Summer 2008 update - lots of activities

Greetings to our Salon friends, old and new.

As many of you already know, the Raday Salon went into an unofficial, unexpected state of hibernation for many months last year, when Linda's brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  This was the beginning of quite a difficult year for us. Sadly, Linda's brother passed away in October of 2007. Linda and Michael spent most of 2007 and part of 2008 in the US, where our main focus was spending time with our families.

Since we returned to Budapest this spring, we have gradually been getting back into our activities here and in the region.  Michael hosted two Salons when he first returned to Budapest, and we are looking forward to starting things up again once the summer holiday season is past. In the meantime have been fairly busy with various human rights related projects. Since it has been a while since we've posted, we thought it might be nice to give you all a quick update of what we've been up to lately. 

We have lots of exciting things to share with you all, even before we get to our next Salon.  We'll be posting items and photos about all these activities and more on the blog in the days and weeks to come.  But just to give you all the quick overview, so far this year:

• The Salon had two showings in March and April of the movie NO! to mark International Women's Day/Women's History Month, with about 75 people attending altogether.
• In March, Michael was one of the two facilitators of a training workshop on organizing human rights campaigns, hosted by the Human Rights Students Initiative (HRSI) at the Central European University (CEU).
• Also in March, Michael traveled to Sweden under the auspices of the Swedish Ombudsman office and gave a training for Afroswedes on developing anti-racism programs.
• Michael also did an interview for Swedish public radio on Martin Luther King.
• In April, Michael participated in another event hosted by HRSI, commemorating the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., 40 years ago. Michael showed an episode of the excellent American Civil Rights Movement documentary Eyes on the Prize, followed with presentation and discussion.
• In May, we had a visit from a filmmaker friend of ours, Gail Lloyd, who shared an excerpt of a film project she worked on with a group of US soldiers returned from the war in Iraq who are now protesting the war.
• Also for the third year, Linda served as a coach for HRSI's annual Moot Court activity for CEU students.
• In June, we were guests of the Budapest radio show Legal Alien, which airs on Radiocafe 98.6, where we discussed our Salon, our human rights work, and Roma rights issues.

• 
  Roma Summer Workshop participants

  In July, we hosted a vibrant group of young Romani activists from around the region for a special screening of an episode of Eyes on the Prize. The activity was a part of the European Roma Rights Centre Summer Workshop for Romani Activists, led by ERRC Director for Human Rights Education, Larry Oloomofe
  
• That same weekend, we also participated in the Budapest Gay Pride parade. As most of you know, the parade was only able to go on with police escort, and was attacked by violent extremists -- the Pride marchers were under seige for several hours.
  

• 
  Michael & Linda leading workshop

  And we recently returned from Transylvania, where we served as facilitators for an 8-day youth training on minority rights, diversity, and tolerance, hosted by the Civic Engagement Movement, a Marosvasarhely/Tirgu Mures NGO. We also gave presentations to two other groups (members of a Mures County Community Development Training Course, and the Magyar Erdelyi Ifjak group) on youth activism and community organizing.
• Lastly, just this week, Michael participated in a special roundtable discussion on the crisis in Darfur, held at the Sziget music festival here in Budapest.

And, the big news is that we'll have two special guests on hand in September. For those of you long-time friends of the Salon, you'll be familiar with the documentary film NO!, which we have screened on several occasions over the years. It is our great pleasure to share with you that the filmmaker herself, Aishah Shahidah Simmons (Michael's daughter) will be paying us a visit in September, so we will plan to have a special screening, complete with Director Q-&-A, while she is here. Also coming with Aishah is her partner Monica Dillon, a jazz pianist, vocalist, composer and performer. We are currently trying to arrange performance opportunities for Monica as well. (If any of you have any relevant contacts or ideas on that score, please do contact us.)

One more piece of news we have for you, not directly related to the Salon, is that there will soon be an new voice on the Budapest radio scene. In a project that grew out of our appearance on the Legal Alien radio show, Michael will soon be hosting a new soul music show on Radiocafe 98.6. The station aired a preview of the show on August 5th, and the response has been extremely positive. The new hour-long show, which is expected to begin in September, is currently titled "Soul School" and will air once a week on Radiocafe. Once we have all the details, we, of course, will let you all know when you can listen in.

We will be having our first events of the new "season" in September, and will send out detailed invitations as we get closer to the date. In the meantime, we hope everyone's doing well and enjoying the summer.

To keep up to date on Salon events ensure you get all our invitations, don't forget to join the Raday Salon mailing list.