Monday was a really interesting event. We had set up a showing of the fascinating and very relevant documentary and work of art The Suffering Grasses, followed by a panel discussion and dinner. Suffering Grasses depicts how the Syrian people originally had had visions of a purely non-violent request for freedom and never in their wildest nightmares saw the hateful and indiscriminate killings and destruction coming. The movie has several different tracks of people talking and gives many varied viewpoints -but thank God for justice and level-headedness then the movie never tries to present the viewpoint of the oppressive regime or pretends that shabeeha are anything other than heartless, robotic killers.
The film is definitely worth watching and the producers actually offer the movie for free if you set up a showing and bring in people to watch it and hopefully start a dialogue and a discussion on what is happening and how we can help with humanitarian needs, long-term and short-term. At our panel we had Omar Offendum, Professor Nasser Rabbat, and brothers Yaman and Bayhas Kana who had made a very short video presentation on a team of dentists who had gone tot he Turkish-Syrian border to help out with dental care. The discussion was interesting and lively and we had questions from many different angles and ethnic sources which made it very interesting. Omar did a very engaging and informative presentation that really put things in perspective and made us all feel the power of individual non-violent activism while holding in high esteem the brave people and fighters of the Free Syrian Army who had to pick up arms in order to defend their women and children at some basic level. Highly recommend the movie which can be requested from www.CuluresofResistance.org.
We also had a Syria souvenir table that evening, a lovely dinner sponsored by the organizers of Walk 4 Children of Syria (Syrian American Alliance) and were able to network and get some really interesting conversations going and met many new friends.
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