town is crazy expensive, 3 dollars for a cup of plain black coffee. We sat down near a couple also attending the Parliament of the World’s Religions, spotting their giant, 400-page programs (that Carmen calls the Bible). We started up a conversation with the them, and when we said we were from Santa Fe, NM, I was surprised when they knew where it was, even though they were from Chicago not many Americans know where New Mexico is. The woman asked if we had been on NPR after we had described the Youth Media Project, and Carmen said yes, that her piece about being a Mexican in the United States had been played. She told us that she actually remembered that she had heard Carmen’s piece on NPR a few years back! As they left the restaurant, the woman said to Carmen, “I feel like I should ask you for your autograph.” Carmen just laughed. Here we are, all the way in Australia, meeting someone from the US who had heard a piece we’d produced.
YOUTH MEDIA PROJECT is winging it's way to Melbourne, Australia. A team of 3 YMP youth from Northern new Mexico schools was selected to be the first youth media group to ever cover events at the Parliament of the World's Religions 8,000-person global conference. The student team will create radio compositions about interfaith issues to be broadcast globally and will try for an interview with his Holiness the Dalai Lama. Check back for more on-location updates over the next week.
