Stacy Parker Le Melle – Government Girl

Late Night Conversation, hosted by Erika Anderson

Tonight Erika speaks to Stacy Parker Le Melle, a woman who defies categorization – she is an author, activist, mother, traveler, New Yorker, political lightning rod.

Listen to the full episode to hear Erika and Stacy talk about her call for zero deaths by the NYPD, her efforts to support the LGBTQ community in Harlem, and the terrarium that is New York City:

About her strong stance on police brutality, Stacy says:

Even if we hadn’t had Ferguson, or the Eric Garner decision, living in Harlem I feel more and more that everyone in the community is feeling the presence of an increasingly militarized police state…. I learned that [the Toronto Police] had these findings and they decided one thing they were going to do was aim for zero deaths. I was so stunned listening to the radio and thinking: Zero deaths, it seems so simple and so right, like why can’t we as a community, why can’t the police just say, ‘Okay, we’re going to try not to kill anybody.’ So I wrote about that recently on the Huffington Post….

ABOUT OUR GUEST

STACY PARKER LE MELLE is the author of the memoir Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House, (Ecco/HarperCollins) and served as the primary contributor to Voices from the Storm: the People of New Orleans on Hurricane Katrina and Its Aftermath (McSweeney’s). She is the workshop director for the Afghan Women’s Writing Project and she created and records oral histories for The Katrina Experience: an Oral History Project. Her recent narrative nonfiction has been published in Apogee Journal and is forthcoming in Callaloo and The Florida Review–where she was a finalist for the 2014 Editors’ Award for nonfiction. She also blogs regularly on books, politics, and social issues for the Huffington Post. She is the founder of Harlem Against Violence, Homophobia, and Transphobia and she is also the co-founder of Harlem’s First Person Plural Reading Series. In her past government life she worked in the Clinton West Wing and the Paterson Executive Chamber, and was a longtime volunteer advance person, staffing presidential and First Lady trips at home and abroad. www.stacyparkeraab.com