The Riviera Beach Martin Luther King Planning Committee has scored another big one for their 2nd annual Martin Luther King banquet. Last year, its inaugural banquet, the keynote speaker was Cornel West, which was a huge success. This year, delivering the keynote speech will be veteran national political strategist Donna Brazile. Brazile will take to the stage, Friday night, January 23rd at the Hilton Singer Island Oceanfront, located at 3700 North Ocean Drive, on Singer Island, Riviera Beach. A reception starts at 6:30pm and the program starts at 7pm. Tickets are being made affordable for everyone at a mere $35.00 each.

“I want everyone to come and join us for this fantastic event. Everyone is excited about it. It’s going to be a great banquet.  I want them to see the good things going on in Riviera Beach, and that we try to make the MLK event about everyone!” said Eureka Irvin, chairwoman of the planning committee for the third year.

Veteran Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile is an adjunct professor, author, syndicated columnist, television political commentator, Vice Chair of Voter Registration and Participation at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and former interim National Chair of the Democratic National Committee as well as the former chair of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute.

She is the author of the best-selling memoir Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics.  Ms. Brazile is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, a syndicated newspaper columnist for Universal Uclick, a columnist for Ms. Magazine, and O, the Oprah Magazine, an on-air contributor to CNN, and ABC, where she regularly appears on ABC’s This Week. Recently she has even delved into acting, and has made two cameo appearances on CBS’s The Good Wife. Most recently, Donna has appeared on Netflix’s new series House of Cards. Ask her and she’ll tell you that acting, after all, is the key to success in politics!

Aside from working for the full recovery of her beloved New Orleans, which is her hometown, Ms. Brazile’s passion is encouraging young people to vote, to work within the system to strengthen it, and to run for public office. Since 2000, Ms. Brazile has lectured at over 150 colleges and universities across the country on such topics as “Inspiring Civility in American Politics,” “Race Relations in the Age of Obama,” “Why Diversity Matters,” and “Women in American Politics: Are We There Yet?”

In August 2009, O, The Oprah Magazine chose Ms. Brazile as one of its 20 “remarkable visionaries” for the magazine’s first-ever O Power List. In addition, she was named among the 100 Most Powerful Women by Washingtonian magazine, Top 50 Women in America by Essence magazine, and received the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s highest award for political achievement.

She is currently on the board of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, the National Democratic Institute, the Professional Diversity Network, the National Institute for Civil Discourse, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the BlackAmericaWeb.com Relief Fund, Inc. She also serves as Co-Chair for Democrats for Public Education.

In the aftermath of the two catastrophic hurricanes that made landfall in the Gulf region, Brazile was appointed by former Governor Kathleen Blanco to serve on the Louisiana Recovery Board to work for the rebuilding of the state and to advocate for the Gulf recovery on the national stage.

She is also the proud recipient of numerous honorary doctorate degrees. She has received honorary doctorates from Louisiana State University, North Carolina A&T State University, Grambling State University, Morehouse School of Medicine, Northeastern Illinois University, Thomas Jefferson University, and Xavier University of Louisiana, the only historically Black, Catholic institution of higher education in the United States. Ms. Brazile is founder and managing director of Brazile & Associates LLC, a general consulting, grassroots advocacy, and training firm based in Washington, DC.

Amazingly, Brazile got her start as a young politician at the tender age of nine! At nine, she worked to elect a City Council candidate who had promised to build a playground in her neighborhood; the candidate won, the swing set was installed, and a lifelong passion for political progress was ignited. Ms. Brazile worked on every presidential campaign from 1976 through 2000, when she became the first African-American to manage a presidential campaign.

Irvin said she selected Brazile as keynote speaker because she is an outstanding representative for all people and she has an extensive and impressive body of work. “We were strategizing and I recommended her to the group. She’s a highly intelligent woman and is going to be a sensational representative for everyone. The banquet is going to be great,” said Irvin. “We are certainly looking forward to having her in Riviera Beach!”

For tickets or for more information, call 561-840-4880 or visit the website at www.Rivierabch.com, click on MLK events, and then Banquet.