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Community Learning Day
Wednesday, October 6, 2004
Debating Equality
Keynote Speaker
Barbara Ehrenreich
Author of Summer Reading Book, Nickel
and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Kendall Hall Main Theatre at 12:30 p.m.
Breakout Discussions at 2:15 p.m.
- The WalMart Expansion: Big Box Debate
BSC 202 East - U.S. Drug Laws: The New Jim Crow?
BSC 202 West - Gay Marriage or Civil Union: Separate
or Equal?
Social Science Atrium
Performance at 4 pm
Rage is Not A One-Day Thing!
The Untaught History of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
A One-Woman Show Written and Performed by Awele
Makeba
Directed by Ellen Sebastian Chang
Music Building Concert Hall
Student Organization Tables at 2 pm in the BSC Atrium
- Habitat for Humanity
- Mu Sigma Upsilon
- The Surfing Club
- Amnesty International
- Asian American Association
- Minority Association of Pre-Med Students
- Islamic Society of TCNJ
- Lambda Theta Alpha
- Progressive Student Alliance
- Black Student Union
Barbara Ehrenreich, Author
Journalist
and Author of the New York Times best-seller Nickel and Dimed: On
(Not) Getting By In America
One of our most recognized and original
social commentators, author/ journalist Barbara Ehrenreich has been
a contributing writer for Time Magazine since 1990. Her articles,
reviews, essays and humor have appeared in a range of national publications,
including The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine,
Ms., Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The Nation, The
New Republic, Social Policy, Mirabella, as well as in newspapers throughout
the world.
Ehrenreich received the Sydney Hillman
Award for Journalism and a Brill’s Content “Honorable
Mention” (April 1999) for a chapter of her current book, NICKEL
AND DIMED, which appeared in Harper’s in January 1999. A second
essay entitled “Maid to Order,” which grew out of her
research for this book, was also published in Harper’s (April
2000), where it generated so many letters that the magazine had to
create a special section to accommodate them. Both articles drew widespread
media interest.
A consistently acclaimed author, Ehrenreich
was hailed as “brilliant” by the New York Review of Books
and “fascinating” by Newsweek in their reviews of Blood
Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of
War (Metropolitan, 1997). A collection of her essays, The Worst Years
of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed was described
by The New York Times as “elegant, trenchant, savagely angry,
morally outraged and outrageously funny.” Additionally, she
is the author of Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class,
which was nominated for a National Book Critics’ Award in 1989;
The Snarling Citizen; The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight
from Commitment; The American Health Empire: Power, Profits and Politics,
with John Ehrenreich; Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of women
Healers; For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice
to Women, with Deirdre English; Re-Making Love: The Feminization of
Sex, with Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs; The Mean Season: The Attack
on Social Welfare, with Frances Fox Piven, Richard Cloward, and Fred
Block; and a novel, Kipper’s Game.
Ehrenreich has been the recipient of
numerous grants and awards, including a Ford Foundation Award for
Humanistic Perspectives on Contemporary Society (1982), a Guggenheim
Fellowship (1987-88),
and a grant for Research and Writing from the John D. and Catherine
T. MacArthur Foundation (1995).
She shared the National Magazine Award for Excellence in Reporting
in 1980 and has received honorary degrees from Reed College, the State
University of New York at Old Westbury, the College of Wooster in
Ohio, and La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. In 1998 and
in 2000 she taught essay-writing at the Graduate School of Journalism
at U.C. Berkeley, and is teaching in the Women’s Studies Program
at Brandeis this spring.
Widely known as a public speaker
and a frequent radio and television talk show guest, Ehrenreich has
lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities in the United States,
Canada, Europe and Australia, and has appeared on such national programs
as the “Today Show,” “Good Morning America,”
“Nightline,” “Crossfire,” “Politically
Incorrect,” “The Phil Donahue Show,” “Charlie
Rose,” and “All Things Considered.”
About NICKEL AND DIMED: On (Not) Getting By In America
In early 1998 Barbara Ehrenreich, arguably our sharpest and most
original social critic, posed the following questions to an editor
at Harper’s Magazine: How does anyone live on the wages available
to the unskilled? And how, in particular, were the 12 million women
about to be booted into the labor market by welfare reform going to
make it on $6 or $7 an hour? Millions of Americans work full-time,
year around, for poverty-level wages; in 1998, Ehrenreich joined them.
What ensued is an unprecedented and illuminating work of immersion
journalism, captured in its provocative entirety in NICKEL AND DIMED:
On (Not) Getting By in America which became a New York Times bestseller.
To answer her own questions, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest
lodgings she could find, and accepted the highest-paying jobs she
was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked
as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide,
and a Wal-Mart sales
clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels,
discovering quickly that no job is
truly ‘ unskilled,’ that even the lowliest occupations
take an enormous mental and physical toll, and that one job is not
enough — not, that is, if you intend to live indoors. “With
all the real life assets I’ve built up in middle age —
bank account, IRA, health insurance, multiroom home — waiting
indulgently in the background, there was no way I was going to ‘experience
poverty’ or find out how it ‘really feels’ to be
a long-term woe-wage worker,” Ehrenreich cautions. “My
aim here was much more straightforward and objective — just
to see whether I could match income to expenses, as the truly poor
attempt to do every day.” What she discovered was that, in fact,
she could not.
The WalMart Expansion: Big Box Debate
BSC 202 East
Coordinated by Martin Bierbaum, TCNJ Municipal Land Use Center
Moderated by Donna Drewes, TCNJ Municipal Land Use Center
Panelists are:
Pam Mount, Deputy Mayor of Lawrenceville, who will will speak on the legal and planning constraints by the planning board and zoning board in addressing issues raised by the arrival of Wal-mart.
Carol Lerner, TCNJ alum, who lives in Lawrenceville and is currently
a leader in the "Let's Stop Walmart" Coalition.
Carlos Rodrigues, a planner and architect currently employed by the Office of Smart Growth within the New Jersey Deptartment of Community Affairs. He is the President-elect of the New Jersey Chapter of the American Planning Association and has worked on the physical design of communities throughout New Jersey.
David Prensky, Director of the Bonner Center for Civic and Community Engagement.
U.S. Drug Laws: The New Jim Crow?
BSC 202 West
Coordinated by Terrence Epperson, Roscoe L. West Library
Panelists will include:
Roseanne Scotti, Director of the New Jersey office of Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), who will discuss the racially disparate impacts of the current war on drugs. Ms. Scotti is the author of: "The Almost Overwhelming Temptation: The Hegemony of Drug War Discourse in Recent Federal Court Decisions Involving Fourth Amendment Rights." Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review Fall 2000.
Gennifer Furst is an assistant professor in the Criminology and Justice Studies department. Her research interests include corrections, race and the administration of justice, and drugs and crime.
Gay Marriage or Civil Union: Separate or Equal?
Social Science Atrium
Coordinated by Amanda Gerson, GUTS at TCNJ Vice-President and Jayne Zanglein, School of Business
Ceremony Officiated by Ryan English and Julie Kirschner
Join us for the celebration of the union of:
Brandon Pena and Erin Fisher
Noel Rodriguez and Angel Hernandez
Matt Lock and Philip Wellbank
Rebecca Mellor and Carly Cohen
Jessica Boston and Courtney Buller
Reception follows with cake and information comparing the benefits of same-sex marriage vs. civil union.
Rage is Not a 1-Day Thing!
Awele (ah WAY lay), uses documentary theatre to examine the untaught
history of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a cornerstone of American mythology.
The play is based on oral histories, interviews, court transcripts,
memoirs, and biographies. The story is told primarily through the
voice of 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, who refused to give up her
seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus 9 months before Rosa Parks' arrest
for the same act. Claudette, who became the star witness in the federal
court case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, shares the
stage with 12 other characters, including other history makers: 18-year-old
Mary Louise Smith, JoAnn Robinson, President of the Women's Political
Council and Rosa Parks, NAACP Youth Director and Secretary. These
women and their community, a "powerless" people, were propelled by
a deep conviction to win an "impossible" victory. They ignited the
fuse for the rising forces of democracy, for us and the world.
" Rage!" gives voice to the unspeakable; it examines the
impact of exclusion, hatred, and violence under segregation and helps
audiences to understand racism's legacy and continuing influence.
It makes us question how much we understand the past and challenges
us to articulate our vision of a just society.
Awele Makeba, Performer
Awele
(ah WAY lay) is an award winning and internationally known actor,
emerging playwright, storyteller, recording artist and educator.
She is a "truth-teller" and an artist for social change. She researches, writes, and performs hidden African American history. She invites audiences to wrestle with complex and emotionally laden issues that teach us about our common humanity, potential, and our purpose for "being" in the world. She provides opportunities for audiences to grapple with the meaning of their own lives as they make meaning of past lives. Ms. Makeba has mesmerized audiences from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC to the University of Alaska at Anchorage and she has appeared in Russia, Australia, Taiwan, France, and Canada. Her performances have been featured at national conferences such as: The Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development, The National Association of Multicultural Educators, and The Coalition of Essential Schools and The Oral History Association. The United States Department of State has invited Awele to tour Rage Is Not A 1-Day Thing! in Paramaribo, Suriname South America. She is a featured storyteller in Scaretactics, a national PSA in the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign sponsored by The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Awele's story, "The Story of Claudette Colvin" is featured on the Music for Little People benefit recording, This Land Is Your Land for the Southern Poverty Law Center. Featured artists include: Danny Glover, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Taj Mahal, Willie Nelson, The Neville Brothers, Raffi, Awele and others.
Sponsored by Committee for Cultural and Intellectual Community.
For more information, please contact Nino Scarpati at 609-771-2449 or at scarpati@tcnj.edu or Gem Perkins at 609-771-3112 or at perkinsg@tcnj.edu.
