OK - I have to check this out. Two heroes in one place at the same time:
Alice Walker and Amy Goodman: January 27, 2006 Media Alliance 30th Anniversary Speaker Series Kick-off!
Media Alliance is 30 years old! Come join us to kick off a year of speakers and events on January 27th at 8 PM. This night we will present a coversation between Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! and the legendary Alice Walker.
First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison Street at 27th, Near Lake Merritt
$15 in advance and $20 at the door.
To sign up for the reception (described below), please call (510) 832-9000 ext 305.
$15.00
7pm Reception with Amy Goodman and MA Boardpadprior to 8pm public talk
$75 Reception price includes: - 1 Preferred, Reserved Seat for 8pm talk - 1 Commemorative poster - 1 Reception admission, including wine and light food
$40 for recent MA donors of $100 or more who already have voucher/ticket for 8pm talk with Alice Walker
Must call in advance to purchase reception ticket
Please call Karoline at 510-832-9000 x305
About the Speakers
ALICE WALKER: Legendary author and activist Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia, the eighth child of sharecroppers. When Alice Walker was eight years old, she lost sight of one eye when one of her older brothers shot her with a BB gun by accident. In high school, Alice Walker was valedictorian of her class, and that achievement, coupled with a "rehabilitation scholarship" made it possible for her to go to Spelman, a college for black women in Atlanta, Georgia. After spending two years at Spelman, she transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in New York.
After finishing college, Walker lived in Tougaloo, Mississippi, and had a daughter, Rebecca, in 1969. Alice Walker was active in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's, and remains an activist today. She has spoken for the women's movement, the anti-apartheid movement, the anti-nuclear movement, and against female genital mutilation. Alice Walker started her own publishing company, Wild Trees Press, in 1984. She currently resides in Northern California with her dog, Marley.
She received the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for The Color Purple. Among her numerous awards and honors are the Lillian Smith Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts & Letters, a nomination for the National Book Award, a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, a Merrill Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Front Page Award for Best Magazine Criticism from the Newswoman's Club of New York. She also has received the Townsend Prize and a Lyndhurst Prize.
AMY GOODMAN: Amy Goodman is the host of the enormously popular, nationally syndicated radio/TV news show “Democracy Now.” As host of the only show free of all corporate underwriting, she is able to present a range of independent voices not often heard on the airwaves. “Dissent,” she explains, “is what makes this country healthy.”
Goodman grew up on Long Island, the descendant of Hasidic rabbis and the daughter of radical parents. After graduating from Harvard in 1984 with a degree in anthropology, she spent 10 years as producer of the evening news show at WBAI, Pacifica Radio’s station in New York City. Democracy Now, which began in 1996, now airs on more than 225 stations across North America.
Goodman believes that media should be, in the title of the 2004 book she wrote with her brother David, The Exception to the Rulers. “The role of reporters,” she says, “is to go to where the silence is and say something.” For going to places like East Timor, Nigeria, Peru, and Haiti to report on stories ignored by the mainstream media, often as considerable risk, she has won many honors including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism, George Polk, and Overseas Press Club awards.
[I added some links and formatting.]
I made a comment the other day about how all the famous bloggers and intellectuals and powerful people in the world seemed to be of Jewish descent - meaning to imply that there might be a link between Jewish culture and political activism. Now I'm just about convinced - being told by this press release that Amy Goodman is of Jewish descent. Amy Goodman and Noam Chomsky. What drives these folks to activist success? Is it something in their upbringing? Something inherent in Jewish culture? I have to check that out.
UPDATE: Totally missed it. For shame on me. Too much to do in SF.
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