Info on the week’s events here. And the word on tonight’s kick-off below.

7pm Monday March 31st
At The Black Rep (276 Westminster)

DARE and PolyPhonic Kick-Off Event
DARE workshop followed by PolyPhonic Open-mic with spoken word, short films, and a DJ.

DARE is excited to host a workshop kicking off the “Looking the Storm in the Eye” week of events. This workshop will include:

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…But you gotta cozy up with a member first.  (Or sign up for a trial membership, which easily pays for itself in wine and cheese.)

Tonight’s Salon, 5-7pm:

Independent filmmaker Don Mays on his in-progress documentary, Deeds of Desperate Valor and the 230th anniversary of the RI First Black Regiment and the Battle of Rhode Island.

“A third time the enemy with desperate courage and increased strength, attempted to assail the redoubt, and would have carried it but for the timely aid of two Continental battalions dispatched by Sullivan to support his almost exhausted troops. It was in repelling these furious onsets, that the newly formed black regiment, under Col. Greene, distinguished itself by deeds of desperate valor,” wrote Samuel Greene Arnold in 1860.

Deeds of Desperate Valor will be a full-length documentary chronicling the unique and important contributions to the history of RI and the United States made by the RI First Black Regiment during their five-year service fighting in the Revolutionary War. Join us for a discussion of the regiment and the film, to be screened at the week-long celebration taking place in Newport August 24-30, 2008 in recognition of the 230th anniversary of the legendary Battle of Rhode Island. (Note: for another view of Mays’s talents, don’t miss his production of The Bluest Eye, Lydia Diamond’s adaptation of Toni Morrison’s classic novel, on stage at Providence Black Rep February 2 through March 9, more info at blackrep.org) For Athenaeum members and their guests.

From Kim Ahern at RIFuture:

While other states in the country are passing Constitutional Amendments to ban same sex marriages, civil unions and even as far as contracts between same sex couples - New England has turned into a bastion of equality and rights. From Massachusetts’s landmark decision in Goodridge to Connecticut currently taking up the case if there is a legal difference between civil unions and marriage - why has New England (with the notable exception of Rhode Island) been such a unique place for LGBT equality?

Come learn more at Roger Williams School of Law, in what is bound to be a provocative discussion involving a fantastic panel and keynote:

What: The Culture of Same Sex Marriage Symposium

Where: Roger Williams School of Law (Bristol, RI)

When: Friday, March 28 from Noon - 4:45PM.

Panel 1: The Same-Sex Marriage Debate in the State of Rhode Island

Panel 2: Civil Unions v. Marriage in New England

Cost: Free! Includes lunch and wine and cheese reception following the panels. However - if you are an attorney and would like to receive the 5 CLE credits available, the cost for that is $25. Co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Lesbian and Gay Bar Association and the RWU Law Alliance for LGBT Students.

Click HERE to register and to read more about the Keynote Address [David Wilson - original plaintiff in Goodridge and Board Member of both HRC and Mass Equality] and each of the panelists!

Don’t forget about two awesome events happening tonight:

• The Black Air Foundation Fundraiser to Benefit the Lambert Lima Flying Squadron Cadet Program from 7:00-9:00PM at the Cape Verdean Progressive Center, 329 Grosvenor Avenue, East Providence.
• The Incarceration Rate for Males of Color In the State of Rhode Island, hosted by the Rhode Island Young Professionals, taking place from 6:00PM and 9:00PM at Brown University’s MacMillan Auditorium, 167 Thayer Street.

For those of you who missed Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci at Brown tonight, he was incredible [and bald]. Those of us who’ve read The Prince of Providence saw a very different Buddy tonight. First, he narrated his time as Mayor, the challenges he faced, and his accomplishments. He then made some key policy prescriptions–some minor, some radical:

• Providence Gardens: Buddy’s plan to cover I-95 from Broad Street to Atwells, connecting downtown with the West Side and opening a ton of land for development, residential space, business, and gardens. The highway would run, like a tunnel, under this development.
• Development on the other side of the mall, more so than exists already.
• Narragansett Landing: Development of 200 acres stretching from the Hurricane Barrier to Allens Ave. to Roger Williams Park. This would include a revamped Port of Providence, lots of jobs, and lots of green space along the South side of the city.
• The three above projects, titled “the 3 Cities” encompass 538 acres in Buddy’s imagination. He admits, “Some of that would have happened, but I was detained a little while.”
• Most radical, his plan to conglomerate the PVD metro area into one giant city including Providence, Warwick, Cranston, Pawtucket, East Providence, and North Providence. With or without conglomerating these cities and towns, he said, we are a city of 500,000 people that should have a unified government, tax base, police department, fire department, school department, and social services. Rhode Island is, and should be, a city-state, the former Mayor declared. He spent a long time ragging on suburban sprawl.

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Monday March 10th, 6PM
DR Workers Rights Lecture
Kassar House, Foxboro Auditorium (On the corner of Thayer and George)

Two representatives from the T.O.S. union, an organization of workers in the largest textile factory in the Dominican Republic, will speak about their incredible experiences as workers and organizers. Manuel Pujols, Secretary General of the union and Julio Castillo, Secretary of Press and Public Relations, will discuss their tireless work to combat poverty and advocate for humane conditions in the Dominican Republic’s free trade zones.

(Followed by the Global Exchange Panel at 8:30PM, also in Foxboro Auditorium: Representatives from Global Exchange discuss the effects of NAFTA on working conditions in Mexico and the rest of North America, and the indisputable links between corporate designed trade and economic policies and the accelerated Mexican migration to the U.S.- brought to you by OxFam.)

Monday, March 10th, 8PM
Community Dinner
DARE Office- 340 Lockwood St
A dinner-discussion with the Dominican trade unionists and representatives from various local organizations to share our experiences and discuss trans-national organizing. Fun for all!

…of the Athenaeum:

Fri, 3/7, 5-7pm: SALON – The Grimke Address/Meanwhile, At That Same Moment… part 5: Athenaeum Program Director Christina Bevilacqua on Edgar Allan Poe, circa 1838.

Poe’s only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, was published in 1838. While starting out with familiar Poe themes of claustrophobia and hallucinatory terror tipping into madness, it soon opens out to the high seas, piracy, shipwreck, cannibalism, polar exploration, theories of hollow earth, war with malevolent “natives” and other agoraphobia-inducing and increasingly fantastical incidents.

In an era when Westerners were making their way into formerly unfamiliar areas of the globe, how does Poe’s fevered travelogue fit into the literary and navigational accounts of the day? For Athenaeum members and their guests.

March 18th at Brown. (Always fun to realize that a lot of Brown students probably don’t know the background.)

Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, Jr. served as the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island from 1975 to 1984 and again from 1991 to 2002. Widely considered to be one of the most exciting and charismatic leaders in the City of Providence’s history, Cianci’s 21-year tenure as mayor made him the longest-serving American mayor of a city of 100,000 or more. Not an uncontroversial figure, Cianci was indicted in April 2001 on federal criminal charges of racketeering, conspiracy, extortion, witness tampering, and mail fraud. Acquitted on 26 of 27 charges, Cianci was found guilty of a single charge of conspiracy and was sentenced to serve nearly five years in federal prison.

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Something cool at Brown this Wednesday for Women’s History Month:

“Women in the Labor Movement”
4:30pm on Wednesday, March 5
Petteruti Lounge in Faunce House
75 Waterman St.
Providence, RI
Featuring Roxana Rivera
RI Director of SEIU Local 615 and workers from Brown

Learn about the role of women in leading and joining the labor movement. Hear Roxana Rivera’s perspective on being a female leader in what remains a male-dominated movement and workers from Brown speak about being part of the union.

Sponsored by the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center and Women Students at Brown and the Student Labor Alliance as part of Women’s History Month 2008: Women Inside/Outside Tradition

Drawn & Quarterly artist and New Yorker contributor Adrian Tomine will offer a presentation of his cartooning career, in the RISD Auditorium on Friday, February 29 at 7pm. A book signing of his latest graphic novel Shortcomings will immediately follow. Shortcomings will be on sale in the Auditorium lobby prior to the presentation.

This event is free and open to the public, and is sponsored jointly by RISD’s Departments of Illustration and Continuing Education.

See Adrian’s work on the Drawn & Quarterly website.

Changes in the Andes: Realities, Challenges, and Opportunities for Inter-American Relations will take place at Brown’s Watson Institute for International Studies on February 12-13. The conference will analyze the current democratic transformation in the region, its implications for US and international policy, and its lessons for other world regions.

Keynote roundtable: Mario Gustavo Guzman Saldana, Bolivian Ambassador to the US; Luis Benigno Gallegos Chiriboga, Ecuadorian Ambassador to the US; and Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, Venezuelan Ambassador to the US - introduced by former US Sen. Lincoln Chafee.

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In Providence, Juan Williams, senior correspondent for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, will speak about the upcoming presidential election at the Central Congregational Church at 7 p.m.The church, at 296 Angell St., is at the corner of Cooke Street.

The speech is one of a series of lectures on religion and politics, sponsored by Darrell West, director of Brown University’s Taubman Center for Public Policy. The event is free and open to the community.

I know why the democrats lose.

A check today of the 2008 Democratic National Convention website indicates that the schedule of speakers remains fluid and suggestions are being accepted. Here’s mine… no more goddam poetry! Who ever came up with this idea, and when was Maya Angelou tenured into the position? Whenever she gets up there to kick off the convention with her insipid benedictions, you can just hear the unemployed factory workers stampeding for the exits. Please Maya, for the good of the party, be busy that weekend. (Her website does not indicate her summer plans, but you can buy one of her Life Mosaic greeting cards from the Hallmark Collection, ‘Celebrating You’.)

I abhor the current climate of anti-intellectualism as much as the next person, but I am getting a little nostalgic for the cigar-chomping, ham-fisted conventioneers of yore.

I am hopeful that, being in Colorado, the convention planners may take a more mid-western ‘regular Joe’ approach to the event planning. For instance, just yesterday they went out to the Draft Horse and Mule Show and selected Mordecai as the official donkey mascot. Good start.

OH. MY. GAWD. Speaking of awesome February events at Brown, my ultimate hero, Angela Y. Davis, will deliver the Martin Luther King Jr. lecture on February 7 at 4PM in Brown’s Salomon Center for Teaching. Her talk, titled “Recognizing Racism in the Era of Neo-Liberalism,” will be free and open to the public. Just so you know: it took a lot of love for you to get me to post this, because if you all turn out and I don’t get a seat, shit’s gonna hit the fan.

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A Liberal and Conservative perspective of the Supreme Court’s shift to the Right

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Lunch beginning at 12:00, event from 12:30PM - 1:30PM

At Roger Williams University School of Law (Room 262) in Bristol, RI

From the Left: Nan Aron, president and founder of Alliance for Justice, a national association of public interest and civil rights organizations, serving as the country’s voice for a fair and independent judiciary. Her notable accomplishments include helping to defeat Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987 and supporting the nomination of Roger Gregory, the first African-American judge in the Fourth Circuit, in 2001.

From the Right: Ronald Cass, president of Cass & Associates, and chairman of the Center for the Rule of Law, an independent, non-profit center of international scholars analyzing rule of law issues. He served Presidents Reagan and Bush as Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission. He is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law, and serves on the Roger Williams Law Board of Directors.

Presented by: American Constitution Society, the Federalist Society, Women’s Law Society, Multicultural Law Students Association, and Association of Public Interest Law.

Much more than Foucault challenges Chomsky in this here bitch-slapping:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbUYsQR3Mes]