From Rwanda to Libya: Who's Calling Whom a Cockroach Now?

“Recently in the news is political cult leader Muammar Gaddafi calling the Libyan people "cockroaches" -- the very term used by radio hosts to dehumanize Tutsi in Rwanda on the cusp of the hundred-day slaughter in 1994. How could people turn on their friends and neighbors, and murder them?

I recently saw a brilliant new documentary film by Adam Mazo called Coexist, which tells the story of victims, perpetrators, and survivors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and what they face as they try to rebuild shattered trust in their country. A key theme in the film is the government-mandated process of reconciliation, and the need to break the cycle of violence so today's victims don't become tomorrow's perpetrators.”

Continue reading at Huff Post.

Movie helps students learn how to ‘Coexist’

“The perpetrators and victims of the Rwandan genocide lingered in the mind of 13-year-old Irena Manukian as she fell asleep Monday night.

Earlier that day at school, Irena, an eighth-grader at Innovation Academy Charter School, and her classmates, had become among the first middle-school students in the state to view Coexist, a 40-minute documentary on the 100-day period in 1994 when a half-million people were slaughtered in Rwanda, an east African country the size of Massachusetts.

The film, directed by Adam Mazo, a former TV news producer at Boston’s Channel 7, shows interviews Mazo conducted with dozens of survivors of the genocide — admitted killers and victims — who the current Rwandan government has ordered to reconcile and coexist.”

Continue reading at The Lowell Sun.

Metropolitan Film Festival of New York

Coexist has just been awarded an Honorable Mention in the documentary category at the Metropolitan Film Festival of New York!

Through Coexist we want audiences to become activists in their communities. We hope Coexist inspires dialogue with friends, family, and most importantly strangers and the "other". We encourage you to explore our site to learn more about our educational mission that we are working to achieve.

The World Premiere of Coexist

400+ guests gathered for the World Premiere of Coexist at Temple Israel in Boston on Saturday November 6th. They saw the 40-minute film which tells the stories of Rwandan genocide survivors, perpetrators, and bystanders. Reverend Hurmon Hamilton of Roxbury Presbyterian introduced the film saying that it is as much about "them" as it is about "us". Through Coexist we want audiences to become activists in their communities. We hope Coexist inspires dialogue with friends, family, and most importantly strangers and the "other". We encourage you to explore our site to learn more about our educational mission that we are working to achieve.

Thank You!

We've just premiered Coexist to a packed house in Boston tonight and we want to thank everyone who came out and everyone who made the event possible. We hope our message is clear, this is the beginining, not the end of our work. We look forward to working with you to improve our communities and educate young leaders to interrupt violence. We've accomplished quite a bit in the last 2+ years, and the opportunities to do much more are within reach. What can you do? Tell someone about it! Get on facebook, send an email, pick up the phone. Be in touch and let us know how you would like to help. Email us: coexistdocumentary@gmail.com

With deepest gratitude,

Adam Mazo

Director of Coexist

Coexist Premieres TODAY!

Today we will premiere the documentary film Coexist. This is the culmination of 2+ years of work and thousands of hours of work from hundreds of volunteers, donors, supporters, and the incredible contribution made by Rwandans who appear in the film. We're excited to announce that GBIO President Rev. Hurmon Hamilton will introduce the film. If you would like to come and have not yet RSVPed, please email us immediately at coexistdocumentary@gmail.com, we will let you know if we have enough space. Plan to arrive on time at 6:30 p.m. The screening starts promptly at 7 p.m. Full details are below.

. . .

Coexist World Premiere

Free Event Saturday, November 6th, 6:30 p.m. Temple Israel 477 Longwood Ave. Boston, MA 02215

. . .

T: Longwood D (Green) line (less than 5 minute walk) Parking: Garage $7, Very limited free street parking

Four Screenings and Scores of New Friends

Yesterday, at the Youth Summit we screened the film to a group of thirty youth from all over North America, as well as Kenya.  I posted seven questions on the walls of the room and asked the youth to "walk the walls" and decide which question most resonated with them.  Each wrote their name on the sheet of the question that tugged at them.  The groups were unevenly sized: two, four, seven, six.  Then they got into seven small groups to share their perspectives on these questions: -are human beings inherently violent?

-are some people born killers?

-who stands to benefit/lose from forgiveness?

-is evil intrinsic to some individuals and if so, is it a waste of time to forgive them?

-how might you judge the sincerity in a perpetrator's confession?

-what do you think of the statement that students in Rwanda are the same as students in the U.S., except that they lived through a different situation and faced different moral decisions?

-what do you think about this statement: the widow who reaches out to her husband's murderer is an expression of empathy not just for her loss but also for the loss of the perpetrator's moral humanity.

Their discussions were rich and several groups did not reach agreement.  They reported out in the remaining time and we had to wrap it up.  One of the young men is from El Salvador and we got to talk my research with Salvadorans many years ago, and the ways he feels pulled between non-violence and his families historic ties to the FMLN.  It was a very real and wrenching conversation.

Early Saturday afternoon, political scientist Cynthia Enloe (Clark University) described her focus on the post-war reality of Iraqi women and U.S. women.  She talked about injured soldiers and the women who care for them, and the impact this care has on the lives of the women, and how men's stories of war influence women's stories of war.  She called this the gendering of injury of war.  Cynthia ended her talk by saying that the privileging of men's war stories, the submerging of women's war stories, women's role caring for injured men, and the use of violence against women in war form the perfect patriarchal seed bed for the next war.

Carolyn Nordstrom, anthropologist from the University of Notre Dame, talked about the fault lines that constitute the zones of vulnerability that are often invisible.  She described a fourteen year old girl from a war zone in Angola: she was shot as a child, lives on the street with other children, they care for each other, have clear rules about sharing and looking out for one another.  Their motto is "let's not turn into Brazil; let's change this before Brazil happens here."  Carolyn examines the extra legal activity that constitutes 1/3 of the world's economy: smugglers, drug traders, money launderers, dealers in guns and body parts, which all told generate over $2 Billion that are not accountable to anyone.  About one-tenth of the world's economy is being laundered at any given moment.  Meanwhile, 12 million children are forced to work in the sex industry every year, and 218 million children work illegally, mostly in agriculture.  The informal economy is beginning to eclipse the formal economy, and the profits are used to grow political power and impunity.  There is a global ideology that says this is okay, and this is a major fault line on our planet.  Societies built on fault lines collapse.

Today (Saturday), we got an extra opportunity to screen the film for students from Roanoke College in Virginia. We will set up a screening on campus in the spring.

In the afternoon, we screened Coexist again for 47 Conference participants -- mostly college professors and activists.  Three of the Conference keynote speakers joined us: Cynthia Enloe, Carolyn Nordstrom, and Catherine Morris of the University of Victoria.  We were asked many more questions than we had time to answer, and most importantly, we made new friends and contacts, many of whom asked for copies of the film and the Viewer's Guide.  One professor said his students are in ROTC and they need to see Coexist.  Another professor said this kind of violence permeates our inner cities in the U.S.  Someone else suggested that the film be used in Israel and Palestine to teach about coexistence.  Some viewers said they love the film's complexity, others its relevancy and power.  We were VERY pleased.   After the screening, we met George Lahey from Swarthmore who encouraged our work, and many other pillars and pioneers of the peacebuilding and peace education movements of North America.  We are thrilled to have attended the Conference and already have an idea for our next film!  Stay tuned!

--Mishy Lesser, Learning Director for Coexist

Learning what it means to be a Winnipegger

Day 2 in Winnipeg at the Peace & Justice Studies Association Conference Elders from Winnipeg's Indigenous Community led us in an opening ceremony at Thunderbird House, a beautiful, round sacred space for dialogue that is home to many gatherings and activities of native peoples.  We learned of the push to create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada to investigate the severe childhood sexual abuse suffered by elders (when they were children) who were forced into religious schools.  If you saw the film Rabbit Proof Fence about similar atrocities in Australia, you'll know what I am referring to.  As we walk the streets of Winnipeg I am struck by the suffering of the aboriginal people of this land.  They seem disproportionately poor, homeless, and jobless.  We also see the signs of great spiritual suffering, as evidenced in alcohol and drug abuse.  Chief Ovide Mercredi of the Misipawistik First Nation and Swampy Cree Tribal Council challenged the conference attendees, asking "where were the peace activists when the Canadian government flooded our lands and ancestral cemeteries just a few decades ago?"  He talked about the violations of treaty and the Canadian government's seizure of tribal wealth.  This is the context for the Conference and for our screenings of Coexist.

We dashed from the Opening Plenary to Gordon Bell High School, the most diverse school in Winnipeg and the province of Manitoba.  It is a middle and high school.  Two high school teachers invited us to screen the film.  One of them teaches English, the other World Issues.  About thirty students crowded into a very cold classroom (they've yet to turn on the heat in the school).  One of the teachers, Mark, introduced us and he reminded the students of their viewing of "Hotel Rwanda" a couple of years ago.  A couple of the students knew the essentials about the Rwanda genocide. We showed the film and some of the students were visibly moved.  Mark gave them a moment to reflect on what they'd seen.  Then Adam got up for Q&A, and pointed to Rwanda on a globe that was conveniently sitting on Mark's very crowded desk.  Then the students asked Adam a couple of questions: why did you make the film?  how did you feel when you went to Rwanda where you heard all these stories?  There was an interesting exchange as Adam talked about filming Grace when she began to cry, and then her translator began to cry.  Adam didn't know what she had said but could feel her pain, and only learned later about the details of her story.  He talked about standing out as a white man in Rwanda, and said he imagined everyone in the room knew what it was like to stand out in ways you don't want to.

Then Adam turned it over to me and I pointed to South America on the globe, and said that I, too, had traveled far from home to learn more about myself and the world.   I asked the students to help me make a list of all the "People of Coexist" who were featured in the film.  I recorded the names on the blackboard and then asked the students to define the word compassion.  We agreed that compassion is the capacity to feel concern for someone else's pain and suffering.  Then I asked them to find a buddy and share with one another who they feel the most compassion for.  Many chose Grace, a few selected Agnes, one chose Alexander, and another Domitilie.  Then I asked the students to think about a question they might ask that person and an experience they might share with them.  And then we were out of time and had to dash to Rice Hall (University of Winnipeg) for our meeting with the Youth Summit.

No sooner did we arrive than we got a text message telling us that the youth were running thirty minutes late, and that the entire conference was off schedule.  This was a stroke of luck, as the technical problems that faced us were hefty and we needed time and help to solve them.  We thought we'd found the right cord for the right laptop, and were all set.  And then the youth arrived and we started the film, and found that the sound was scratchy and the image cut off.  So Adam and Mishy had our first experience of Improv.  As Adam worked with Michelle from the adjacent office to save the day, I spent half an hour engaging the youth in a conversation about the film, its purpose, the afternoon workshops they had, the plenary we missed, and their experience as facilitators.

It's been such a busy day we're even blogging this right now as the Youth Summit participants watch the film.

One more screening still ahead tomorrow for the adults!  And now more than ever we need to get our own equipment to avoid the kind of uncomfortable and awkward situation we faced today.

-Mishy Lesser, Learning Director for Coexist