Richard Ross, a UCSB art professor and the recent winner of a Guggenheim fellowship, is back from a personal fact-finding trip to Iran as a photographer and concerned citizen.

In May, Ross set off on a two-week trip with Jeff Clark, a Santa Barbara photographer who’s a former student of  his, in hopes of finding out what life was really like in Iran, an Islamic country that is Aryan, not Arab, and ascribes to Shiite, not Sunni beliefs.

Hoping to dispel the myth that Democrats aren’t religious -- and that the religious only care about abortion and gay marriage -- clergy and liberal politicians will come together for an unprecedented summit this weekend in Goleta.

The event, coordinated at the request of the California Democratic Party, is the result of more than a year of informal conversations and roundtable discussions with local clergy.

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