MANHATTAN, Kan. - The Monthly Film Series, sponsored by the Manhattan Alliance for Peace and Justice, presents The Dark Side of Chocolate on Wednesday, July 13th at 6:30 pm at the Manhattan Public Library Auditorium. The public is invited to attend.

Film Synopsis: While we enjoy the sweet taste of chocolate, the reality is strikingly different for African children. Since the '90s numerous non-governmental organizations working in the Ivory Coast and Ghana have reported the use of children as slaves on cocoa plantations. The Ivory Coast alone produces about 43% of the world's cocoa beans. The simple truth is that all the heavily advertised chocolate, M&Ms, Hersey, Godiva, and Nestlé, is made by child slave laborers.

Estimates placed the number of cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast at approximately 600,000. The number of children working these farms is estimated as high as 15,000. Young boys from the age 12 to 16 are forced to work on cocoa farms in order to harvest the beans from which chocolate is made. Most boys that are forced to work on these farms come from Mali were slave trader agents hang around bus stations looking for children who are alone or begging for food.

TOPEKA, Kan. - In response to yesterday's posting on the efforts by the telecom industry in Kansas to undo the Kan-ed program, I received the following statement from Bradley S. Williams, M.S., CIO & Executive Director of Kan-ed. It outlines well the programs and services provided by Kan-ed to the people of Kansas:

I am reaching out to you directly today because Cox Communications (Wichita), who is a Kan-ed Authorized Provider, has elected to lobby against Kan-ed members and their funding. Cox Communications has asked House Speaker Mike O'Neal (R-Hutchinson) to introduce House Bill 2390 to eliminate Kan-ed effective July 1, 2011. The Speaker of the House indicated yesterday he is supportive of the bill and we also know that Representative Joe McLeland (R-Wichita), is also pushing to dismantle Kan-ed as he has done every year since Kan-ed inception.

If Cox and the Speaker are successful with HB 2390, then all Kan-ed connections and services will go away. That includes all network and video connections, Renovo Video scheduler, licenses, and servers, MCU, Kan-edLiveTutor.com (homework Kansas), Empowered Desktop and LS test builder, EMResource (hospitals ER database) and E-rate support just to name a few... all gone.

TOPEKA, Kan. - Last week, on March 14th, at the request of the Speaker of the House Mike O'Neal (R-Hutchinson), the chair of the Kansas House Appropriations Committee, Marc Rhodes (R-Newton), introduced HB 2390 that would abolish Kan-Ed and transfer all remaining assets to the state's general fund effective July 1 of this year. Internet access would continued to be administered by the Kansas Universal Service Fund, that is overseen by the Kansas Corporation Commission, but other services provide by Kan-Ed would expire.

Kan-Ed was created by the Kansas Legislature in 2001 and administered through the Kansas Board of Regents. The purpose of the program is to expand the collaboration capabilities of Kan-Ed's member institutions: K-12 schools, higher education, libraries and hospitals through the use of technology.

As such, it provides services including hospital ER databases, provides libraries, schools and hospitals with affordable and high-speed Internet connectivity, the ELMeR videoconferencing network, research databases (including all K-12 databases and Heritage Quest), Kan-Ed Live Tutor (Homework Kansas), and more.

TOPEKA, Kan. - This afternoon, Thursday 17 March, in Topeka the House Judiciary Committee is once again going to take up another xenophobic law that the right-wing extremist Kris Kobach is trying to force on the state of Kansas.

Today the Judiciary Committee Chair, the right-wing extremist Rep. Lance Kinzer, is going to force a vote on Kobach's anti-immigration bill HB 2372. Modeled on the now notorious Arizona legislation that Kobach authored, should this legislation pass, Kansas will face spending millions of taxpayer dollars defending legislation that is nothing more than the race laws passed by Nazi Germany.

While I am a fourth generation Kansan, born and raised in Marshall county, from 1982 - 1998 I lived and worked in Italy. The first four years I lived in Italy, I did so as an undocumented worker. Thus I know well what it means to be an immigrant and why HB 2372 is a morally corrupted piece of legislation.

TOPEKA, Kan. - On Saturday February 27th, approximately 1500 Kansans joined with hundreds of thousands of others across the United States to protest the war on the middle class that is being waged by the Republican Party and their corporate billionaire backers.

Joining with voices echoing the need to return government to the people, working class Kansans from teachers to correctional officers spoke out against the extremism of Sam Brownback and the Koch Brothers.

We heard from Aaron Fowler of Wichita, a member of the American Federation of Musicians union, who emceed the rally. Then, Teresa Molina, a Wichita teacher, Greg Winfield a correctional office at the Lansing State Prison, followed by Jane Carter, executive director of the Kansas Organization of State Employees, Emilio Ramirez of the United Steel Workers; Rep. Paul Davis, House Democratic Leader, and Senator Anthony Hensley concluded.

MANHATTAN, Kan. - If one listens to the rhetoric of right-wing pundits and politicians, our nation is in peril from a massive immigration of people from south of our border with Mexico.

The only problem is that the very policies these same ideologues hold up as the saving truths - free market capitalism, free trade zones, and no tariffs - are the very reasons why people in the global south must leave their homes and move in order to survive. Add to this mix the attacks on immigrants in Kansas being carried out by the xenophobic Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, and the lack of comprehensive coverage by the mainstream media of the important role immigration plays in the Kansas economy has lead to an atmosphere fear and ignorance on this complex issue.

In response, the Manhattan Alliance for Peace and Justice is please to announce photojournalist, editor, union and immigrant rights activist David Bacon will deliver Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants for their Spring Lecture at K-State on February 28th. Bacon will speak at 7:00pm in Forum Hall of the K-State Student Union.

MANHATTAN, Kan. - The Landon Lecture series at K-State opened the 2011 season with Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Thursday January 27th. Sotomayor spoke in Forum Hall at the K-State Student Union, becoming the third Supreme Court justice to address the K-State student body, following Earl Warren and Sandra Day O'Connor.

Breaking with tradition and creating the atmosphere of an armchair chat, Sotomayor took questions in a forum format from District Justices Deanell Tacha and John Lungstrum who were joined by Danny Unruh, K-State student body president.

Sotomayor had braved the inclement weather on the east coast to come to K-State, saying when she left Washington that morning her home was without power.

Judge Tacha opened the discussion asking Sotomayor to describe her day so that the audience could get a better idea of what it is like to serve on the Supreme Court.

Sotomayor responded that she reads a lot, spending her weekends chewing through circuit briefs and court decisions, in order to be able to engage with the other justices in the decision making process. "Getting four people to agree is difficult," she said.

MANHATTAN, Kan. - The Manhattan Monthly Film Series continues in February with the showing of the Josh Fox's GasLand, winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The film will be shown at 6:30 pm on Wednesday February 9th at the Manhattan Public Library. The film is free of charge and open to the public.

GasLand looks into the Halliburton-developed drilling technology of "fracking" or hydraulic fracturing that has contributed to the largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history. But serious questions exist to its safety and environmental impact.

Director Josh Fox becomes personally involved with the issue when he is asked to lease his land for drilling. Unable to get his questions answered, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and environmental contamination. A recently drilled Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. The film is part verité travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown. It informs the American people about another legacy given to us by the Bush administration.

MANHATTAN, Kan. - Kenneth O'Keefe was on board the ship Mavi Marmara on May 31, 2010 when Israeli commandos attacked the ship and killed nine of its passengers. The following is an excerpt from O'Keefe's written account of what happened, and his reflection on the limits of non-violence. O'Keefe spoke at K-State University on 5 October. The lecture was sponsored: the Manhattan Alliance for Peace and Justice, K-State Amnesty International, and K-State Departments of Philosophy, and Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work. The podcast of his speech is available below.

I have for many years understood that we, people of conscience, are the true holders of power in this world. Frustratingly, however, we have largely relinquished that power and failed to reach our full potential ...

MANHATTAN, Kan. - Our annual Community Cultural Harmony Week (CCHW) provides the community with the opportunity to stretch boundaries and leave one's usual comfort zones in order to arrive at new levels of understanding on a personal and communal level about the human diversity that surrounds us.

Founded 22 years ago by Barbara Baker to targeted general problems and concerns of both U.S. and international citizens, the Week was the direct result of an unfortunate incident that occurred in what was then Bushwacker's Club in Aggieville in June of 1987. Puerto Rican students had rented the club to celebrate the day of San Juan (St. John the Baptist), the patron saint of the island and of its capital city. Bushwacker's employees hung signs that referred to San Juan, using obscene language, and the case was finally taken to the state attorney general's office, with the decision against the club for its actions.