Blog Posts - Minnesota Peacebuilding Leadership Institute

Peacebuilding Update: April 2018

4/8/2018

For the fifth year in a row, the Minnesota Peacebuilding Leadership Institute is sponsoring LUNAFEST: Minneapolis. On Wednesday April 25, 2018 at the Riverview Theater, we’ll screen nine internationally curated short films by, for, about women. Since 2000, LUNAFEST has showcased the work of talented women directors from all over the world. This year’s lineup of films include a film about a 10 year-old girl training to become a professional boxer, a film tribute to the highest-paid silent film director at Universal Studios in 1916, and a film about a Pakistani woman who helps middle school girls in Silicon Valley learn to design video games.

In a historic moment where we’re reckoning with the film industry’s history of discrimination, it’s more important than ever that films like these that hold up the stories of women and people of color are made and shown widely. Thanks to #MeToo and #TimesUp, there’s a push for equity in film that echoes our need for equity in all aspects of our lives.

As a nonprofit organization committed to equity, these films are an important part of achieving our vision to Make Minnesota the Peacebuilding Power State For All. The funds raised from LUNAFEST: Minneapolis go toward Peacebuilding’s scholarships that help make our trainings accessible to all by offsetting the cost of tuition. We hope you join us for an evening of Peacebuilding in our community.

Women's History Month Featured Leader: Nellie Bly

3/31/2018

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.

Today we’re celebrating:

Nellie_Bly_Womens_History_Month_Peacebuilding

Nellie Bly

Journalist (1867 – 1922)

Known for exploits as well as resourcefulness in investigative journalism
Began a career in journalism in her early twenties after being mostly self-educated
Gravitated toward subjects like political corruption and perceptions of problems with women working
Traveled around the world in 72 days in homage to Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days”
Known for her work as an undercover journalist at Blackwell’s Island, a mental institution, where she pretended to be a patient in order to expose the inhumane conditions and practices there
Also exposed conditions in sweatshops, jails, and other institutions through undercover reporting

Women's History Month Featured Leader: Romana Bañuelos

3/30/2018

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.

Today we’re celebrating:

Romana Bañuelos

Businesswoman and U.S. Treasurer (1925 – 2018)

Thirty-fourth treasurer of the United States, serving from 1971 – 1974)and first Hispanic U.S. treasurer
Owner of a multimillion-dollar Ramona’s Mexican Food Products in Gardena, California
Born in Miami, Arizona during the Great Depression and deported to Sonora, Mexico, where she learned to farm and cook with her family
Returned to the U.S. at age 18 with her two sons and worked as a dishwasher and tortilla maker until she saved enough to start her own tortilla factory in downtown Los Angeles, which became the largest processor of Mexican food by 1990
Opened the Pan-American National Bank in East Los Angeles in 1963, with the mission of bankrolling Latinx people who wanted to start their own businesses in order to help them gain political influence

Women's History Month Featured Leader: Ruth Bader Ginsburg

3/29/2018

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.

Today we’re celebrating:

Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg_Womens_History_Month_Peacebuilding

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (1933 – present)

First woman confirmed to the Supreme Court, and one of four woman to be confirmed
Was a wife and mother when she started law school
Taught at Rutgers School of Law and Columbia Law as one of few women in the field
Advocate for gender equity and women’s rights and former volunteer advocate at the ACLU
Now a pop culture icon known as the Notorious RBG in recognition of her leadership

Women's History Month Featured Leader: Martina Navratilova

3/28/2018

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.

Today we’re celebrating:

Martina_Navratilova_Womens_History_Month

Martina Navratilova

Tennis player and activist (1956 – present)

Selected as the greatest female tennis player by “Tennis” magazine in 2005 for the years 1965 through 2005
Ranked number one female tennis player in the world seven years in a row
Won more titles than any other female tennis player in history
Trailblazer for navigating fame as an openly gay athlete in the 1980s and ‘90s
Social activist for animal rights, gay rights, and underserved children

Women's History Month Featured Leader: Calamity Jane

3/27/2018

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.

Today we’re celebrating:

Calamity_Jane_Womens_History_Month

Calamity Jane (Martha Jane Cannary)

Frontierswoman and sharpshooter (1825? – 1903)

Excellent markswoman, rider, and gender non-conformist who chose not to wear women’s clothing
Lost her parents around age 12 and drifted around mining districts in Montana
Settled in Deadwood, South Dakota
Cared for the sick during the smallpox epidemic
Her nickname “Calamity Jane” may have referred to her compassion for the less fortunate or for the warning she gave men who crossed her

Women's History Month Featured Leader: Margaret Sanger

3/26/2018

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.

Today we’re celebrating:

Margaret Sanger

Birth control activist, nurse, sex educator, and writer (1883 – 1966)

Worked as a nurse in the early twentieth century on the lower East Side of Manhattan, where she treated women in a seemingly constant state of pregnancy, but left nursing to find practical methods of birth control after receiving many requests from her patients to control conception
Worked for years to make birth control a fundamental human right (and coined the term “birth control”), despite immediate persecution from the government and organized religion
Opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, where she was arrested after an undercover police officer bought a copy of her family planning pamphlet
Founded the American Birth Control League, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In New York City, she organized the first birth control clinic staffed by all-female doctors, as well as a clinic in Harlem with an all African-American advisory council and later an African-American staff

Women's History Month Featured Leader: Mary Lou Williams

3/25/2018

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.

Today we’re celebrating:

Mary Lou Williams

Pianist and composer (1910 – 1981)

Known as the “First Lady of Jazz,” Williams wrote hundreds of arrangements and compositions and recorded over a hundred records
Made major contributions to the Kansas City swing style of big band jazz
Friend, teacher, and mentor to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie
Later taught at Duke University and the University of Massachusetts

Women's History Month Featured Leader: Carry Nation

3/24/2018

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.

Today we’re celebrating:

Carry Nation

Radical temperance movement leader (1846 – 1911)

Became an activist after her first husband died of alcoholism after a year of marriage
Cofounder of her local Texas branch of the Women’s Temperance Movement
Believed she was divinely ordained to destroy saloons and used a hatchet to smash bottles and kegs in saloons in what she called “hatchetations”
Exerted force in response to the lack of agency and support women had in their marriages, where they were stuck in marriages with drunken husbands
When Nation was imprisoned for her hatchetations, she raised bail money through speaking engagements and selling souvenir hatchets

Women's History Month Featured Leader: Fannie Lou Hamer

3/23/2018

In March, we’re featuring an influential woman every day in honor of Women’s History Month.

Today we’re celebrating:

Fannie Lou Hamer

Voting and women’s rights activist, civil organizer, Civil Rights Movement Leader (1917 – 1977)

Became a voting rights activist after she attempted to vote in Mississippi in 1962 while working as a sharecropper
While trying to register and vote, Hamer was extorted, threatened, harassed, shot at, and assaulted by police and white supremacists
Founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
Gained national attention during the 1964 Democratic National Convention when the MFDP insisted on being seated with the all-white delegation