Great news! Two of the women leaders of the Afro-Colombian community La Toma, which we have told you about in blogs and action alerts, have been featured on a program called Women, War & Peace on PBS!
Please help us spread the word about this show and click here to watch it online!
Although this series has covered the struggles of women in conflict zones all over the world, this episode focuses solely on women in Colombia. This episode, called The War We Are Living, follows two Afro-Colombian women, Clemencia Carabali and Francia Marquez from the community La Toma in Colombia’s Pacific southwest region. Despite threats from multinational corporations and paramilitaries interested in the natural resources beneath their ancestral territories, these brave women have led a movement to keep thousands of families in their homes and on their lands.
As you may remember, LAWG and our partners have done actions to support this community in the past, but it’s amazing to have such a national platform to share their story. After first airing on national television on November 1st, 2011, the video is now available online. We hope you’ll use this great tool as a way to get more of your friends and family involved in our work to support peace and human rights in Colombia.
If you can, please send this link to the video to your community to share their story: http://to.pbs.org/phzayh
If you’re into social networking, here’s a sample post for Facebook:
In Colombia, civil strife has robbed over 5 million people of their homes and livelihoods. This episode of Women, War & Peace tells the story of two extraordinary Afro-Colombian women leading a land‐rights movement in Colombia’s gold-rich mountains, where armed paramilitaries threaten to uproot thousands from their homes. Watch it at: http://to.pbs.org/phzayh
Or if you’re on twitter, try:
Powerful episode of @WomenWarPeace about Afro-Colombian women resisting displacement by a gold mining company Watch at: http://to.pbs.org/phzayh
I have had the honor of meeting both of these incredible women and visiting the community of La Toma. So, I am thrilled that their story has reached homes across the nation on television and will now continue to be shared online. I hope you’ll join us in spreading the word and watching this exciting program today!
