Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts

Saturday, March 04, 2017

Support FIVE SESSIONS The Play



Support Five Sessions the play. I am glad to be part of this play by Jaime Estades. Play opens this Friday, March 10, at the Julia de Burgos Theater in NYC's El Barrio and runs until March 26. Support independent theater.

FIVE SESSIONS: A War in Therapy tackles issues of race, political correctness, class and passion

"Five Sessions" follows a 24-year-old recent Ivy League graduate and therapist, and her first client, a blue-collar political activist. Dealing with tensions of race, political correctness, socioeconomic differences, and passion, the two characters explore each other's personal challenges. Her supervisor's demands and Wall Street boyfriend contribute to their struggles.

WHO: "Five Sessions" by playwright Jaime Estades, a lawyer, social worker, social policy professor at Rutgers University, and cofounder and president of the Latino Leadership Institute, Inc. Edward Torres, theater professor at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, is the director.

WHAT: "Five Sessions" will showcase uptown in East Harlem, which is home to three beautiful theaters that are underutilized despite their great potential. "Five Sessions" will play at The Julia de Burgos Performance & Arts Center, an artistic, cultural, educational and civic space. A goal with this original play, as well as future theatrical projects, is to tell diverse stories by local writers and artists and to share the innovative and exciting work being produced uptown. "Five Sessions" writer, Jaime Estades, is a longtime East Harlem resident and community leader.

WHEN: March 10 to March 26.



WHERE: Julia de Burgos Performance and Arts Center, 1680 Lexington Avenue. Tickets are available at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/five-sessions-tickets-31832980301 and at the Julia de Burgos ticket window. Net profits will benefit the nonprofit Latino Leadership Institute, which cultivates leaders in politics, policy and community organizing.

#fivesessions

Update: Five Sessions had successful run in El Barrio with standing ovations and sold out shows. Thank you. Here are some scenes from the closing show with cast and crew members.





Thursday, July 24, 2008

Survey Says Hispanics Support Obama for Prez


Politics

Hispanics Support Obama over McCain for President by Nearly Three-to-One, Pew Hispanic Center Survey Finds

Hispanic registered voters support Democrat Barack Obama for president over Republican John McCain by 66% to 23%, according to a nationwide survey of 2,015 Latinos conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, from June 9 through July 13.

The presumptive Democratic nominee's strong showing in this survey represents a sharp reversal in his fortunes from the primaries, when Obama lost the Latino vote to Hillary Clinton by a nearly two-to-one ratio, giving rise to speculation in some quarters that Hispanics were disinclined to vote for a black candidate.

In this new survey, three times as many respondents said being black would help Obama (32%) with Latino voters than said it would hurt him (11%); the majority (53%) said his race would make no difference to Latino voters.

In addition to their strong support for Obama, Latino voters have moved sharply into the Democratic camp in the past two years, reversing a pro-GOP tide that had been evident among Latinos earlier in the decade. Some 65% of Latino registered voters now say they identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, compared with just 26% who identify with or lean toward the GOP. This 39 percentage point Democratic Party identification edge is larger than it has been at any time this decade; as recently as 2006, the partisan gap was just 21 percentage points.

The report also examines Hispanic registered voter engagement, party identification, ratings of national conditions, and top campaign issues.

The report, 2008 National Survey of Latinos: Hispanic Voter Attitudes, is available at the Pew Hispanic Center's website, www.pewhispanic.org.

The Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, is a non-partisan, non-advocacy research organization based in Washington, D.C. and is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

source: Pew Hispanic Center release

(photo courtesy of Barack Obama's photostream at flickr.)

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

On Latino Policy

The National Institute for Latino Policy recently provided some interesting information on Puerto Ricans stateside and how the stateside population continues to outnumber those living on the island.

Here's an excerpt of an entry from the Institute July 14 bi-monthly newsletter, edited by Angelo Falcon:

Puerto Rican Population Stateside
Continues to Exceed that of Puerto Rico


In 2004, the Atlas of Stateside Puerto Ricans documented for the first time the stateside Puerto Rican population exceeded that of Puerto Rico in 2003 by 163,246. The latest statistics from the Census Bureau, from the 2006 American Community Survey (ACS), estimates that this gap has grown: in 2006 there were 3,987,947 Puerto Ricans living stateside compared to 3,745,007 in Puerto Rico, meaning that there are 242,940 more Puerto Ricans stateside than in Puerto Rico. Does this development have implications for the politics and policy issues of the Puerto Rican community as a whole?




Interesting question. What do PRSUN readers think?

Anyway, if you are interested in Puerto Rican and Latino policy issues, the Institute's bi-monthly e-newsletter is a wonderful resource. It regularly features items related to Puerto Ricans.

Go to www.latinopolicy.org to subscribe.

By the way, the National Institute for Latino Policy was formerly known as the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy. It changed its name as a way of better representing policy issues impacting Latinos.

The National Institute for Latino Policy is a independent nonprofit and nonpartisan policy center established in 1982 to address Latino issues.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Boricua Hip-Hop Activist Rosa Clemente Runs for VP of the US in Green Party Ticket



The Green Party, which captured less than 1 percent of the vote in the last U.S. presidential election, has chosen the former Democratic Representative Cynthia McKinney. McKinney's running mate for the November election is vice presidential candidate Rosa Clemente, a hip-hop artist and activist who is boricua.

Here's an entry posted in www.greensforgreens.org:

Cynthia McKinney Wins Green Party Presidential Nomination

Cynthia McKinney won the Green Party of the United States presidential nomination at the July 12 GP-US Convention in Chicago. McKinney, a former Member of Congress from Georgia, received 313 of 532 first round votes to earn nomination by Greens delegates from across the country excited that she will be their standard bearer this year. Hip-hop activist and journalist Rosa Clemente was selected to be the vice-presidential candidate of the Greens.
McKinney served six terms representing DeKalb County’s 4th Congressional District before moving to California and becoming a Green. About 800 Greens are attending the convention at the Chicago Symphony Center.
Clemente said she accepted McKinney’s invitation to be her running mate because she believes the former Georgia Congresswoman’s platform addresses issues not addressed by Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama.
“I chose to do this, not for me, but for my generation, my community and my daughter,” said Clemente, 35, in the statement. “I don’t see the Green Party as an alternative, I see it as imperative.”

Here's a link in Wikipedia about Clemente and her background:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_clemente

For more info on the Green Party and its recent national convention in Chicago, go to
http://www.gp.org.


(photo courtesy of the Green Party site)

Thursday, July 10, 2008

'Political Animals' Film Fest

Film

Handball Court Summer Film Series
at White Park, NYC's El Barrio

"Political Animals", this year's curatorial theme…

MediaNoche presents the free Handball Court Summer Film Series at White Park beginning Saturday, July 12. The series at White Park (106th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues) will run Saturday nights at sunset (about 8 p.m.) until August 30.

Curator Judith Escalona brings together a set of fictional films, dramas and comedies, examining the U.S. electoral process. The Candidate (1972), which looks at how a young politician slowly gives up his ideals to be elected, is as relevant today as when it premiered 36 years ago! In the more recent Head of State (2003), a young politician who knows the ropes finds his voice and a way to embrace his ideals. The last film in this set is actually a documentary entitled An Unreasonable Man, a moving portrait of America's greatest public advocate Ralph Nader that includes a critical view of the entrenched two-party political system.

"Hazardous to your health" groups films dealing with health and the environment. Not to be missed are: Sick Around the World, comparing health coverage in five capitalist democracies, and The Medicated Child, how troubled children are over-prescribed medicines that have unknown long term effects. Lastly, An Inconvenient Truth, screened last year but presented here again, to stress the urgency of global warming.

MediaNoche is a project of PRdream.com.

For the complete lineup and more information, visit http://www.prdream.com/wordpress/?cat=5, e-mail info@medianoche.us or call (212) 828-0401.

source: Judith Escalona