The Washington City Toilet Paper Strikes Again

With Prurient Shallow Disgusting Reporting.



Dennis Sobin, Founder and President of the Safe Streets Foundation and Prisons Art Gallery, might like to sue the Washington City Paper for libel, but he has been declared a vexatious litigant for fighting, inter alia, all the horrendous slander and libel about him out there over the years, some of which is pure fiction by people who just don't like his ideas. Made up garbage. It is true he has a less than virtuous past. It is true he profited off those sleazy 900 or 976 numbers in the 80s- as did every major phone company (I worked at MCI -later Worldcom- in their General Counsel's office on a temporary project on the team fighting the multimillion dollar class action lawsuit brought by folks who felt they were defrauded by these numbers generating expensive phone bills)-



Will Sommer, the Washington City paper reporter, who attended two hearings in a half year battle to rescind the Civil Protection Order brought, Dennis believes, frivolously and harassingly by his overzealous Asst DA Son, wasn't at all interested in reporting a balanced view of Mr. Sobin who kindly took him in his partial confidence only to be sadly betrayed by this piece of yellow journalism. Will Sommer was interested, as he himself states in the article itself -in 80s sleaze. Twenty year old garbage. Dennis wanted to talk about his Prison Arts Foundation, and Mr. Sommer couldn't get his mind out of the gutter.

Pathetic reporting. Sommers flatly misreports what the city was trying to do to Mr. Sobin in stating that the city was after a renewal of a CPO (civil protection order) for one year when they were after Five Years which the kind Judge refused to grant as a ridiculous over-reach of the city. Additionally, they were really after locking him up again (more obviously than subtextually as they had a marshall appear in court right next to him) over a piece of campaign literature that was found outside the Wilson Building because the son absurdly claims that the entire building is his place of business as legislative counsel to Fenty and he ordered his father to stay 100 feet away from his place of business- nevermind his father was lobbying city hall before he was born.


So let me tell you the other side of the story Sommer refused to report muckraking a distorted trash piece that you should put next to your toilet to wipe yourself with, Mr. Sommers. (If I were on the Board of any real paper I would fire Sommers but the Washington City Paper doesn't really care about fact checking much I found)


The Dennis Sobin story is one of amazing redemption; his and many others he vigorously assists. He built a foundation that has not only the respect of the Arts Community, and is a recipient of Grants from the DC and Federal government and private foundations alike, he has garnered the support of a partner at a major international law firm, Greenburg Traurig, who is pro bono counsel on an expanded much larger high end gallery of prisoner art. Sobin has literally saved lives by mentoring prisoners and ex-prisoners in the arts. This is no trivial matter. Sommer mocks the Kennedy Center as though that were some small achievement. The Musical prodigy who arranged Sobin's opera who is a PHD candidate in music composition at Catholic U. is now employed by Arena Stage. The foundation which he has built is not a 'one man show' (as the DA who prosecuted him stated falsely in court) but has a Board, some of whom showed up on stage at the Kennedy Center event, comprised in part of Wardens in other States and has garnered the support of law enforcement personnel, staff and volunteers, donors, mentees and loyal customers.



Dennis Sobin eagerly came to Archbishop Wuerl's Midnight Mass last Christmas Eve to take photographs that he put in a montag to music in a CD that he gave as gift- because I, his lawyer, sang in the cathedral Christmas mass choir. He regularly plays guitar which he taught himself in prison at homeless breakfast events in several churches throughout the city and has been hosted by Saint Matthews Cathedral at Christmas, Western Presbyterian Church, Episcopalian and Lutheran churches alike throughout the city. This was of course all in the record that Will Sommers ignored. In fact most of the record Will Sommers ignored if he read it at all. There is even a letter of commendation from a prominent Pastor in the record and many many thank you letters from people who purchased and used the art (half the proceeds go to the prisoner and the other half to the gallery as is customary) for calendars, T-shirts, magazines, church ministry fundraisers, and the like.



Dennis Sobin's indefatigable creativity is beyond inspiring. He is a book author, has recorded numerous CDs, produced plays and mentored others to write and produce them, mentored artists and pushed municipalities to make art supplies available in prisons, and has a national network of people affected by the criminal justice system helping him, supporting him, and encouraging him in an incredibly noble mission to advance the creative arts of people who lost their freedom nationally.



In this country to lose your freedom equates in some minds with losing your life. Dennis is about resurrecting the lives of people by freeing their souls and minds and he is incredibly successful at it. Some people view him as a national treasure. Who cares what he did in the 80s.



At the trial on the Civil Protection Order brought by his son, an Asst. DA in DC, one such soul testified that Dennis literally saved his life rescuing him from the streets and called him a 'saint' as he detailed how Dennis literally wanders downtown Washington, DC handing out bottled water to homeless people just because it's hot-and he's been there. In fact today's Express reports that one in seven people in America live in poverty and a lot of them wander around Washington, DC hanging out at places like Miriam's Kitchen -where he has greeted guests playing guitar gently. What has Mr. Sommers done for anyone else in his life?



The Prisons Arts Foundation deserves the support of everyone. It is an amazing piece of Washington, DC landscape and history that someone has come this far in his mission to resurrect others while people still want to see him buried alive- like apparently the Washington City Toilet Paper. Flush. Flush.



The GW Paper (George Washington University) The Hatchet did less of a hatchet job on him than the City paper which isn't worth the paper they cr***ped on. It's Free and worth the price you paid for it.


http://media.www.gwhatchet.com/media/storage/paper332/news/2010/09/09/Arts/Safe-Streets.Arts.Foundation.Encourages.Creativity.Talent.From.All.Walks.Of.Life-3929150.shtml