The Last United Nations Film Festival Meeting

So I attended our last UN Film Festival meeting tonight at Phyllis's house (she lives literally all the way up Spruce with just a phenomenal view of the Bay) and I am glad to say that it wasn't all business. It was extremely nice to see all the members--especially Ray Couture who is a medicinal marijuana using Vietnam Vet who teaches a class in Burlingame on "Empowerment Astrology" (yes, I am still somewhat a believer) and Rita Maran, who teaches International Law at Berkeley and has authored several books pertaining to human rights and torture (I just read the book reviews on Jstor).

Rita is super cool-- she's a bleeding heart liberal but a registered Republican just so she's in touch with what tactics "the other side" is employing in hopes of winning the election. Tonight she described some hard-core right wing phone calls she received from Republican Senators (tape recordings naturally) that tried to feed the flame of possibilities for same sex marriage legislation. Rita's daughter just so happens to be in a same sex marriage. Her granddaughter is none other than model Josie Maran (from Dancing with the Stars). In any case, besides dinner being wonderful as Phyllis was kind enough to offer a home cooked meal, I always love meetings because you get to hear all the cool stories about Berkeley and Oakland back in the 60s. For instance, Phylli's husband taught Huey Newton and Bobby Seale and because of his position on the Academic Senate (that is, pertaining to the public school system in Oakland) negotiated with demands from the Black Panthers and even recalls the murder of Marcus Foster.

But I severely digress. I wanted this post to be about how I'm now going to volunteer/intern/whatever you want to call it at Human Rights Advocates an organization that Rita helped found and (as the name suggests) is dedicated to promoting and protecting international human rights. Its an NGO that is most involved at the "United Nations Commission on Human Rights and its Sub-Commission, the Commission on the Status of Women, the Commission on Sustainable Development. [They] also participate in UN Conferences, including the women's conference in Beijing, China, the racism conference in Durban, South Africa and the Conference on the rights of the child in New York, NY."

So yay for that and maybe my life will not be as wasteful as I thought it would be. On that note, I've got a paper to write.