• On Tuesday, February 17th "King in Chicago: Dr. Martin Luther King and the Chicago Freedom Movement" will make its television premiere on WTTW (channel 11 in Chicago) at 10pm. Through interviews and an amazing photo archive the film explores Dr. King's time in Chicago and explores the accomplishments of his push for "open housing". Director, professor, and friend-of-MoveSmart.org Seth McClellan is a highly skilled filmmaker and interviewer; this documentary is not to be missed.
  

MoveSmart.org will be live blogging from the first hearings of the National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. The Commission, created through a joint effort of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund (LDF), the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights (Lawyers’ Comm), the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), will be hosting four day-long hearings around the country to investigate the state of fair housing. Once the hearings are concluded, the Commission will make a series of recommendations for the next administration.

From around 9:00am until 5:00pm CDT on 7.15.08, we’ll be live blogging after the jump and the Miami Valley Fair Housing Center is video streaming the day as well (click here for the ASL video stream). The usual caveats about live blogging apply below.

The previous month was filled with three fantastic and interesting conferences and a slew of other noteworthy items. Below are MoveSmart.org executive director Justin Massa’s brief reflections and links to coverage of NetSquared’s N2Y3, the National Fair Housing Alliance / Leadership Conference on Civil Rights annual conference, and the Community Media Workshop’s (CMW) Making Media Connections.

Previous coverage: day one; day two.

6/10/08, Tuesday

6:15pm: NFHA formally launches the “A Richer Life” media campaign.

6:00pm: On behalf of Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who was unable to make the reception, staffer Candice Cho accepts an award in recognition of Sen. Durbin’s support of the Housing Fairness Act of 2007.

Previous coverage: day one.

Monday, 6/9/08

Note: the final update of today is quite late due to continuing problems with the hotel’s T-Mobile HotSpot and a trip to Ben’s Chili Bowl (how can you pass up chili dogs with civil rights history?).

4:53pm: Shanna Smith provides a litany of the failures of enforcement at a federal level, both at the DOJ and HUD.