Results tagged “secondlanguage”

Mayor Bloomberg has been learning Spanish since becoming Mayor, and the NY Times observed one of his lessons with tutor Luis Cardozo. Cardozo had been a lawyer in Colombia, but in NYC (he immigrated in 1999 to flee the violence), he runs a language school. The lessons are casual conversations, with Mayor Bloomberg driving the discussion and Cardozo gently correcting the mayor. The Mayor hopes to be fluent by next year. And back in 2005, Post reporter Sandra Guzman appraised Bloomberg's Spanish in a campaign ad: "Bloomberg's accent is gringo, not in a cowboy way, more like a student who's really trying hard."

Andrew Friedman is co-director of Make the Road by Walking, a Brooklyn-based community-based organization founded in 1997 on the belief that the center of leadership must be within the community. Since then, the organization has grown dramatically and now includes over 600 members, a member-elected board composed of low-income community residents, and a staff of twelve. Over the past 5 years, MRBW has achieved many improvements to the lives of Bushwick residents. They pushed New York City to conform to federal law and provide translation services to non-English speakers in food stamp, welfare, and Medicaid offices, and got dozens of neighborhood employers to pay more than $100,000 in illegally withheld wages to garment workers.

. The Club is at 15 Gramercy Park and the event is free, and open to the public, starting at 8PM.

This week's literary events kick off tonight (1/24) at Housing Works Used Books Cafe (126 Crosby St.), with a reading from Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonorated, edited by Dave Eggers and Lola Vollen. The reading will be followed by a Q&A and a signing, starts at 7PM, and is free.

Allison Bowles, Student

Tomorrow night (Monday May 9th) comedian Colin Quinn (who, if you're like us, you know first from MTV's Remote Control) will headline an evening of stand-up comedy with Todd Barry, Greg Giraldo, and special guests. The evening will be hosted by the comedy duo and Saturday Night Live writers Slovin & Allen.