Church Members Mistreat Homeless Man, Unaware It Is Their Pastor in Disguise

from Independent Reporters TV Media, Africa's No 1 Internet TV Platform

Pastor Jeremiah Steepek transformed himself into a homeless person and went to the 10,000 member church that he was to be introduced as the head pastor at that morning.

He walked around his soon to be church for 30 minutes while it was filling with people for service, only 3 people out of the 7-10,000 people said hello to him.

He asked people for change to buy food – no one in the church gave him change.

He went into the sanctuary to sit down in the front of the church and was asked by the ushers if he would please sit in the back.

He greeted people to be greeted back with stares and dirty looks, with people looking down on him and judging him.

As he sat in the back of the church, he listened to the church announcements and such.

When all that was done, the elders went up and were excited to introduce the new pastor of the church to the congregation.  (...)

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The Department of Gender + Women's Studies is thrilled to present this year’s Korenman event. E. Patrick Johnson's will perform selections from his 2009 play, Sweet Tea—The Play, based on his book, Sweet Tea. The play had its world premiere in April 2010 and had a month run to rave reviews. He won a Black Theatre Alliance Award for Best Solo Performance for the show. He has toured to over 80 college campuses from 2006 to the present.

RSVP to the event here: http://my.umbc.edu/events/20834

Professor Johnson’s performance will help us celebrate our Critical Sexuality Studies minor. Johnson’s work amplifies UMBC’s commitment to scholarly practice, and his performance continues our shared project of telling our stories as a model for civic engagement and social justice.

Professor Johnson is the Carlos Montezuma Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University. He is also an Artistic Fellow at the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media at Columbia College, Chicago. A scholar, artist, and activist, Johnson has performed nationally and internationally and has published widely in the area of race, gender, sexuality and performance.

You can find out more about Johnson at his website:  http://epatrickjohnson.com/. For background readings and additional updates on the event, see the GWST website.

The GWST 7th annual Korenman lecture is co-sponsored by the Dresher Center for Humanities, the Office of the Provost and the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

You are also invited to visit the Women’s Center on Wednesday, November 20th to view the slideshow and reflect on these lives.

For more information, there will be a table at the Korenman Lecture.

Visit transgenderdor(dot)org to learn more.

Columbia University professor and Roosevelt Institute’s Dorian Warren, Rinku Sen from ColorLines.com, co-President of GlobalGrind.com Michael Skolnik, and Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation, join Melissa Harris-Perry for a discussion on how to be a good ally in situations like marriage equality and the Steubenville rape trial.

Joanna Raczynska: Playing Un-Documented Utopias

Wednesday, November 6^th, 2013 at 4 pm

Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture

The inaugural program of the six-part lecture series Jump Over Time: Uses of Documentation Video features the project’s curator, Joanna Raczynska, who will present an overview of the project with excerpts of video work by Martha Rosler, Karen Finley, and Zoe Beloff.

Included in the lecture will be the presentation of two recent works: People to be Resembling (Otolith Group, UK/India, 2012, 22 minutes), “a five sided portrait of the methodologies of the post-free jazz, pre-world music trio Codona. People to be Resembling returns to 1978 in order to re-dream the recording process at Tonstudio Bauer as a meditation upon the relations between visual anthropology, anti-colonial choreography, nuclear annihilation and Weltmusik;” and Walk Through (Redmond Entwistle, USA/UK, 2013, 17 minutes), “an exploration of the site, design and philosophy of the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, as a starting point for posing wider questions about contemporary pedagogical models and their relationship to new forms of social, political and economic exchange that have emerged since the 1970s.”

Jump Over Time: Uses of Documentation Video
Jump Over Time looks at some creative uses of video documentation as an idiom and form used by media artists. When does the video documentation of an event shift from witness to evidence? If a performance is designed for the camera is the urgency, the live-ness, of the performance obliterated?  When the video maker’s intent is to re-present a specific historic period, action, or happening, can reenactments be considered documentation? Selected works as well as visiting artists and archivists will speak to the many ways archives—brimming with mediated experiences—are critical to cultural determination, memory, and practice.

Joanna Raczynska is the Assistant Head of Film Programs in the Department of Film Programs at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. She earned her master’s degree in documentary by practice from Royal Holloway College, University of London in 2001. She first started making non-fiction films ands videos in 1996, while a student at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Her works have screened internationally and across the United States, most recently at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. She has previously worked for a variety of non-profit organizations including Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, NY (where she served as Media Arts Director from 2002 – 2006), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

By Carrie Wells, The Baltimore Sun

Morgan State University has opened an investigation into a student's allegation that members of a fraternity he wanted to join rejected him because he is gay.

Brian Stewart said he dreamed of joining Morgan's chapter of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity and thought members would be impressed by his academic accomplishments — Stewart said he was a White House intern — but he was rejected the day after his interview.

He believes it is because of his sexual orientation, citing social-media messages using an anti-gay slur that someone sent him and told him were between fraternity members.

"I couldn't even be angry because I was so hurt," he said.

Members of the fraternity chapter and the national organization did not respond to requests for comment.

A Morgan State spokesman, Jarrett Carter Sr., said the university opened an investigation into Stewart's allegation after he lodged a complaint last week.

"The university doesn't tolerate or accept any kind of discrimination," Carter said. "It's something that the university takes very very seriously."

Carter said that discrimination — in Greek life or elsewhere — is against university policy and that those found in violation can face disciplinary action after a review by a panel of students, faculty and staff.

Stewart, a 20-year-old senior business major, said he wanted to join Kappa Alpha Psi — Morgan's chapter is called Alpha Iota — because his pastor and mentor from his youth was a member. He said he grew up poor in Annapolis and that his mentor had a major influence on his life.

"What he offered to me, I wanted the ability to offer that to someone else," Stewart said.

Stewart said he is no longer interested in pledging the fraternity but that he filed a complaint because he wanted to raise awareness.

"I didn't know I was going to have no control — that my interview meant nothing, my achievements meant nothing, because they had already made up their minds," Stewart said.

cwells@baltsun.com

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