Born in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan to proud members of the U.S. Communist Party, John Ross grew up in a lively cultural ambiance informed by jazz, abstract expressionist painting, radical politics, and Beat poetry – Ross was a younger member of the Beat Generation, reading his poetry in Greenwich Village bars with the great bass player Charles Mingus.

At 19, Ross set out on the road, following the Beat trail that Burroughs and Kerouac and Ginsberg had blazed to Mexico City. Soon he had separated from this U.S.-based literary movement taking up residence in an indigenous community in the Meseta Purepcha of the state of Michoacan

Six years later when John Ross returned to the United States, he was incarcerated by the FBI at Terminal Island federal penitentiary in San Pedro California for refusal to report for induction in the U.S. Army and became the first resister to be jailed for refusing service in Vietnam. In 2005, Ross returned to San Pedro to receive the American Civil Liberties Union's annual "Uppie" (for Upton Sinclair) award for his penultimate cult classic "Murdered by Capitalism – A Memoir of 150 Years of Life & Death on the U.S. Left.

Following the terrible September 1985 8.2 earthquake in Mexico City, Ross returned to the city he first knew as a young Beat and took up residence in the old quarter or "Centro Historico", the ancient Aztec island of Tenochtitlan, where he lives still. Now the dean of foreign correspondents in Mexico, Ross continues to report for Noticias Aliadas (Peru), the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and the Texas Observer, and is a regular contributor to U.S. monthlies like the Progressive, the Nation, and Counterpunch (on line), in addition to the Mexican Left daily La Jornada. His investigations into electoral fraud and human rights abuses in Mexico, environmental carnage, and the struggles of Indians and farmers have won various awards down the years.

Since its earliest hour 12 years ago, Ross has accompanied the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, breaking the story of the impending uprising in a small northern California weekly weeks before it occurred, and writing three volumes chronicling this unique indigenous movement - "Rebellion  From the Roots" (American Book Award winner 1995), "The Annexation of Mexico" (1998), and "The War Against Oblivion" (200.) His fourth volume ZAPATISTAS! Making Another World Possible – Chronicles of Resistance 2000-2006" is to be published by Nation Books this October

ILAN PAPPÉ is a fellow of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the director of the European Center for Palestine Studies and the co-director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political Studies. His recent books include: Gaza in Crisis (Haymarket, 2011), with Noam Chomsky; The Husaynis: The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (California University Press, 2011); and The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel (Yale Univeristy Press, 2011). He is also the author of A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld 2007). A native of Haifa, Professor Pappé obtained his BA degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1979 and the D. Phil from the University of Oxford in 1984. He founded and directed the Academic Institute for Peace in Givat Haviva, Israel between 1992 and 2000, and was the Chair of the Emil Tuma Institute for Palestine Studies in Haifa between 2000 and 2006. Professor Pappé was a senior lecturer in the department of Middle Eastern History and the Department of Political Science in Haifa University, Israel between 1984 and 2006.

READINGS:

Please join us to hear the story of Miko Peled's personal journey from his upbringing as the son and grandson of Israeli founders, with a strong belief in the Zionist ideal of a Jewish state, to his work today as an activist for peace who advocates transforming what he calls the Israeli  apartheid system into a secular democracy, where Israelis and Palestinians will live as equal citizens.

Co-sponsored by the Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund, American Jews for a Just Peace-Madison, the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, Playgrounds for Palestine-Madison, Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative, and Students for Justice in Palestine-UW Chapter.

For more information on Miko Peled and The General's Son, please visit http://mikopeled.com/

A book signing will follow the talk
 
The event is free and open to the public