WAMU 88.5 : About

Community Council Quarterly Meetings and Community Dialogues

Nathasha Lim

The WAMU Community Council will hold its next quarterly meeting Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2013. The meeting will take place at 7 p.m. in the community room at the station, 4000 Brandywine St., NW.

Quarterly Meetings

The WAMU 88.5 Community Council meets four times a year. Meetings are held at the station in the fourth floor community room and are open to the public. Laura M. Chambers is the 2013 Chair of the Council and Kent W. Lynn serves as Vice Chair. Dates and times for the quarterly meetings are posted on our website and announced on-air at least seven days in advance. Links to the minutes of the last three Quarterly Meetings are posted below. For further information, please call Anne Healy at (202) 885-1264 or send an e-mail to ahealy@wamu.org.

Meeting Minutes

Community Dialogues

Every year since its reorganization in 1991, the WAMU Community Council has sponsored a series of discussion meetings with community leaders and experts on a wide variety of issues of concern to our community. These off-the-record discussion meetings provide background information and valuable contacts for the station's news and programming staff. Topics for recent Community Dialogues have included the following: "What's Working in Education in DC;" "Transportation – A Look Into the Future;" "What is the Reality for Youth in the District of Columbia;" "Using Music and Art to Address Social Tension and Help Disparate Groups Communicate;""Changing the American Dream - How the Needs and Expectations of College Students have been Affected by the Downtown in the Economy;" and an exploration of Region Forward, A Comprehensive Guide for Regional Planning and Measuring Progress in the 21st Century."

During 2011 the Council continued its exploration of the challenges and goals put forth in Region Forward. This comprehensive planning guide was prepared by the Greater Washington 2050 Coalition and approved by the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments on January 13, 2010. Among the issues discussed in the 2011 Community Dialogues were “Examining the way in which Community Colleges in Washington Metropolitan Area are Preparing their Students for the Changing Workforce”; “ Cars, Pedestrians and Bicyclists, Can We All Get Along?”, and, “Working to Achieve a More Prosperous Region.”

NPR

When It Comes To Brain Injury, Authors Say NFL Is In A 'League Of Denial'

Brothers Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru take an exhaustive look at how the NFL has dealt with allegations that playing football can lead to brain damage. They say the NFL has repeatedly avoided tying football to brain injury, even as they've given disability payments to former players with dementia-related conditions.
NPR

School Pulls All-Beef Burgers From Menu, Citing Complaints

Students in a Virginia school system are now eating hamburgers with additives in them, after officials heeded their complaints about the appearance and taste of all-beef burgers it had been serving. The burgers that are now being served include a reported 26 ingredients.
NPR

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A partial shutdown of the federal government is now in its seventh day. At the heart of the impasse is a political battle. For the government to re-open, Republicans are insisting on big changes to President Obama's signature health care law. This is not the first time there's been GOP resistance to a new social welfare program that was advocated and signed into law by a Democratic president.
NPR

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Millions of U.S. factory jobs have been lost in the past decade. Now, in North Carolina, high school students are being encouraged to think about taking manufacturing jobs. But this isn't the furniture-making or textile labor of generations past — it's a new kind of highly technical work in aviation.