SpeakEasy with Kymone Freeman & Ron Pinchback
Monday–Friday, 5pm–7pm
Kymone Freeman
Kymone Freeman is a poet, playwright, activist, father, and director of the National Black LUV Festival (NBLF), one of the largest annual AIDS mobilizations in the nation, as well as being the founder, program director and co-owner of Newton Media Group and We Act Radio WPWC 1480AM. Freeman: “As a native of Washington, DC, the city with the highest AIDS infection rate in the entire United States, the threat of this disease has always been on my mind.”
“I learned early on that knowledge rules the world and ignorance simply carries the burden. So I sought out and became active with progressive organizations such as the American Friends Service Committee, which sponsored a youth leadership conference in Nairobi, Kenya. I spent the summer there learning about the inequities of poverty and AIDS in Kibera, the largest slum in Africa.”
“It wasn’t until my uncle died of this dreaded disease—with the disapproving silence and refusal of my family to even acknowledge the truth—that I began to take personal action. Since that time, I have dedicated myself to do all I can to destigmatize the social prejudice and address the fear and ignorance surrounding the greatest pandemic of our time.”
“I do this by becoming my own media. Be it through coordinating a yearly community awareness event and eco-arts festival, producing live theatre with my play Prison Poetry, or with my current film project Nineveh: A Conflict Over Water, bridging environmental and HIV/AIDS awareness.”
“I’ve realized that our only hope of truly curbing this pandemic is the discovery of a vaccine. This is why I fight.”
Kymone Freeman was a 2010 Green For All Academy Fellow. He was recognized in 2006 as a finalist of Washington, D.C. Mayor’s Art Award for Excellence in Service to the Arts, and received a Mayoral Proclamation in 2007. Read more about him here:
http://65.79.227.222/articles/17876/what-exactly-do-we-owe
http://thefightback.org/2010/09/no-love-black-l-u-v/
http://www.voxunion.com/?p=4756
Ron Pinchback
With decades of robust radio experience Ron brings the knowledge all week on SpeakEasy.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/ronpinchback