UNREST: Best Practices for Hosting a Community Screening

This guide will provide you with ideas for hosting your own impactful screening of Unrest that will be well-attended, well-publicized and garner support from important institutions in your community for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME).  
Community screenings of Unrest have taken place all over the globe. While all successful events can look differently, below is an example of what we consider best practices for a large-scale community event.
As an example of a highly successful Unrest screening, we’ll look to the Boston event organized at the historic Regent Theatre on Nov. 12, 2017. The event was packed with 358 people attending. A panel discussion followed the film, moderated by a local National Public Radio (NPR) station senior correspondent and host. The organizers solicited the support of stakeholders in the community, resulting in 19 co-sponsors from government, healthcare, disability, arts, academic, religious and women’s organizations. For most of these organizations, this was the first time they worked on an ME advocacy effort, and the first time they publicly declared their support for people with ME.
For this event, the Boston advocates were also able to secure a statement from the entire 11 member Massachusetts Congressional Delegation vowing support for ME patients, which was made public for the first time, and read aloud, during the Unrest screening event.
Watch the opening introduction and panel discussion from the Boston Regent screening of Unrest here. See photos here.
The Massachusetts CFIDS/ME & FM Association organized the Boston Regent Unrest screening, with #MEAction member and MassCFIDS volunteer Rivka Solomon spearheading the effort with her co-organizer Leah Williams. (Follow Rivka on Twitter: @RivkaTweets)

After the film screening, audience members met in a café to discuss volunteering for ME advocacy projects.
 

 

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8 thoughts on “UNREST: Best Practices for Hosting a Community Screening”

  1. Thank you, MEAction, for deciding to focus your “best practices” article on our Boston area UNREST event! — Rivka

  2. Apologies. The full guide is temporarily down, but should be accessible in a few hours. – Ben HsuBorger

  3. I would like very much to be a member of the education of practitioners committee. As well, I’d like to strongly encourage y’all to like the idea of billboards placed near hospitals, especially teaching facilities. The cost is minimal.
    I was asked by a local TV newscaster to come talk about what it’s like to live with CFS and Jennie Montgomery showed snippets of UNREST also. I’d suggest that you simply contact your local TV station and ask if you can also be interviewed. It only cost me about 5 days in bed. The irony as always is that I looked relatively healthy and nicely dressed for the TV interview which is generally never the case.
    Marcie Myers
    [email protected]
    803-279-9766 home
    803 634 2606 cell

  4. After 40+years we are still dealing with CFS/ ME , Chemical Sensitivities, and Chronic Pain in the dark, with no answers as to the cause.
    In 1984 I started down this road beginning with Chemical Sensitivities, in 1992 CFS was added, in 1997 Fibromyalgia, and in1999 Chronic Pain Syndrome. In 2012 I found out I have two “defective” copies of the MTHFR gene, and all I was told was that it causes me to be low in energy.
    In the past year I found out that the chemical sensitivities, the CFS,Fibromyalgia, and Chronic Pain are all caused by this gene mutation – –and that 40 to 60 % of human have a MTHFR gene mutation. In fact, 98% of children and adults who have autism also have the MTHFR gene mutations. And if you have these MTHFR gene mutations you can not detoxify chemicals, the cells can not make ATP properly, your body can not make hormones properly, nor can it convert chemical vitamins into bioavailable forms, like converting folic acid into folate. Without folate your nervous system will not work properly, and a fetus will be born autistic. Go to nih.gov and search PubMed with the search words MTHFR and Autism and you will be able to read the studies done in the last four years.
    By avoiding chemicals, folic acid, GMO products, etc I have gone from being housebound and spending 90% of my time in bed depressed and in severe pain, to turning it all around. The MTHFR gene mutations may not be the only cause of CFS,etc but it is the cause of my illnesses. I have been ill for forty+ years, so I expect it to take time, but in only one year I have improved a good 30 %. Gone from taking three pain medications, each six times a day, for a total of eighteen a day, just to get out of bed. Now take four half tablets of one pain medication, that’s only a total of two tablets a day, and have almost no pain.
    There is hope but it may not be a medication or other therapy, unless they can fix the gene mutations. If you are like me it will be avoiding the chemicals our modern world is bathed in, eating organicly grown and grass-fed foods, and finding a physician who will prescribe the bioidentical vitamins and medications you need.

    1. Hi Aelxa I’ve had m.e. for 25/26 years and have just found out the wonderful amazing news that Griffith university , with funding from Queensland govt and others, has found the cause of m. E. / chronic fatigue syndrome . . It’s a faulty gene, receptors and calcium ions not being able to pass into the cells . As we need calcium throughout the body this has a major affect and shows why there is such diversity in symptoms from brain to muscles and stomach to limbs !!!!, it’s to do with TRMP3 if I have that right . . .look up ‘ Queensland research into M. E. and CFS Feb 2017 I’m trying to pass it on and spread the word that there is now HOPE . I’m going to get t shirts printed to share this amazing news . . .please pass it on wherever you can please

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