No Child Behind Bars: Living Resistance from the U.S. to Palestine

press release: Free and open to the public.

Featuring:

Ahed Tamimi is a 16-year-old Palestinian human rights activist, charismatic, and articulate. Because she was not issued a visa by the U.S., Ahed will be speaking via video tape from her home in Nabi Saleh, Occupied West Bank, Palestine.

Amanda Weatherspoon is a Unitarian Universalist minister and Black liberation activist in the Bay Area. Her ministry is centered on collective liberation with an intersectional approach.

Nadya Tannous is a writer and organizer in the Bay Area. She has researched the detention of Palestinian minors since 2013.

Alix Shabazz is a 24 year old community organizer with Freedom Inc. in Madison, WI.

NOTE: Amanda Weatherspoon and Nadya Tannous are scheduled to be interviewed by phone on Friday, January 27 from 12 noon - 1 pm on 89.9 FM WORT Radio's A Public Affair live call-in show with host Esty Dinur

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This 19-city speaking tour is meant to educate the American public about the widespread abuse of children through detention and criminalization. While the tour features Ahed, a Palestinian youth, it is also meant to draw attention to the intersectional nature of injustice to children, including detention practices and youth incarceration right here in the United States, which disproportionately impact children and youth of color. Our goal is to spread awareness and to highlight congressional, economic, and educational opportunities for coalitions to mobilize around a common goal: the full realization of human rights for children.

" We are at a precipice in our struggle for collective liberation. The opportunity to engage with prophetic voices of our time, powered by distinctive and united visions, on tour and in our communities, while sharing a platform to mobilize for systemic change and interface with communities across the US, is something that we need now more than ever.

"Let us be exceptionally bold together and grow in the light of Living Resistance and the possibility, inevitability, of liberation."

The main sponsor of the tour nationally is Friends of Sabeel-North America. Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center is a Palestinian Christian organization

Local Tour Co-Sponsors:

American Friends Service Committee of the Madison Friends’ Meeting; Amnesty International Group 139, Madison; Bethlehem Partnership, Wisconsin Conference of the UCC ; Colombia Support Network; Families for Justice; First Unitarian Society; Groundwork; Jewish Voice for Peace-Madison; Linda and Gene Farley Center for Peace, Justice & Sustainability; Madison-Rafah Sister City Project; Memorial UCC Fitchburg; Peregrine Forum; Pilgrims of Ibillin; Playgrounds for Palestine-Madison; Prairie UU Society Social Action; Racial Justice Tipping Point; Students for Justice in Palestine-UW Madison; The Crossing; Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice; Women's International League for Peace and Freedom-Madison; Young Gifted and Black Coalition.