By TINA ARNOPOLE DRISKILL

"The Art of Tolerance" exhibit will open at the Modesto Junior College Art Gallery, College Avenue in Modesto from August 31 to September 21.

California artists Deborah Colotti and Patricia Heinburger will showcase works which "visually engage tolerance themes through various mediums."

A community forum featuring "Out of the Depths of Hate," a talk by a former skinhead who tours under the auspices of the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, will open the year-long tolerance program series Thursday Aug. 31 at 7:30 p.m. in the MJC East Campus Gymnasium on Coldwell Avenue.

The speaker, who promoted hate, bigotry and racism for 15 years, will share his experience as a leading recruiter, organizer and propagandist for the White Supremacist and neo-Nazi movements.

Following the speech, a panel of community leaders will discuss what parents, educators and civic officials can do to prevent hate groups from operating in our community. Panelists include Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance, Stanislaus County Sheriff Les Weidman (both members of the California Attorney General’s Commission on Hate Crimes), Captain Dave Young of the Modesto City Police Department, Juan Alvarez of the Hispanic Leadership Council, Norm Rostad of Parents and Families of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), Venesse Metcalf, Yosemite Community College District Director of Staff Diversity and Odessa Johnson, Modesto City Schools Trustee, University of Merced Regent and MJC Dean of Community Services.

Documentary film maker Micha Peled’s "Inside God’s Bunker" will be shown September 5 at 6:10 p.m. in MJC Forum 110. The film traces Peled’s return to his native Israel to explore the growing community of Jewish settlers in the West Bank town of Hebron (see article, this issue).

"Tolerance Tales from Around the World" will be featured at the first annual MJC Storytelling Festival September 15 and 16 in the MJC East Campus Recital Hall. The storytelling event will begin Friday evening with registration from 5 to 7 p.m., followed by the program from 7 to 8:30 p.m., concluding with a ghost story concert under the stars from 9 to 10:30 p.m.

The festival continues Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to noon with individual storytelling by storytellers Diane Ferlatte, Olga Loya and Clara Yen. A storytelling workshop for students, teachers and the community will round out the event Saturday afternoon from 1 to 3 p.m.

ACTION: The art exhibit, community forum and film are free and the storytelling festival have minimal charges for each session. Community individuals are encouraged to participate in the events. Call 575-6081 for storytelling festival reservations or information on tolerance programming.

By MYRTLE OSNER

"I learned from Grandma’s Quaker values," says Peter Bunting, "that you cannot stereotype people."

As this summer’s Peace Camp, Judy and Peter Bunting were two leaders I hadn’t met. They taught the children Mi-Wuk games and lore. I am always astonished at how people come from all over to attend this most unique weekend of rest mixed with challenging ideas.

After thirty years in the United States Forest Service, Peter has retired but he hasn’t left his home in Jackson, in Amador County, where his life’s work is centered. I was curious to know how he and Judy became so active in Native American affairs with foothill tribes.

Another surprise: It all started with Girl Scouts.

When their children were young, Peter and Judy wanted a Girl Scout troop for their daughter, so Judy started one — still the only one in Amador County. Girl Scouts has a program called International Friendship Day. Wanting to know about a culture other than their own, the girls decided to study local Indian (Native American) culture as their celebration of International Friendship Day. There were no Indians in their troop, but Peter knew some of the elders of the local tribes who live in the foothill communities.

Over time, many Indian girls became troop members. During the early seventies Judy started an ethnic studies program in local schools At the time, many schools wanted such a program and most of them in other localities turned out to be African American studies. But the logical program for their school was Native American, so Judy brought in a local elder. Important, the children learned and educated their parents about the Indian culture. And so, slowly, community was built.

Peter grew up in Washington, D.C., and as a youngster already interested in Indian lore, spent hours in the Smithsonian Museum talking to curators and borrowing books. He went to college at Utah State in Logan, learning about resource management but he learned about Indian lore from the Indians where he worked. He was assigned to Amador County as a forester where it was natural to come in contact with Indians who worked mostly on fire crews. Eventually the Forest Service appointed him as a liaison with other ethnic communities around his district.

His appointment was sparked by various changes in the law and the climate of the times, including affirmative action, the civil rights movement, Hispanic group activism, and AIM (American Indian Movement). The Forest Service realized it did not represent the nation it served. Very slowly, it has changed from a white male organization to a multi-cultural, gender neutral organization (women, at the time were used only in clerical positions).

Peter was instrumental in helping to get Indian Grinding Rocks made into a State Park. It originally had been private property, but was a cherished historical site and needed protection. Getting through the government process to do this was necessary, along with the strong input of the local tribes. The design for the roundhouse to be built had to be just so — and only the Native American elders knew how to do it.

Most recently the Amador County Fair has had an awarding-winning booth sponsored by the Forest Service, the State Park, the Sierra Native American Council, the Chaw’se Organization, the El Dorado – Amador County Indian Association, and the Foothill Indian Education Association. Children’s activities are especially featured here.

Another interesting accomplishment is the designation of an area for traditional gathering and preservation of plants used for basket-making or making medicines. This is set aside for Indian use and protected from development which is fast destroying these traditional areas.

"Forest Service 2000" now sponsors inner city kids learning about resource management, the outdoor world, and doing projects.

The Buntings have been made honorary members of the Sierra Native American Council, and of the Sequoia Fellowship of American Indians in Science and Engineering Foundation, a prestigious organization with less than 1000 Fellows.

By TINA ARNOPOLE DRISKILL

Cultural diversity takes center stage at International Festival 2000, celebrating its 10th anniversary on Saturday October 7 from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. in Graceada Park near downtown Modesto.

The free event will feature "Return to the Old West", an Americana opening review at 11 a.m. in the Mancini Bowl, followed at noon with a mid-day performance by Xiuh-Coatl, an Aztec dance and music troupe. The day’s highlights continue at 6 p.m. with the exciting local Polynesian dance and rhythms of Kauluhaimalama Hula Hale.

John Santos and the Machete Ensembe with the State Theatre Jazz Orchestra headline the evening show, beginning at 7 p.m.

Throughout the day on-going cultural entertainment will showcase more than 500 performers representing countries from around the world on 4 different stages throughout the park.

Once again students and families can have their "Passports to Learning" stamped at booths in the Global Village where representatives from more than 30 cultural groups will help festival goers learn about their various traditions.

The festival will also include arts and crafts and commercial vendors, an international food court, world desserts, a multicultural book fair, a world information area, a beer and wine garden, a cafe art gallery, youth activities and kids world art projects, games and a petting zoo, plus roller hockey and roller blading exhibitions, and a rugby clinic.

ACTION: Experience the American cultural diversity that makes up our county and country.

By Phyllis Harvey

UNICEF has the most cost effective and highest quality oral polio vaccines available. 7.6 billion doses have been administered by UNICEF in over 100 countries in the global eradication effort . In the last decade the number of polio cases has been reduced by 95 percent. Endemic on five continents in 1988, polio today affects children only in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The big challenges to UNICEF are the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the prevalence of armed conflicts, continuing gender discrimination and deep poverty. UNICEF would like to guarantee the very youngest children a good start in life, nurture, care, and a safe environment. All the world’s children should live safely, be physically healthy, mentally alert, emotionally secure, socially competent and able to learn.

Other goals are:

• Give all children an opportunity to complete a good quality basic education, especially for girls and women.

• Provide adolescents an opportunity to develop fully their individual capacity in safe and enabling environments that empower them to participate in, and contribute to, their societies.

An extra 30 cents out of every one hundred dollars would ensure that every child on the planet is healthy, well nourished, and enrolled in primary school.

We have a $30 trillion global economy which leaves 1.2 billion people—a fifth of the human race—struggling to survive on less than a dollar a day. We need to agree that the time to address the basic needs of the 600 million of them who are children is right now.

We need to meet the needs of every child, a world where poverty is finally in flight.

U.S. Fund for UNICEF, 333 East 38th St., New York, NY 10016, 1-800-FOR-KIDS

At MJC, filmmaker showcases documentary about Jewish religious fundamentalism

In 1994, Bay Area film maker Micha Peled returned to his native Israel to explore, with camera and interviews, the growing community of Jewish settlers in the West Bank town of Hebron. His documentary film, Inside God’s Bunker, captures not only their strong sense of family and devotion, but also the militant intolerance and self-righteousness that, in his view, infuse this community of fundamentalist Jews. His subjects, who indicate the extremes to which they are willing to go to establish the political supremacy of orthodox Judaism in Israel, ultimately made their own point: only months after his filming, a settler let loose with an automatic weapon inside a Moslem mosque -- the infamous Hebron massacre of 1994.

Peled will speak after a screening of his film at Modesto Junior College on Tuesday, Sept. 5 – just a week before the date (Sept. 13) the Palestinian authorities have set as their deadline to declare an independent Palestinian state, if the failed Camp David II negotiations do not resume. The presence of militant Jewish settlers in lands long populated by Palestinians, and Jewish claims on Jerusalem, were among the obstacles to any agreements at Camp David this summer. The screening of Inside God’s Bunker, at 6:10 p.m. in Forum Building 110, on the MJC East Campus, is free and open to the community.

The event is part of a new film class at MJC this fall, entitled "Moving Pictures: The Human Experience on Screen (Film 198C). The class is the outgrowth of a Yosemite Community College District "Tolerance Initiative," an attempt to broaden awareness and respect for societal diversity through classes and special events.

On Tuesday nights, a series of 18 films will illuminate the causes and consequences of human intolerance — racial, economic, ideological, political, sexual and religious – as well as some that dramatize times and places in which people have risen above these conflicts. A wide range of films will be shown both American and foreign, documentary and fiction, thrillers and comedies. The class began Aug. 15 but registration is still open to the community through Sept. 14. The cost is $33 for the 3-unit course.

The instructor is Laura Paull, who teaches journalism and mass communications at MJC and co-produced with Evan Garelle the award-winning 1995 documentary, Havana Nagila: The Jews in Cuba.

"Peled’s eye-opening film, which I saw at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival a few years back, is perfect for this class, because it examines the nature of religious fundamentalism itself – an attitude, a world view – that is certainly not limited to Jews," Paull says. "Fundamentalism is implicated in many of the conflicts around the world today."

Peled, born in Jaffa, Israel, in 1952, served as an Israeli Army sergeant during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He arrived in the U.S. two years later, and earned a bachelor’s degree in film and television from California State University, Northridge, and a master’s degree in film and broadcasting from Boston University.

He has had a diverse career and been an activist on behalf of multiple social causes. In 1985-87 he ran the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign in Marin County, and the campaign that made Marin the first county in the U.S. to prohibit the investment of public funds in companies that manufacture nuclear weapons.

In 1988 he was appointed Executive Director of Media Alliance, a no-profit advocacy organization of 3000 media professionals, and organized dozens of events, including a national conference on "Media and Democracy" in 1992.

In 1993 Peled left Media Alliance to pursue his greatest passion, documentary filmmaking. His 1996 film, "You, Me and Jerusalem" is a co-production with a Palestinian colleague, George Khleifi.

Modesto’s State Theatre will launch "Poets’ State," a series of poetry events, beginning October 14 with Central Valley favorites Lawson Fusao Inada, Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel and Gary Soto.

Inada, an English professor at Southern Oregon State University in Ashland, will open the day-long happening with a workshop from 1 to 3 p.m.

The evening program begins at 7 p.m. with the world premier of filmmaker Chris Simon’s documentary about McDaniel, followed by a reading by McDaniel herself who is fondly referred to as the "biscuits and gravy poet." Her poetry tells the story of Oklahoma sharecropper families who came to the Central Valley in the 1930’s as farm laborers, including her own.

The nightime program continues with readings from popular Mexican-American writer and poet Gary Soto. A Fresno native, he is the author of more than 14 collections of poetry and prose and has won numerous literary awards.

Inada, also a native of Fresno, rounds out the evening in his dynamic style with readings from his works which often speak of the Japanese American internment experience during World War II. His own family lived in concentration camps in Arkansas and Colorado.

All three poets will provide copies of their works for sale.

The event is open to all. A free will offering will be accepted toward the restoration and operation of the State Theatre and its diverse programming.

The Library Book

By ELIZABETH VENCILL

Why does it cost a dollar to get a book from the library?

Discrimination comes in many forms. This morning was the memorial service for Jim Higgs, well known to Connections readers and the community for his leadership against it. How do you suppose he would feel about this?

Yesterday morning I found out it was gone; Can’t get a reference book any more. Spencerian penmanship is an esoteric study. Not much available to be bought. But an inter-library loan might just work. My son wants to learn this Spencerian technique. He has no job, no dollars. He is a student at Berkeley. All of his dollars are used for that endeavor. But that is not the point.

It was a dollar for the loan of the book; a dollar to be paid to the librarian for the privilege of borrowing the book. Not a dollar for the penalty of not returning the book, but a dollar to begin asking for it. A dollar to get the book from another library, to be paid by the library-card-carrying taxpayer who funds the library with every purchase in this county. A dollar to be paid by every student who would come for knowledge at the library. A dollar to be paid by every poor person who can ill afford to buy any book, but who would learn to become a taxpayer by the reading of a book. A dollar is the difference between having knowledge and not having it.

My grandmother was a librarian at the New York Public Library in this century’s earliest decades. She started the library at the public school in Pittsburgh where my father, my siblings, and I learned to read. The principle of a publicly funded free library where anyone can come to get anything they wish to read is bred into my bones.

I am livid.

Upon asking why this fine is placed upon requesters of knowledge, the explanation given me is that it costs about $15.00 for every inter-library loan of a book. My mathematics tells me that the dollar does not pay even near the cost, so I ask again, why the dollar? The reply is that there are unscrupulous folks who would ask for a book, then not come after it when it is procured for them, and that these people do not ask for the books if they have to pay the dollar. My good sense tells me that this is faulty reasoning. Money is the issue, not the changing of a mind or need. I ask again: who imposes this fee and why? The County Board of Supervisors imposes the dollar to stem requests for interlibrary loan to save money for the library. Um. I see.

Let me get this straight: The library is a publicly funded entity for the benefit of the entire population. Library materials are procured by money collected from the pockets of every library distrct taxpayer as well as by the fines it imposes on scofflaws who don’t return their library books on time, me included. Librarian salaries and library operating expenses are funded by the recently passed library tax which is added to all purchases in this district. Library hours have been expanded since passage of the tax to serve the population; and the population in this county is growing by a lot all the time, therefore increasing the revenues available to the library fund.

Again I ask, why? This time the answer comes clearly. The Board of Supervisors wants to discourage the use of the reference librarian’s service of procuring books on inter-library loan. My ears burn with passionate heat. How could they, in this county with its chronic state of unemployment, dare to create any sort of barrier in this the sacred font of knowledge, the only place where someone might come for free to learn to change their circumstances? How dare the Board of Supervisors continue this discriminatory tax on information?

And the librarian sweetly explains the worst of it: The Library Administration has requested the repeal of this fee from the Board of Supervisors several years in a row. But no taxpayers have requested its repeal, (as if a Library Administrator pays no taxes). Ah. I see. The people must speak.

At Jim’s memorial this morning, the late Supreme Court Justice Brandies was quoted as saying, "In a democracy the greatest office that an individual can hold is that of citizen."

It is time for the citizens to speak.

We call upon the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors to repeal the $1.00 fee for the service of the inter-library loan of books, immediately.

ACTION: Write to the County Board of Supervisors, 1100 H Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, or call them at 525-4494 and demand immediate repeal of the one dollar fee for interlibrary loans as unfair discrimination.

By VASU MURTY

Abortion policy must be completely secular. In 1797, an American treaty with Tripoli, declared that "the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." This reassurance to Islam was written under Washington’s presidency and approved by the Senate under John Adams.

The U.S. statutes against abortion have a nonsectarian history. They were put on the books when Catholics were a politically insignificant minority. Even the Protestant clergy were not a factor in these laws. Rather, the laws were an achievement of the American Medical Association.

From the early 19th century, Americans — even lay people — were exposed to enough information about embryology to enable them to make a critical and ethically significant distinction between contraception and abortion: the former practice did not terminate a new human life, but the latter one did. In 1827, Von Baer determined fertilization to be the starting point of individual life. By the 1850s, medical communities were advocating legislation to protect the unborn. In 1859, the American Medical Association protested legislation which only protected the unborn after "quickening."

A rational, secular case thus exists for the rights of preborn humans. Individual life is a continuum from fertilization until death. Zygote, embryo, fetus, infant, adolescent, etc. are all stages of development. To destroy that life at any stage of development is to destroy that individual. The real question in the abortion debate is not the seemingly absurd scenario of giving full human rights to zygotes, but rather the thorny question of how to legally protect those rights without violating a new mother’s privacy and civil liberties. And the right to privacy is not absolute. If parents are abusing an already born child, for example, government "intrusion" is warranted — children have rights.

Recognizing the rights of another class of beings limits our freedoms and our choices and requires a change in our lifestyle — the abolition of (human) slavery is a good example of this. A 1964 New Jersey court ruling required a pregnant woman to undergo blood transfusions, even if her religion forbade it, for the sake of her unborn child. One could argue, therefore, apart from religion, that recognizing the rights of the unborn, like the rights of blacks, women, lesbians and gays, children, animals and the environment, is a sign of secular social progress.

Writer and activist Jay Sykes, who once served as head of the Wisconsin ACLU, wrote: "It is on the abortion issue that the moral bankruptcy of contemporary liberalism is most clearly exposed," because the arguments used in support of abortion "could, without much refinement, be used to justify the legalization of infanticide." The Left is divided on abortion.

In an article appearing in The Progressive entitled "Abortion: The Left Has Betrayed the Sanctity of Life," Mary Meehan concluded: "It is out of character for the Left to neglect the weak and the helpless. The traditional mark of the left has been its protection of the underdog, the weak, and the poor. The unborn child is the most helpless form of humanity, even more in need of protection than the poor tenant farmer or the mental patient or the boat people on the high seas. The basic instinct of the Left is to aid those who cannot aid themselves — and that instinct is absolutely sound. It is what keeps the human proposition going."

Writing in the Tallahassee Democrat, pro-life feminist Rosemary Bottcher, cynically observed: "I had always thought it peculiar how the liberal and conservative philosophies have lined up on the abortion issue. It seemed to me that liberals traditionally have cared about others and human rights, while conservatives have cared about themselves and property rights. Therefore, one would expect liberals to be defending the unborn and conservatives to be encouraging their destruction."

Rosemary Bottcher criticized the Left for its failure to take a stand against abortion: "The same people who wax hysterical at the thought of executing, after countless appeals, a criminal convicted of some revolting crime would have insisted on his mother’s unconditional right to have him killed while he was still innocent. The same people who organized a boycott of the Nestle Company for its marketing of infant formula in underdeveloped lands would have approved of the killing of those exploited infants only a few months before. The same people who talk incessantly of human rights are willing to deny the most helpless and vulnerable of all human beings the most important right of all.

"Apparently these people do not understand the difference between contraception and abortion," Bottcher concluded. "Their arguments defending abortion would be perfectly reasonable if they were talking about contraception. When they insist upon ‘reproductive freedom’ and ‘motherhood by choice’ they forget that ‘pregnant’ means ‘being with child.’ A pregnant woman has already reproduced: she is already a mother."

A national poll by Wirthlin Worldwide on the evening of the 1998 elections found that 38 percent of all Democrats (and 40 percent of Democrat women) oppose abortion. A national poll released by the Center for Gender Equality (a women’s think tank headed by former Planned Parenthood executive director Faye Wattleton), in January 1999, found that a majority of American women do not support legalized abortion on demand. 53 percent of female respondents to the poll said abortion should be allowed only in cases of rape, incest, to save a mother’s life or not at all, up from 45 percent in 1996.