Veterans For Peace presents Wage Peace: Veterans Speak Out Film Festival, a benefit for Veterans Of Peace, featuring Sir! No Sir!, This Is Where We Take Our Stand and the locally produced Boys To Men with panel discussions and more Tuesday, November 3 at the Arcata Theatre Lounge, 1036 G St in Arcata. Doors open at 5:00 p.m. Movies start at 5:15 Cost is $5 to $10 sliding scale and is all ages.

For more press info/interviews please contact Rob Hepburn of VFP at 826-7124.

Veterans For Peace Humboldt Bay Chapter 56 presents Wage Peace: Veterans Speak Out with the films Sir! No Sir!, This Is Where We Take Our Stand and the locally made Boys To Men - Exploring Nonviolence.  Between the movies there will be panel discussions and dialog with the audience about these powerful films and the connection to work for peace here in Humboldt.   VFP will continue its interactive outreach with a free open community meeting on Nov. 5 at 6:30pm in the Kate Buchanan Room at HSU.  All community members are welcome, and VFP especially hopes to see many young veterans join the discussion.  Listen to KHSU Thursday Night Talk, hosted by David Cobb, on October 22 at 7:30pm to hear VFP’s Rob Hepburn and Jeff Karr talk about Incopah, the adventure therapy retreat for veterans with PTSD being created in Willow Creek.

Sir! No Sir! is a Film About The GI Movement Against The War In Vietnam. In the 1960’s an anti-war movement emerged that altered the course of history. This movement didn’t take place on college campuses, but in barracks and on aircraft carriers. It flourished in army stockades, navy brigs and in the dingy towns that surround military bases. It penetrated elite military colleges like West Point. And it spread throughout the battlefields of Vietnam. It was a movement no one expected, least of all those in it.  Hundreds went to prison and thousands into exile.  And by 1971 it had, in the words of one colonel, infested the entire armed services. Yet today few people know about the GI movement against the war in Vietnam. This is the story of one of the most vibrant and widespread upheavals of the 1960’s–one that had profound impact on American society, yet has been virtually obliterated from the collective memory of that time. Sir No Sir! reminds us of forgotten and whitewashed history, including that more than 500,000 active duty military went AWOL to help bring an end to the war in Vietnam

This Is Where We Take Our Stand, like Sir! No Sir!, was made by David Geiger of Displaced Films and shows members of Iraq Veterans Against The War planning for and testifying at Winter Soldier hearings in 2008. A riveting and timely story of the hundreds of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans talking plainly about their war experiences and sharing details rarely if ever explored in American media. Run time is 43 minutes.

Boys To Men explores nonviolence and was produced locally a few years ago by Maureen McGarry as part of Arcata’s Arts in the Afternoon program.  This 20 minute film opens the VFP Film Festival by looking at the attitudes of young people toward violence and war, and how these views change when the kids interview veterans about their experiences in war.  After the movie, some veterans featured in the film will participate in a panel discussion.