Tonight in Oakland, our friends at Youth Together are screening Greensboro: Closer to the Truth at 6pm at the First Congregational Church of Oakland (at 2501 Harrison Street). It’s part of a larger project to initiate conversations in six cities around the country about justice and reconciliation work. Check out the event’s Facebook invite for more information. Some background on the film:

On November 3, 1979, in the absence of a dissuasive police presence, a caravan of white supremacists confronted demonstrators preparing for a “Death to the Klan” rally planned in a black community in Greensboro, NC by the Communist Worker Party. The Klansmen and Nazi Party members emerged from the cars, unloaded an arsenal of guns and began firing on protesters. Five people were killed in what became known as the Greensboro Massacre. The film documents the first Truth and Reconciliation Commission ever convened in the United States, which was organized 25 years later in Greensboro to help the community come to terms with this violent history that continues to play a role in the lives of those affected by it. In screenings hosted just outside of Greensboro, North Carolina, viewers expressed shock at their own ignorance of the 1979 “Greensboro Massacre” and its aftermath that transpired only a few miles from where they live.