Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Roberta Guaspari

With the violin, I can get into kids' hearts and souls.”
—Roberta Guaspari, 1992

In 1991, 150 kids in three East Harlem public elementary schools were about to lose their cherished violin program as a result of budget cuts. Working with parents, other teachers and volunteers, their violin teacher, Roberta Guaspari, founded Opus 118 Harlem School of Music, a private, nonprofit organization, to save the program and to continue to serve public school students in low-income areas.



Violinist Arnold Steinhardt, impressed by what he witnessed in these Harlem music classes, engaged colleagues Itzhak Perlman and Isaac Stern to organize Fiddlefest, a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall to keep the violin program alive. Not only did this first concert shine a bright light on Opus 118, it became the first in a series of Fiddlefests with acclaimed musicians such as Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, Wynton Marsalis, Bobby McFerrin, and Mark O'Connor joining the Harlem students in performance.

Roberta Guaspari’s passionate struggle to keep music instruction alive in Harlem's public schools has inspired two films: Small Wonders, a 1996 documentary produced by Susan Kaplan and directed by Allan Miller, and Miramax’s 1999 feature film, Music of the Heart, starring Meryl Streep; both films received Academy Award nominations. The New York City Schools Chancellor restored funds for Ms. Guaspari and for two more Opus violin teachers. Today, Opus serves in five New York public schools.

In 2002, Opus 118 Harlem School of Music expanded on the success of its internationally recognized In-School Music Program and established a comprehensive community music school currently located at 103 East 125th Street in Harlem.

Through this community music school, Opus 118 can meet the needs of this fast-growing and underserved community by offering opportunities for New York City public school students to obtain one-on-one and ensemble instruction after school, offering access to music education for children who may not have music programs in their schools at all, and offering instruction for adults who want to learn a musical instrument or advance their musical skills. In addition to Opus 118's traditional violin program, the expanded curriculum includes viola, cello, piano, guitar, chorus and early childhood music education.
Opus 118 Harlem School of Music expanded their reach even further in 2008 by creating the Community Programs Initiative which partners Opus 118 with local communities, organizations and schools to bring music classes and performances to even more people in the community. Opus 118 students play for local hospitals and special events while the faculty brings music education to after-school programs and early childhood music education to Head Start Programs.

What started in one Harlem classroom now affects thousands of children, here in New York and in other cities that have taken inspiration from the Opus 118 story.
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Roberta Guaspari (born September 15, 1947) is an American violinist and music teacher in Harlem, New York.

Early life

Roberta grew up in a working-class family in Rome, New York. She graduated with a music education degree from the State University of New York at Fredonia in 1969. She created a scholarship there in 2008.

Career

She co-founded Opus 118, a school of music that provides music instruction and teacher development. A documentary film, Small Wonders (directed by Allan Miller), and a movie, Music of the Heart (starring Meryl Streep as Roberta) soon followed, depicting Guaspari’s struggle to keep music in the Harlem schools.

Awards

Links

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Bill T. Jones

In 2003 Bill T. Jones was awarded The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, one of the richest prizes in the arts, given annually to...
“a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.”
BILL T. JONES, a multi-talented artist, choreographer, dancer, theater director and writer, has received major honors ranging from a 1994 MacArthur “Genius” Award to Kennedy
Center Honors in 2010. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2009 and named “An Irreplaceable Dance Treasure” by the Dance Heritage Coalition in 2000. His ventures into Broadway theater resulted in a 2010 Tony Award for Best Choreography in the critically acclaimed FELA!, the new musical co-conceived, co-written, directed and choreographed by
Mr. Jones. He also earned a 2007 Tony Award for Best Choreography in Spring Awakening as well as an Obie Award for the show’s 2006 off-Broadway run. His choreography for the off-Broadway production of The Seven earned him a 2006 Lucille Lortel Award.                       

Bill T. Jones / Photo: Lois Greenfield
Mr. Jones began his dance training at the State University of New York at Binghamton (SUNY), where he studied classical ballet and modern dance. After living in Amsterdam, Mr. Jones returned to SUNY, where he became co-founder of the American Dance Asylum in 1973. In 1982 he formed the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company (then called Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane & Company) with his late partner, Arnie Zane. In 2010, Mr. Jones was named Executive Artistic Director of New York Live Arts, a new model of artist-led, producing/presenting/touring arts organization unique in the United States that was formed by a merger of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Dance Theater Workshop.                                       

In addition to creating more than 140 works for his own company, Mr. Jones has received many commissions to create dances for modern and ballet companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Boston Ballet, Lyon Opera Ballet, and Berlin Opera Ballet, among others. In 1995, Mr. Jones directed and performed in a collaborative work with Toni Morrison and Max Roach, Degga, at Alice Tully Hall, commissioned by Lincoln Center’s Serious Fun Festival. His collaboration with Jessye Norman, How! Do! We! Do!, premiered at New York’s City Center in 1999.

His work in dance has been recognized with the 2010 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award; the 2005 Wexner Prize; the 2005 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement; the 2003 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize; and the 1993 Dance Magazine Award. His additional awards include the Harlem Renaissance Award in 2005; the Dorothy B. Chandler Performing Arts Award in
1991; multiple New York Dance and Performance Bessie Awards for his works The Table Project (2001), The Breathing Show(2001), D-Man in the Waters (1989) and the Company’s groundbreaking season at the Joyce Theater (1986). In 1980, 1981 and 1982, Mr. Jones was the recipient of Choreographic Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1979 he was granted the Creative Artists Public Service Award in Choreography.

Mr. Jones was profiled on NBC Nightly News and The Today Show in 2010 and was a guest on the Colbert Report in 2009. Also in 2010, he was featured in HBO’s documentary series MASTERCLASS, which follows notable artists as they mentor aspiring young artists. In 2009, Mr. Jones appeared on one of the final episodes of Bill Moyers Journal, discussing his Lincoln suite of works. He was also one of 22 prominent black Americans featured in the HBO documentary The Black List in 2008. In 2004, ARTE France and Bel Air Media produced Bill T. Jones-Solos, highlighting three of his iconic solos from a cinematic point of view. The making of Still/Here was the subject of a documentary by Bill Moyers and David Grubin entitled Bill T. Jones: Still/Here with Bill Moyers in 1997. Additional television credits include telecasts of his works Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land (1992) and Fever Swamp (1985) on PBS’s “Great Performances” Series. In 2001, D-Man in the Waters was broadcast on the Emmy-winning documentary Free to Dance.
Bill T. Jones / Photo: Shavar
Bill T. Jones’s interest in new media and digital technology has resulted in collaborations with the team of Paul Kaiser, Shelley Eshkar and Marc Downie, now known as OpenEnded Group. The collaborations include After Ghostcatching - the 10th Anniversary re-imagining of Ghostcatching (2010, SITE Sante Fe Eighth International Biennial); 22 (2004, Arizona State University’s Institute for Studies In The Arts and Technology, Tempe, AZ); andGhostcatching - A Virtual Dance Installation (1999, Cooper Union, New York, NY).

He has received honorary doctorates from Yale University, Art Institute of Chicago, Bard College, Columbia College, Skidmore College, the Juilliard School, Swarthmore College and the State University of New York at Binghamton Distinguished Alumni Award, where he began his dance training with studies in classical ballet and modern dance.

In addition to his Company and Broadway work, Mr. Jones also choreographed Sir Michael Tippet's New Year (1990) for Houston Grand Opera and Glyndebourne Festival Opera. HisMother of Three
Sons was performed at the Munich Biennale, New York City Opera and the Houston Grand Opera. Mr. Jones also directed Lost in the Stars for the Boston Lyric Opera. Additional theater projects include co-directing Perfect Courage with Rhodessa Jones for Festival 2000 in 1990. In 1994, he directed Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain for The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, MN.
                                       


http://www.newyorklivearts.org/company/bill-t-jones.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_T._Jones

Nick Vujicic - Life Without Limbs


Of the many people I have come to know, appreciate and value, Nick Vujicic is one that is at the top of my list to be one of my Living Heroes.

Here's why...

Imagine being born without arms. No arms to wrap around someone, no hands to experience touch, or to hold another hand with. Or what about being born without legs? Having no ability to dance, walk, run, or even stand on two feet. Now put both of those scenarios together: no arms and no legs. What would you do? How would that effect your everyday life?

Nick Vujicic... Born in 1982 in Melbourne, Australia, without any medical explanation or warning, Nicholas Vujicic (pronounced Voy-a-chich) came into the world with neither arms nor legs. Having had an uneventful pregnancy and no family history to expect this condition, imagine the shock his parents felt when they saw their first born, brand new baby boy, only to find he was what the world would consider imperfect and abnormal. A limbless son was not what nurse Dushka Vujicic, and her husband Pastor Borris Vujicic had been expecting. How would their son live a normal happy life? What could he ever do or become when living with what the world would see as such a massive disability? Little did they know that this beautiful limbless baby would one day be someone who would inspire and motivate people from all walks of life, touching lives all over the world.

Throughout his childhood Nick dealt not only with the typical challenges of school and adolescence such as bullying and self-esteem issues; he also struggled with depression and loneliness as he questioned why he was different to all the other kids surrounding him; why he was the one born without arms and legs. He wondered what was the purpose behind his life, or if he even had a purpose. After a lot of frustration and feeling like the odd one out in school, at seven years of age Nick tried out some specially designed electronic arms and hands, in hopes that he would be more like the other kids. During the short trial period of the electronic arms, Nick realized that even with them, he was still unlike his peers at school, and they turned out to be much too heavy for Nick to operate, effecting his general mobility quite significantly.

As Nick grew up he learned to deal with his disability and started to be able to do more and more things on his own. He adapted to his situation and found ways to accomplish tasks that most people could only do by using their limbs, such as cleaning teeth, brushing hair, typing on a computer, swimming, playing sports, and much more. As time went by Nick began to embrace his situation and achieve greater things. In grade seven Nick was elected captain of his school and worked with the student council on various fund-raising events for local charities and disability campaigns.

According to Nick, the victory over his struggles throughout his journey, as well as his passion for life can be credited to his faith, his family, his friends and the many people he's encountered during his life who have encouraged him along the way. (read more about Nick at http://attitudeisaltitude.com/aboutus-nick.php )
What I will learn from Nick as I endeavor on MY journey...

It has been an interesting and wonderful journey to learn about Nick. Reading his work and watching his videos, I believe I have laughed AND cried a lot and experienced all kinds of emotions … 

As I begin this new year and endeavor to use my gifts and talents to serve, I am inspired by Nick and heart to love and serve. This last year has been an eye opening experience as my life's purpose became clearer. I knew that there was work to be done and that I was designed for such a time as this, however it was not as clear as it is now. The life experiences and the people that God has orchestrated in my life.

I am looking forward to serving my community and my dream is to create a holistic leadership training program that can be implemented anywhere there is a need and desire for such programs. I have no idea when this is going to happen, I am not even prepared (financially) for it, but I know God is bigger than my doubts, fears and uncertainties.

Knowing Living Heroes like Nick inspires me to be courageous and pursue this work knowing that it will makes a difference…

Thank you Nick

Find out more about Nick by visiting the following links:

Dr. Patch Adams

Medical doctor; Clown; Performer; Social Activist; Founder and Director of the Gesundheit Institute, a holistic medical community that has provided free medical care to thousands of patients since it began in 1971; Author of Gesundheit! & House Calls; Moving Speaker.


Patch is both a medical doctor and a clown, but he is also a social activist who has devoted 30 years to changing America's health care system, a system which he describes as expensive and elitist.
He believes that laughter, joy and creativity are an integral part of the healing process and therefore true health care must incorporate such life. Doctors and patients in his model relate to each other on the basis of mutual trust, and patients receive plenty of time from their doctors. Allopathic doctors and practitioners of alternative medicine will work side by side. If you think that all sounds like a utopian impossibility, it isn't. Patch and his colleagues practiced medicine at the Gesundheit Institute together in West Virgina that way for 12 years in what he calls their pilot project. They saw 15,000 patients. Patch Adams has devoted his life to the study of what makes people happy.
Through the success of this program at the Arlington, Virginia location, a model health care facility is being planned on 310 acres purchased in Pocahontas County, WV. The Institute will include a 40-bed hospital, a theater, arts and crafts shops, horticulture and vocational therapy. Over five years ago, Dr. Adams and staff temporarily stopped seeing patients so that they could coordinate plans for raising $5 Million needed for the Institute's permanent and expanded home, a model health care community. Currently planned is an immediate phase of this dream, a $400,000 WV facility so that their medical service to patients can resume within the next two years.
The Institute addresses, by action, four major issues in health care delivery: the rising cost of care, dehumanization of medicine, malpractice suits, and abuses of third-party insurance system.

Dr. Adams adds to his training as a physician, his experience as a street clown. In working with health and mental health professionals, he explores the relationship between humor and therapy using his unique blend of knowledge, showmanship and hands on teaching techniques. Says Dr. Adams, I interpret my experience in life as being happy. I want, as a doctor, to say it does matter to your health to be happy. It may be the most important health factor in your life. Patch Adams, M.D., is a nationally known speaker on wellness, laughter, and humor as well as on health care and health care systems. He approaches the issues of personal, community, and global health with zestful exuberance, according to Time Magazine.

Dr. Adams believes that the most revolutionary act one can commit in our world is to be happy.

Patch's Awards and Prizes

  • World Humor, Rufus C Browning Award, 1987
  • The Temple Award of Creative Altruism, Institute of Noetic Sciences, 1993
  • The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award, 1997
  • 1st Annual Doug Fletcher Lifetime Achievement Award in Therapeutic Humor, American Association of Therapeutic Humor, 1999
  • Humanitarian Award Oasis Hospital 1999
  • The Jude Award—Heal the People, Heal the World, 1999
  • The Chapel of Four Chaplains Legion of Honor Annual Humanitarian Award, 2000
  • The Caring Institute's National Caring Award, 2000
  • Assisi St. Francis Pilgrim of Peace Award, 2000
  • University of South Carolina The Search for Six Award, 2001
  • Frederick II Peace Award, 2002
  • Joe Thorne Gilbert MD Lectureship, University of Texas, 2002-03
  • Humanitarian of the Year 2003, Christian Connections for International Health
  • Death Penalty Focus, Norman Felton and Denise Aubuchon Humanitarian Award, 2003
  • American Medical Student Association Health Justice Award, 2006
  • Bastyr Naturopathic University, Honorary Doctorate of Naturopathic medicine, 2006
  • University of Bologna Honorary Doctorate of Pedagogy, 2007
  • International Lion's Club Foundation, Melvin Jones Fellow for Humanitarian Services, 2007
http://www.patchadams.org/

Nelson Mandela


Nelson Mandela remains one of the world's most revered statesman, who led the struggle to replace the apartheid regime of South Africa with a multi-racial democracy.

Despite many years in jail, he emerged to become the country's first black president and to play a leading role in the drive for peace in other spheres of conflict. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
Since stepping down as president in 1999, Mr Mandela has become South Africa's highest-profile ambassador, campaigning against HIV/Aids and securing his country's right to host the 2010 football World Cup.

Mr. Mandela has also been actively involved in peace negotiations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and other African countries.

He joined the African National Congress in 1943, first as an activist, then as the founder and president of the ANC Youth League.Eventually, after years in prison, he also served as its president.
Mr Mandela qualified as a lawyer and in 1952 opened a law practice in Johannesburg with his partner, Oliver Tambo. Together, Mandela and Tambo campaigned against apartheid, the system devised by the all-white National Party which oppressed the black majority. In 1956, Mr Mandela was charged with high treason, along with 155 other activists, but the charges against him were dropped after a four-year trial.

The ANC was outlawed in 1960 and Nelson Mandela went underground. Tension with the apartheid regime grew, and soared to new heights in 1960 when 69 black people were shot dead by police in the Sharpeville massacre. It was the end of peaceful resistance and Mr. Mandela, already national vice-president of the ANC, launched a campaign of sabotage against the country's economy. He was eventually arrested and charged with sabotage and attempting to violently overthrow the government. Conducting his own defence, Mr Mandela used the stand to convey his beliefs about democracy, freedom and equality. "I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities," he said. "It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." In the winter of 1964 he was sentenced to life in prison.
He remained in prison on Robben Island for 18 years before being transferred to Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland in 1982.

In 1980, Mr. Tambo, who was in exile, launched an international campaign to release Mr Mandela. The world community tightened the sanctions first imposed on South Africa in 1967 against the apartheid regime. The pressure produced results, and in 1990, President FW de Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC, and Mandela was released from prison.

In December 1993, Mandela and de Klerk were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Five months later, for the first time in South Africa's history, all races voted in democratic elections and Nelson Mandela was elected president.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation develops initiatives that advance the understanding of social change and human development, with particular attention on making a difference on the HIV/AIDS issue and improving the situation of children in rural schools.

http://www.nelsonmandela.org

Amy Kalafa


Amy Kalafa is the Producer / Director of Two Angry Moms. Since childhood, Amy has been passionate about social justice and environmental issues. She is now compelled to express that passion by speaking out as an Angry Mom fighting for the health of America's kids.
For over 15 years, Amy has produced award-winning films, television programs and magazine articles in the field of health education. Amy's production credits include three seasons of Dr. T. Berry Brazelton's parenting show, "What Every Baby Knows", PBS specials, "Our Nation's Health: A Matter of Choice" and "Healthy Aging", as well as the Reiner Foundation's, "The First Years Last Forever". She has produced food and health segments for "Martha Stewart Living" and has appeared as a guest chef on PBS's, "Cultivating Life".

Amy holds a Lectureship at the Yale School of Medicine and Psychiatry for her work in the field of health communication, particularly in recognition of a series she created for Court TV, "Inside the Criminal Mind". As a subcontractor, Amy has worked on numerous training films for Yale University and the US Department of Education. She is the Executive Producer of a grant-funded project, "The Trauma Business" in cooperation with the New York State Psychiatric Center and Columbia University.

Amy is also a holistic health and nutrition counselor and a Lyme Disease consultant. Her advocacy work extends to her personal life as well. She served a four-year term on the advisory board of the Weston / Westport Health District's CDC funded "Target Lyme" prevention initiative and she is a founding board member of the AIDS Treatment Data Network, a certified Kripalu Yoga teacher and an organic farmer. Amy and her husband, filmmaker Alex Gunuey, have two daughters who have always "brought" their lunch to school.

As one half of the dynamic duo Two Angry Moms Filmmaker Amy Kalafa is on a mission to transform school lunch programs and the school lunch environment, around the country, one school at a time. Amy and Susan Rubin, the other half of Two Angry Moms, are winning fans and making a huge difference in the way our kids eat and ultimately expanding the possibility that they will lead healthy lives.




Rubin "Hurricane" Carter


Rubin Carter was born May 6, 1937, in Clifton, New Jersey. n 1966, at the height of his boxing career, Carter was wrongly convicted twice of a triple murder and imprisoned for nearly two decades. During the mid-1970s, his case became a cause celébrè for a number of civil rights leaders, politicians, and entertainers. He was ultimately exonerated in 1985.

Early Life

Athlete. Born May 6, 1937, in Clifton, New Jersey. In 1966, at the height of his boxing career, Carter was wrongly convicted—twice—of a triple murder and imprisoned for nearly two decades. During the mid-1970s, his case became a cause celébrè for a number of civil rights leaders, politicians, and entertainers. He was ultimately exonerated, in 1985, after a United States district court judge declared the convictions to be based on racial prejudice.

Carter, who grew up in Paterson, New Jersey, was arrested and sent to the Jamesburg State Home for Boys at age 12 after he attacked a man with a Boy Scout knife. He claimed the man was a pedophile who had been attempting to molest one of his friends. Carter escaped before his six-year term was up and in 1954 he joined the Army, where he served in a segregated corps and began training as a boxer.

He won two European light-welterweight championships and in 1956 returned to Paterson with the intention of becoming a professional boxer. Almost immediately upon his return, police arrested Carter and forced him to serve the remaining 10 months of his sentence in a state reformatory.

Rise to Boxing Fame

In 1957, Carter was again arrested, this time for purse snatching; he spent four years in Trenton State, a maximum-security prison, for that crime. After his release, he channeled his considerable anger, towards his situation and that of Paterson's African-American community, into his boxing—he turned pro in 1961 and began a startling four-fight winning streak, including two knockouts. For his lightning-fast fists, Carter soon earned the nickname "Hurricane" and became one of the top contenders for the world middleweight crown. In December 1963, in a non-title bout, he beat then-welterweight world champion Emile Griffith in a first round KO. Although he lost his one shot at the title, in a 15-round split decision to reigning champion Joey Giardello in December 1964, he was widely regarded as a good bet to win his next title bout.

As one of the most famous citizens of Paterson, Carter made no friends with the police, especially during the summer of 1964, when he was quoted in The Saturday Evening Post as expressing anger towards the occupations by police of black neighborhoods. His flamboyant lifestyle (Carter frequented the city's nightclubs and bars) and juvenile record rankled the police, as did the vehement statements he had allegedly made advocating violence in the pursuit of racial justice.

Arrest for Triple Homicide

Carter was training for his next shot at the world middleweight title (against champion Dick Tiger) in October 1966 when he was arrested for the June 17th triple murder of three patrons at the Lafayette Bar & Grill in Paterson. Carter and John Artis had been arrested on the night of the crime because they fit an eyewitness description of the killers ("two Negroes in a white car"), but they had been cleared by a grand jury when the one surviving victim failed to identify them as the gunmen. Now, the state had produced two eyewitnesses, Alfred Bello and Arthur D. Bradley, who had made positive identifications. During the trial that followed, the prosecution produced little to no evidence linking Carter and Artis to the crime, a shaky motive (racially-motivated retaliation for the murder of a black tavern owner by a white man in Paterson hours before), and the only two eyewitnesses were petty criminals involved in a burglary (who were later revealed to have received money and reduced sentences in exchange for their testimony). Nevertheless, on June 29, 1967, Carter and Artis were convicted of triple murder and sentenced to three life prison terms.

While incarcerated at Trenton State and Rahway State prisons, Carter continued to maintain his innocence by defying the authority of the prison guards, refusing to wear an inmate's uniform, and becoming a recluse in his cell. He read and studied extensively, and in 1974 published his autobiography, The 16th Round: From Number 1 Contender to Number 45472, to widespread acclaim. The story of his plight attracted the attention and support of many luminaries, including

Bob Dylan, who visited Carter in prison, wrote the song "Hurricane" (included on his 1976 album, Desire), and played it at every stop of his Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Prizefighter Muhammad Ali also joined the fight to free Carter, along with leading figures in liberal politics, civil rights, and entertainment.

Trial and Support

In late 1974, Bello and Bradley both separately recanted their testimony, revealing that they had lied in order to receive sympathetic treatment from the police. Two years later, after an incriminating tape of a police interview with Bello and Bradley surfaced and The New York Times ran an exposé about the case, the New Jersey State Supreme Court ruled 7-0 to overturn Carter's and Artis's convictions. The two men were released on bail, but remained free for only six months—they were convicted once more at a second trial in the fall of 1976, during which Bello again reversed his testimony.
Artis (who had refused a 1974 offer by police to release him if he fingered Carter as the gunman) was a model prisoner who was released on parole in 1981. Although lawyers for Carter continued the struggle, the New Jersey State Supreme Court rejected their appeal for a third trial in the fall of 1982, affirming the convictions by a 4-3 decision. Inside the prison walls, Carter had long since recognized his need to resign himself to the reality of his situation. He spent his time reading and studying, and had little contact with others. During his first 10 years in prison, his wife, Mae Thelma, stopped coming to see him at his own insistence; the couple, who had a son and a daughter, divorced in 1984.
Beginning in 1980, Carter developed a relationship with Lesra Martin, a teenager from a Brooklyn ghetto who had read his autobiography and initiated a correspondence. Martin was living with a group of Canadians who had formed an entrepreneurial commune and had taken on the responsibilities for his education. Before long, Martin's benefactors, most notably Sam Chaiton, Terry Swinton, and Lisa Peters, developed a strong bond with Carter and began to work for his release. Their efforts intensified after the summer of 1983, when they began to work in New York with Carter's legal defense team, including lawyers Myron Beldock and Lewis Steel and constitutional scholar Leon Friedman, to seek a writ of habeas corpus from U.S. District Court Judge H. Lee Sarokin.

Life After Prison

On November 7, 1985, Sarokin handed down his decision to free Carter, stating that "The extensive record clearly demonstrates that [the] petitioners' convictions were predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure." The state continued to appeal Sarokin's decision—all the way to the United States Supreme Court—until February 1988, when a Passaic County (NJ) state judge formally dismissed the 1966 indictments of Carter and Artis and finally ended the 22-year long saga.

Upon his release, Carter moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, into the home of the group that had worked to free him. He worked with Chaiton and Swinton on a book, Lazarus and the Hurricane: The Untold Story of the Freeing of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, published in 1991. He and Peters were married, but the couple separated when Carter moved out of the commune. The former prizefighter, who was given an honorary championship title belt in 1993 by the World Boxing Council, now serves as director of the Association in Defense of the Wrongfully Convicted, headquartered in his house in Toronto. He also serves as a member of the board of directors of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta and the Alliance for Prison Justice in Boston.

In 1999, widespread interest in the story of Rubin Carter was revived with a major motion picture, The Hurricane, directed by Norman Jewison and starring Denzel Washington.The movie was largely based on Carter's 1974 autobiography and Chaiton and Swinton's 1991 book, which was re-released in late 1999. In 2000, James S. Hirsch published a new authorized biography, Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter.

Rubin Carter

APA Style Rubin Carter. (2012). Biography.com. Retrieved 09:32, Jan 01, 2012 from http://www.biography.com/people/rubin-carter-9542248
Harvard Style Rubin Carter [Internet]. 2012. http://www.biography.com/people/rubin-carter-9542248, January 01
MLA Style" Rubin Carter." 2012. Biography.com 01 Jan 2012, 09:32 http://www.biography.com/people/rubin-carter-9542248
MHRA Style' Rubin Carter', Biography.com,(2012) http://www.biography.com/people/rubin-carter-9542248 [accessed Jan 01, 2012]
Chicago Style" Rubin Carter," Biography.com, http://www.biography.com/people/rubin-carter-9542248 (accessed Jan 01, 2012).
CBE/CSE Style Rubin Carter [Internet]. Biography.com; 2012 [cited 2012 Jan 01]. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/rubin-carter-9542248.
Bluebook Style Rubin Carter, http://www.biography.com/people/rubin-carter-9542248 (last visited Jan 01, 2012).
AMA Style Rubin Carter, http://www.biography.com/people/rubin-carter-9542248 (last visited Jan 01, 2012).

Justin Hines


Justin Hines is a Canadian singer-songwriter who was born in Newmarket, Ontario.

Hines has a rare genetic joint condition called Larsen's syndrome and uses a wheelchair. He is a strong supporter of charity and has performed at many fund raising events. He founded the Justin Hines Foundation, a charitable foundation for people with disabilities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Hines
http://www.justinhines.com/