CAIR-Chicago Sponsoring FREE Screening of "Welcome to Shelbyville"

WHAT: FREE screening of Welcome To Shelbyville (60 Minutes) In a small Tennessee town in the heart of the Bible Belt, a community grapples with rapidly changing demographics.  Just a stone’s throw away from Pulaski, Tennessee (the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan), Shelbyville’s longtime African American and white residents are challenged with how best to integrate with a burgeoning Latino population and the more recent arrival of hundreds of Somali refugees of Muslim faith.  Set on the eve of the 2008 Presidential election, the film captures the interaction between Shelbyville’s old and new residents as they search for a way to live together during that tumultuous, history-changing year.

After the film, join Eight Fourty-Eight host Alison Cuddy and panelists in a discussion about immigrants in Chicago. How do we welcome newcomers? How do recent immigrants experience Chicago? How do we create new communities and forge alliances across cultural divides? 

WHO: Hussein Affey, Cross-Cultural Consultant and Mediator, Founder of Somaliland Communities of Chicago, Advisory Council of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs for the City of Chicago David Lubell, Executive Director, Welcoming America Kim Snyder, Director of Welcome To Shelbyville Kevin Vodak, Staff Attorney, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Chicago) more panelists To Be Announced. Moderator: Alison Cuddy, Host of Eight Fourty-Eight on WBEZ 91.5.

WHEN: Saturday, May 21, 2011, 2:00 PM - 4:30 PM

WHERE: Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St., Chicago (In the Claudia Cassidy Theatre)

This event is free and open to the public.

Presented by BeCause Foundation, CAIR-Chicago, Heartland Alliance, Illinois Coalition on Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, ITVS and WTTW Channel 11

See more information and high-resolution photos HERE

See the trailer HERE