The National Occupation of Washington, DC Seeks to Lift Occupy with Powerful Education Programs
The National Occupation of Washington, DC Seeks to Lift Occupy to New Levels With Powerful Educational Programs
By Kevin Zeese
The National Occupation of Washington, DC which begins on March 30th and ends on April 30th will include protests, music and art but its anchor is education of the movement.
The major educational activities begin on April 2nd with the "Control the Corporation" conference at the Carnegie Institute of Washington. The conference organized by the Center for the Study of Responsive Law was designed for the Occupy and will include how people can work toward controlling corporations impact on elections, slow privatization, create better paying jobs and mobilize for the future. The full schedule is here. Please register in advance at http://csrl.org to help planning for food and space.
Over two weeks the NOW DC Social Forum will hold more than 70 sessions where members of the Occupy and their allies will examine the first six months of the movement and discuss what worked, and what did not work. Also discussed will be how labor and Occupy can work together more effectively, what strategy and tactics are most effective, how the Occupy can work with the media, as well as create its own media. A range of economic issues including job creation, co-operatives, sustainable and local economies, health care, energy, biodiversity and food production will be examined as will issues of war and empire. Goals, strategies and tactics of the Occupy will be examined in multiple sessions. The full schedule can be seen here.
"We want occupiers to share information, network and learn so they can bring new information and skills back to their Occupation. This is an opportunity to lift the Occupy to a new level of strategy, activity and cohesion," said Margaret Flowers, MD, one of the organizers of NOW DC and one of the original organizers of the Occupation at Freedom Plaza.
"With twenty-six occupations voting solidarity with NOW DC and Occupiers from across the country organizing these events, this is a tremendous opportunity for all of us to learn from each other. And, the DC community is rich with advocacy talent that can add to the already impressive skills in Occupy," said Kevin Zeese, also an organizer of NOW DC and of Occupy Washington, DC.
This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/national-occupation-washington-dc-seeks-lift-occupy-new-levels-powerful-educational-programs-1332863.
= new reply since forum marked as read
IT's UP FOR RENTAL for DISCUSSION...and seems Carnegie thought that might be appropriate place...although I'm not sure if he had OWS in mind...at the time. Still it's a RENTAL for all who have the MONEY.
History
When Andrew Carnegie established his institution for discovery in 1902, he left to the trustees and administrators the task of organizing and running it. In 1905, the trustees passed a resolution to construct a new building, a structure that would reflect the quality and excellence of the institution’s work and symbolize its permanence in the nation’s capital. They engaged John Carrére and Thomas Hastings, architects trained in the Beaux Arts style, to design a building “as nearly fire-proof as practicable,” and with ventilation good enough “so that life in it may be tolerable during a tropical summer.”
Carrére and Hastings were among the most prominent architects of the time, indeed of the century. Their sophisticated legacy includes the landmark New York Public Library (1897), the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C., and the Russell Senate and Cannon House Office Buildings on Capitol Hill.
Andrew Carnegie believed the institution should be known for the grandeur of its work, not the grandeur of its surroundings. In keeping with a limited budget, and to appease Mr. Carnegie's objections to a grand edifice, the drawings for the new building underwent several revisions, becoming less monumental with each one. Nonetheless, the architects managed to maintain a sense of elegance and proportion commensurate with the building's location on one of the grand thoroughfares of the city. The authors of Sixteenth Street Architecture, a book published by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, in 1988, place the building among the most distinguished on Sixteenth Street.
The building was constructed during 1908 and 1909 by the J.E. & A.L. Pennock Company of Philadelphia. Work was slowed by errors in the original survey, a strike among the ornamental plasterers, and an outbreak of typhoid among the limestone cutters in Indiana, yet the quality of construction remained high. The steel structure was encased in terra cotta for fire protection. Ventilation was achieved with large operable windows and skylights.
The building's solid, neoclassical facade is an impressive presence. Its monumental portico is surmounted by a flat-top roof and supported by Ionic columns. Huge marble urns, copies of originals in the Vatican Collection, flank the entrance steps. The massive bronze doors at the top lead inside to a two-story rotunda, framed by large Corinthian columns and an elliptical side staircase. Large offices with twelve-foot ceilings and elaborate cornices line the rotunda on both floors. Natural light plays across the rotunda floor, as well as the wide hallways and second-floor library, swept in from a sophisticated system of skylights not visible from the Sixteenth Street entrance. Also hidden from view is the building's ground floor and 1938 addition, which extends back along P Street.p/b]
The addition was conceived in the late 1920s, when the institution realized the administration building was too small to accommodate its growing public lecture and exhibit programs. Although, the Capital Science Lecture program was curtailed during World War II, it was reinstated in 1991. The trustees voted to add a new addition in 1930, but financial uncertainties delayed completion until 1938. The architects, Delano & Aldrich, designed a 400-seat auditorium, an exhibit hall, and a new entrance on P Street, blending the classical style of the original building with a distinctive modernist touch. Especially noteworthy is the way the architecture complements the painted surfaces of the auditorium's interior. Wrapping around the entire room is a unique set of murals by J. Monroe Hewlett. Hand-painted in a style reminiscent of N. C. Wyeth, the murals depict a group of heroic figures—astronomers, geographers, and explorers typifying the researchers of the institution. In the ceiling above, are lighted transparencies of the sun and moon.
http://rentals.carnegiescience.edu/history
