I used to be able to eat on the stoop of my house in Mt. Pleasant, and then I couldn’t because people were being beat up and shot. I ended up at Sidwell Friends in seventh grade and shifted environments dramatically. Being around Sidwell kids, I always felt a bit removed. Of about 100 kids in each class, there were about 10 black students. This was a reversal of everything I had gotten used to. I had a simplistic view that money made everything happen, but it doesn’t. City at Peace exposed me to the complexity that everyone has.
City at Peace gave me a different outlet for a lot of the frustrations I felt and saw. There were only so many places I could put that energy. One was to stew internally and be angry or agitate. City at Peace represented a way of getting that energy out there more productively. We’d create classroom scenes that mirrored scenes we’d experienced. By dramatizing it you can live it again but on your terms and highlight what was wrong instead of leaving the classrooms mad.
People listen more clearly, honestly, and vulnerably when they’re being entertained. I do political comedy, satire, write about politics. I use the stage to communicate these big ideas in a way that was heavily influenced if not determined by my experience at City at Peace.
- Baratunde Thurston, City at Peace alumnus (1992-1995), currently author, political satirist, web editor for The Onion, New York City
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Hello this is Lia Totty of the Adams Morgan MainStreet Group in Washington DC. We’re planning our annual Adams Morgan Day Festival for September 12th 2010 and I was wondering if there were any volunteers who would want to participate in this regional one-day festival that attracts over 45,000 people to the DC area per year. I regret not having been able to outreach to your organaziation in timne to book a performance by the City at Peace kids. But I hope in the future years, City at Peace will apply to perform in the Adams Morgan Day Festival.
MIn the meantime, if you have any students looking for community service, or people just wanting to volunteer at a fun festival, please send them our way!
In the last two years we’ve added a Green
Pavilion, Pet Zone, and Health/Fitness Pavilion to meet the popular demand of our residents and local businesses, as well as to attract even more people to the festival.
If you know of any volunteer groups who’d be interested, could you please
send them our way? Or if you could list us on your website as a non-profit in need of volunteers for a local, multicultural festival then please do.
If you know anyone tell them to email LTotty@ammainstreet.org or just tell them to go here: http://www.volunteermatch.org/search/opp336164.jsp.
Our office number is 202 232 1960, fax is 202 232 1978.
Thank you for your time,
Lia Totty
Green Pavilion Coordinator
Adams Morgan Day Festival