“There’s a movement building, and it’s spreading like wildfire,” announced Rafe Lieber of Citizens for Access to the Arts at a rally on the steps of Brooklyn Borough Hall early in January. With politicians, celebrities, a brass band and a screaming crowd, any passerby would conclude that some popular uprising was in the works.Speaker after speaker, including City Council members and even Brooklyn-native actress Rosie Perez, gave impassioned speeches about the importance of providing access to art to young people, leading the crowds in chants of, “We’re not gonna stop!” “Fuel our dreams!” “We’re coming for you!” and, most frequently, “Save Ovation!”The participants were decrying the decision of Time Warner Cable to deny the arts network Ovation TV to poor and minority viewers. Cheering along with them, I suddenly heard a cell phone ring. The woman behind me, a fellow protester, answered, saying, “Can you call me back? I’m at work.”While I had considered the rally more of a quick buck than work, her statement wasn’t technically wrong. Like me, many of the rally’s participants had arrived via the same November Craigslist ad for “TV Press Rally Extras.” A week before the rally, we received an email from Warren Cohn, an employee of the power lawyers David Schwartz and Bradley Gerstman’s lobbying firm Gotham Government Relations. In part, it read:Continue Reading… … Read More
Thatcher was trailblazer who said she ‘owed nothing’ to feminism
Margaret Thatcher once said she owed nothing to feminism, but the only woman ever to become British prime minister unwittingly cleared the way for other women to succeed in the male-dominated world of politics, observers said on Tuesday. In the impassioned debate sparked by her death on Monday,…
Harry Belafonte challenges African-Americans at NAACP awards ceremony: ‘In the gun game, we are the most hunted’
Singer makes impassioned appeal to black Americans, accusing them of failing to speak out over the problem of gun violence Veteran singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte has weighed in on the debate over gun violence, chastising fellow black Americans for failing to speak out on the…
Callers React to Biden’s Executive Order Threat to Ban Guns
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Obama Set to Ban All Guns
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India Gang Rape Case Sets Off Debate Over Women’s Rights
NEW DELHI — India’s army and navy canceled New Year’s celebrations on Monday out of respect for a New Delhi student whose gang-rape and murder has set off an impassioned debate about what the nation needs to do to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.Protesters and politicians have called for tougher rape laws, major police reforms and a transformation in the way the country treats its women.Read More…
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