“Music for Movements” Party Planned Tonight at Farinon Center

Activist music and graffiti art will be part of “Music for Movements,” a party 11 p.m. today in the Farinon Center snack bar.

Sponsored by Students for Social Justice, the event will feature a live performance by local band Real West. A graffiti board/banner will be hanging for people to write or draw what they want to express. Next week, the banner will hang in Farinon.

“The goal of the night is to educate about activist music, inspire creativity, and create a fun environment for students,” says organizer Danielle Pollaci ’06 (Trenton, N.J.). “We also want to promote the ideal that everyone has a voice that can and should be heard. That’s why we’re playing pre-recorded music from arists like Bob Dylan, Ani di Franco, Rage Against the Machine, and Bob Marley, to name a few. ‘Music for Movements’ is going to be a night of creativity and fun. ”

The event is entered in the Party Challenge led by Cindy Adams, health education specialist at Lafayette. Guidelines include having a multicultural component and no alcohol or drugs.

Students for Social Justice recently initiated a weekly Wednesday movie night, where films about social injustices are screened. In addition, it holds a reading circle that currently is focusing on Marx.

The group organized Monday’s Walkout for Peace and subsequent Teach-In, as well as a brown bag Tuesday featuring a representative of Voices in the Wilderness (see related article). It has participated in peace rallies in New York, Washington, D.C., and Allentown, as well as at Muhlenberg.

Students for Social Justice is organizing the Taking a Stand 5K Run along with the student chapter of the American Society for Mechanical Engineers. The event will benefit Heifer International, an organization that combats hunger, alleviates poverty, and restores the environment by providing appropriate livestock, training, and related services to small-scale farmers worldwide.

Another initiative in the works is sending members and students from local colleges to their Congressmen. SSJ is active in Lehigh Valley Peace Coalition, a group of area schools working against social injustices, and has attended meetings of the Lehigh-Pocono Commitee of Concern.

Other SSJ events this year have included:

• a workshop on environmental racism and justice;
• a debate on war in Iraq between Lafayette President Arthur Rothkopf and Steven Lammers, Helen H.P. Manson Professor of the English Bible;
• a student-led War Discussion panel;
• a debate between John McCartney, associate professor and head of government and law, and James DeVault, associate professor of economics and business, on the policies and actions of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank;
• a talk by law professor Christine Cimini, a former staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, on “The Real Work Lawyers Do;”
• a performance of Lysistrata;
• building snowmen that “held” peace signs on the Quad.