After an insightful conference with Campus Progress, I went to Busboys and Poets for some poetry and a delicious dessert (white chocolate banana bread pudding with carmel sauce and coconut icecream--yes it is the bomb). It was great. Between the 17 year old Sudanese girl and the professional poet taking his show on the road, I felt like I was in speak-easy heaven.
Crowded in the Langston Room, I enjoyed the cozy company of complete strangers who were now close friends after 30 minutes sitting at the table together. As a tradition, and I like traditions, each poet is asked to read a poem of Langston Hughes either before or after they read or perform their own work.
I am even more excited about this one man play "EMERGEN-See" debuting next month and this Saturday's show "Silence is Forbidden". It's at American University on the 30th. Starts at 8pm. Spoken Word artist like Black Ice and Georgia Me are on the mic. And local artist like Messiah will be showcasing there. Of course a DJ with some hot sound to go along with the selections will be working the crowd (DJ Fredlocks).
Tix are $20 and for more info on the event or where to buy,
Featured Panelists: Denise Rolark Barnes, Publisher, The Washington Informer Joe Madison, Radio Personality, Radio-One WOL-AM and XM Satellite Radio channel 169 Mark Lloyd, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
Moderated by: Melody Barnes, Executive Vice President for Policy, Center for American Progress
Focus Features and the Center for American Progress are pleased to present TALK TO ME. Academy Award nominee Don Cheadle portrays the one and only Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene Jr. In the mid-to-late 1960s, in Washington, D.C., vibrant soul music and exploding social consciousness were combining to unique and powerful effect. It was the place and time for Petey to fully express himself - sometimes to outrageous effect - and "tell it like it is." With the support of his irrepressible and tempestuous girlfriend Vernell (Taraji P. Henson), the newly minted ex-con talks his way into an on-air radio gig. As Petey's voice, humor, and spirit surge across the airwaves with the vitality of the era, listeners tune in to hear not only incredible music but also a man speaking directly to them about race and power in America like few people ever have. Please join us for a provocative panel discussion and Q&A session immediately following the film.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007 Program: 7:00pm to 9:30pm Admission is free.
Doors open at 6:30 PM. Screening starts at 7:00 PM sharp.
SPACE IS EXTREMELY LIMITED RSVP Required. First come, first served.
Please let us know in advance if you have any needs for special accessibility so that we can be sure to accommodate you.
E Street Cinema 555 11th Street NW Washington, DC 20004 Map & Directions
Nearest Metro: Accessible from the Blue, Green, Orange, Red and Yellow lines at the Metro Center and/or Gallery Place/Chinatown metro stops
For more information, please call 202.741.6246.
Biographies
Denise Rolark Barnes is the publisher of The Washington Informer, the leading community newspaper serving the African American community in Washington, D.C. Rolark Barnes became publisher of The Washington Informer in 1994 where she is continuing the legacy of her father, Dr. Calvin W. Rolark, who established The Washington Informer in 1964.
In addition to her work at the Informer, Rolark-Barnes maintains The Washington Informer Charities, a non-profit organization that promotes literacy and sponsors internship opportunities and writing competitions for students interested in pursuing careers in journalism. The Washington Informer Charities also partners with local schools to assist their efforts to publish student-run newspapers.
She hosts "Reporter's Roundtable," a local municipal cable television show aired twice daily featuring local reporters who discuss civic and social issues affecting D.C. residents, and she has also appeared as a guest on the nationally syndicated Tavis Smiley Show, Tony Brown?s Journal, NBC4's Reporter's Notebook and several local radio and television programs.
Rolark Barnes board memberships include United Black Fund, Inc., the AARP District of Columbia Executive Council, the Historical Society of Washington D.C., and the advisory board of New Leaders for New Schools SHIRE Collaborative on the Prevention of Childhood Obesity. She is also a member of Leadership Greater Washington.
Rolark Barnes lives in the District of Columbia with her husband, Lafayette Barnes. They have two sons, Lafayette (21) a student at Howard University School of Business; and Desmond (19) a freshman at Morgan State University.
Joe Madison, also known as "The Black Eagle" by his Radio-One WOL-AM listeners in Washington D.C. and nationally on XM Satellite Radio channel 169, is one of America's top talk radio personalities. Born in Dayton, Ohio, Madison has been named one of Talker Magazine's 100 Most Important Radio Talk Show Hosts nine times. This recognition doesn't even begin to skim the surface of his extraordinary commitment to social justice at home and abroad. As comedian and human rights activist Dick Gregory once said, "you can't pigeon hole the Black Eagle. Madison is more than a radio talk show host. He is a radio activist." After graduating from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, Madison became Executive Director of the 10,000 member Detroit NAACP, the youngest person appointed to that position. Between 1984-1986, Madison led four separate voter registration marches called "The Overground Railroad". In 1986, the NAACP convention delegates elected him to the national board of directors and re-elected him for the next 14 years. In 1996, Madison accepted the challenge of restoring prominence to the NAACP Image Awards when he was appointed its chairman.
Directing a major civil rights organization, registering voters, marching in the streets, and giving lectures would be enough to demonstrate one's commitment to social justice, and rightly so. Yet, in the midst of his civil rights activism, Madison started another career as a socially conscious radio talk show personality in 1980 on Detroit's WXYZ-AM.
Madison not only uses his microphone to bring attention to social injustices here and abroad, he also challenges himself and his listeners to do something about it. For him this has meant going to jail for civil disobedience countless times, and going on hunger strikes in opposition to apartheid in South Africa, genocide and modern-day slavery in Sudan.
Madison has been relentless in his efforts to protect those who suffer at the hands of powerful interests. He led demonstrations and arrests in front of the Sudanese Embassy for 90 straight days to end the genocide in Darfur. Madison has traveled three times to the war zones in southern Sudan where he participated in the freeing of more than 7,000 slaves and delivering survival kits to refugees. He organized a "Sudan Campaign" to end slavery and raised thousands of dollars to free slaves, at a cost of $35 per slave. He participated in the victorious movement opposing the deportation of 15,000 Liberians from the United States in 2001.
Madison has won numerous awards including the National SCLC Presidential Award and has been listed in Ebony Magazine's 50 Leaders of the Future and Who?s Who in Black America. He and his wife Sharon have been married for more than 30 years and live in Washington, D.C.
Mark Lloyd is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and an affiliated professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute.
From the fall of 2002 until the summer of 2004, Mr. Lloyd was a Martin Luther King, Jr. visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught communications policy and wrote and conducted research on the relationship between communications policy and strong democratic communities. He also served as the executive director of the Civil Rights Forum on Communications Policy, a non-profit, non-partisan project he co-founded in 1997 to bring civil rights principles and advocacy to the communications policy debate.
Previously, Mr. Lloyd worked as general counsel to the Benton Foundation, and as a communications attorney at Dow, Lohnes & Albertson in Washington, D.C., representing both commercial and non-commercial companies. He also has over a dozen years of experience as a broadcast journalist including work as a reporter and producer at NBC and CNN.
A widely-published author in both popular and academic publications, his book "Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America" was released by the University of Illinois Press in 2007.
Melody Barnes is the Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress, where she coordinates and helps to integrate all of the Center's policy work from the policy departments, fellows, and the Center's network of outside policy experts.
From December 1995 until March 2003, Barnes served as chief counsel to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) on the Senate Judiciary Committee. As Kennedy's chief counsel, she shaped civil rights, women's health and reproductive rights, commercial law, and religious liberties laws, as well as executive branch and judicial appointments. Barnes' experience also includes an appointment as Director of Legislative Affairs for the U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and serving as assistant counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights. During her tenure with the Subcommittee, she worked closely with members of Congress and their staffs to pass the Voting Rights Improvement Act of 1992, which was signed into law.
Barnes began her career as an attorney with Shearman & Sterling in New York City and is a member of both the New York State Bar Association and the District of Columbia Bar Association. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of The Constitution Project, EMILY's List, and The Maya Angelou Public Charter School. She received her law degree from the University of Michigan and her bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she graduated with honors in history.
The Center for American Progress is a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to promoting a strong, just and free America that ensures opportunity for all. We believe that Americans are bound together by a common commitment to these values and we aspire to ensure that our national policies reflect these values. We work to find progressive and pragmatic solutions to significant domestic and international problems and develop policy proposals that foster a government that is "of the people, by the people, and for the people."
If you want to stand out as being an out-of-towner, so ahead and use the Metro anyway you see fit. But, if you want to look like a Washitonian on the platform, follow a few simple rules.
Rule 1: Don’t be an Esaclump. Pronounced es-ke-lump. Metro defines an escalump as a person who becomes a human speed bump by stopping suddenly at the top or bottom of a Metro escalator. This is not a joke or a work of fiction. Seriously, natives to the city and people who’ve lived and worked here long enough get really upset when people stop stop traffic to look around on the escalator.
Rule 2: When you are on the escalator, coming down or going up, you should always stand to the right or walk to the left. Everyone understands that you may not be in as much of a hurry as the next man or woman, but we don’t have to get in the way of their progress.
Rule 3: When entering or exiting the Metro station, pay close attention to which gate you put your ticket into. If you don’t and make a mistake, it stops the people behind you, someone could walk through your passage, and you could look kind of silly. I watched one lady have a frantic fit about how she put her card through twice and that she had $16 on the card. She rambled on to the station attendant to fix the problem so she could exit. The attendant just looked at her like she was crazy and pointed to the open gate on the other side of the woman. Don’t let this happen to you!
i received this message from some progressive activist here in DC. If you can help save a life, take action and do it.
Dear friends:
A good friend of mine, Vinay, is in urgent need of a bone marrow transplant. His friends and family are conducting donor registration drives across the country, including one in Washington, DC on June 14th. All it takes is five minutes, a cheek swab, which will be tested to match Vinay's tissue, and some paperwork! No blood will be drawn. Please come to the drive and get registered—especially if you are of Asian and South Asian descent!
REGISTER AS A DONOR—HELP SAVE VINAY’S LIFE!
June 14th, 4:30 – 7:30 pm
Asian American Justice Center
1140 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 1200
RSVP (encouraged) or for more info: DCdonorDrive@aol.com
www.HelpVinay.org
ABOUT VINAY
When Vinay began experiencing severe exhaustion and bone pain last November, he attributed it to his grueling schedule as a medical resident. His symptoms turned out to be Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Since November, Vinay has undergone intensive chemotherapy, but last month, he received the difficult news that the chemotherapy was not effective. He now needs a bone marrow transplant to survive.
Vinay, a 28-year old orthopedics resident at Boston Medical Center, was just beginning a new phase of life when he was diagnosed. He and his wife Rashmi married in 2005, and the couple had just celebrated their first wedding anniversary.
ABOUT VINAY'S ILLNESS
More than 35,000 people suffering from life-threatening blood diseases such as leukemia are in need of bone marrow or blood cell transplants. While 30 percent of patients find a matched donor within their family, the other 70 percent must find an unrelated donor. Because tissue traits are inherited, patients are most likely to find a donor within their racial and ethnic community. However, less than seven percent, or about 415,000, of the six million donors in the registry are of Asian descent—and even fewer are of South Asian descent.
Even if you don't match with Vinay, you might be able to save the life of one of the other 35,000 patients waiting for a donor. To find out more about bone marrow or blood cell transplant process, please visit www.marrow.org.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
1. Register as a donor. If you're between 18 and 60, particularly of South Asian descent, please register right away by coming to a donor drive or online at www.marrow.org. Vinay's friends and family are conducting donor drives across the country—and in India as well. Visit www.helpvinay.org to find a drive near you.
2. Get others registered. Bring a friend, coworker or neighbor with you to a donor drive. The more people we register, the better Vinay's chances of finding a match.
3. Spread the word. There are drives all over the country, so forward this e-mail to everyone you know and ask them to register. Ask others to visit Vinay's website at www.helpvinay.org to help build awareness of the bone marrow registry. Don't forget to forward this e-mail to your friends and relatives in India as well!
THERE ARE MATCHES OUT THERE!
Pia faced Vinay's odds in 2004 when her leukemia returned, and her only chance of survival was a bone marrow transplant. Through her website, and the efforts of her friends and family, Pia helped register tens of thousands of new donors! She found a match for herself—but is continuing to recruit donors in India and around the world through the United South Asian Donor Registry (www.matchpia.org).
Together, let's find a match for Vinay! Please register with us on June 14th! E-mail DCdonordrive@aol.com for more information or to RSVP.
As we leisurely strolled through the city in search of a good meal during lunch yesterday, most of us could not have imagined that we would be running and ducking for cover just a few short hours later. It was so hot around lunch time, I wore sun glasses and wondered if I needed another application of sun block on my way to get an oatmeal/chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich from Potbelly (it was really good). So, to my utter shock and surprise, when I left work at 5:30, the light drizzle quickly turned into a rain storm fully complimented with thunder and lightning. I tried to walk it out as I saw many others doing who were just a bit more accustomed to the evening rain. But as it began to pour, I was over it and took shelter at a near by ATM covering.
However, as the time went by, I had places to go and things that I needed to do, like the really nice happy hour at the Science Club on K. Putting aside my desire to be nice and dry after a long days work, I briskly walked the three blocks, hovering in front of restaurant doors at red lights. I finally made it to the Science Club for an intern social coordinated by Campus Progress. A few other interns and I arrived a bit earlier than the suggested time, trying to escape the weather.
But once I got inside, I forgot all about the gloom that held me hostage just moments before. Although small and narrow, the Science Club has a good vibe and energy. It seemed like a prime location to host an event like this one since many interns are working in the near-by area. The music was really a good mix. Think Will Smith’s Summer Time and Kirk Franklin right after something by Erykah Badu. The food (because we all care about the food) was really good. They have a menu that can accommodate vegetarians as well.
The food was good; the drinks were right; but most importantly, the conversation and networking was on track. Interns were their from Progressive Majority, Sierra Club, Center for American Progress, Campus Progress, Center for Progressive Leaders, and Gender Pact. I had the opportunity to meet some other interns who plan to be at Take Back America, which I will be working and attending by the way. Take Back America will have everything from Presidential candidate speaking to House and Senate rep lectures, to rallies to film series to breakout sessions like Progressive Majority candidate track and much more. These are all day events so you are sure to find something to get into during lunch or after work. Register today. Ourfuture.org
I am so excited and Interns, you should be too! It's my first day interning with a progressive organization, and they have given me the itinerary for TAKE BACK AMERICA 2007. The speakers list includes names like Maxine Waters, Tavis SMiley, Sen. Edwards, Sen. ObamaSen. Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi. I am looking forward to the workshops and the speakers. There will be opportunities to join grassroots organizations, meet and network with other activist, progressive campaign mangers, hip hop thinkers and coalition builders. Find out how you can get involved. It's going to be great. ourfuture.org
My first official day in the District led to some lessons learned, brief networking opportunities and fun with fellow interns.
So I learned a hard lesson in spending on the Metro trains. To all out-of-towners, when in doubt, buy a day pass if you’re on a budget. Long story short, if you go too far without enough money on your train ticket, you must pay an exit fare. A day pass is a flat rate. What you are willing to pay is what you will spend. Period.
Moving on.
Interns, facebook.com is your friend because many of the progressive groups like Campus Progress and Center for Progressive Leaders have groups that you can join, receive updates and meet other interns. Well, I did both.
I met up with another intern from North Carolina who is here for the summer. We’d communicated via facebook.com for a couple of weeks. We decided to go to PIN (Progressive Intern Network) Kick-off Bar-BQ at the park behind one of my favorite restaurants, Busboys and Poets. We ventured from Union Station to U Street Station and walked up a few blocks to a pretty empty park, confused. After seeing a group on the porch of a house in the neighborhood, we asked them if they knew anything about said social. For some unknown reason the party had moved across the street, where the front yard, back yard and house were full of young politicians carrying on various political and social conversations. Although the food was practically gone (and by practically, I mean chip crumbs), there was plenty soda and conversation. Immigration and African colonization were among the topics of discussion.
After making my rounds and introducing myself to some other interns [see you all at the next PIN social ;)], I hooked up with some of my friends’ house mates and went to Salsa Thia. I could have gone for take-out at Yums, but the group wasn’t quite feeling that one. Salsa Thai was good, though. It’s a nice atmosphere with low lights and wooden floors. Their fried rice was excellent and they have this fried banana and ice cream dessert this is something special. But you may not want to go if you have a group larger than five because they have problems with splitting bills and returning cash change. I’m thinking our waitress took the liberty to assume a tip even though there was definitely mandatory gratuity. Apparently, a storm was raining on the rest of the city, but we missed all that by the time we closed the place down as the last guest.
I had a good time and am ready to meet more people as well as see what else the city has to offer someone like me.
PS. For anybody looking for something to get into tomorrow, I just heard about a “Hoops for the Homeless” event at the Verizon Center from 9am to 5pm. Magic Johnson is one of the many celebrity guest of honor.
I think it hit me as I was enjoying the luxury and comfort of my Midwest Airlines flight. I could see the White House and the Washington Monument out of my window. The landing gear had properly descended from the plane, and it hit me. I had the pleasure of spending the summer working in the US Capital, home to so many great and interesting things. I plan to explore many of them, by the way.
After landing, getting my luggage and waiting over an hour for my ride (thanks Keri), I was in the city. She took the streets because the freeway was packed, but I didn’t mind because I loved the scenic root of the city with all the beautiful brick buildings and busy people. Although this is not my first in the city, I always find something new to enjoy.
I am really looking forward to my experience as a political intern and writing about it here. I’m working with Center for Progressive Leaders, Progressive Majority and Campus Progress. What a load! My calendar is filling fast, and I’m happy because I’ll have plenty to write about.
Oh yeah, about me:
California Native, cultural critic, sociologist, college graduate looking into graduate schools, loves food, music, movies, poetry and fun.
Please remember that Campus Progress' terms of use do not allow promoting or endorsing any particular political party or candidate for office. Posts or comments that do this will be deleted.
Posts
