The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

TakePart Gang:

Sudan Leader Charged with Genocide: What Are the Reactions? by Wendy Cohen

Inconvenient Truth of the Day: Al Gore Speaks on Climate Change by Joshua Tremblay

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Nicole Hughes:

“Farms in the Sky” a Solution to Global Food Crisis?

Wal-Mart Launches Eco-Bling Project

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Andy Kondrat:

NYC To Bring in 300 Hybrid Taxis Per Month

Coolio To Educate Students On Climate Change

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Jon Popham:

Pickens’ Plan for Energy Independence

On “Rent” Closing, the East Village, and Gentrification

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Gina Telaroli:

Batman Morals: Top 5 Lessons from the Capped Crusader’s Films

Emmy Nominations Kick “The Wire” to the Curb

“Rent” the Broadway musical portraying the bohemian life in NYC’s East Village in the early 1990’s is closing this September. This passing in the cultural life of the city and an article in today’s New York Times examining the changes that have occurred in New York City since the times the show was set in have me reflecting on my own tenure in the Big Apple.

I should start by saying I never saw “Rent“. I’m not much for musicals and in fact have never seen a single one since I moved to New York in 1994 for college. But what I’ve shared with Jonathan Larson’s bohemian epic is a neighborhood: the East Village. A neighborhood that has constantly changed since my arrival in New York City at a speed I never dreamed possible for a piece of land. The East Village intimately introduced me to gentrification, a force that has been a constant throughout my adult life, and a fitting associate, seeing how I fast realized after moving into the area that I was a gentrifier.

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New York City has announced a plan to convert two of Broadway’s four lanes into a public esplanade. The surprise move will turn half of the Great White Way between Herald Square and 42nd Street into public space featuring a dedicated bike lane alongside a pedestrian walkway with room for outdoor cafe seating and plant and flower boxes. The esplanade, which the city is calling Broadway Boulevard, is set to open mid-August of this summer.

This is not the first restructuring of traffic patterns on Broadway this year however. A few weeks ago I noticed for the first time that downtown near City Hall on down to Wall Street, automobile Broadway had been reduced to one lane, with the other lanes dedicated to the city and regional bus lines that bring so many people down to the city’s second largest business district.

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Wanna dance? Wanna dance with thousands of dancers? Then join the 2nd Annual New York Dance Parade on May 17!   With 3,100 dancers performing 29 dance styles, this celebratory event will help heighten public awareness and appreciation of this singularly moving art form.  Here’s a little Samba from last years event:

All are invited to join this kid-friendly event intended to unite, but also raise awareness of the importance of dance in the community.   Registered dance groups already range from ballet to belly dance, B-boy to the rumba, and from salsa to swing.   In addition to the dance companies and individual dancers, colorful floats, live bands and DJs will waltz, tango and pirouette down Broadway from 32nd Street to Tompkins Square Park with a dance festival finale in the park.

To volunteer for the event, register your dance group or to join a dance group  and visit http://danceparade.org/EE/

A Raisin in the Sun, is the groundbreaking 1959 play written by Lorraine Hansberry, the first black woman to have a play produced on Broadway. In 1961, a film version of A Raisin in the Sun was released featuring its original Broadway cast of Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Claudia McNeil, Diana Sands, Ivan Dixon, Louis Gossett, Jr. and John Fiedler. Hansberry wrote the screenplay, and the film was directed by Daniel Petrie.

Tonight the stage goes to screen again as the cast of the 2004 Broadway production of a Raisin in the Sun (Sean Combs, Audra McDonald, Phylicia Rashad, and Sanaa Lathan) reprise their roles for the ABC TV adaptation. Check out this trailer ( and a little promo from Sean Combs aka P. Diddy)

The story is about the Youngers, a family hopping to achieve their American dream while living on Chicago’s South Side in the 1950s. When Lena (Rashad) gets a $10,000 life insurance check, the family must figure out how to best use the money. Walter Lee Jr. (Combs) wants to start a business, his wife Ruth (McDonald) wants a new home, and his sister Beneatha (Lathan) wants to finish up college so she can become a doctor.

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