Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright visited Southern Indiana Wednesday to campaign for Hillary Clinton.
Albright spoke mostly about foreign policy during her stop at Indiana University Southeast in New Albany. She said she would not criticize Clinton’s rival, Barack Obama, but she did offer critiques of the current administration’s Middle East strategies.
“President Bush came up with the idea of a road map for the Middle East,” she said. “I think until last year that road map was not taken out of the glove compartment. So there is a lot of work to do on that score.”
Chelsea Clinton and Barack Obama have both visited IUS in recent weeks. Hillary Clinton will be in Jeffersonville Thursday, as will Obama’s wife, Michelle. Indiana’s primary is Tuesday, May 6.
After working at the Speed Art Museum for more than eight years, the institution’s first contemporary art curator is leaving. The Speed Art Museum says Julien Robson will leave in July to become the curator of contemporary art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
Former director Peter Morrin hired Robson to be the Speed Museum’s first contemporary art curator in 2000. Robson organized bold exhibitions and expanded the museum’s collection of contemporary work. He also assisted local art connoisseurs with building their own collections and worked with artists throughout the city to encourage the creation and showing of local art.
Robson says he believes the current dirctor, Charles Veneble, will grow the programs he and Morrin built.
“With the arrival of Charles, I think that he will facilitate a much greater expansion of contemporary art activity within the museum,” Robson says. ”I think he sees it as important for the museum to put contemporary art in the foreground.”
The museum plans to review its programming before launching a search for a new curator.
Louisville Metro Police will allow traffic to flow freely this weekend along West Broadway. But that doesn’t mean they’ll allow Derby cruising. WFPL’s Stephanie Sanders has an update on the weekend plan and the short-lived history of the street festival.
What started as a motorcycle show at 28th Street and Greenwood Avenue swelled eastward on Broadway and eventually drew 150-thousand people. It became known as Derby cruising, and though it wasn’t a sanctioned event, it drew participants even from out of town. But for the last two years, Metro Police have banned the street festival, saying it had become too violent and out-of-control. And all you have to do to hear the public’s opinion is walk down west Broadway and say one word… “cruising”.
“A lot of the business comes from people that’s coming in town, you get a lot of people that are cruising, that’s going to get some service, and it just wiped out all that. It just killed everything.”
“People just can’t afford to go into other areas of the city to enjoy themselves, so we’ve got to make due with what’s we’ve got.”
“I hope it’ll be more safe this year, for real. It is dangerous on Derby, for real, it really is dangerous.”
“It didn’t bother me until they started getting vulgar. But other than that, they just kids trying to have fun for one weekend, so it didn’t really bother me that much.”
This year, the police will allow traffic on Broadway, but not cruising. If traffic starts to gridlock, they’ll reinstate road blocks that were used in previous years, and use a pass system for access.
The police crackdown on Derby cruising started when a rash of violence broke out in 2005. The outlawing of cruising drew the ire of some west Louisville residents and business owners, who complained they were being fenced in.
Last year a group of business owners and civil rights leaders asked a federal judge for an injunction to lift the ban, which they said was discriminatory and unconstitutional and was costing them thousands of dollars in lost business. The judge denied the request, saying it was a public safety issue.
“Public space and the streets have been used traditionally, and historically, by not just minority populations, but by all populations.”
Benjamin Blandford is a doctoral student in geography at the University of Kentucky who studies cultural and urban geography.
“Demonstrating in the streets is a symbolic way to claim space, or to claim an identity, or to claim a right to the city.”
Or an event. Like the Derby.
Blandford says Derby cruising didn’t start as a statement of race or social status.
“When events become that large and they begin to take on a new presence, especially when you start to have such strong reactions against these celebrations, then they begin to take on a political significance that maybe was never intentionally there.”
But when some Louisville residents reacted negatively to an unpredictable street festival held in the West End of the city, where the city’s African-American population is most dense, it became much more of a problem in the mind’s of some Louisvillians.
“The location of cruising, in the West End, which is sort of stigmatized by the rest of the city, and the fact that its in the street, its in public space, it’s not contained… so I think when you add those things together, you have the stigmatization and this feeling of it being uncontrollable, that results in a threat or fear of what might happen.”
In essence, the things that made cruising so appealing to some made it unallowable to others.
This is the first year since 2005 in which side streets leading to Broadway will be open and motorists will be able to use the street freely…. police are responding to complaints from business owners along Broadway who say their sales have plummeted Derby weekend for the last two years because of the roadblocks.
Citizen reaction to the loosened restrictions will certainly shape how the police will enforce the continued ban on cruising and how residents will shape their future Derby weekends.
Louisville Metro Police will allow traffic to flow freely this weekend along West Broadway. But that doesn’t mean they’ll allow Derby cruising. WFPL’s Stephanie Sanders has an update on the weekend plan and the short-lived history of the street festival.
What started as a motorcycle show at 28th Street and Greenwood Avenue swelled eastward on Broadway and eventually drew 150-thousand people. It became known as Derby cruising, and though it wasn’t a sanctioned event, it drew participants even from out of town. But for the last two years, Metro Police have banned the street festival, saying it had become too violent and out-of-control. And all you have to do to hear the public’s opinion is walk down west Broadway and say one word… “cruising”.
“A lot of the business comes from people that’s coming in town, you get a lot of people that are cruising, that’s going to get some service, and it just wiped out all that. It just killed everything.”
“People just can’t afford to go into other areas of the city to enjoy themselves, so we’ve got to make due with what’s we’ve got.”
“I hope it’ll be more safe this year, for real. It is dangerous on Derby, for real, it really is dangerous.”
“It didn’t bother me until they started getting vulgar. But other than that, they just kids trying to have fun for one weekend, so it didn’t really bother me that much.”
This year, the police will allow traffic on Broadway, but not cruising. If traffic starts to gridlock, they’ll reinstate road blocks that were used in previous years, and use a pass system for access.
The police crackdown on Derby cruising started when a rash of violence broke out in 2005. The outlawing of cruising drew the ire of some west Louisville residents and business owners, who complained they were being fenced in.
Last year a group of business owners and civil rights leaders asked a federal judge for an injunction to lift the ban, which they said was discriminatory and unconstitutional and was costing them thousands of dollars in lost business. The judge denied the request, saying it was a public safety issue.
“Public space and the streets have been used traditionally, and historically, by not just minority populations, but by all populations.”
Benjamin Blandford is a doctoral student in geography at the University of Kentucky who studies cultural and urban geography.
“Demonstrating in the streets is a symbolic way to claim space, or to claim an identity, or to claim a right to the city.”
Or an event. Like the Derby.
Blandford says Derby cruising didn’t start as a statement of race or social status.
“When events become that large and they begin to take on a new presence, especially when you start to have such strong reactions against these celebrations, then they begin to take on a political significance that maybe was never intentionally there.”
But when some Louisville residents reacted negatively to an unpredictable street festival held in the West End of the city, where the city’s African-American population is most dense, it became much more of a problem in the mind’s of some Louisvillians.
“The location of cruising, in the West End, which is sort of stigmatized by the rest of the city, and the fact that its in the street, its in public space, it’s not contained… so I think when you add those things together, you have the stigmatization and this feeling of it being uncontrollable, that results in a threat or fear of what might happen.”
In essence, the things that made cruising so appealing to some made it unallowable to others.
This is the first year since 2005 in which side streets leading to Broadway will be open and motorists will be able to use the street freely…. police are responding to complaints from business owners along Broadway who say their sales have plummeted Derby weekend for the last two years because of the roadblocks.
Citizen reaction to the loosened restrictions will certainly shape how the police will enforce the continued ban on cruising and how residents will shape their future Derby weekends.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Learning to Be a Jockey
The United States is home to more than 75 thoroughbred racing tracks but there hasn’t been a formal training program for the folks who ride the horses. All that changed when the North American Racing Academy welcomed its first group of students in the fall of 2006. Today, live from Churchill Downs, we talk to the school’s founder and an instructor about the skills you need and the things you have to learn on the path to becoming a jockey.
Related Links:
The highest judicial body in the Louisville-based Presbyterian Church has ruled that a California minister did not violate the church constitution by performing two same-gender wedding ceremonies and should not be disciplined.
Reverend Janie Spahr says the decision means she won’t be censured for her actions, but the news is not all good.
“The reason for that is painful, because it said the reason I wasn’t censured is because they believe lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender relationship or marriages are separate from heterosexual marriages. what I mean by that is it’s almost the
standard again of separate but unequal.”
The 61 year old Spahr says she won’t rule out peforming gay weddings in the future, even though they’re not recognized by the church.
Today’s (Tuesday’s) decision followed a Friday hearing in Louisville before the church’s highest court, the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission.
Both Democrats in Kentucky’s Capitol Hill delegation are now supporting Barack Obama for president.
At a press conference Tuesday in Louisville, 6th District Congressman Ben Chandler announced his endorsement of the Illinois Senator.
The Lexington Democrat says it wasn’t his idea to make the announcement outside of his home district.
“I talked to the Obama campaign and they preferred that I make it in Louisville and my guess is that that had something to with the Indiana primary coming up a week from today,” says Chandler. “That’s my guess because they’re right across the river and there was some thought that some of the coverage might bleed over.”
Third district Congressman John Yarmuth announced earlier he would support Obama, who trails Hillary Clinton in the Kentucky superdelegate count, 3 to 2. Three others remain undecided. Kentucky’s primary is May 20th.
