News Release

San Francisco - "Speak Truth to Power," an exhibition of powerful black-and-white portraits of human rights defenders by Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Eddie Adams, opens December 12 at the San Francisco Main Library's Jewett Gallery, 100 Larkin Street, Civic Center, and will be on view through February 23, 2003.

The individuals profiled come from all parts of the world and face every form of oppression and abuse, but they hold in common a record of accomplishment and a profoundly inspiring capacity to ignite change. The exhibition text, written by Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, examines a broad range of human rights issues, including nuclear disarmament, children in war, environmental activism and religious self-determination, as well as biographical information about each of the 51 activists portrayed.

Three of the human rights defenders, Harry Wu, Van Jones and Sister Dianna Ortiz, will be featured speakers at the opening program on Saturday, December 14. Celebrating the anniversary of the signing of the December 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the program is co-sponsored by Amnesty International and the Center for Justice and Accountability. The program begins at 3:00 pm in the Koret Auditorium of the Main Library and will be followed by a reception in the Latino/Hispanic Community Meeting Room.

The exhibition opening program "Inspiring Stories from Human Rights Defenders" will feature inspiring stories of women and men around the world who stand up to oppression at great personal risk in the nonviolent pursuit of human rights. Sister Dianna Ortiz, an American nun tortured by Guatemalan security forces, is the executive director of the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC).

Harry Wu survived two decades in Chinese prison camps. As director and one of the founders of the Laogai Research Foundation, he is the foremost critic of the Chinese Laogai labor camp system.

Van Jones is the National Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, an organization that challenges human rights abuses in the U.S. Criminal system.

Other courageous human rights defenders featured in the exhibition include those unsung beyond their national boundaries as well as the internationally celebrated such as: Vaclav Havel, Baltasar Garzon, Sister Helen Prejean, Marian Wright Edelman, and Nobel Prize Laureates including the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Oscar Arias Sanchez, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Jose Ramos-Horta, and Bobby Muller.

The exhibition is based on the book, Speak Truth to Power by Kerry Kennedy Cuomo with photographs by Eddie Adams. The traveling exhibition, organized by Nan Richardson of Umbrage Editions in New York, debuted in September 2000 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and has traveled to other venues including Boston Public Library, Columbia University, Northwestern University's Dittmar Memorial Gallery; the National Civic Rights Museum in Memphis and most recently the Toledo Public Library in Ohio. Following its showing at San Francisco Public Library, "Speak Truth to Power" will travel to the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego and then internationally through 2006.

All programs and exhibitions at the Library are free of charge and open to the public.

Funding support for the exhibition was provided by the Friends & Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library.

The San Francisco exhibition of "Speak Truth to Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World" and related programs are supported by the Friends & Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library.

The Main Library's Jewett Gallery is open during regular library hours:
Sun 12-5; Mon 10-6; Tu, Wed, Th 9-8; Fri 12-6; and Sat 10-6.


For more information, please call (415) 557-4277.

"In a world where there is a common lament that there are no more heroes, too often cynicism and despair are perceived as evidence of the death of moral courage. That perception is wrong. People of great valor and heart, committed to noble purpose, with long records of personal sacrifice, walk among us in every country of the world."— Kerry Kennedy Cuomo.