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Jim Harney RIP, 1968 and Today
Nancy Minott, Jim’s companion in life, recently discovered in some old Financial Times of London, a journal that Jim began his last summer. She is sending it to friends of Jim and herself in segments and asked that we share it.
When Jim was suffering from terminal cancer, an event was held to celebrate his life and work in solidarity with immigrants.
Jim Harney Recipient of
the Community Church of Boston’s
2008 Sacco & Vanzetti Social Justice AwardJim Harney’s Walk in Solidarity with the Undocumented (Video)
Jim Harney talks about his walk in solidarity with undocumented. (Video)
1968: From the Milwaukee 14 Statement at the time of the action
Fr. James Harney, 28, is a curate of a parish church in No. Weymouth, Mass. He spent a year working in Baltimore poverty areas and was a co-founder of the Baltimore Inter-faith Peace Mission.
JIM HARNEY TODAY
As Artist in Residence for Posibilidad, Jim gives presentations on globalization and its negative impact on the poor. These are illustrated with his own photographs and the words of those he has listened to on his travels.
He has most recently returned from the US-Mexico and Mexico-Guatemalan borders walking with undocumented people headed to the US to find work. In May 2005, he made a visit to Venezuela to explore the importance of the dramatic social reforms going on in the oil-rich country that have touched the lives the country’s poor. In February 2005 an article about Jim’s activism appeared in the Weymouth (MA) News, “Pauper with a Powerpoint.”
In May 2004, Jim was with the poor in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, documenting the way economic structures come down heavy on them, condemning them to exclusion.
Jim spent six weeks in Argentina in November-Dec 2003. He spoke with Piqueteros – unemployed people whose numbers illustrate the results of the worlds largest default that the country experienced when it couldn’t pay its debts to the IMF in December 2001. He walked with Cartoneros who go about picking up recyclables to make a living in slums in greater Buenos Aires. He hung out with Argentines who organized a referendum on the FTAA.
Faces of Iraq by Jim HarneyJim used his skills as a photojournalist in a January 2003, eight-day trip to Iraq as a member of a Voices in the Wilderness 16-person delegation. Since his return, he has traveled around Maine, Massachusetts and Maryland showing FACES OF IRAQ: A presentation that brings the faces and voices of the Iraqi people into an intense debate about the role of the United States in the world.
During the 80′s Jim lived with the poor in El Salvador. Covering the intense war as a photojournalist he ran with peasants dogging machine-gun fire and hiding in tunnels when A-37 jets dropped five-hundred-pound bombs. During the 90′s he lived with the Communities of Population in Resistance in the hills of Guatemala.
He witnessed first-hand in Chiapas where indigenous people struggle to defend their dignity and confront the presence of 73,000 Mexican troops. In 1998, Jim traveled twice to Acteal, Chiapas, Mexico. There he interviewed survivors of a December 22, 1997 massacre that took the lives of forty-five people, mostly women and children.
In December 1999, he photographed protesters in Seattle opposed to the World Trade Organization and traveled around New England giving presentations on globalization from the bottom up.
Faces of Coloumbia by Jim HarneyIn the spring of 2001, he traveled to Colombia for two-and-a-half months. He had an opportunity to visit six conflict areas of the country where intense violence occurs. His photos and narratives unmask corporate violence. They also open discussion around The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), The World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
After each journey into Central America, Jim gave slide presentations throughout the United States and Canada in homes, schools, universities and churches. Jim’s photography, engaging storytelling and group facilitation-skills quickens discussion, allows people to speak from the heart in ways that often surprise them.
The power of his stories revolves around people engaged in redefining power in their own lives and his photos complement the stories in a visceral way.
Jim lives in Bangor, Maine, with his partner Nancy Minott.
For more information on Jim Harney and his photojournalism check out the web site:
http://www.posibilidad.org/index.html
