Welcome back to Amnesty at Wells! We just had our first meeting of the semester and these are the minutes (sorry for the length):
The biggest news of the meeting was, in conjunction with Cornell's branch of Amnesty, we're bringing a prisoner of conscience to speak at Wells! His name is Francis Bok and you can read more about him at http://www.iabolish.org/act/commu/booking/index.htm. He'll probably be coming to speak the week before spring break. If you aren't enthusiastic about that, ask Heather Turner and her excitement is sure to brush off on you. She's been trying to get a prisoner of conscience here since 2001. Nicole Krogman suggested we get Gospel Choir to sing before his lecture, so we'll be trying to do that.
Our Urgent Action for the week is being written up into a letter by Emily Klein. From the info sent to us by Amnesty:
Stop the Torture of Social Activists and Human Rights Defenders in Punjab, India. Amnesty International is concerned for the safety of at least 100 individuals including social activists, human rights defenders and lawyers in Punjab. Some are being illegally detained in connection with the escape of four detainees from Burail Jail, Chandigarh. They and those who have been formally arrested are being held in various parts of Punjab, including Chandigarh, where they are allegedly being tortured.We'll be starting up our movie series this semester with 5 movie nights, 1 per night. The movies topics are Jewish, India, Tibet, Middle East, and South America. The first movie will be "Life is Beautiful" and we'll probably show that on Thursday night next week or the week after depending on what's available.
Maria LeCompte-Shiba is our new treasurer as well as our collegiate rep.
We have a new meeting place and time! We'll be meeting on Thursdays at 8:00pm in the smoking room of the library. If you don't know where that is, ask someone at the circulation desk. If you can't make that meeting time please email Heather Turner. We really do want as many members at the meetings as possible so if that's a bad time for some of you we will try to reschedule.
~Monica Chapman '05