Gender equity has been on the forefront of the push for social change in the last year, thanks in part to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements that sprung out of the film industry. Though the film industry has been dominated by men abusing their power since its beginnings, these forces of oppression are beginning to weaken, thanks to those who have boldly come forward to tell their truth and demand change.
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While these movements demanding equity in film are gaining momentum, we’re taking a moment to appreciate one film production company that’s been advocating for women in film since 2005. Chicken and Egg Pictures supports women making non-fiction films to create social change. Through grants and creative mentorship, Chicken and Egg pictures helps women around the world produce, direct, and act in films as a means of disrupting the status quo in an industry that’s been defined by the male gaze. With their mission of supporting women to realize their artistic goals, build sustainable careers, and achieve parity in all areas of the film industry, Chicken and Egg Pictures is a worthy cause that receives part of the proceeds from LUNAFEST.

For the fifth year in a row, the Minnesota Peacebuilding Leadership Institute is sponsoring LUNAFEST: Minneapolis.  On Wednesday April 25, 2018, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. 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 who happens to be a woman, and a film about a Pakistani woman who graduated from MIT and now works in Silicon Valley as a game designer and provides summer camps for middle school girls to learn how 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 those shown at LUNAFEST – that highlight 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 programs and scholarships that help make our trainings accessible to all by offsetting the cost of tuition. We hope you join us for LUNAFEST on Wednesday April 25 for an evening of fun, inspiring, and thought-provoking Peacebuilding in our community.

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

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

Carry Nation

Radical temperance movement leader (1846 – 1911)
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• 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 

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

Fannie Lou Hamer

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

On Wednesday, February 21, 2018, students who survived the shooting at Marjorie Stoneham Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida travelled seven hours to speak to state congressional leaders about passing gun control legislation. These students, unable to vote and appalled by the lack of action to reform laws concerning the purchasing, use, and ownership of guns, took bold, decisive leadership action to create change themselves. When they saw their elected and community leaders failing them, they decided to lead themselves.

No one thinks of youths as leaders; the claim is that they lack experience, and therefore don’t know what they’re talking about. But these kids were eyewitnesses to a mass shooting, saw their friends and teachers killed, and hid in closets to protect themselves. What better experience is there than that to understand the danger of assault weapons? What other kind of knowledge could these politicians be seeking?
The last several years have been defined by political rancor, the murders of people of color at the hands of police, and mass shootings. Immediately following these incidents comes what seems to be our defining cycle of violence: the feedback loop of thoughts and prayers versus calls for action by authentic leaders. Each time we bear witness to a shooting, we shudder, maybe hold our breath, wonder when this cycle will break, and when it might affect us directly, close to home. We look to our elected leaders to spearhead this change, and yet each time we are instead met with platitudes about the impossibility of reform. Instead, we hear that these deaths shouldn’t be politicized, and we feel stuck. It’s like the gas pedal and the brake are jammed at the same time. We are caught in the freeze response.

What do we do when we feel stuck in this cycle of violence? What do we do when we feel let down, deeply disappointed by our elected leaders?

When terrible things happen, our peace is stolen from us. Most people want to build peace back into their lives and communities. At the foundation of peacebuilding is the need for safety. In an emergency, the first priority is to get to a place of safety, and from this safe place we can assess the situation and begin to repair it. But we often feel unsafe after the emergency ends. It is then that we turn to others we trust for support to help us build peace back into or lives. This is when we turn to leaders, to ensure that we are protected from future harm.
These students from Parkland, Florida prepared speeches and talking points, met with state politicians from both parties, and asked them to consider legislation that would ban assault weapons like the one used in the shooting they witnessed. But in the initial session, Florida lawmakers voted against a bill that would outlaw assault rifles. These leaders chose to reject a measure that would play a part in restoring safety to their constituents’ lives.

There are, of course, different kinds of leaders. There are the leaders elected on the promise of representing the will of the voters; the leaders in our communities who listen to the needs of their neighbors; and the leaders in our spheres of influence who inspire us with confidence. And there is, of course, a plethora of ways to lead. We hope that our leaders are authentic: that they listen to our requests and value our input, that they represent our best interests. But there are times when our elected leaders fail us. When leaders value profit over input, or when they refuse to listen to those they represent, they are inauthentic leaders. This inauthenticity takes away our sense of safety, and we are once again stuck in the cycle.

But we are not stuck with inauthentic leaders.
In explaining his lack of support for banning assault weapons, a prominent state politician told Parkland students that the AR-15 should be accessible as it is occasionally used to hunt boar, and that “being in elected office, you have to be very, very, very careful how much authority and power you bring to government. The greatest atrocities known to mankind have been committed by governments.”

There is an inherent dishonesty in this leader’s statement: we understand that the defense of the AR-15 is not about hunting boar. We understand a different meaning of being careful with the authority and power of government. We see the deep irony in claiming that taking action would be an atrocity, while being called upon by the very people who have survived the atrocity of seeing their friends and teachers killed by the weapon in question. The trust in these leaders is broken when they fail to listen to the requests of future constituents before them. This broken trust renders this type of leadership inauthentic.

By confronting lawmakers over why they support the sales of assault weapons, the youth of Parkland are forcing politicians to give dishonest, inauthentic answers. Through persistence and using their voices, by stepping up when no one else does, by using their knowledge and experience as nonviolent power to confront inauthentic leadership, these young people are the authentic leaders in the push for gun control legislation. This is peacebuilding.
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When terrible things happen, peacebuilding happens when authentic leaders speak truth, demonstrate mercy, demand justice, and build peace. We at Minnesota Peacebuilding Leadership Institute instigate, train, support, and stand with authentic leaders who engage in nonviolent direct action to transform individual and collective traumas into nonviolent power with positive, productive alternatives to revenge. Peacebuilding is authentic leadership. We call upon all leaders to examine themselves and choose the authentic way.

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

Today we’re celebrating:

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Writer (1860 – 1935)
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• Became a writer and lecturer in her mid-thirties despite receiving four years of erratic education
• Her mother forbade her from reading fiction as a child, but later received a list of books to read from her absent father
• Perkins’ most famous work, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is a semi-autobiographical short story based on her experience with post-partum depression and dismissive attitude men had toward post-partum women as being ill or hysterical
• Perkins divorced her husband in 1894, a rare practice in the 19th century
• Her book “Women and Economics” argued for women’s economic independence 

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

Mary Harris “Mother” Jones

Labor agitator (1830 – 1930)
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• Born in County Cork, Ireland and emigrated to the United States as a child
• Became a labor organizer after her husband and children died of yellow fever and losing her dressmaking business in the Chicago fire
• A founder of the Industrial Workers of the World, Jones traveled to organize garment workers, steelworkers, and miners
• Child labor abolitionist who led a march of child textile workers to Theodore Roosevelt’s home in 1903
• Motto: “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living”

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

Mourning Dove

Author (c. 1882 – 1936)
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• After being forced into mission education, Mourning Dove became a writer to raise awareness of Native culture in white America
• Her novel  Cogewea, the Half-Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range was one of the first by a Native woman to depict a female protagonist
• Cogewea depicts the challenges of being multiracial and Native American perspectives on religion
• Mourning Dove’s story collection Coyote Stories is a collection of what she termed Native American folklore

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

Corazon Aquino

President of the Philippines (1933 – 2009)

• Eleventh president of the Philippines and first woman to hold the presidential office
• Lead a popular uprising after the assassination of her husband, Senator Benigno Aquino  
• Rose to prominence for her leadership in the “people power” revolution against the dictatorial government, which toppled the 21-year rule of President Ferdinand E. Marcos
• Oversaw the rewriting of the Constitution to limit presidential power
• Emphasized civil rights and human rights in her leadership and emphasized civil liberties and human rights in her administration
• Urged peace talks to resolve the ongoing Communist insurgency and Islamist secession movements

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

Today we're celebrating:

M. Therese Bonney 
Photographer (1894 – 1978)

• American photographer and publicist in Paris between the world wars
• Photographed the effects of war on civilians on the Franco-Russian front during the outbreak of World War II
• Amassed an unprecedented collection of photographic evidence of military events on “truth raids”
• Became a collector, exhibitor, and curator of the arts and a figure in literary circles after the war