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2008 Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration,January 27 - February 1

Sunday, January 27

Class in the Upper Valley: A Community Panel
3 pm, Collis Common Ground

This panel will explore the issue of class in the Upper Valley from the perspectives of community members whose professional work and personal backgrounds provide a unique lens on this complex subject. Panelists will offer insights from a variety of viewpoints on the challenges which different communities and towns face in terms of class. Panelists also will share their personal stories on this complex issue. Light refreshments will be served.

Speakers include:

• Moderator Peter Glenshaw, director of Community Relations, Dartmouth College. Glenshaw has been a higher education administrator and fundraiser for 20 years, at Georgetown, Harvard, and Dartmouth. He co-founded and managed two startup companies, one of which produced the first-ever encyclopedia about the African diaspora in both print and CD-ROM. He currently serves as chair of the Lyme School Board and of the Lyme Democratic Committee, and as a member of New Hampshire Democratic State Committee. He also co-founded Democracy for New Hampshire, the largest grassroots political organization in the Granite State.
•  Tom Ketteridge, managing director of the Upper Valley Haven.Ketteridge has worked for the Haven since 2000, supporting its mission to serve people struggling with poverty by providing shelter and education to homeless families and supplying food, clothing, and support to anyone in need. Ketteridge previously worked for White Mountains Insurance Group in Hanover and in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical fields. He is a U.S. Army veteran.
•  Jennifer Lipfert, MD, director of Community Health Improvement, Good Beginnings of Sullivan County, New Hampshire. Lipfert completed her pediatric residency in 2006 and currently serves as director of Community Health Improvement at Good Beginnings of Sullivan County, a non-profit primary prevention family resource center in Claremont, New Hampshire. She has special interests in infant mental health; promoting quality child care environments both in and out of the home; and fostering healthy, nurturing, and joyful relationships between children and parents.
• Brenda St. Laurence, parent educator, Good Beginnings of Sullivan County, New Hampshire. As a home visitor with Good Beginnings, St. Laurence works with young mothers and their babies to offer needed support and connect them with community resources. She previously worked with Valley Regional Hospital’s rural health outreach grant project, mentoring at-risk grade-school students and connecting families to resources in their area in order to support and improve the children’s home lives. Her work with this project was featured in Dartmouth Trustee Emeritus David Shipler’s book The Working Poor: Invisible in America.
• Jennifer Archibald Williams ’85, Partner, Community Partners Hotel group. Williams is executive director of the Children’s Fund of the Upper Valley, which benefits local children’s charities. She worked in higher education fundraising for 13 years, 11 of them with Dartmouth College. She serves on the boards of the Montshire Museum, Hopkins Center, and Montessori School of Hanover, and chairs the Working Group for the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Upper Valley Community Foundation and on the Upper Valley Land Trust Advisory Committee.

DFS Hopkins Center Film and Discussion
Waging a Living
7 pm, Spaulding Auditorium, Hopkins Center
$7, $5 w/ Dartmouth ID, $5 children 12 & under

Waging a Living chronicles the struggles of America’s working poor, capturing the dreams, frustrations, and accomplishments of a diverse group of workers as they strive to lift their families out of poverty. By presenting an unvarnished look at the barriers that these workers must overcome, Waging a Living offers a sobering view of the elusive American Dream. Discussion led by Professor Bruce Nelson to follow.

Monday, January 28

The Rockefeller Center Presents
Nancy MacLean, History Department Chair, Northwestern University
Freedom Is Not Enough: The Struggle to Open American Workplaces to All
4:30 pm, Filene Auditorium, Moore Hall

In the 1950s, the exclusion of women and of black and Latino men from higher-paying jobs was so universal as to seem natural to most Americans. Today, diversity in the workforce is a point of pride. How did such a transformation come about? Nancy MacLean, chair of the history department and professor of history and African American studies at Northwestern University, will tell the dramatic story of the fights for jobs and justice waged by the black civil rights movement, the feminist movement, and the Latino civil rights movement. She will address the little-known story of conservative opposition to all three and outline how the interactions between these groups over the last fifty years changed the country.

Film and Discussion
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts by Spike Lee (Acts I and 2)
7 pm, Occom Commons

This intimate portrait of New Orleans in the wake of Katrina tells the personal stories of those who endured the harrowing ordeal. The film looks at a community that has survived death and devastation at every turn and yet is finding new hope and strength as the city rises from the ashes, buoyed by its citizens’ own resilience and a rich cultural legacy. Discussion led by Professors Quintus Jett and Craig Wilder to follow.

Tuesday, January 29

The Economic Equity Initiative Presents
A Student Workshop with Felice Yeskel, Executive Director of Class Action
Divided We Fall
4–6 pm, Cutter-Shabazz Hall, 1^st floor
Space is limited. Sign up via Blitz to "DPP" or by calling 646-0123.

This interactive workshop explores the causes and consequences of growing economic inequality on our lives and communities. We will see how scapegoating and wedge issues—like LGBT rights and immigration —pit us against one another and allow the rules of the economy to change to the detriment of the vast majority of Americans. We will also confront two key questions: “What is right?” and “Where do we go from here?”

Presenter Felice Yeskel is co-founder and executive director of Class Action, an organization that facilitates cross-class dialogue and alliances and promotes economic justice throughout the United States. She also is co-founder of United for a Fair Economy, the UMass Stonewall Center, and DiversityWorks, Inc., and is an adjunct faculty member at UMass Amherst’s Social Justice Education Program. She is the co-author, along with Chuck Collins, of Economic Apartheid in America.

Film and Discussion
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts by Spike Lee (Acts 3 and 4)
7 pm, Occom Commons

This intimate portrait of New Orleans in the wake of Katrina tells the personal stories of those who endured the harrowing ordeal. The film looks at a community that has survived death and devastation at every turn and yet is finding new hope and strength as the city rises from the ashes, buoyed by its citizens’ own resilience and a rich cultural legacy. Discussion led by Professors Quintus Jett and Craig Wilder to follow.

Thursday, January 31

Hopkins Center Film and Discussion
The Price of Sugar
7 pm, Arthur M. Loew Auditorium, Hood Museum of Art
$7, $5 w/ Dartmouth ID

The Price of Sugar follows a charismatic Spanish priest as he organizes some of this hemisphere’s poorest people. His journey leads him to shocking examples of modern-day slavery intrinsic to the global sugar trade. Narrated by Paul Newman, the film raises key questions about where the products we consume originate, at what cost they are produced and ultimately where our responsibility lies. Discussion led by Professor Susanne Freidberg to follow.

Friday, February 1

Seventh Annual MLK Social Justice Awards and Panel Discussion
5 pm, Collis Common Ground

Please join us in honoring and hearing about the lives and careers of Dartmouth community members who have enriched our world through their contributions to peace, civil rights, education, public health, environmental justice, and social justice. The ceremony will include a panel discussion with the honorees. A reception will follow the ceremony.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

Dr. Stephen J. Atwood ’68, DMS’70 has worked in international public health since 1986 and currently serves as UNICEF’S regional advisor for health and nutrition in East Asia and the Pacific. Among other assignments to urgent areas, he coordinated massive public health and recovery operations in Indonesia in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

ONGOING COMMITMENT

Allison Barlow ’86 serves as deputy director for the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health. In this capacity, she manages outreach programs that address suicide, HIV, teen pregnancy, and other issues facing the Native community. She also has been a long-time active board member with the South Baltimore Homeless Shelter.

EMERGING LEADERSHIP

Renai S. Rodney ’99 serves as an assistant United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. She previously worked as an Equal Justice Works Fellow representing subsidized housing residents in Chicago and with the Bluhm Legal Clinic on behalf of unlawfully evicted tenants. Rodney also co-founded Voices International, a mentoring project for adolescent girls in Chicago’s Englewood community.

Anne Sosin ’02 is founder and director of Haiti Rights Vision, which focuses on women’s rights, violence against women, health as a human right, and general human rights issues in Haiti. Also in Haiti, she previously conducted field research on small arms control with Oxfam-UK and investigated human rights abuses with the Institute for Justice and Democracy.