Sarah Solon

Thank you to everyone who came out last night to support us at the DMI Annual Benefit!

Our benefit was a big success, due in large part to the crowd that showed up to celebrate Martin Luther King's legacy, the work DMI's been putting out and the work we plan to do. As Cornel West said last night, Martin Luther King's legacy is wide, wide enough to include the pro-environment/anti-global warming plans of Mayor Mike Bloomberg and the astute, social-justice-seeking work of Tavis Smiley. It was a pretty rare and pretty powerful thing to have all those people in one room. Not to mention some of my other favorite powerhouses: Rev. Forbes, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Randi Weingarten, and Bill Wachtel. And those were just the people on stage.

In the audience, over 250 people chatted with each other, snacked on deep-fried crab cakes (so good), and cheered the particularly great lines in the presenters' speeches. This blog post is really for you - it means a lot to us that so many people attended our benefit, and showed that they too are interested in out-thinking the Right and in public policy that makes peoples lives better and our economy fairer. The crowd last night was definitely a huge motivation for us to continue doing our work, and doing it well. Thank you.

We'll have photos and transcripts and more multimedia fun from the benefit up soon, but in the meantime here are a few of the best quotes from last night's program:

"My only fear is that we'll call on DMI so much that they'll change their phone number." - Speaker Christine Quinn

"This battle will not just be on the ground. We need to fight this in the intellectual sphere, in the ideological sphere, in the moral sphere." - Cornel West

"Every time I hear the words 'Drum Major,' I think about the best American this country has ever produced, Dr. Martin Luther King." - Tavis Smiley

"DMI's Congestion Pricing paper is one of the best analyses I've seen. Their point about congestion pricing being good for the middle class is a really important part of this conversation." -Mayor Bloomberg

"Rev. Forbes may not be at the Riverside Church any longer, but he's taken on a new title: CSO, our Chief Spiritual Officer" - Bill Wachtel

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Posted at 1:44 PM, Jun 22, 2007 in Drum Major Institute
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