A Presentation of Writings and Images from the Occupied West Bank
Join award-winning photographer and journalist Louis Bockner for an evening of stories from his recent trip to Palestine. Louis will be presenting photographs and personal journal entries that offer reflections on his experience volunteering for Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT) in Hebron, a city in the occupied West Bank, in December of 2022.
The event will also feature a collaborative performance by poet Zaynab Mohammed and musician Bessie Wapp as well as a presentation from Sid Shniad of Independent Jewish Voices Canada, a Jewish-Canadian organization that envisions a just peace in Palestine and Israel based on equality and human rights.
Read "Anti-Zionism ≠ Anti-Semitism" Sid Shniad.
Tickets are $15 for adults, $12 for seniors and $10 for students.
Louis will be selling physical postcards of his photographs at the event.
Louis Bockner
Louis Bockner is a Canadian photographer and writer living on the unceded traditional territory of the Sinixt First Nation. He specializes in telling stories of people and the places they shape and are shaped by, with a particular affinity for those who live close to the Earth in a simple way.
His past clients include the Narwhal, the Globe and Mail, Kootenay Mountain Culture, Coast Mountain Culture, The Sierra Club, America magazine and the Wilderness Committee.
Visit his website.
Zaynab Mohammed
Zaynab Mohammed is an award-winning professional performance poet. She was born on the coast of BC, to immigrant parents fleeing war-torn countries. Inspired by the hardships her family has endured, her writing touches on what is possible in the realms of healing and creating new ways forward.
She currently lives and works in the Slocan Valley with her dog, Threshold.
Visit her website.
Bessie Wapp
Bessie Wapp has been a professional performing artist since 1993. After visual art and music studies at Emily Carr, Vancouver Community College and Selkirk College, she began working with some of Vancouver’s most innovative interdisciplinary groups, becoming a core member of two (Mortal Coil, Zeellia) with whom she performed extensively across North America and in Europe. Tour highlights include Lincoln Centre (NYC), Kennedy Centre (Washington DC), Festival D’Ete (Montreal) and Zagreb Danceweek (Croatia).
In 2006, Bessie returned to her hometown, Nelson, BC, where she leads the Taghum Hall Choir, performs with Klezmeridian and the Bill Lynch Trio, is a faculty member of Oxygen Art Centre. She was named the city’s cultural ambassador in 2015.
Sid Shniad
Sid Shniad has been active in labour, anti-war and anti-racist movements his entire life. He worked as the research director of the BC-based Telecommunications Workers Union from 1980 until 2009, playing an active role in promoting pay equity and women's rights and combating the deregulation of Canada's telecommunications industry.
In 1980, he became a founding member of the BC Organization to Fight Racism, which was established to combat the KKK when it threatened to sink roots in the province. In the run-up to the launch of the war in Iraq in 2003, he helped establish StopWar.ca, the BC-based anti-war coalition. Sid has been an active member of Independent Jewish Voices Canada, a Palestine solidarity organization, which he helped found in 2008.
All profits from this event will go towards the Palestine office of CPT. CPT is a global peace organization with offices in Columbia, Iraqi-Kurdistan, Canada, Lesvos and Palestine that believes violence is rooted in systemic structures of oppression. They have had an office in Hebron, Palestine, since 1995.