Barbara Schlachter Memorial Lecture Series: Stories from Brave Mother Earth Protectors
Fee: none. No registration. Open to All Ages
Mondays, 3/6 – 3/27 6 – 7:30 PM in room 202
3/6: From Without to Within (See video)
Jessica Reznicek of the Des Moines Catholic Worker has been involved in peace and justice work on both an international and domestic level for the past 6 years. Her voice and actions strive toward achieving peace and harmony for Mother Earth and all of her inhabitants. She is the founder of the Mississippi Stand, an encampment campaign focused on non-violent civil disobedience to stop the boring of the DAPL pipeline under the Mississippi River.
3/13: Saving Our Children from a Lifetime of Nicotine Addiction (video)
Eileen Fisher grew up on a farm in South Dakota. She taught high school chemistry in Kansas City in the 1970s where she helped found a nonprofit called the FoolKiller, which worked to spread progressive ideas through music, theater, lectures, and art. Eileen has a PhD in Public Health from the UI and is a member of AFT Local 716. In 1996, she founded CAFE (Clean Air For Everyone) after suffering the loss of her sister to cancer. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “A woman is like a tea bag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.” Eileen will describe how she became such a strong activist for tobacco prevention and how to create the next generation of strong women who care about changing the world for the better.
3/20: Where Do We “Stand Now”: Activism after DAPL/BAKKEN
(video) Since 2014, Miriam Kashia has put one foot ahead of the next and walked her talk across America and beyond. Her climate activism has taken her to many frontlines, including Northern British Columbia, the Standing Rock encampment in North Dakota, and back and forth across Iowa fighting the construction of the DAPL/BAKKEN pipeline. She’s been arrested on the steps of the nation’s Capitol and at the Des Moines and Mississippi Rivers in Iowa participating in non-violent direct actions. She will bring her stories and photos and share what motivates her in the most important and hardest job she’s ever undertaken.
3/27: A Sugar Creek Chronicle: Stories Behind the Writing (video)
Connie Mutel will tell stories about writing her book on climate change and how it has changed her forever. Connie Mutel has written or edited many books on Iowa’s natural history and environment, including The Emerald Horizon (a history of ecological change in Iowa), A Watershed Year (on the 2008 floods), and most recently, A Sugar Creek Chronicle: Observing Climate Change from a Midwestern Woodland. She is a Senior Science Writer at the UI’s IIHR Hydroscience and Engineering.