Ráday Salon

Whoopi Goldberg's message to Hungary in support of Budapest Pride 2009

This week is Pride week in Budapest. The festival hosts film screenings and discussions during the week and will culminate in a march this Saturday. For more information on events, check out the Budapest Pride 2009 website. (Link goes to English version, but a Hungarian version is also available - just look for the Hungarian flag.)

Although the Budapest Pride march was once a fun-filled event, in the last two years it has become the focus of violent extremists, and will be carried on this year (as last year) under heavy police protection. To learn more about the history of the Pride march, and to see videos of attacks on last year's pride march, click the "continue reading" link below.

Amnesty International - Hungary Statement on International Day Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism

This week, in commemoration of the International Day Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism, Amnesty International - Hungary released the following statement, written by Linda Carranza and translated into Hungarian by AI member Dalma Fero:

Statement on International Day Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism

Sunday, November 9, 2008 marked the 70th anniversary of the “Kristallnacht” pogrom in Nazi Germany, when Nazi Stormtroopers and bands of civilian rioters rampaged against the Jewish population, destroying thousands of Jewish businesses and burning hundreds of synagogues. The violent attacks left 91 Jews dead and saw another 30,000 sent to concentration camps on a single night in 1938.

Sadly, in 2008, with the rise of far-right extremism across Europe we cannot say that anti-Semitism and racist violence exist only in our history. Racism, intolerance, and hate attacks are present-day phenomena here in Hungary as well, from the violence and rioting that have become regular features of the once-peaceful Gay Pride events, to the growth of the Magyar Garda, to racist assaults against foreigners and minorities in Budapest.

As we remember the “Kristallnacht” pogrom on this International Day Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism, we strongly condemn these and all expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and discrimination, and we stand firm with all those victimized by hatred and violence.

Állásfoglalás a fasizmus és antiszemitizmus elleni küzdelem világnapja alkalmából

2008. november 9-én, vasárnap volt a kristályéjszaka néven ismert németországi náci pogrom hetvenedik évfordulója. 1938-ban, a kristályéjszakán náci rohamcsapatok és bandákba tömörült civilek megtámadták a zsidó lakosságot és ennek során több ezer zsidó üzletet romboltak szét és több száz zsinagógát gyújtottak fel. Az erőszakos cselekmények során 91 zsidó vesztette életét és további 30.000 zsidót koncentrációs táborokba hurcoltak egyetlen éjszaka alatt.

Ma, 2008-ban, amikor a szélsőjobboldali mozgalmak Európa-szerte erősödnek, sajnos nem mondhatjuk, hogy az antiszemitizmus és a rasszizmus már csupán történelmünk lezárt fejezetei. Az intolerancia, a rasszista és gyűlölettől vezérelt támadások Magyarországon is mindennapos jelenségekké váltak, az egykor békés meleg büszkeség napi felvonuláson mára rendszeressé vált erőszaktól kezdve a Magyar Gárda erősödéséig és a külföldiek és kisebbségek ellen irányuló rasszista támadásokig.

Emlékezve a kristályéjszakán történt eseményekre, a fasizmus és antiszemitizmus elleni küzdelem világnapja szellemében teljes mértékben elutasítjuk a rasszizmus, az antiszemitizmus, a homofóbia és a diszkrimináció minden megnyilvánulását és kiállunk a gyűlöletcselekmények áldozatai mellett.

Summer 2008 update - lots of activities

Greetings to our Salon friends, old and new.

As many of you already know, the Raday Salon went into an unofficial, unexpected state of hibernation for many months last year, when Linda's brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  This was the beginning of quite a difficult year for us. Sadly, Linda's brother passed away in October of 2007. Linda and Michael spent most of 2007 and part of 2008 in the US, where our main focus was spending time with our families.

Since we returned to Budapest this spring, we have gradually been getting back into our activities here and in the region.  Michael hosted two Salons when he first returned to Budapest, and we are looking forward to starting things up again once the summer holiday season is past. In the meantime have been fairly busy with various human rights related projects. Since it has been a while since we've posted, we thought it might be nice to give you all a quick update of what we've been up to lately. 

We have lots of exciting things to share with you all, even before we get to our next Salon.  We'll be posting items and photos about all these activities and more on the blog in the days and weeks to come.  But just to give you all the quick overview, so far this year:

• The Salon had two showings in March and April of the movie NO! to mark International Women's Day/Women's History Month, with about 75 people attending altogether.
• In March, Michael was one of the two facilitators of a training workshop on organizing human rights campaigns, hosted by the Human Rights Students Initiative (HRSI) at the Central European University (CEU).
• Also in March, Michael traveled to Sweden under the auspices of the Swedish Ombudsman office and gave a training for Afroswedes on developing anti-racism programs.
• Michael also did an interview for Swedish public radio on Martin Luther King.
• In April, Michael participated in another event hosted by HRSI, commemorating the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., 40 years ago. Michael showed an episode of the excellent American Civil Rights Movement documentary Eyes on the Prize, followed with presentation and discussion.
• In May, we had a visit from a filmmaker friend of ours, Gail Lloyd, who shared an excerpt of a film project she worked on with a group of US soldiers returned from the war in Iraq who are now protesting the war.
• Also for the third year, Linda served as a coach for HRSI's annual Moot Court activity for CEU students.
• In June, we were guests of the Budapest radio show Legal Alien, which airs on Radiocafe 98.6, where we discussed our Salon, our human rights work, and Roma rights issues.

• 
  Roma Summer Workshop participants

  In July, we hosted a vibrant group of young Romani activists from around the region for a special screening of an episode of Eyes on the Prize. The activity was a part of the European Roma Rights Centre Summer Workshop for Romani Activists, led by ERRC Director for Human Rights Education, Larry Oloomofe
  
• That same weekend, we also participated in the Budapest Gay Pride parade. As most of you know, the parade was only able to go on with police escort, and was attacked by violent extremists -- the Pride marchers were under seige for several hours.
  

• 
  Michael & Linda leading workshop

  And we recently returned from Transylvania, where we served as facilitators for an 8-day youth training on minority rights, diversity, and tolerance, hosted by the Civic Engagement Movement, a Marosvasarhely/Tirgu Mures NGO. We also gave presentations to two other groups (members of a Mures County Community Development Training Course, and the Magyar Erdelyi Ifjak group) on youth activism and community organizing.
• Lastly, just this week, Michael participated in a special roundtable discussion on the crisis in Darfur, held at the Sziget music festival here in Budapest.

And, the big news is that we'll have two special guests on hand in September. For those of you long-time friends of the Salon, you'll be familiar with the documentary film NO!, which we have screened on several occasions over the years. It is our great pleasure to share with you that the filmmaker herself, Aishah Shahidah Simmons (Michael's daughter) will be paying us a visit in September, so we will plan to have a special screening, complete with Director Q-&-A, while she is here. Also coming with Aishah is her partner Monica Dillon, a jazz pianist, vocalist, composer and performer. We are currently trying to arrange performance opportunities for Monica as well. (If any of you have any relevant contacts or ideas on that score, please do contact us.)

One more piece of news we have for you, not directly related to the Salon, is that there will soon be an new voice on the Budapest radio scene. In a project that grew out of our appearance on the Legal Alien radio show, Michael will soon be hosting a new soul music show on Radiocafe 98.6. The station aired a preview of the show on August 5th, and the response has been extremely positive. The new hour-long show, which is expected to begin in September, is currently titled "Soul School" and will air once a week on Radiocafe. Once we have all the details, we, of course, will let you all know when you can listen in.

We will be having our first events of the new "season" in September, and will send out detailed invitations as we get closer to the date. In the meantime, we hope everyone's doing well and enjoying the summer.

To keep up to date on Salon events ensure you get all our invitations, don't forget to join the Raday Salon mailing list.

Welcome Radio Cafe listeners!

On Tuesday, June 3, Michael and Linda were guests on the Legal Alien program of Radiocafé 98.6 here in Budapest. Legal Alien is a weekly English language show that focuses on expat life and features interviews with English-speaking expats about their lives here, their work, and their impressions of their host country. We hope to have audio of the interview soon, so that if you missed it, you can listen on the web right here on the Salon blog. :o)

If you've just learned about us from Legal Alien, welcome! We invite you to browse through our website to learn more about the Ráday Salon. On the left hand menu you will find general information about the Salon and its hosts, and on the right hand side, you can click the links to read more about some of the topics we have addressed in our Salon evenings over the years. Or, you can just read down the front page to see what we've been up to recently. To be notified of upcoming events, you can join our mailing list.

At the end of the Legal Alien program this Tuesday, we played a favorite song of ours: Ella's Song, by the African-American acappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock. It was written by Bernice Johnson Reagon, the foremost singing voice of the African American Civil Rights movement. The lyrics are based on the life and writings of Ella Jo Baker, the intellectual and spiritual mentor of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The song, which speaks of the need to keep struggling against injustice, is  rooted in the fight against racism in the US, but it could just as well be addressing the oppression of Roma in Europe. If you'd like to hear the song again, you can use the player below. (Lyrics available here.) The song itself can be downloaded in mp3 format (for $0.99 USD) at Amazon.com.

More information on the Legal Alien show can be found on the Radiocafé 98.6 website here (top half of page in Hungarian; scroll down for English). Legal Alien airs every Tuesday night from 8-9pm -- tune in!  If you would like to listen online, instructions are here (scroll down for English).

Preview of the Global Network for Non-violence

Back at the end of October/beginning of November, Michael and Linda traveled to Amman, Jordan for a conference sponsored by the United Nations University -- International Leadership Institute.  The conference was actually a 5-day course, entitled Nonviolent Approaches to Conflict Resolution, Peace-Building, and Reconciliation; Michael participated as a faculty member, giving two presentations on the antecedents of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s non-violent philosophy, and its impact.  We met passionate and committed leaders and activists from all over the globe -- people of all different ages and backgrounds, many from the Middle East, especially Israel and Palestine, but also from Africa, South America, Asia and Russia.  They all had wisdom and experience to share, and were equally willing to hear and learn from others, and work together in the pursuit of non-violent solutions to seemingly "intractable" conflicts.

The course was a wonderful experience, bringing together such a diverse, talented, energetic, and truly dedicated group of participants, that the momentum built up during our time together continued well after the gathering.  Although Michael and Linda talked much about the conference with our Budapest friends after our return, we haven't yet gotten around to putting anything on our blog about it.  However, you'll soon be hearing and reading a lot more about it from us, as the success of the course led to the creation of a new organization -- the Global Network for Non-violence.  A steering committee has officially been formed (of which Michael is a member), and Michael and Linda will be responsible for mainitaining a soon-to-be-launched website for the organization.

So we just wanted to give you a little preview.  The video linked above was the brainchild of an amazing Israeli activist named Hagit (she's the last one to speak in the video) who thought through the concept, managed to corral all the participants (no small task, that), and enlisted a local cameraman to do the shooting. 

We'll have more links and information in the weeks to come...  In the meantime, you can check out:

• A description of the course on the UNU-ILI website
• A few photos, also on the UNU-ILI website
• An article written by one of the participants in the course, Helena Cobban, that appeared in the Christian Science Monitor shortly after the course

We have more photos as well as the audio from Michael's presentations, which we will hopefully get around to putting online soon! 

Some nice words of appreciation

Some of you will remember a special visit we had a couple of years ago, from a group of Arkansas university students on a study tour of Central Europe. Their professor, Jayme Stone, knew Michael and had managed to arrange the students' planned two-day visit to Budapest so that they would be able to spend an afternoon/evening at our flat. The students had spent some time before the trip studying the history and politics of the region, and we had asked several students that we knew through the Roma Access Program at CEU to join us at our flat, so that the students would be able to learn about Roma issues first hand and compare that with what they had been reading in books. 

However, life doesn't always work out exactly as planned. Jayme, who flew separately from the students, arrived in Budapest right on schedule. The students' flight, on the other hand, was cancelled, and they missed an entire day of their 2-day Budapest stay. Nevertheless, Jayme was bound and determined that these students not miss the opportunity. The students were met at the airport by their tour bus, taken to their hotel, and given just enough time to drop their bags and freshen up, before getting back on the bus to head to Ráday utca!

They arrived at our flat bewildered, exhausted, and hungry, and faced with a flat full of strangers -- and yet, to their credit, they rallied (especially after a bit of Michael's famous fried chicken!) and soon became deeply engaged in conversation with the Roma students and other guests. 

The evening was a total success, and we were so glad to have been part of the students' Central Europan experience.  Still, it was a nice treat to stumble upon a website that a few of the Arkansas students put together about their trip, where they write:

. . . Budapest became our home away from incredibly far from home for less than twenty-four hours. But you would have thought we were simply meeting old companions if you had been witness to the kindness we were shown by civil right’s activists Michael Simmons and Linda Carranza. No more than an hour and a half from stepping off our very long international flight, we were sitting in their comfortable apartment, voraciously eating fried chicken and lasagna. It was like another world, but with food you were familiar with and people who didn’t treat you as an outsider but as a long lost friend. Besides the much-needed nourishment, the whole group had the opportunity to talk with Roma civil right’s activists from Budapest and Roma youth. Speaking with these people was just so wholly different from American conversation, because we did not even remotely share the same types of experiences, but we were still able to connect and discuss. The idea that many of us began to form through this gathering and by reading parts of Bury Me Standing by Isabel Fonseca is that the Roma, sometimes derogatorily called Gypsies, are probably the most oppressed group throughout all of history. They have no homeland; in the past and present, many of the countries they have even stepped foot in have passed laws restricting their civil rights. The Roma are also stereotyped as thieves, liars, and untouchables. From our personal experience, we know that the Roma defy the labels placed on them, and they need advocates fighting for their equality.

To read more of the students' account of their travels, click to visit their webpage (and their Budapest page.)

You can also visit our photo album from that day.

Profile of Balázs Dénes

For some more background for Thursday's event, you can learn more about Balázs and the HCLU's mission and work, in this article written by Linda for the website of the Public Interest Law Initiative.

Ráday Salon blog gets a new spring outfit

As you might have noticed, the Ráday Salon blog has a new look.  What can I say?  With all this springtime and freshness bursting about around us, how could we not follow suit?

Hopefully, the new design makes things a bit more readable, although the true purpose was to make some of you famous by featuring your pictures on the front page header.  Stay tuned for some additional new content in the near future as well -- Linda will be adding some "About Us" pages with a little more info about your hosts, as well as some background information and web links for some of our Salon friends as well.

If you would like to share any feedback or suggestions on the new design, feel free to post a comment.  Also, if you have a website that you would like us to link to in the future, please let Linda know.