The new movie, Defending Utopia: The News Review at 80, premieres at the Old Greenbelt Theatre on Thursday, November 16 at 7:30 p.m. (advance tickets available at the box office and online). Prior to the film (and after dessert) the program includes three speakers with very different stories to tell.
Megan Searing Young
The first speaker is Megan Searing Young, director of the Greenbelt Museum since 2008. Fascinated by the social history of early Greenbelt, Searing Young is eminently qualified to discuss her topic: The News Review: Communication and Cohesion. She notes that since its founding in 1937, just weeks after the first residents moved into Greenbelt, the Cooperator, now the Greenbelt News Review, has always been much more than just a newspaper. It has reinforced the ideals under which Greenbelt was founded: cooperation, egalitarianism and a dedication to a new way of living. It has been a tool by which those ideals and values were and are transmitted.
Searing Young has curated numerous exhibitions and lectured on many aspects of Greenbelt history. In 2012, she co-authored the book, Images of America: Greenbelt, with Jill St. John. She earned a B.A. in Art History and Women’s Studies from Johns Hopkins University and an M.A. in the History of Decorative Arts from the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Institution and Parsons School of Design program where she focused on early twentieth century design, material culture and social history.
Chris Cherry
Known to many residents as the city’s energetic and creative coordinator for the performing arts, the second speaker, Christopher Cherry, researches his Greenbelt-centric shows in the News Review Office – digging through old copies of the paper for the references he needs. In the summary of his talk, Confessions of an Archive Addict, he notes wryly that, “It started innocently enough with historical research about theater in early Greenbelt.” But once immersed in the archives, Cherry was captivated by the newspaper accounts of every facet of life during the town’s founding year. The optimism and energy that suffused the new town were captured in the Cooperator and persist in the archives, an expanding resource of insight and inspiration for present and future Greenbelters.
Cherry will discuss his odyssey and share the surprising things he discovered, including a connection between Greenbelt and a world-renowned novelist.
Lee Levine, Esq.
The News Review is relieved that the last speaker is addressing us on a festive occasion instead of our being in desperate need of his legal advice.
Lee Levine is a lawyer who operates far from the parochial world of Greenbelt, except for one big connecting idea: his cases often reference First Amendment freedoms. As a result, he constantly encounters a few key decisions that wrote the book on libel, and one is the News Review’s. In describing his talk, Levine says, “In 1964, the United States Supreme Court revolutionized the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press in a case called New York Times v. Sullivan. One of the more significant of the cases spawned by Sullivan was decided in 1970 and involved the GreenSPEAKERS continued from page 1 belt News Review. It established First Amendment-based protections for the press and public that endure to this day.” Levine tells how the Supreme Court came to decide both these cases in a story “drawn from the personal papers of the justices who decided them.” A First Amendment expert, Levine has argued in the Supreme Court on behalf of media defendants and litigated in more than 20 states and the District of Columbia, appearing in most federal appeals courts and in the highest courts of 10 states. He served as an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center from 1989 to 2016 and is lead author of the treatise Newsgathering and the Law, now in its fourth edition. Levine co-authored the casebook Media and the Law and recently, with Professor Stephen Wermiel, co-authored The Progeny: Justice William J. Brennan’s Fight to Preserve the Legacy of New York Times v. Sullivan – based on the personal papers of Brennan and his colleagues.
Chambers USA, a publication ranking law firms and attorneys, has reported that Levine is considered “the greatest First Amendment attorney in the United States” and The Legal 500 wrote that Levine’s “reputation is unparalleled. He is in a class of his own.” Tickets To assure a seat at this onetime-only evening of celebration and insight, stop by the Old Greenbelt Theatre box office or purchase tickets online (convenience fee applies). This story was created out of material provided by the three speaker