I Think That I Shall Never See ...

OK, so it turns out that a recent Nobel Peace Prize winner would have sided with the treesitters you all love to hate so much. Laugh's kinda on you, because Wangari Maathai is awesome. Lisa Merton and Alan Dater's documentary tells her story: Educated in the U.S. in the people-power 1960s, she returned to Kenya and started talking to the women she'd grown up with. As a result of both British colonist's and Kenyan dictatorships' disregard for environmental concerns, their rural homes were running out of water, food, and trees. Maathai encouraged them to plant trees, and over the years developed a powerful group of women known as the Green Belt Movement. They were brutally repressed by President Daniel arap Moi, but they perservered, reforesting large parts of the country and developing sustainable jobs for themselves along the way -- and Maathai herself has since been elected to Parliament (Which is these days allowed to have more than one party.) OK, so it's not the same story as the one in Berkeley, but still, you know which side the hero would take.
Tue., March 24, 6 p.m., 2009