Dream Bridge Concert – November 15, 2020 1pm
UDC Auditiorium 1-4pm
We are introducing the Dream Bridge Project to Washington and to the USA through a Benefit Concert, featuring international and local musicians, at the University of the District of Columbia Auditorium on Saturday, November 15, 2020, at 1pm. The concert will feature the international Andean folk band Wayno, local folk-rock duo Emma’s Revolution, Vietnamese pop singer Haitrieu, and the women’s Brazilian-style drum corps Batala! Washington.
Concert Tickets are available in advance for $15, $10 for students and seniors ($20 and $15 on the day of the show). Further discounts and complimentary tickets are available upon request to individuals with disabilities and groups. Donors to the Dream Bridge Project ($100 and up) will receive complimentary concert tickets.
What is the Dream Bridge Project?
It is an ongoing, economically and environmentally sustainable community center, music restaurant, and massage therapy center, run with the help and for the benefit of disabled Vietnamese youth, in Cu-Chi district, Vietnam.
It is a joint-effort project of international grassroots cooperation between the U.S. and Japan, initiated by the Japanese non-profit organization Dream of the Earth, joined in the USA by the Washington Peace Center through the DC Hiroshima-Nagasaki Committee, and operated by the YMCA of Vietnam.
Most critically, it is an opportunity for Americans to recognize and help remedy—at a practical and personal level— the ongoing consequences of our government’s military aggression in Vietnam, still manifest 3 and 4 generations later in the exceptionally high rate of birth defects in Vietnam, many linked to the toxic defoliant Agent Orange.
In this respect, the Dream Bridge Project mission alligns with the ongoing work of the DC Hiroshima- Nagasaki Peace Committee (node/1112) , which commemorates annually the massive destruction and enduring consequences of the atomic bombings of Japan in early August of 1945, at the end of World War II. The common goal is to help Americans consider the results of our nuclear and chemical weapon attacks on foreign peoples. Future work of the project hopes to extend the Dream Bridge into Iraq where, today, US military forces are using radioactive (Depleted Uranium) weapons that will, again, have cascading consequences after active hostilities have ceased, still wreaking US sponsored misery on innocent populations long into the unknown future.
Once the land is acquired and the project is manifest, the Dream Bridge Webpage will continue to serve as a conduit of information about and resources for the project, including a secure channel for contributions, Study Trips to learn more about Vietnam and the project, Work Camps to help with construction and later development, and ultimately other educational programs, taught or attended by interested Americans.
Meanwhile, our goal is to raise, through the Concert and Website, $100,000 for the Dream Bridge Project. Combined with a like amount raised by our Japanese partners at Asian Children’s Dream, we hope to make $200,000 available to our operating partner – the YMCA of Vietnam – to purchase the land for the project. It would be situated in Cu-Chi district, one hour north of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), near an entrance to the Cu-Chi Tunnels national historic site and popular tourist destination. It will be the first such center in the area.
For more information, please contact us at 202/682-4282, or email to et@nucnews.net (Subject Line: DREAM BRIDGE).
Learn More About Agent Orange
* Wikipedia entry about Agent Orange (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange)
* Agent Orange website (http://www.lewispublishing.com/orange.htm)
* Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign – www.vn-agentorange.org (http://www.vn-agentorange.org/)