Tag: Kevin Kelly

‘Barrel of a Gun’ Mumia Abu Jamal documentary premiere thoughts

The middle of the center section on the lower level of the Merriam Theater Tuesday night seemed well-acquainted.

Across rows, middle aged men with ruddy cheeks talked about seeing each other last on trips to Key West, sneaking a six-pack into the historic theater and shared the kind of general chatter of people who knew each other well a long time ago.

The lights came down around 7:15 p.m., too early to know exactly how well or from when they knew each other. It would only be a guess that they all came from the same neighborhood, but that was how the audience felt last night at the world premiere of the ‘Barrel of a Gun,’ the feature-length documentary from Tigre Hill meant to finalize the 30-year-old controversy around Mumia Abu-Jamal’s convicted killing of police officer Daniel Faulkner in December 1981.

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Interview: Kevin Kelly, Young Philadelphia Republicans

Kevin Kelly at left with for U.S. Congressman Newt Gingrich at a Philadelphia Republican meetup meeting on April 1, 2007.

This evening I sat in on a meeting of the loyal opposition, a group of some in the city’s Republican community who are looking to create a viable GOP in Philadelphia.

The group is led by Kevin Kelly, a former president of the Philadelphia Young Republicans, and a businessman determined to see an active two-party system in the city. He’s developed a meet-up group online and is all for converting Democrats to create competition. Kelly grew a reputation last year by circulating a manifesto of sorts for reviving and reforming the city’s Republican Party [PDF].

After the meeting, a perhaps surprisingly diverse group of 15, including guys like the long-time 5th ward Republican leader Mike Cibik. They were fielding questions from Philadelphia magazine writer Steve Volk and discussing their own positions on the party.

Afterwards, I got to speak to Kevin Kelly alone, and he was largely critical of the complacency into which the city’s GOP had fallen, he said.

“I reward results,” Kelly said. “If you were zero for the last 50 years in any other job in the world, would you still have that job?”

His movement and critique will find a large part in my paper.

Photo courtesy of Philadelphia Republican Meet up Group.