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Civic Imagination

Lezem

My story takes place in Lebanon in which an organization called Lezem is dedicated to create a better living situation in Lebanon.

Lezem is a Lebanese organization that was initiated by students who aim to make Lebanon a better place. What’s unique about this organization is that it aims to do so through art. The organization first launched in 2010 and has been going on ever since. All types of artists gather around and support a certain cause, whether they are film makers, painters, graffiti artists, photographers, musicians, writers, etc… They tackle the problem through their art which allows them to spread the message in a peaceful way. Also, a lot of people prefer not to watch the news due to all its negativity, so instead they attend these events and exhibition in order to aim for a change and support the people who are trying their best to improve the country.

Even though I love my country Lebanon, I do believe that it can improve immensely. We have been living without a president for three years, people die every day due to political conflicts, the living situations are very bad especially for the poorer part of the country, and all in all the country keeps falling apart day by day. I’m only 20 years old and I’ve experienced war more than once and we had to run around from place to place trying to find shelter. I remember reading about Lezem and I was very surprised to know that this kind of organization existed in Lebanon. I began to research more about it and I found it very interesting especially because even though they are tackling very negative and sensitive problems, they are doing it in a very positive way. I personally am not a fan of politics especially in Lebanon because it’s all about corruption and war, so once I found out about Lezem I began to learn more about the problems without bringing myself down and I also felt glad because I tried to help in more than one way. I’ve donated to the organization, I told all my friends and family about it; trying to spread the message around in order for more people to get involved and help the country. Before knowing about this organization I believed that the country has very little to no hope at all, especially considering the people who are controlling the citizens. Whereas after finding out about Lezem, I realized that we are capable of change and we have more power than we think we do. This organization is not related to any politicians or to the government which is very rare in Lebanon. Now I know that change is possible and improvement is happening.

I believe that this story is very inspiring, not just to Lebanese citizens, but also to people all around the world. Everyone aims for improvement, and this can be done in a million of ways, however what’s important is to improve without bringing others down. Lezem has aimed to do so in many different ways. One way is that they made a fashion show to raise money for a certain cause and in the fashion show they covered and talked about the problem that they were tackling during that time. This also inspired many other artists to join in as well. I believe this story doesn’t relate to a specific person, but rather the country as a whole. Everyone who’s heard about Lezem is surprised and inspired by it and the people I’ve shared it with have been as well. I’ve shared it with many of my friends and they’ve attended exhibitions with me as well as watched a lot of their videos etc.. I shared it because I believe that this type of positivity and improvement should be found everywhere all around the world. It’s a unique idea that spreads messages in a very friendly way and it had changed people’s lives drastically.

Fashion Meets Lezem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxD0_Eva31w
Lezem Logo: https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/378800000773654874/305759dc54ecc5ba9ea43812f69f1129.jpeg

Improvement, politics, government, positivity, art

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6. Maus: A Survivor's Tale
11. The Lion King
13. Sailor Moon Sailor Moon is a young teenage girl that learns that she has magical powers that allows her to fight against the evils of the extraterrestrial world. She finds the Sailor Scouts, Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter. Each of them have powers that relate to the symbolism of their planet and a specific superhero outfit that they wear. Based in Neo-futuristic Tokyo the story was released in the 1990’s as a manga and then a television anime came out. It became very popular among teens especially young Asian-American girls because of where it was based although the characters were many depicted as white skin tone.
16. Chef "Chef is a film released in 2014 that was written and directed by Jon Favreau who was inspired by his own career in film and love of the culinary arts to create a movie about a popular chef who needs to find his creative spark and fall in love with cooking once more. The film begins in California where Chef Carl Casper lives and works. After receiving a brutally negative review from a well regarded food critic, Carl reevaluates his job at a fancy restaurant in California. He realized that sticking to a strict menu has taken away a lot of joy from the profession he used to love. After he quits his job, Carl heads to Miami, Florida with his family because his ex-wife, Inez, needs him to watch their son, Percy, while she works.
17. How the tortoise got cracks in his shell
19. The colonial city
20. My Dad
27. Sanjay's Super Team This is an animated short film from Pixar directed and written by Sanjay Patel who based it off his experiences as a child. The story revolves around a young boy, Sanjay, and his father, an Indian-American migrant. Sanjay is watching his favourite superheroes on TV while his father is praying by the shrine in the same room. His father urges him to join in the ritual but Sanjay refuses so he switches off the TV and takes his toy in order to force him into it.
31. Freedom Writers: Bridging Racial Divides Through Writing Freedom Writers (the movie) is based on a true story of a school in Long Beach, California. The main character, Erin Gruwell, is a new teacher at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School and placed with the students who are considered at-risk and unteachable. These students were almost entirely comprised of minorities, with the exception of one student. With such a diverse class and a group of students who had no apparent desire to learn, the film explores the real-world challenges that Gruwell faced trying to get her students to come to class wanting to learn, if they would even want to come to their classes at all. The class divides itself based on race, and fights and arguments breakout regularly. The class later finds common ground on their feelings and discussions around The Holocaust. Her students become inspired to break free from the things that originally divided them, most notably with one character speaking out against someone who she was being forced to lie for during a trial. She tasked her students with writing in a diary and then compiled those journals and writings into a collection of them all in “The Freedom Writers Diary.”
32. Emmeline the Suffragist
35. Michelle S
40. Rafael DCB
42. A Leader
48. The Myth of the Mansfield Hanging Tree
55. Train of Hope
57. Fox's Creek On a hot summer night a community of animals were chased out of their home by a growing wildfire which started to burn down their forest. Mother Deer grabbed her young ones while the other animals rushed to cross the great river. Everyone showed their human instincts, pushing, kicking, and growling desperately on their way to safety. Mother Deer made it to the other side with Fawn but Mother Rabbit forgot one of her many young ones so she asked her for he
61. Simba and the Maasai Warriors
62. Roaring Lion
69. Nora S
70. Out of Balance
72. The doctors' team of the Aegean sea
79. Ghada G.
81. Stephanie Q
86. Nina N.
87. Sandokan: A Post-Colonial Coldwar Hero The plot of the novel revolves around the adventures of Sandokan - a Bornean man who lost his status, home and family to British colonialists. Embittered by his experience, Sandokan sets up camp at the island of Mompracem. From there he leads a gang of pirates under the flag of the Tiger. Together they destabilize the colonialists’ authority through robbery and violence. Steeped in the colonial period in which it was written, Salgari’s novel pitted indigenous populations against the colonial powers in ways that highlighted the evils of imperialism and celebrated resistance. As Maria Bianca Gerlich (1998, 34) observes, “Sandokan, Mompracem, and the flag of the tiger are allegories in the fight for freedom.”
89. Equilibrium Equilibrium is set in 2072 in Libria, a city state established by the survivors of World War III. “Equilibrium” is an action/thriller movie following John Preston (Bale), an enforcement officer in a futuristic world where a regime has decided to eliminate war by suppressing emotions using a certain type of drug. Books, art and music are strictly forbidden and "feeling" is a crime punishable by death.
91. The Help
109. Dana G.
113. How I "Eat, Pray, and Love"
116. Nick C
121. We are all Martín Fierro
124. Nour H
127. Tiajna A
130. The Outlet It is the civil war in Venezuela. Xena and her little brother, Gabriel, live in the city where Gabriel practices his art. Xena, wants to see her brothers art and asks him to go to his studio and bring it back. Just as he reaches the car, a bomb hits the car, killing Gabriel. Xena, being extremely close to her brother, blames herself for sending him to get his art. She later finds out that the bomb was planted by the Latin Kings gang. Out of revenge, she then joins the rival gang with her friend, Shepard. In an act of revenge, her gang plants a bomb. She later learns, that the bomb she planted blew up Shepard's parents house. Feeling guilty, and knowing that Gabriel would be disappointed in these actions, she decided to make a change. In honor of Gabriel, she picks up his art, and paints the entire country of Venezuela with beautiful street art. Through this art she finds peace. The art was so beautiful and happy, that it ended the civil war, and transformed into a happy, peaceful place to live.
133. Julia B. I am a third year student at the University of Maryland in the U.S. studying Journalism with a minor in French. Writing is a passion of mine, and journalism is one of the many real world applications of writing. I hope to be able to use writing to make an impact on the world through the news and help others get the information that they need in order to be informed citizens. In my free time I like to do triathlons and write poetry.
134. An American Chef in the Aegean: Teaching solidarity through food
136. A Tale of Traveler's Past A 28-30 year-old man boards a train and sits in an empty compartment. He is a weary traveller who has spent countless days trying to find transportation to reach his destination. While en route, he falls asleep and is visited from travelers from past and present journeys of who had boarded this particular train. The first visitor is Alexander Hamilton; a migrant from the Caribbean who traveled to the United States in the 1800's. He recounts his experience of traveling to a new country and achieving his dream of creating something that would outlive him. The second visitors are Art and Vladek Spiegelman; a father and son who share their story of how they migrated to a new country after the Holocaust events of World War II and their struggles of adapting into the culture of a new nation. The last visitor is a woman who comes from the Middle East who arrived in Vienna a year ago. She tells her story about the journey she experienced to reach her new home as well as the issues she's experiences now as an outcast from a land that she's still not fully settled into yet.
137. Em/Power Love As Liz finishes her spiritual trip around the world she heads to Brazil for her final stop. She stops into a local bar where this man Sebastiao spills a glass of wine on her. From there the love story began and the couple traveled around Brazil to take photos of social injustice. One night they were out in the middle of a field where they were taking photos of an approaching comet and Sebastiao noticed something strange in the image. They went to the comet collision and found an luminescent girl standing there. She introduces herself as Em, an inter-terrestrial who warns them about the consequences of gender inequality. She says there is an outer universal counsel that judges planets according to social understandings. Em tells them that she has magic powers to empower women and helps them reach self-discover. Liz and Sebastiao take on the mission to travel around the world with Em to show the strong women all over the world. Together they take photos of social injustices while illustrating stories of women struggling to find themselves within their societies. After taking the photos with Em using her magic power given by the moon they feel they can become their own hero. Em takes the photos back to the counsel to prove that Earth is becoming a more equal society. But Liz and Sebastiao’s work of empowering women and showing social injustices will still continue.
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4. War, Love and Religion The story is about me, it is about War, Love, and Religion. As a person who experienced war and love, because of religion. It is safe for me to say that i have a story to tell. In my country, Syria, a civil war is still going on. The causes are many but the result is one, yet the most notable cause is Religion. Religion was like fuel to the fire in my country. Being a young lady in such a place and such a time was very devastating. My religion became a curse i was born with, It was a barrier to love and normal life. A simple scene of what religion has caused in such a time of war is a conflict between my mothers family and my fathers family.
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