NOT YOUR AVERAGE HISTORIC PLAQUE UNVEILING

Please join us on Tuesday April 14 at 7 pm for the unveiling of the commemorative plaque honoring Mayor Sam Abbott who served as mayor of Takoma Park during the benchmark years of change 1980 – 1985. Text of the plaque

We will celebrate the legacy of the "Abbott Era" which, due to a passionate and activated citizenry, became the single-most transformative chapter in the history of our City since its founding.

Hear from the local heroes who worked with Sam to transform Takoma Park from a sleepy borough suddenly blind-sided by development from every direction during the 1960s – 1970s – 1980s into the dynamic community we know today.

Speakers include:

• Faith Stern — on the hard-won battle to save the Junior High School and Lee Jordan Field from closure by the Montgomery County Bd. Of Education;
• Frances Phipps — the successful struggle to save several blocks of houses around the Takoma Metro site from destruction by Park & Planning's odious "Mustard Sheet Plan" as well as the victorious battle to save the Victorian homes in “Block 69” from expansion by Montgomery College;
• Merrill Leffler — Takoma Park Poet Laureate;
• Lynne Bradley — on the tumultuous transformations in local governance based on citizen participation;
• Hon. Peter Franchot — the end of double-taxation and the Unification of the City into one county;
• Laureen Summers — the founding of the Takoma Park Folk Festival, still going strong four decades later as an all-volunteer effort that seamlessly loops artists and community;
• Jay Levy — the establishment of our ground-breaking Nuclear Free Zone;
• Hon. Ana Sol Gutierrez — on Sanctuary City, and the City's civil and human rights legacy;
• Jesse Palidofsky — "The Ballad of Sammie Abbott";
• Angela Rooney — the 90 years-young environmental activist who worked with Sam on the 13-year battle to stop the North Central Freeway from bisecting Takoma Park and the whole greater Washington metropolitan area.

We are very honored to be joined as well by a number of current and former elected officials including former Mayor Kathy Porter and Hon. Sheila Hixson, Hon. Jamie Raskin, and Hon. Will Smith from the MD General Assembly. Peter Franchot has also expressed his intention to be there.

We will remember our roots as a community, and honor our "Golden Age" of political and cultural transformation during which Takoma Park first established its unique identity as the dynamic and progressive city it is today.

B.F. Gilbert founded Takoma Park as an entrepreneur in the late 1800s. A hundred years later, Sam Abbott preserved it by galvanizing a vibrant and remarkable public citizens' movement that proved "You CAN fight City Hall" and win!

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Please join the Mayor & Council, the Ad Hoc Committee on the Abbott Plaque, and the Sam Abbott Living Legacy Project of Historic Takoma, Inc. for an evening of conversation, poetry, and song. Following the program and plaque dedication, light refreshments will be served.

Tuesday, April 14 at 7 pm at the Takoma Park Community Center / Sam Abbott Citizens Center