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With Trump-era tax breaks, Krens’ museum-theme park bid now stands to remake North Adams’ downtown; 2,000 spinoff jobs forecast

A sweeping theme-park-for-art vision of a economic and cultural transformation of the Greylock region – 2,000 new jobs and up to $180 million annually added to the economy, and tax-breaks for investors — was detailed for the first time in a public forum on Sunday by art entrepreneur Thomas Krens.

Krens spoke to a full-house audience at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., in the final of four lectures since fall about his career from Williams College professor to head of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and years helping create large-scale museum projects worldwide.

GO TO THE GREYLOCK INDEPENDENT TO LEARN MORE  . . .  

COMMUNITY: How shall we define? Let us count the ways — nine at TedX North Adams

How many ways can we build community? Sharing water, theater, books, music, food, family, arts education or hip hop and “stepping” dance?   Nine speakers and performers each took 20 minutes on Saturday to describe a form of community.

It was the second-annual TEDx North Adams event held in Studio 10 at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MassMoCA). Under rules of the national TedX nonprofit, the North Adams effort, in its second year, was limited to only 100 tickets sold, but next year they’ll be authorize to sell more. The Studio B 10 at MassMoCA was organized like a cafe.

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE GREYLOCK INDEPENDENT 

VIDEO: Entrepreneur Ralph Brill details "Hobbit-style" Greylock Glen and downtown Adams eco-tech-bike tourism in Bascom Lodge video

ADAMS, Mass. -- Entrepreneur Ralph Brill unveil details of his proposal for a bicycle-and-virtual reality reinvention of Adams' business district -- and a "Hobbit-inspired" Greylock Glen -- in a public discussion atop Mount Greylock.  

Brill's April 6 talk was entitled: "What do Hobbits, Ilvermorny and Bicycle Shops Have in Common in the New Adams." Brill's proposal is pending before town boards and selectmen in Adams and he revealed some details in December. Brill's key argument is that the town needs to embrace the use of the former Adams Memorial Middle School as a hostel and new-media education center in conjunction with the Glen and with bicycle-oriented eco-tourism. He has even suggested the town be renamed, "New Adams" as a way of emphasizing its new focus and image.

Video of the roughly one-hour talk, broken into three segments can be viewed at these YouTube URLs: 

https://youtu.be/_dYJ2IjguXs (Part 1, about 11 minutes) 

 

https://youtu.be/QpslJ1QzxS0  (Part 2, about 25 minutes) 

 

https://youtu.be/16FDK84n1Rs  (Part 3, about 20 minutes) 

RALPH BRILL ASSOCIATES
Ralph Brill, President
Box 786
North Adams, MA 01247-0786
413.664 4353
[email protected]

RELATED LINKS: 

• Entrepreneur Ralph Brill files plans for campsite Phase 1 of Greylock Glen -- with some innovative twists 
• Thirteen firms propose helping build Greylock Glen education, ski center; town now mulls Brill’s eco-reality camping bid; Audubon interest affirmed
  
• J.K. Rowling's fictional wizardry school -- "Ilvermorny" -- enchanting the Berkshires
• First magical convention for Ilvermorny held in June in Adams 

Williams College seeks soil samples from Water Street site -- part of museum location study?

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. --  Williams College  is conducting four days worth of soil sampling at a potential Water Street site for a $65-million art-museum complex. However the town, which gave permission for the drilling, says it is not a precursor for any particular project. 

Dustin Humphrey, a geo-technical engineer for a Springfield, Mass.-based speciality geoenvironmental engineering firm said on Wednesday that his firm had been retained by Williams to do the work.  They were on site with a drill rig that has an eight-inch, hole-drilling auger that can take soil samples above bedrock.  He said work by O'Reilly, Talbot & Okun would continue for two more days.

Town Manager Jason Hoch said the town gave permission for the college to hire the sampling work on the town's property. "There more we all know about what is underneath the better," he said, adding that the town has had other testing and work done over the years at the site, and Williams has agreed to share with the town what it learns from the new borings.

"There are a handful of things in play now so I can't say this is a precursor for a particular project," added Hoch. "We've talked about a variety of potential uses on that site, obviously there has been talk in the past about buildings."  The college also has in mind some possible stormwater improvements, Hoch said.

The truck is at the former site of the town's municipal-equipment garage, which was razed and the site is now a gravel parking lot, owned by the town, which abuts Williams property on two sides, including the Spencer Art Building.  The town has permitted various uses on the site since the building was removed.  

A year ago, some 300 people signed petitions opposed to an initial location the college was reviewing as a possibility for the museum building -- at Southworth and Main streets.  That site was subsequently abandoned by the college, after it held a community discussion. The college said it was look at other possible locations. Those have included the site of the current Williams Inn at Field Park. The college owns the inn land and operation and has said it isn't sure what it would do with the property once it completes planned construction of a new hotel at the south end of Spring Street.  In January, a Williams official said the idea of putting the museum at the town garage site was "an interesting scenario." 

Williams College has been invited to comment on this post.

"REwind" multimedia exhibit at Williams invites 'uncomfortable' inquiries about apartheid and U.S. race relations

 
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- For almost two weeks, through April 17, students, faculty and visitors to the Williams College campus are invited to confront the uncomfortable, to disrupt their daily routines to go to a place they don't want to be -- considering, for example, apartheid, and Black Lives Matter.

"We are wanting to disrupt peoples' everyday lives," says Lois Banta, a Williams biology professor who holds the Gaudino Scholar chair. "It's easy to just bob along," she adds, "to think, 'People are dying out there, and I'm worried because I have a paper due tomorrow' . . . but these things are happening. I want these things to intrude in people's lives." 

The "interruption" is a multimedia art-and-music installation in the Williams College Chapel -- seven video monitors looping 3-to-7-minute excerpts from the choral work, REwind: A Cantata for Voice, Tape & Testimony.  The are based on testimonies from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation project. (VIDEO) In addition, each of the seven clips is reproduced in one other open-to-the-public location on campus and town.

The seven video monitors are in Sawyer Library, Hollander Hall, WCMA, '62 Center, Schow, Davis Center and the town's Milne Public Library. 

REwind is not new. It was commissioned  in a 2007 collaboration between two professors at Williams -- Brad Wells and David Eppel -- and artists in South Africa, including husband-and-wife team Gerhard and Maja Marx. This week, the Marx' were on campus, overseeing the Williams installation and lecturing to classes at the invitation of the Gaudino program.

Gerhard, who is a theater director and designer and visual artist in South Africa, says he sees some parallels -- or at least some opportunities for learning -- between his native country's addressing of statutory racial discrimination -- apartheid -- and today's ongoing institutional racism in the United States. "The African National Congress is not the same liberation party that it was," he says. "We are disappointed that things haven't translated on the ground, even though we now have a great constitution." 

Robert Gaudino was a Williams political-science professor in the 1960s and 1970s who challenged his students to go to uncomfortable places and situations that challenged what he called the "borgeoise" upbringng -- living India, Appalachia or predominantly black neighborhoods in Detroit as a semester-long learning experience. The goal of the college's Gaudino Fund is to perpetuate his "emphasis on reflection, confronting our own biases through immersive engagement with otherness and, through that experience, learning to know ourselves more deeply and differently." 

While visiting Williams with a serious purpose, Gerhard Marx took some time to do a favor for the couple's children, ages 3 and 6, back home. Early on Tuesday morning, Marx was observed building a snowman on the edge of Westlawn Cemetery -- it was about 6 degrees Farenheit and there were several inches of snow on the ground, a both extremely rare for April in Williamstown. 

For REwind building locations on the Williams campus,  consult the map outside the driveway entrance to the Security Office located in Hopkins Hall on Main Street (Rte. 2), next to the Thompson Memorial Chapel, or call the Office of Communications (413) 597-4277. The map can also be found on the web at www.williams.edu/map

 

Williams abandons controversial museum site; still looking "on campus," Town Garage site would be "interesting scenario," Puddester says

LISTEN TO AN AUDIO PODCAST OF PUDDESTER’S TALK

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Williams College has abandoned a controversial idea to locate a new, 60,000-square foot art museum at the corner of Southworth and Main streets, a college official said on Wednesday night. Frederick Puddester, the college’s vice president for finance & administration and treasurer, also said a college committee is now looking at other sites “on the campus.”

Puddester also said it would be “an interesting scenario” if the town’s voters were to encourage Williams to purchase for museum use the site of the old town municipal-equipment garage on Water Street.

Puddester’s disclosure came during an hour-long discussion with about 15 people at a meeting of the Williamstown Democratic Town Committee which was held in a conference room at town hall. The No. 2 non-academic administrator at the college took many questions about the college’s building boom, and also quipped briefly about national politics.

“Some folks in town didn’t like that site,” said Puddester. “We met with them as we would have done eventually anyhow, they accelerated that part of the process,   and based on community input, we decided we’re not going to build on that site. That site is no longer being considered for the museum.” But study of other college-owned sites is continuing.   “They are looking at lots of sites,” he said of the campus committee. One audience member asked whether the college would consider seeking to acquire the present site of the Williamstown Savings Bank. Puddester replied that he had no reason to believe it was available.

In a wide-ranging summary of Williams construction plans, Puddester made these points:

• $200-MILLION SCIENCE PROJECT -- Construction will begin soon on a $200-million, two-building science center that will take four years to complete and will include the demolition and replacement of the 52-year-old Bronfman Science Center. At its peak, more than 200 construction workers will be on site. To alleviate public-parking congestion, the college is requiring the contract to provide satellite parking and a shuttle service for the workers.
• SPRING STREET BOOKSTORE -- Ground will be broken this summer on a three-story commercial building at the corner of Spring and Walden streets which will house a new textbook and retail trade bookstore on two stories and office space on the third story. The college will continue to contract with Follett and existing staff to run the bookstore, replacing the Water Street location. The move is part of the college's "continuing efforts to revitalize Spring Street," Puddester said. An in-store café will be run by one of three local restauranteurs to be selected and announced soon. The new store will carry Williams clothing and paraphernalia in competition with Goff’s Sports.
• ZONING CHANGE SOUGHT -- Williams will seek a zoning change by a two-thirds vote of Town Meeting in May before it begins definitive designing for a 100-room hotel at the bottom of Spring Street to replace the current 125-room Williams Inn. Puddester said the college “has no Plan B” should the zoning-change request fail to win voter approval
  .
• ENROLLMENT STEADY -- The college has no plans to expand enrollment. A new 60-bed residence hall nearing completion on Stetson Court is intended to provide “swing space” so the college can more easily manage cyclical renovation of its 37 dormitories and student residence houses.
• NEW ROAD -- Williams perceives town support for construction of a road connecting Walden Street with South Street and would consider donating to the town some of the cost of doing so. Much of the road would be carved out of college-owned land.       Building it now would eliminate the need for tractor-trailers carrying steel beams for the science project to negotiate Spring Street or Hoxsey Street.
• LICKETY SPLIT RELOCATION -- The college hopes to facilitate relocation of the Lickety Split ice-cream parlor in the Denison Gatehouse building elsewhere on Spring Street, because that house would be razed to make room for a new hotel. Puddester observed that all three constituencies served by Spring Street (where he said about 40% of the business are in college-owned buildings) – students, tourists and townsfolk – patronize the Lickety Split.
• MERCHANTS LIKE INN ON SPRING -- Puddester took a number of skeptical questions about the need to construct a hotel at the base of Spring Street. He said Spring Street merchants generally support the location, and the current Williams Inn location, in his view, is too far from Spring Street. He said experts have advised him that the present hotel at Field Park – which the college owns – is not capable of being rebuilt and operated at the same time. During graduation and parents’ weekends, he said, “we need an inn, the college does, and I think the town does at all times.”
• WILLIAMS INN A PARK? -- If a new inn is completed in 2019 or 2020 on Spring Street, said Puddester, the college will thereafter tear down the current Williams Inn. “Our intention, right now, is we’re going to build a park there,” he said in answer to a question about what would be next for that site.
• B&G MOVE 'VERY LONG TERM' -- The college’s Towne Field House is being structurally assessed this year to assist in deciding its future, Puddester said, and it is no longer judged acceptable for holding track meets.       In the long term, Puddester said the college will likely consider replacing it and possibly – “in the very long term” – moving the college’s adjacent facilities building. But by that time, in Puddester’s plan, decisions about a new inn and art museum will already have been made and the buildings, hopefully from his point of view, completed.

MORE DISCUSSION ABOUT MUSEUM SITES

During the discussion, this writer asked if the college would consider the site of the old town municipal equipment garage on Water Street, should Town Meeting voters in May direct that the town undertake negotiations with the college to put the museum there.

Q: “If there were a petition at Town Meeting this year that called on the town to enter into negotiations with Williams to sell the town garage site for use for an art museum or maybe a parking lot to help with all the parking problems, then it would be a site that you would have a reason to pay attention to. What’s your thought about that site?”

A: That is a true statement. It’s kind of a hypothetical. I’m a little leery to answer frankly a hypothetical, but that would be an interesting scenario.” He added shortly thereafter: “People talking about the town garage site, we don’t own it, but as Bill mentions there might be a way we could own it. But believe it or not something important goes on there. It is filled with busses a lot of weekends and a lot of weekdays and I don’t know where those buses go, other than sit on town streets. So, even that, again, for a museum, I don’t want to prejudge the museum project, but that town garage site has beautiful views of our oil tanks, and our smokestack.”

Another questioner asked if the campus committee had considered as a possible museum location the former site of the Williams College children’s day-care center on Park Street (the so-called “1937 House”), a 300-by-120 foot parcel bordered on the south by the St. John’s Church rectory and parish hall and the college’s development office to the north. Puddester said it had not. A museum located there could front on a circular drive and parking lot built to serve the ’62 Center for Theater and Dance.

Neighbors get big turnout at Williams' meetings to discuss $65M museum idea for Southworth Street location

(READ LATER POST)

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Neighbors got a big turnout Dec. 16 when Williams College is holding two public briefings about concepts for possible construction of a new art museum. The college said Friday there is no design, proposal or site picked out yet, but various documents and postings have pegged the cost of the proposed facility at $65 million, that it would be 102,000 square feet and would, from a program point of view only at this point, be ideally located at the corner of Main and Southworth streets.

Thomas Krens, former director of the current Williams College Museum of Art, disclosed last week that architect Steven Holl had been selected to design the museum and that construction would begin in 2017.  However, a college spokesperson, Mary Dettloff, told this blog that Steven Holl Associates "was hired to do a space-utilization and program study only, and not a design." She added: "We have no design."

The public forums ran from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. and from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. in Griffin hall, room 3, on the college campus. They wer announced in an  email circulated five days earlier by Williams Dean of Faculty Denise Buell, Provost Will Dudley and signed by eight other members of an “arts facilities committee.”

The college facilities committee has looked at a half-dozen sites and liked Southworth the best, Dettloff told iBerkshires in a report posted Dec. 1. She said traffic, parking, geology and cost studies remain to be done and will take months and the project has not yet received trustee approval. Some documents circulated about the proposal have included drawings of a 50-car parking lot. Dettoff said there is no firm plan yet for parking and other considerations, including traffic, geology and cost. These would factor into any proposal which might ultimately be made for a Main/Southworth site, if one is made, she said.

The mentioned site is the subject of an iPetitions campaign signed by more than 300 people, many of them Williams faculty and staff, expressing concerns about the Southworth site. Various posts on the iPetition website assert that other locations have been considered and rejected, including the site of the current Williams Inn, the First Congregational Church and the Williamstown Savings Bank.

"There is no site picked out . . . I can't comment on all the rumors on the iPetition site," said Dettloff. "I would say 90 percent are rumors . . . we don't have a building schedule for a building being built in 2017 . . . there was a very early conceptual drawing, but it was immediately rejected by the building committee as being too big. We still don't have a replacement concept for that. There is no concept."

One site not included in deliberations to date, apparently, is the former town garage site on Water Street, a vacant dirt parking lot that abuts the college’s main studio-art building.

The name of the architect selected to design the facility, Steven Holl, was provided last week at a public meeting by Krens, MassMoCA originator and former head of the Guggenheim museums. Krens also said that construction would begin in 2017. Coll’s philosophy yields designs that appear cubist and stark. 

WCMA is known to be working on a name change, which has given rise to speculation that the college may have secured a major gift for the museum expansion. However, Dettloff said "since we have no design, we have not begun fundraising for a new museum."  Some documents in circulation have shown drawings of a four-story museum structure at the Southworth site.

Holl has designed dozens of international works, one of which is an eight-building, Linked Hybrid, a 220,000-square foot mixed used complex in Beijing, China, which includes soaring, multiuse, skybridges similar to what could be used to link his four-story design to the Spencer Studio Art Building and to Spring Street if it were built on the town garage site. The idea of skybridges at the town garage cite to create connection between the college, Spring and Water streets was first suggested years ago by former Town Manager Peter Folin.

There are pictures on the web of Holl-designed skybridges in Copenhagen and Beijing. The New York-based architect’s other commissions include an addition to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and a new art museum at Princeton University, both under construction.

RELATED LINKS:

• Anonymous comment on the unofficial "EphBlog"
• The Williams College Museum of Art 2014 strategic plan

More than 300 signatories join seven residents opposing possible location of new, $64M Williams art museum building

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- More than 300 online "petitioners" have joined seven town residents using Facebook and iPetition to raise awareness of reports that Williams College is considering building a $64-million, 200,000-square-foot facility for its art museum at the corner of Southworth and Main streets. The petition opposes the location.

On Nov. 27, at 8:06 p.m., Stephanie Boyd posted this to her Facebook page: 

Perhaps you are interested in this issue. Williams College is exploring the possibility of building a new college arts complex to house the WCMA art collection and galleries, faculty offices, administrative offices, meeting spaces, viewing rooms, a potential café, and other associated spaces.

The site currently under consideration for this project is located at the northwest corner of Southworth St. and Main St. in Williamstown which is zoned General Residence 2. The project will necessitate the removal of historic properties and greatly diminish the quiet people-friendly nature of Southworth St.

We hope you will read the background material and petition here: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/save-southworth-street

Please feel free to forward this email to your friends and colleagues.Thank you,Henry Art, Williamstown resident and Williams College, Rosenburg Professor of Environmental Studies and Biology; Stephanie Boyd, Williamstown resident and former director of the Williams College Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives;  Betsy Burris, Williamstown resident; Richard D. De Veaux, Williamstown resident and Williams College, C. Carlisle and Margaret Tippit Class of ’42 Professor of Statistics; Sylvia Logan, Williamstown resident; Anne O’Connor, Williamstown resident (and selectwoman); and Catherine McKeen, Williamstown resident.

You're invited: To add your voice to a March 3 dialogue about "rules change" and the American Dream

Hedrick Smith, and his 2012 book

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- This is a personal note from Greylock News blog owner Bill Densmore.

For those who believe that America’s practice of democracy and governance of corporations has gone askew, what is to be done, and who is doing it?  That question underlies the work of a new experiment called The Rules Change Project,  at the borderlines of journalism and advocacy. I’ve been helping with the project for a couple of years.

PRINTABLE PDF HANDOUT 

In his 1960s-era book, Capitalism and Freedom, and a now-famous 1970 New York Times Magazine essay, the free-market economist Milton Friedman wrote:

"There is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."

Fifty years later, things have changed. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren often speaks about today’s economic “rules of the game” as being “rigged against the little guy.”  Exactly which rules are rigged? And if so, what will it take to change them? 

At the same time, legal scholars such as Lynn Stout are revisiting Friedman's now-assumed dictum, launched by Friedman, that the only purpose of a corporation is the maximize profits. In fact, Stout writes in her book, “The Shareholder Value Myth,” there are equal values at stake – involving customers, employees, communities and the environment.

A chance to be heard – March 3

Please join me for a free, public, videotaped discussion, “Rules Change and the American Dream: A Dialog Among Generations,” on Tues., March 3, at 7 p.m. in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall at Williams College. The college’s news release is linked from HERE.

We’ll start by hearing -- via "Skype" -- Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times journalist and PBS-documentarian Hedrick Smith. For two years since the publication of his book, “Who Stole the American Dream,” Smith has been crosscrossing America talking crowds large and small – in some prestigious locations – and he has gotten an earful of concern from those audiences. He’ll set the scene for the Rules Change challenge – telling us why the public feels powerless. He’ll lhave some suggestions for what to do about it, including 10 steps for reviving the American Dream.  

Then Smith – a Williams College alumnus and ex-trustee – will dialogue with three graduating seniors to hear what they learned during a unique Winter Study project.  Working with us at the Rules Change Project, they reviewed hundreds of stories and reports from several years about corporate governance, economics, equity, poverty, divestment, gerrymandering and influence.  They were looking for examples of “Rules Changes giraffes” – people and institutions sticking their necks above the crowd to foster analysis an action that will make our participatory democracy more just and open.

The trio – Mitchell Prevot, Jack Atchue, and Tom Cabarle (pictured above, l-to-r)  are profilng six “rules change giraffes” for the new Rules Change website. They’ll share with Smith vignettes about those six people, and about how their work in January may have changed their life or career perspectives.

Finally we want to talk about the state of the American Dream. What does that mean to you, audience members? And how do we restore it, or reinvent it?  We’ll capture your thoughts on video, for possible inclusion  a short documentary that will advance the Rules Change Project’s reporting.

Besides showing up on March 3, if you’re interested in a broader discussion about – or involvement in – the Rules Change Project, please email Bill Densmore.

ADDITIONAL LINKS: 

• Williams College announcement of March 3 discussion
• Hedrick Smith’s  10 steps for reviving the American Dream
• Hedrick Smith’s author/correspondent/producer web site 
• The Rules Change Project vision

Probing the impact of corporate donations on democracy: Images sets screening, expert discussion on Monday, Aug. 11

PRINTABLE VERSION OF THIS ITEM

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – A live public dialog on the role of corporate donations in American politics -- and the Citizens United decision -- comes to Images Cinema for one night on Monday, Aug. 11 highlighted by a 7 p.m. screening of the new documentary “Citizen Koch."

 The 88-minute documentary, released to theaters in July, will be followed by a live teleconference discussion with the audience and film’s co-director, Carl Deal, and by two Williams College professors, Ralph Bradburd and Justin Crowe. Future-of-media researcher Bill Densmore will moderate.

 “This film – ‘Citzen Koch’ – is an example of a shift in technology and our media ecosystem which allows independent voices to reach diverse audiences at much lower cost than an earlier era of three networks,” says Densmore (EMAIL). “We’ll be assessing with the Images audience the fairness and balance of this example and whether it is effective advocacy.”

 Admission will be by suggested donation, $5-10, which will benefit Images Cinema to cover film exhibition expenses. Images Cinema is located at 50 Spring Street, Williamstown, Mass.

  "Citizen Koch" is billed as a searing exposé on the state of democracy in America and the fracturing of the Republican Party by Academy Award®-nominated directors Deal and Tia Lessin (Trouble the Water; co-producers of Fahrenheit 9/11 & Bowling for Columbine).  The film is in part a case study of the impact of the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court “Citizens United” decision overturning campaign-finance restrictions on corporations. 

 As a case study, the documentary investigates the impact of unlimited, anonymous spending by corporations and billionaires on an anti-union drive and ensuing gubernatorial recall in Wisconsin. It  focuses in part on Charles and Edward Koch, the two Texas oil-industry billionaire philanthropists who  have backed Tea Party and other political initiatives. 

 Orignally, Lessin and Deal were commissioned by mainstream foundations to create the documentary for airing via the Public Broadcasting Service. Critical funding evaporated after they retitled the documentary from “Citizen Corp” to “Citizen Koch.” At that point, PBS station officials allegedly worried about David Koch’s $23 million in giving to public TV. Deal and Lessin then used the online service Kickstarter to raise $170,000, finish the documentary and re-orient its release to theaters.

 After screening the film at 7 p.m., Images will host a panel discussion including: 

• Carl Deal, co-director of “Citizen Koch” (via live link from his New York home), who will describe why the documentary focuses on events in Wisconsin and the president campaign of former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer.
• Williams College economist Ralph Bradburd, who will discuss the incentives for corporations to spend large sums on lobbying or public advocacy.
• Williams College political scientist and Supreme Court scholar Justin Crowe, will summarize the debate over “Citizens United” (and subsequent cases) as well as the political and constitutional issues surrounding corporate policy spending generally.

 Densmore, the session moderator, is a convenor of the Rules Change Project (http://www.ruleschange.org ) and a research fellow to the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism.

 ABOUT IMAGES CINEMA

 The only one of its kind in Berkshire County, Images Cinema is a year-round non-profit, member-supported community film house that presents a wide range of films that impact filmmaking and our culture. Images continuously seeks to entertain, educate and engage the community with quality programming, while maintaining its dedication to independent film and media. Images Cinema serves organic popcorn, real butter, locally-made baked goods, and naturally sweetened sodas, as well as traditional concessions fare. Images Cinema is supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. Check for up-to-date happenings at www.imagescinema.org / Contact: Janet Curran, [email protected] /  413-458-1039 

RELATED LINKS: 

• Discuss issues on Natural Person Facebook page 
• The Rules Change Project website managed by Bill Densmore (under development) 
• Move to Amendment website (advocacy for constitutional amendment) 
• Jeff Clements' book and website: Corporations are Not People

 

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