A Reel Progress Screening

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."