1) Kid Cudi and Asher Roth perform at the Tabernacle.
2) The Pan African Film Festival continues at the Woodruff Arts Center with The End of Poverty?
3) Blondie, Pat Benetar and the Donnas play Chastain Park Amphitheater.
4) Morehouse College hosts the African Dance and Drum Festival.
5) Ricardo Arjona performs at the Arena at Gwinnett Center.
(Photo by Duran Rose)
Jake Tapper of ABC News tweets that President Barack Obama today will name Dr. Regina Benjamin as surgeon general.
Benjamin, who’s the founder and CEO of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in Bayou La Batre, Ala., isn’t as entrenched in Atlanta as local heartthrob Sanjay Gupta. (The CNN anchor and Atlanta-based neurosurgeon opted not to be considered for the post in March.) But she’s got a connection.
From Benjamin’s bio:
Regina Benjamin received a B.S. (1979) from Xavier University of Louisiana, attended Morehouse School of Medicine from 1980 to 1982, and received an M.D. (1984) from the University of Alabama at Birmingham; she also holds an M.B.A. (1991) from Tulane University. She completed her residency in family practice at the Medical Center of Central Georgia (1987).
Finally, those liberal elitists are showing some love for Southerners!
(Courtesy MacArthur Foundation)
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will give a speech on the economy at Morehouse College today.
Bernanke is apparently bored with straight speech-giving. Based on the transcript published on the Wall Street Journal’s web site, he plans on spicing-up today’s Morehouse address by delivering it in the form of ma nishtana, the four questions traditionally asked by the youngest child at a Passover seder. No, I’m not making that up.
In his conclusion, Bernanke tries to go upbeat. He will declare he is “fundamentally optimistic” about the U.S. economy and note “[r]ecently we have seen tentative signs that the sharp decline in economic activity may be slowing.”
Tentative signs that the sharp decline may be slowing?
It’s sad what passes for optimism these days.
One of President Barack Obama’s campaign promises was to promote a “green economy” — essentially, helping create jobs in such professions as energy-efficiency and clean energy. Not only could these jobs put people to work, but they’d also help the environment. (This week’s cover story will touch more on the topic and what we’re seeing in Georgia, a state that’s traditionally been all-coal, all-the-time. Many men and women are making strides and trying to capitalize on the momentum. But as you probably know, there are challenges.)
On Thursday, April 16, the City of Atlanta, Morehouse College and several national and local community organizations will host a town hall to discuss Atlanta’s potential for green jobs and sustainability.
The event will feature a diverse representation of community leaders in a panel discussion designed to educate the community about impending environmental issues and inform the audience about existing and developing career opportunities within Atlanta’s green economy. Panelists include City of Atlanta’s Director of Sustainability, Mandy Schmitt; Julian McQueen of Green for All; and Nia Robinson of Environmental Justice Climate Change Initiatives.
“The purpose of this event is to get individuals interested in the environmental industry and demonstrate to the rest of the country that Atlanta is a proactive environmental leader in helping to support the nationwide development of environmental jobs,” said Mandy Schmitt, Director of the Office of Sustainability for the City of Atlanta.
Mayor Shirley Franklin and the U.S. Congressman John Lewis have been invited to participate. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held at the Martin Luther King, Jr. International Chapel on the Morehouse campus. The event starts at 6 p.m. For more information visit the event site.
(Courtesy National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
In 2007, Atlanta Councilman C.T. Martin unsuccessfully proposed a much-debated law against saggy britches. Now he offers a resolution praising Morehouse College for setting a good example.
C.T. Martin
“The debate garnered international attention and discussion among youth and adults and has led to several states, municipalities and educational institutions to encourage their youth to dress appropriately.”
— C.T. Martin, from his current resolution
“I think people passing a law against people wearing sagging pants is a waste of time. Having said that, brothers should pull up their pants.”
— President-elect Barack Obama, in an MTV interview
“The use of profanity and the wearing of exposed underwear are not a part of the image of Morehouse College, its students, nor its distinguished alumni, which include actor Samuel Jackson and director Spike Lee…”
— C.T. Martin, from his current resolution
“I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!”
— Samuel L. Jackson, from Snakes on a Plane, 2006
Forget the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Atlanta’s cantankerous Councilman C.T. Martin wants to start the Brotherhood of the Unsaggy Britches.
Nearly a year after a citizens’ task force on droopy trousers (we only wish we were making this up) decided that his proposed city-wide ban on visible knickers was one bone-headed idea, Martin is bouncing back with a new resolution commending Morehouse College for discouraging the “wearing of exposed underwear.”
Here’s a bit of the language of Martin’s measure:
WHEREAS, the Atlanta City Council established a task force to recommend whether the City of Atlanta, Georgia should amend its indecency code to make it illegal for exposure of one’s undergarments in a public place; and
It was hard to breathe last Tuesday night on the campus of Morehouse College. The election season often felt like someone was pushing our head into and out of water. But then the time came to sit back and watch the tide of electoral votes come in. This community of black men was confident that the right thing would happen. However, no matter how beautiful we saw the potential waves of change, we feared being yanked down by the undertow of history and deep-seated inequality.
Thankfully, the only threat of drowning that we faced that night was the inundation of tears by even the most manly of men — black men who are usually depicted as devoid of emotion.
We have a unique culture on our campus. No matter the individual’s socioeconomic background, we live with a reminder of how far we can fall if we slip on any side of the narrow path. We assume our cool and sometime violent posture to save face in a hostile world. We live embattled from all sides. Hope is not a campaign slogan. Hope has a more significant meaning for us who everyday look at the face of nihilism, sometimes in our peers, sometimes in the mirror. The tension broke when we saw the electoral count tip in Obama’s favor. I have never in my life seen such eruption of pure elation that broke out on the Atlanta University Center campuses. This was not just an election. For us, Obama’s win was a victory for the affirmation of human dignity. And for the first time we took off our “face” and our cool, and some of us cried.
November 4, 2008, 11:26 p.m, at Fredrick Douglass Hall, Morehouse College
(Photo and Text by Wendell Hassan Marsh)
MOTHER’S DAY TORNADOES: Twenty-three people are killed nationally by an estimated 47 twisters from Oklahoma and Missouri to Georgia, making this year the worst so far for tornadoes since 1999. At least one person dies in Georgia as six tornadoes hit through midstate.
EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE: A Valdosta Daily Times reporter, who was one of five media monitors of the execution of William Earl Lynd last week, writes of the experience.
THOMAS GOWN AFFAIR: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gives UGA’s commencement speech over the weekend, recalling how Georgia was still too segregated for him to attend UGA in the ’60s.
SCHOLARBLIND: The AP profiles the valedictorian of this year’s Morehouse graduating class, who’s white.
CORN IN THE USA: By July, the entire Southeast gasoline pipeline will be using E10, which is at least 8 percent ethanol.
CAN’T ARGUE WITH RESULTS: Jonesboro High School’s mock trial team wins its second consecutive national championship.
SHADY ROVE: MC Turd Blossom has a new gig as FOX News “pundit.”
CROWS TERRIFIED: Northeast Georgia town trying to break Guinness World Record for “Most Scarecrows in One Location,” with 4,000 scarecrows by Sept. 1. No one so far has had the heart to tell Hoschton that this will not, in fact, make the town a “household word.”
