Dan Schnur.

Sunday. Oct 12. 4pm.

Dan Schnur is the Director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, where he works to motivate students to become active in the world of politics and encourage public officials to participate in the daily life of USC.

For years, Dan was one of California’s leading political and media strategists, whose record includes work on four presidential and three gubernatorial campaigns. Schnur served as the national Director of Communications for the 2000 presidential campaign of U.S. Senator John McCain and spent five years as chief media spokesman for California Governor Pete Wilson.

Schnur began his political career in the press office of the Reagan-Bush ’84 presidential campaign. He later served as a spokesman for the Bush-Quayle ’88 presidential campaign, and worked in the press offices of the Republican National Committee before moving to California in 1990 to take on the position of Communications Director of the state Republican Party. Following Wilson’s election as Governor that year, Schnur joined the Administration and subsequently served Wilson as both Press Secretary and Communications Director. In 1994, he served as Press Secretary to Wilson’s successful gubernatorial re-election campaign.

In addition to his position at USC, Schnur is an Adjunct Instructor at the University of California at Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. Schnur has also held the post of Visiting Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Institute of Politics at Harvard University and taught an advanced course in political campaign communications at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management. In addition, he was the founder of the Center for Campaign Leadership, a non-partisan effort to equip young people with the skills essential for professional involvement in political campaigns.

He has served as an advisor to the William & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Broad Education Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, and the Stuart Foundation on a variety of K-12 education, college and workforce preparedness, governance and political reform efforts. He is also the Co-Chairman of the Voices of Reform project, a bi-partisan statewide organization devoted to making state government more responsive to the needs of California voters.

Schnur writes a regular column for the New York Times’ political opinion website, Campaign Stops (http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/). His commentaries have appeared in several California newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Sacramento Bee. In addition, he has been an analyst and political commentator for CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and National Public Radio.

Schnur is a graduate of the American University in Washington, D.C.

 

Stephen Rohde

Sunday. Nov 2. 4pm

Steve is a constitutional lawyer, lecturer, writer and political activist. He is a former President of both the ACLU of Southern California and the Beverly Hills Bar Association, Regional Chair of progressive Jewish Alliance and is a founder of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace. He is the author of American Words of Freedom, which explores the origins, history and meaning of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. His most recent book is Freedom of Assembly which is part of the American Rights Series. He is also co-author of Foundations of Freedom published by the Constitutional Rights Foundation and has written numerous articles and book reviews on civil liberties and constitutional history. Mr. Rohde received his B.A. degree in Political Science from Northwestern University in 1966 and his J.D. degree from Columbia Law School in 1969. He is senior partner with the law firm of Rohde & Victoroff in Century City specializing in civil and appellate litigation, intellectual property, communications and civil rights law.

 

4 Young Explosive Poets.

Sunday. Dec 9. 4pm

Eitan Kadosh is one of the funniest and most original voices in the poetry slam nation, having carved a unique niche through a decade of relentless touring, performing, writing, and teaching. He has performed at universities, high schools, bars, festivals, and theatres nationwide, and shared the stage with the like of Nikki Giovanni and Dave Eggers. He won the 1999 National Poetry Slam with team San Francisco, was a core member of the 2000 SlamAmerica Bus tour, filmed for HBO and BET, and is the author of "Too Neurotic! A One-Jew Show About Love, Labor, and Jewish Summer Camp." He received an MFA in poetry from California State University Long Beach and a BA from UC Berkeley.. His work has been published in Nerve, The Atlanta Review, RipRap, SLAB, and 5AM. He currently teaches English at Foshay Learning Center as well as a Judaic Studies class at Temple Beth Hillel.

Rob Sturma has spent the better part of the 21st century writing and performing under the nom de plume Ratpack Slim. Using this alias, he infiltrated the Los Angeles slam poetry scene, first by being a regular at Da Poetry Lounge in Hollywood, and then by becoming the permanent host of Green, a weekly open mic he co-anchored for four years with DJ Jedi and beatboxer Joshua Silverstein. He has been on three nationally ranked slam teams, including making it to the finals stage in 2005 with Team Hollywood. He's performed with a number of luminaries on the spoken word and music scenes, including but certainly not limited to DJ Z-Trip, Buddy Wakefield, Kid Beyond, Mighty Mike McGee, and a cast of thousands. He is a former poetry editor for GetUnderground.com, and wrote and produced a series of webstories for kcet.org called "Children Of Slam". He has two chapbooks available, You Sensitve Bastard and Nerdplay.

Kristan LaVietes is a poet and stay-at-home new mother. Her work has appeared in Pearl, Nerve Cowboy, Texas Poetry Journal, and Isotope, among others. Her baby's work has appeared in Huggies, Pampers, and Seventh Generation.

Mindy Nettifee. Born in Des Moines, Iowa to a minister and a trouble-maker, Mindy Nettifee was doomed from the start. A fixture of the Southern California poetry scene from the time she was old enough to be arrested, she was featured on the cover of NEXT magazine when she was only 15. Mindy went on to become a Grand Slam Champion of the Long Beach/Orange County Poetry Slam, competing on and coaching teams at 5 National Poetry Slam Competitions. She holds Bachelor's Degree in Social Sciences from Chapman University and served for five years on the Five Penny Poets advisory board of literary nonprofit Tebot Bach. Mindy has published five chapbooks through independent small presses such as The Inevitable Press, Instagon and Jinx Publications and in 2006 published her first full length collection Sleepyhead Assassins on Moon Tide Press. Her work has been featured in ISM magazine and the California Poetry Anthology. She is a nominee for the Pushcart Prize. She has a new manuscript in the works forthcoming on Write Bloody Press.