Who took the old Kucinich and replaced him with this pragmatic one? I like this new look much better.
Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos

This week President Obama invited Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich to take a ride with him on Air Force One. Kucinich was one of the “progressive” holdouts on the health care reform bill — Would you call the holdout a principled position or the all-or-nothing last stand. After a few bars of “Come fly with me” the Ohio Congressman joined the chorus of the “yes” vote for the health care reform bill. More “no’s” are switching to “yes” after the Congressional Budget Office’s report on the changes made to the compromised House and Senate bills. Money will be saved. The vote is expected Sunday. Looks like Democrats finally figured out how to get the ball down the field.

Update:
Here are the amendments/changes to the health care bill coming up for a vote this weekend. Gee, I wish the call to war on WMD and Iraq had received the same “laser analysis” as the health care bill.
111_hr4872_amndsub

Nine months after Michael Jackson’s death, his estate has signed one of the biggest recording contracts in history, giving Sony, Mr. Jackson’s longtime label, the rights to sell his back catalog and draw on a large vault of unheard recordings.
Ben Sisario, The New York Times, March 16, 2010

ITVS Community Cinema is presenting preview screenings of the documentary DIRT! The Movie during the month of March. If you’re reading this from outside Washington, DC, you can find a screening near you at www.pbs.org/independentlens/getinvolved.

Actually, we’re talking about soil when we’re talking about sustainability and life. But “dirt” seems to give the title a little edge. Perhaps “Soil! The Movie” would’ve been a little…soily.”

If you’re in the DC area, you have two opportunities to attend a “Dirt!” event:
Sunday, March 21 at 3 PM Washington DC Jewish Community Center (1529 16th Street, NW)
Sunday, March 28 at 5 PM at Busboys and Poets (2021 14th Street, NW)

DC’s Dirt! events will have some great panelists thanks to Marsha Weiner of FoodMuse Media (a community partner for the DC presentations of Dirt! The Movie:

March 21 - Allan Baliett, the Farmer at Fresh and Local Community Supported Agriculture; Ariane Lotti of the Organic Farming Research Foundation; Kristen Santucci, Founder and “Mob Boss” DC Crop Mob “People for the Potomac.”

March 28 - Allan Baliett (see above); Kim Rush, Backyard Gardner/Educator; Kristen Santucci (see above).

There is a great discussion guide put together by ITVS (Independent Television Service). You can download a copy from this link. It includes filmmaker bios, resources, information, and question to explore. Gotta stop treating dirt like….dirt!

Community Cinema is FREE (no admission fee). Reservations highly recommended. Email dirt[at]communitycinema-dc.org or call 202-939-0794.

Just as the state board of education in Texas takes the final steps to remove the secular Thomas Jefferson from its history text books, the President has set his focus on bringing the next generation up to speed via education standards, where the previous generation apparently failed (were failed). Some of the country’s most important political and cultural debates are staged in the guise of improving public education.

Yes, the U.S. is falling behind the rest of the planet because public education has not been a priority for perhaps the last 40 years. Let’s start with state, city or even the nation’s fiscal budgets. True, some places have thrown money at the problem with little or no results. Schools need positive community reinforcement. I remember a time when the drunks and the addicts would tell kids to go to school, “Go to school and be somebody.” Over the past 30 years, resentment has replaced encouragement of academic achievement especially in communities where there are low performing schools. Schools sometimes have to step in to do social work for students and occasionally their parents/guardians. If parents can’t hold up their end, meeting academic goals becomes that much harder for the student and the teacher. The parent/teacher partnership is strained by demoralizing unemployment or multiple part-time gigs to make ends meet.

Public education also got burned by making teaching a pass-through gig or a profession for persons who couldn’t get jobs in the private sector. The revolving door mentality has to stop and teaching needs to be a serious profession again. Serious educators, I’m sure, feel like a deflated football being tossed and kicked across the field. With each new administration comes a new set of standards and requirements. A new pass/fail criteria. At what point will teachers be stakeholders in crafting the standards and requirements for their students to succeed since it is their profession that’s always on the line?

Then this…
“What I meant was they’re not black players; they’re Latin American players. There is a difference culturally. But on the field, we’re all brothers, no matter where we come from, and that’s something I’ve always taken pride in: treating everybody the same, whether he’s a superstar or a young kid breaking into the game. Where he was born and raised makes no difference.”

Source: Chicago Sun-Times

LA Angels center fielder Torii Hunter proves my point that everyone, including African Americans, can use some diversity training. And yes, culture can be complicated. “Negrito” means dear one. Literally it’s “little black thing.” I don’t always get an A+ either. There are differences culturally, regionally, class, education, etc. Treating someone “the same” is, in my opinion, basically saying “I don’t see you.” Avitar moment? Treating someone with respect and recognizing their inherent worth for who they are is close to the place I’d like to be. We’re not in Kansas anymore.

Please forward Mr. Hunter the following YouTube videos produced by the Afro@Latin Forum based in NYC. They are asking Latinos of African descent to check two boxes on the U.S. Census. Look up Afro-Latino. Some embrace it; some don’t. Latin America has race issues too. Maybe this effort to stand up and be counted is, like most identity movements, a way to be seen and heard.

As for Torii, if you’re brothers on the field, what happens after the game?

Yeah, Mo’Nique, I got all the Hattie McDaniel references in your Oscar dress and the gardenia on the red carpet. I also know McDaniel is the subject of a film project Mo’Nique’s developing. It may not be about the politics, but it’s definitely about the promotion. Now that Mo’Nique’s got the little man, light goes green…perhaps. Your first task may be to find Hattie’s 1940 Oscar (for Best Supporting Actress in “Gone With the Wind”) which is reported to have disappeared after she willed it to Howard University following her death in 1952. Efforts have been made to have another statue reissued to Hattie McDaniel. Going missing doesn’t cut it with the Academy. But did Hattie really get one? Statues weren’t issued for supporting roles in those days. Perhaps the biggest mystery is why the Academy told a San Diego reporter that they have no record of McDaniel ever receiving the honor.

Put Mo’Nique on the case. But it might take some politiking to get the job done.

Complete list of 2010 Academy Award winners available here.

Kudos to NEH for packaging such a fantastic feast for the eyes and soul. Here’s a prayer published in the brochure credited as Prayer of titled men from Anambra State, Nigeria, August 1966:

And who is going to remember
To Coninue in the tradition
Of the elders?
In those days,
When things were shared out in common,
In this town,
What belonged to my village,
By right
Used to fill up a big basket.

I say “Amen” to that.

ART AND LIFE - NOT FORGOTTEN
A few years ago I was trying to develop a character for a musical who was an actress and a member of Marcus Garvey’s UNIA organization in the 1920s. Well, that wasn’t just my imagination. That real person is Henrietta Vinton Davis, a Shakespearean actor, elocutionist, dramatic reader and activist.

Clayton LeBouef has been organizing and working to recognize Davis’s legacy. He will present his play “The Shero’s Journey: A Livication for Henrietta Vinton Davis” at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library Sunday, March 14 at 2 PM.

“The Shero’s Journey…” will be followed by a reception for the opening of an exhibt on Miss Davis and a book signing by Professor William Seraile, Ph.D. of his book Bruce Grit: The Black Nationalist Writings of John Edward Bruce.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library is located at 901 G Street, NW. For information, call phone:202-727-1222.

For more information about the Henrietta Vinton Davis Memorial Foundation fund, visit this site.

March 10 - 13. Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness invites poets, writers, artists, activists, dreamers, and all concerned world citizens to Washington, DC, for poetry, community building, and creative transformation as our country continues to grapple with two wars, a crippling economic crisis, and other social and environmental ills. The festival will feature readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, film, activism –- opportunities to imagine a way forward, hone our activist skills, and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for social change.

That’s Split This Rock Poetry Festival which kicks off Wednesday giving voice to an activism vision. The festival began in 2008 as a creative protest against the Iraq war. Wow, it’s been two years already???

Featured poets are Chris Abani, Lillian Allen, Sinan Antoon, Francisco Aragón, Jan Beatty, Martha Collins, Cornelius Eady, Martín Espada, Andrea Gibson, Allison Hedge Coke, Natalie Illum, Fady Joudah, Toni Asante Lightfoot, Richard McCann, Jeffrey McDaniel, Lenelle Moïse, Nancy Morejón, Mark Nowak, Wang Ping, Patricia Smith, Arthur Sze, Quincy Troupe, and Bruce Weigl.

Visit splitthisrock.org for registration information and schedules.

Michael Kieschnick, President and CEO of CREDO Action (the long distance company with a social entrepreneurial model) sent this out to CREDO customers:

..On Tuesday, March 9, the big insurance industry CEOs and their lobbyists are gathering in D.C. These are the same CEOs who are so confident they can stop the public option and real health care reform that they brazenly raised our insurance rates even while the debate over health care rages in Congress.

It’s time to fight back with a public shaming of these CEOs. I hope you can join me on Tuesday. There should be a great crowd of like-minded folks who have had enough. Why should the Tea Party crazies have all the fun?

A small number of us will be attempting a citizens’ arrest of major insurance lobbyists and CEOs. More than 45,000 people die each year because they can’t get the health care they need and deserve. We assume the D.C. police will not allow me to do this and in turn I will be arrested for this act of civil disobedience.

I am going to get arrested (so you don’t have to), but I need you and all of your friends to join us as we surround the Ritz Carlton.

Where: Gather in Dupont Circle for a march to the Ritz-Carlton where CEOs are plotting (about 0.5 mile)
When: 11:00 A.M., Tuesday, March 9

As I said, if not now, when?

President Obama visited Mrs. Wilkes’ in Savannah, Georgia March 2nd. That fried chicken looks good too. Here’s the menu.

Hey, Mrs. Wilkes has a cookbook!

When I read this I couldn’t help but wonder what impact will the earthquake have on Chile’s infrastructure, not to mention the country’s people - especially working people. Chile’s ports were badly damaged by the earthquake and the tsunami. Summer is almost over and school starts in March in Chile and much of Latin America. The harvest season is done; and it’s too soon to tell what impact the earthquake has had on the future of the country’s agricultural exports.

Is there a connection between fruit for sale and the desperation of people taking food from grocery shelves in the city of Concepción, the second largest city and the one most affected by the earthquake? Can those ships out at sea turn back with its cargo of blueberries and raspberries? I never buy fruit that isn’t in season in the U.S. anyway. Tsunamis are now wiping out coastal cities. I see more indigenous Chileans sleeping outdoors.

The quake has also exposed the fact, experts say, that although Chile is one of the most developed countries in the region, it is also one of the most unequal, with huge pockets of urban and rural poor, who suffered most in the quake.
Source: The New York Times (March 2, 2010)

What would Neruda say?

I awakened when dreamland gave way beneath
my bed.
-Pablo Neruda, “Earthquakes,” Canto General

I purchased a copy of Canto General in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Ernesto Guevara (aka Che) always carried a copy of Neruda’s poems with him. Chile was the first leg of Ernesto’s journey as a young med student which was recorded in his “Motorcycle Diaries.” What are homeless Chileans carrying to their tents?

Chile has a 9/11 too.

Saturday’s Chile earthquake was so powerful that it likely shifted an Earth axis and shortened the length of a day, NASA announced Monday.
Source: National Geographic News

Talk about last days kind of events. Are we getting older faster or just faster?

It seems we’re all in this together.

The Red Cross has set up a relief fund for Chile. You can find out more here.