IMAGES & VIDEOS
BRING THEM HOME
May 31st
FREE JOSH FATTAL, FREE THEM ALL
By Tao Orion
REPUBLISHED FROM THE EUGENE WEEKLY, 27 MAY 2010:
Josh Fattal
Josh Fattal is an avid hiker. During the years that we lived together at Aprovecho, Josh thoroughly explored the rolling hills of clear-cuts and Douglas fir plantations that comprise our backyard. One day, I remember looking up from my work in the garden to see his smiling face and dancing eyes, relating a tale of walking all the way to Saginaw on forest roads. Another day, determined to find a path from Aprovecho to Cottage Grove that does not intercept the paved road, he walked into town and back on the dirt roads that crisscross the forest between our property and town. Josh also spent the last winter he lived at Aprovecho expanding and improving the trail network on our property, creating new paths to formerly under-appreciated areas. Every time I walk the trails, I think of Josh, his creativity and his love and wonder for the world.
Josh is an articulate and principled member of our community. Josh led numerous groups of interns through Aprovecho’s Sustainable Living Skills Internship Program during the three years that he lived and worked at Aprovecho. He planned hiking and biking trips for the interns and encouraged them to engage in our local area by helping on farms and participating in community events. In Aprovecho’s business and organizational structure, Josh was a strong voice for staying true to our consensus process, working hard to find ways that everyone’s voice could be heard while still making progress and not spending all of our time in meetings.
Josh is a thoughtful and passionate citizen. Just before Josh left for his work as a teaching assistant with the International Honors Program, he helped create Aprovecho’s 100 Mile Diet Internship. Josh felt strongly that as a sustainable living education center, Aprovecho should endeavor to source its food needs locally and demonstrate our region’s potential for locally based economics. He believed that by focusing our organizational purchasing power into our local community, we could contribute to the creation of a more just, equitable and sustainable world.
Josh is in prison in Iran. I try to imagine what life is like for Josh at this moment, where he sits in Evin Prison in Tehran, with his friends Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd. I imagine him practicing tai chi, doing the poses that he practiced every Tuesday and Thursday morning in Coiner Park in Cottage Grove. I imagine that he is trying his best to keep centered, to keep healthy, as the days of his imprisonment continue to add up.
Josh, Shane and Sarah were taken into Iranian custody on July 31, 2009, during a hiking trip to Kurdistan, an autonomous and peaceful region of Iraq. As of the date I write this article, the hikers have been held without charge, without access to a lawyer and with extremely limited contact with the outside world. The Swiss diplomats who represent America’s diplomatic interests in Iran have visited with the hikers three times. Their most recent visit brought news of poor physical and deteriorating mental health.
Josh is a friend of many in the Cottage Grove community, and he is known and loved by people all over the world. We hope every day for the safe and speedy return of Josh, Shane and Sarah. They have been held for far too long, and we long to see their smiling faces again, to be inspired by them again, and to welcome them back to where they make their homes so they may continue to be appreciated as the kind, intelligent and passionate people they are. Please visit www.freethehikers.org to learn how you can help bring them home as soon as possible.
PHOTOS OF TRISTAN AT SARAH & SHANE’S GOING-AWAY PARTY
May 31st
Tristan (no wig) from the same party.
These are photos from better times for everyone.
Shane (middle) & Tristan (right) with a friend, in costume at Sarah & Shane's going-away party.
Here are a couple of pictures of Tristan & Shane from Shane and Sarah’s going-away party when they left to move to the Middle East, taken in Oakland, Summmer 2008.
TRISTAN ANDERSON’S PARENTS: “RELEASE #USHIKERS”
May 30th
Tristan Anderson
Tristan Anderson is a longtime friend of hikers Sarah Shourd and Shane Bauer. Following a peaceful protest against Israel’s Wall in the West Bank village of Ni’lin, Israeli troops hit Tristan, an American citizen, in the forehead with a teargas canister, critically injuring him. That was on Friday, March 13th, 2009. More than a year later, Tristan, 39, remains hospitalized near Tel Aviv with a severe brain injury. It is not known when he will be able to be transferred back to the United States.
This is a letter of support that Tristan’s parents wrote to Iranian Authorities, imploring them to return the hikers to their families. In addition to being a heartfelt and moving statement of support, this letter explains that Shane and Sarah, like Tristan, are caring individuals of conscience, concerned with justice and the well-being of all people. Anyone who knows them as Tristan and his parents do, can attest to the fact that the accusation that the hikers are “spies” for the US government is not only ridiculous, but unthinkable.
Please note: Farsi and Arabic translations of this letter are also available as PDF documents.
LETTER OF SUPPORT BY THE PARENTS OF TRISTAN ANDERSON:
February 10, 2010
His Excellency Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President, Islamic Republic of Iran
Palestine Avenue, Azerbaijan Intersection,
Tehran, Islamic Republic of IranHis Excellency Ayatollah Sadegh Ardeshir Larijani
Head of the Judiciary
Howzeh Riyasat-e Qoveh Qazaiyeh / Office of the Head of the Judiciary
Pasteur Street
Vali Asr Avenue, South of Serah-e Jomhouri
Tehran, Islamic Republic of IranRE: Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, & Josh Fattal
Your Excellencies:
As the parents of Tristan Anderson, an American citizen who was critically wounded while supporting the rights of Palestinians, we are deeply distressed by the continued detention in Iran of Tristan’s good friends Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal. We appeal to you to do everything in your power to bring about their prompt release.
Shane standing on the spot where Tristan was shot.
On March 13, 2009, our son Tristan was grievously wounded in the Palestinian village of Ni’lin. Tristan was taking photographs following a non-violent protest against Israel’s annexation wall when an Israeli soldier shot him from approximately 60 meters with a high-velocity tear gas projectile designed to travel up to 500 meters. Tristan survived multiple life-saving surgeries but remains in a Tel Aviv hospital, where he works daily to recover.
Upon learning of Tristan’s suffering, people throughout the world have embraced him for following his conscience and not the policies of his government. Shane, Sarah and Josh are close friends of Tristan’s who similarly follow their own consciences. With Tristan, they share common principles, projects and community. Before traveling to the Middle East, they worked together on social justice issues in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tristan was a regular guest at the house where Shane and Josh lived, and all four worked with Food Not Bombs, a food relief group that serves free meals to the homeless.
A few days after Tristan was shot, Shane, Sarah and Nora (Sarah’s mother) traveled to visit him in the hospital in Tel Aviv. They carried roses from Palestinian friends in Syria, where Sarah and Shane were living. Then, just before Josh arrived in Syria, and shortly before the group’s fateful hiking trip to Iraqi Kurdistan, Shane and Shon Meckfessel (the fourth hiker) returned to visit Tristan in the hospital to support us through a difficult time.
We empathize with the parents of Shane, Sarah and Josh. It pains us greatly, on top of the tragedy we have already suffered, to see Tristan’s close friends made to bear the burden of grievances between nations. They are not instruments of their government, but independent thinkers who set their own course and seek to explore beyond the rhetoric, clichés and propaganda which stain the lens and stifle debate. Tristan, Shane, Sarah and Josh all journeyed to the Middle East with the purest of intentions: to expand their cultural horizons, to learn the rich histories and customs of other people and to seek a common humanity. Please do not punish them for the trespasses of others.
With all our hearts, we implore you to return Shane, Sarah and Josh to their families.
Sincerely,
Nancy Anderson & Mike Anderson
CLICK HERE FOR A PDF OF THIS LETTER IN FARSI.
CLICK HERE FOR A PDF OF THIS LETTER IN ARABIC.
LOVE HAS NO BOUNDARIES – BY CHRIS CROWSTAFF, SAFE WORLD MEDIA
May 29th
My husband Andrew and I have led the strangest lives for the last 2 months, ever since we ‘met’ you Sarah, Shane and Josh.
In these 2 months, we have constantly heard your voices, watched your faces, listened to your words, and yet you do not know us. We started this friendship with you because we felt your truth. When we read your blogs, watched your films, learnt about your lives, spoke to your friends, it was as though we had no choice but for you to become part of our world.
Right now dawn is breaking outside the window of our tiny cottage. We have spent the day and night working on a new video to help get you released. We don’t know if what we do makes a difference. We just feel we have to do this.
Today’s video is about love. It’s about the love between your good friends Emily and Basel, and their wedding that you so enjoyed just before you went on your holiday. It is also about the love between you Sarah and Shane, and the love we can feel the three of you have for each other. Making these videos has taught us a new freedom. A freedom to explore our inner creativity together and the joy of expressing a message which we feel deeply passionate about. Our freedom to do this is also about restoring your freedom to continue the things that you are passionate about.
Although you have been in your prison cells for the last 300 days, and although you may not know it, you have brought together thousands of people throughout the world joined by the same love.
FREEDOM DAY by Alex Fattal
May 28th
May 27, 2010
Dear Josh,
I love you and I miss you! As you know, today is day 300 of your detention and we have designated it Freedom Day. People from all over the world are sending in their reflections and appreciations about their own freedom so that you can feel those freedoms vicariously.
Here’s mine, a reflection from yesterday:
It’s 92 degrees in Philadelphia and it’s my good fortune to find myself by the Schuykill River. Placing non-essential clothes on a plank at the water’s edge I dip my first foot, recently relieved by the bounds of laces too tightly tied, into the river. The hairs atop my foot float up, the gravelly sand compresses below my foot and tadpoles wiggle away. It feels good and I cautiously place my next foot in and gradually wade to the middle of the river.
I look downstream and a white bicycle helmet zips across the small stone bridge that has been connecting the two sides of the river for eighty-six years. I look upstream in disbelief that I am in the heart of Philadelphia. My heart beats with brotherly love imagining that you have already run into the river and are swimming upstream taking in the pleasure of being fully submerged in the cool water, not worrying about what chemicals the foam circles floating along the surface might carry or the discomfort of drying.
Swimming in the Schuykill River
I stand with the image of you swimming upstream in my mind as the water passes through my legs. After five minutes of basking in the daydream I dive in and chase you upstream. But the moment I am submerged you are gone. I am alone in the water feeling a freedom you can only feel when in another medium entirely. It’s a dreamy freedom. I slow from a frantic crawl-stroke to the breast-stroke, the gradual stroke that grandpa has perfected. My eyes are just above the water’s surface and the leafy riverbanks’ reflections ripple away from me, blurry images of trees elongating, slinking and snapping into other shapes. Without opening my mouth I ask myself, “Do you see that Josh?”
My thoughts flit to Brazil, to Dico’s house. I flip onto my back and take on a leisurely back-stroke as I think ‘this is not Brazil.’ The trees are temperate, it’s Philly, which continues to strike me as the most unbelievable part of the moment: I am in Philadelphia, it’s beautiful and I feel free; three thoughts I have never so closely connected before. But the freedom is only partial since I know you are somewhere up river. You are here and not here. I know I am swimming for you, exploring for you, feeling the gentle massage of the current for you. In the meantime you are left to look forward to limited allotments of time in the ceilingless room in Evin Prison and are praying for a storm so you can feel connected to the outside world through the weather and try to catch raindrops in your mouth.
My computer is in the car but my iphone is on the bank, the campaign awaits. I should get going. I stop my swim to put my feet down, turn and face the bridge. An eddy is pushing water against my back and I think of Dad saying, “a million dollars,” us looking at each other and cracking up. A smile comes across my face. You are here and not here, but most importantly you will be here. I swim back letting the river carry me.
Hang in there!
Love, Alex
VIDEO: BROTHER OF HIKER DETAINED IN IRAN SPEAKS OUT
May 23rd
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
In this Today Show interview, Alex Fattal, whose brother Josh remains locked inside an Iranian prison with Sarah Shourd and Shane Bauer, discusses the emotional reunion of the trio with their mothers in Tehran.
DEAR SARAH, THINKING ABOUT YOU…
May 20th
I’m in London at the moment, sitting in a café, getting over my jetlag. I’m in town for my sister Katie’s wedding and as I was leaving the hotel room, I saw a brief clip of your mom finally getting to hug you. I’ve been thinking about you a lot since you’ve been detained, but this week is special.
Your mother and I both left the country on Tuesday; I left to join my family for Katie’s wedding, and she left to finally visit you. I know we haven’t been close as adults, but I’ve grew up considering you to be one of my little sisters.
Baby Sarah
I still remember how great you were at crawling when you were a baby. It took you longer to start walking than some babies, because you were so fast at crawling, you didn’t really see the need. Of course, once you started walking, it wasn’t long before you started to run!
I must get back to everyone now, but I wanted you to know that our family here misses you and thinks of you often.
I hope it isn’t long before we all have the opportunity to share the joy of reunion that you and your mother are having right now.
Love, alita.
VIDEO: THE REAL #USHIKERS—WHO ARE #SSJ? BY @SAFEWORLD4WOMEN
May 16th
“THE REAL HIKERS—WHO ARE SARAH, SHANE & JOSH?”
A film by SAFE WORLD MEDIA, part of A SAFE WORLD FOR WOMEN.
As the release of the three US hikers grows more likely, this film shows the real faces of Sarah, Shane and Josh at work in Darfur, Syria and the USA.
Little has been mentioned, by the international media, about the lives of the “three Hikers” before their incarceration in an Iranian prison, for allegedly crossing the border.
Iran’s early statements that Sarah, Shane and Josh were suspected of espionage, were widely reported. This film gives a glimpse into the real lives and work of these three social activists.
SHANE BAUER, a fluent Arabic-speaker, is a well-respected, published journalist who reported from Darfur, Yemen and Iraq. His insightful commentaries have covered issues not tackled by the mainstream media.
SARAH SHOURD is a women’s rights activist who, earlier in her career, was volunteers coordinator working to help stop the femicides in Mexico.
In the aftermath of the New Orleans Earthquake, Sarah was part of a team of volunteers helping survivors.
She later joined the Iraqi School Project in Syria, where she was teaching refugees.
JOSH FATTAL is a passionate environmentalist who worked at a sustainable living research & education centre in Oregon. He has a deep interest in food issues and had recently taught Global Health to 33 undergraduate university students while travelling with them in Switzerland, India, China and South Africa.
Activist musician, Jackson Browne, supports this film with his anti-war song Drums of War.
This film includes footage provided by APROVECHO—EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE LIVING, as well as clips from the following films:
“STRANDED IN SYRIA” by Josh Vardey
“SONGS TO ENEMIES AND DESERTS: A FILM ABOUT REBELLION IN DARFUR” Co-directed by Shane Bauer & David Martinez
MOVING VIDEO: MOM GETTING VISA TO SEE #USHIKERS
May 13th
Video shot by hiker’s brother, Alex Fattal, as he and his mother take a taxi to the “Iranian Interest Section” to get the visa that she hopes will make it possible to see her son, Josh, for the first time in almost a year.
“My mother, Laura Fattal, gets emotional in a taxi cab as she prepares to receive her visa to visit my brother Josh, who has been held in by Iranian authorities without charge since July 31, 2009.” ~Alex Fattal
VIDEO: HIKER’S BROTHER, @ALEJOFLORES: MOMS ALLOWED TO VISIT #USHIKERS
May 13th
In this MSNBC interview, Alex Fattal, the brother of Josh, one of three Americans being held in Iran, talks about the possibility of family members being allowed to visit and whether any progress is being made to secure the release of his brother and his companions.
