Campaign for Liberty

## **World Civil Defense Day Open House** **Disaster Preparedness, Community Resilience & Volunteer Response** How prepared is our community for the next emergency? Join us in observance of **World Civil Defense Day** for an educational Open House focused on disaster preparedness, civilian protection, and community resilience. World Civil Defense Day highlights the importance of coordinated response between first responders, volunteers, civic groups, and community members. This event will introduce the work of the **Scientology Volunteer Ministers**, a global humanitarian program dedicated to helping communities before, during, and after crises. ### **What to Expect:** • Self-Guided tour of a special exhibit in the Public Information Center • Overview of disaster response and emergency preparedness efforts • Educational materials and practical information • Open discussion and networking with others interested in community engagement Whether you are interested in emergency preparedness, volunteerism, public safety, or simply want to learn how communities can work together more effectively, this Open House is designed to inform and inspire. ### **Event Schedule:** 11:30 AM – Self-Guided Tour of the Special Exhibit 11:50 AM – Lunch 12:10 PM – Open House Presentation 12:45 PM – Networking & Community Dialogue 📍 Founding Church of Scientology of Washington, DC 1424 16th St. NW Washington, DC 20036 Open to the public. Guests are welcome.

No sign\-ups required \| All levels welcome \| 21\+ If you're looking for a casual game of chess in a fun atmosphere, this event is for you! Members range from beginner to master level, and games are played both with and without time controls. There are dozens of players each week, with only a fraction of the participants registering on meetup. This event is held at a bar, the Board Room, in Washington, DC, and is intended for 21+ players. We meet upstairs, on the mezzanine. Upon arrival, fill out a name tag and indicate your relative skill, to facilitate match-ups. Chess sets and boards are provided. We don't have club clocks, but most people use the Chess Clock app from Chess.com to play timed games.

**bikablo® Basic Day 1 Training** Each year, more than a thousand participants worldwide attend **bikablo® Basic Training:** a method of using simple visuals to facilitate groups and conversations. In a small group of like-minded people, Jill Greenbaum will provide individualized feedback and support to address your unique learning needs. When appropriate, we divide the learning group into teams at different levels. You’ll come to the realization that, “I can visualize – and use it in my job tomorrow!” **This training is for you if...** * you are still convinced that you are not at all talented and still would like to learn how to visualize * you have not yet participated in a visual facilitation training with us * you have a little experience with visualization so far and are looking for an easy way to improve your charts with graphics, symbols, simple figures, and good handwriting to make them more clear, attractive, and lively In this one day training, we focus on the basics of drawing and imagery in visual language: no matter your level of talent or skill, you will take your first visual steps up at the wall and learn how to use small details to make large spaces look clear, attractive, and lively. You'll be working both individually and in small groups.l will take plenty of time to answer your questions and guide you into the world of visual language with hints and techniques suited to figure individual progress. **Our areas of focus:** * Learn to hold the pen, draw clean lines, and structure your space on the flip chart * Create graphics and text containers/geometric shapes, objects and symbols * Discover the easy ways the bikablo® method provides to draw people, roles, groups, and situations * Use simple and fast options to color elements and spaces to support the graphic structure * Combine all the ingredients - graphics, writing, symbols, figures, and color - to create visual, translations of content and meaningful posters for different purposes. Many participants experience a renewed flow of creativity. By working with images and symbols in a new way, they discover a fresh, intuitive approach to expressing ideas. This is not only fun but also valuable—creativity fosters problem-solving, innovative thinking, and finding new perspectives in teamwork. Bring a sketchbook or notebook and your favorite markers. **Lunch:** PACK A LUNCH! We're in a bit of a food desert. **Venue:** Suite 850, 1753 Pinnacle Drive, McLean, VA. **about Jill Greenbaum** https://jillgreenbaum.com Learning, change, and personal transformation are in everything I do. Over time, I have persistently discovered new ways of helping people be their best selves. NOVA Scribes has entered into a partnership with the IFVP: the International Forum of Visual Practitioners! This workshop is an IFVP Learning Lab. All IFVP members have access to Learning Labs at https://ifvpforum.circle.so/c/learning-hub/

Grace will be guest facilitator. "I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my Soul." \-\- Rumi "Authentic spirituality is revolutionary. It does not legitimate the world, it breaks the world; it does not console the world, it shatters it. And it does not render the self content, it renders it undone." \-\- Ken Wilber \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- ***“I am struck with how rare it is to find a few good friends on the path. It is easy to find people who simply want to sit and be entertained by teachers, or who want to sit and entertain by playing the role of teacher. In other words, the quest for affirmation often outweighs the quest for truth.*** ***Yet you may have one or two good friends, and definitely have one or two waiting to be discovered. Find them; be thankful.”*** ***— Shawn Nevins*** 'What will make me happy in life?' ... 'Am I my thoughts?' ... 'What is Enlightenment?' ... We meet every week to ask questions like these in the pursuit of Self-Knowledge and Truth. We are interested in topics like: Zen, stoicism, spirituality, psychology, mindfulness, Nisargadatta, non-violent communication, Socrates, existential philosophy, Alan Watts, taoism, Eckhart Tolle, meditation, Ramana Maharshi, etc. But we are not affiliated with any dogma, philosophy, or religion. Our goal each meeting is to serve as mirrors for one another using question-based inquiry in a safe environment. In a session, every participant takes turns discussing the week's question or topic, and the group asks reflective questions without any agenda besides trying to understand the person's beliefs. A few other guiding principles of our group: * No one is obligated to share * Be honest with yourself and others * Do not try to convince others to believe or think as you do * Keep the focus on the person being questioned We meet at the [Bethesda Library](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GWMozF8zpY1m1PY26) every Monday. The library is a 5 minute walk from the Bethesda Metro on the Red Line, approx 25 minute Metro ride from Metro Center and Gallery Place stations. The library has a a parking lot with metered parking for $1/hour. \*\*\* WE WILL BE IN MEETING ROOM 3 UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED ----- THE MEETING ROOM IS IN THE BACK OF THE LIBRARY \*\*\* Please contact us with any questions!

Come in and sit down at a table to play casual MtG Commander!

Join us at Don Taco in Old Town Alexandria for our first Taco Thursday Happy Hour! Connect with fellow Libertarians in Northern Virginia and the wider DC area for good conversation, drinks, and tacos! We will have a large table in the **upstairs bar area** of Don Taco reserved for us. The Libertarian Party of Northern Virginia is your local affiliate of the national Libertarian Party. Since 1971, the Libertarian Party has been fighting for personal freedom, economic freedom, and peaceful foreign policy. We run candidates for office, advocate for liberty in our community through our presence at local fairs and festivals, and connect fellow DC area libertarians through events like these.

[Profs and Pints Northern Virginia](https://www.profsandpints.com/washingtondc) presents: **“Ireland’s Fight for Freedom,”** with Kevin Matthews, assistant professor of history at George Mason University and former London correspondent for Vatican Radio reporting on British and Irish news. [Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at [https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/northern-virginia-ireland-freedom](https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/northern-virginia-ireland-freedom) .] After centuries of struggle, Irish men and women won their freedom from Great Britain after waging a war that set the pattern for all other independence struggles of the 20th century. But there was a price—the partition of their country, a split setting the stage for the Northern Ireland “Troubles” that didn’t end until 1998. Gain a deeper understanding of Ireland and its history with Professor Kevin Matthews, a historian and frequent Smithsonian Associates speaker who had served as a journalist covering the last stages of the Troubles in Ireland in the early and mid 1990s. He’ll discuss in depth how the Irish won independence in a two-year war between 1919 and 1921, covering topics as the role women played in the conflict, the life and tactics of the revolutionary leader Michael Collins, and the Irish development of “urban guerilla warfare” using small, highly mobile armed units called “flying columns.” Most important, this talk will examine how the conflict between Irish nationalists and Irish unionists led to Ireland’s division and later conflict. From the Easter Rising to the Good Friday Agreement, from Bloody Sunday to Brexit, this conflict has never quite gone away. As the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats once wrote: Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. Professor Matthews will explore how the Irish fought to a standstill what was then the mightiest empire in the world and how, more than he could have known, Yeats’ prediction still rings true today. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.) Image: Members of the Irish Republican Army’s West Connemara Flying Column in 1921. (Public Domain photo.)

*From the [publisher's website](https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324092452)*: *The Second Emancipation*, the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa’s pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild’s contention that French is a “modern-day Copernicus.” The title—referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom—positions this liberation at the center of a “movement of global Blackness,” with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972), at its head. That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is “typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa’s enormous role in the birth of the modern world.” Determined to re-create Nkrumah’s life as “an epic twentieth-century story,” *The Second Emancipation* begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana’s Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French’s consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah’s early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu—including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him “one of the greatest political leaders of our century”—and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947. Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana’s first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah’s radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power. In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, *The Second Emancipation* becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history. ***How to find us:*** We meet in the upstairs seating area at Zorba's in Dupont Circle. Look for a sign on a table with a picture of the book's cover on it. ***Links:*** **[Bookshop](https://bookshop.org/a/91030/9781324092452): By purchasing your book through this link, you help support local bookstores and defray the cost of DCIA's Meetup subscription.** [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Second-Emancipation-Nkrumah-Pan-Africanism-Blackness/dp/1324092459) [WW Norton](https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324092452) [Wikipedia page about Howard French](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_W._French) [Howard French's website](https://www.howardwfrench.com/)

[Profs and Pints DC](https://www.profsandpints.com/washingtondc) presents: **“Trump, Your Rights, and Resistance,”** an overview of the legal landscape in the District of Columbia just over one year into Donald Trump’s second administration, with Scott Michelman, legal director of the ACLU of D.C. and lecturer on law and Shikes Fellow in Civil Liberties and Civil Rights at Harvard Law School. [Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at [https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-trump-rights-resistance](https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-trump-rights-resistance) ] Our nation looks a lot different just over a year after President Trump took office in January 2025. What has actually happened—and what does it mean for our rights? Get an informed breakdown on the civil rights and civil liberties issues that have defined the period since Trump's second inauguration with Scott Michelman, a legal scholar who last January gave an excellent talk on the legal guardrails potentially checking Trump’s actions. He’ll discuss what has been happening with immigration policy, criminal justice reform, domestic military deployment, discrimination, and threats to free speech. He’ll identify troubling patterns, explain where advocates have successfully pushed back in the courts, and outline the unresolved concerns ahead. The talk will also explore what individuals can do next, from understanding their rights to participating in elections that will shape the future of this administration and our country. (Door: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.) Image: The October 18, 2025 “No Kings Day” protest in Washington D.C. (Photo by Geoff Livingston / Wikimedia Commons.)

Curious about DSA? Thinking about joining but want to hear more info first? Attended a few of our events already and ready become a member? Already a member and want to get more involved? If so, this event is for you! You'll learn about DSA, what we do, and how you can get involved in the fight for a brighter future. We'll outline our chapter's structure and our campaigns, working groups, and branches. Our chapter covers the DMV area, including the district, Northern Virginia, and Montgomery County and Prince George's County in Maryland. Unable to join in person? Consider joining [our next virtual orientation](https://actionnetwork.org/events/why-you-should-join-dsa-new-member-orientation-168/) on Wednesday, March 18! Please RSVP on [Action Network](https://actionnetwork.org/events/why-you-should-join-dsa-new-member-orientation-179/) to receive further updates on this event. \* \* \* This event is open to both DSA Members and supporters. Not a Member? Please consider [becoming a Member](https://dsausa.org/join?source=Metro%20DC). Fees are on a sliding scale according to what you feel you can afford.

Meeting Room 2b, Main Library Join us for a welcoming evening of reflection, gentle music, and meaningful conversation. We’ll begin with a short grounding moment, followed by a brief reading from spiritual or philosophical traditions, and an open reflection circle where participants can share (or simply listen). Libera Animae is an interfaith community focused on inner growth, creativity, and authentic connection. We desire to cultivate a space where all questions are welcome and each person is treated with compassion and respect.

The Humanist Monthly Program is our longest running event and still a community favorite. In the old days it used to be called "Going to HCCO" and we still like to think of it as our flagship event. Food and drinks will be provided at the event. Feel free to show up a little bit early to hang out and talk. Our March speakers are Molly Gaines and Zack Parrish, co-organizers of the Secular Education Association: They will share their story of how a small group of Ohio parents grew into a national organization tracking released-time religious instruction and other church–state issues in public schools. The presentation will cover SEA’s early wins and hard lessons, what we’re seeing nationally right now, and how local advocates can play a meaningful role in protecting public education. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of the landscape — and practical ways to get involved. Going forward our meetings will be hybrid. You can meet us in-person or attend online Join Zoom Meeting [https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87836564953?pwd=4Mi57ElZkDIFlb1fnlNwOJ0NiOK4tP.1](https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87836564953?pwd=4Mi57ElZkDIFlb1fnlNwOJ0NiOK4tP.1) Meeting ID: 878 3656 4953 Passcode: 760812 One tap mobile +19292056099,,87836564953#,,,,\*760812# US (New York) +13017158592,,87836564953#,,,,\*760812# US (Washington DC) The formal presentation will start at noon

Interested? Contact Preston Moore k.preston.moore@gmail.com 614-300-5989 ———————————— Engaging in men’s work is the new way to forge friendships while being open-minded to personal growth. Many men experience healthier relationships, personally and professionally, by engaging in this work. Open Men’s Group is a container for men to share vulnerably without receiving judgment or feedback. We believe that emotionally mature, powerful, compassionate, and purpose-driven men will help heal some of society’s deepest wounds. We support the powerful brilliance of men and we are willing to look at, and take full responsibility for, the pain we are also capable of creating – and suffering. We care deeply about men, our families, communities, and the planet. Visit ManKind Project USA to discover more. https://mkpusa.org/

Bring your Raspberry Pi, Arduino, microcontroller, or any other electronic project and join fellow electronics makers for a night of creativity and collaboration! This session is open forum to share your current projects—whether complete or in progress, it’s all interesting! Whether you’re deep into embedded systems, exploring new ideas, or just getting started, you’ll find a welcoming space to collaborate, share, and get inspired. **New to electronics or curious about tinkering?** You’re absolutely welcome. If you’re a beginner and want to experiment, I’ll have a couple of starter kits available so you can try things out—whether that’s blinking your first LED, putting something on a display, or experimenting with simple sensors. No pressure and no experience required—just an interest in learning and building. While we continue to pursue a more permanent venue for this Meetup, we’ll be using public library facilities based on availability. This session will be at the Worthington Park Library in the Olentangy Meeting Room.

This is a time where players of all ages, and skill levels can gather and enjoy a nice Sunday full of Chess!

We may pick a specific topic and post in advance or may discuss current events and various ad hoc topics . We would love to spend time hanging out and getting to know one another. Atheist, agnostics, other non-theists, and atheist-friendly people are welcome to join us. Note: COUNT operates a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/groups/COUNT.discussions (http://www.facebook.com/groups/COUNT.discussions/) to promote discussions among members and visitors.