May 12th, 2012
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Open mic followed by featured readers
“Sign-up for the open mic begins at 7pm. The open mic begins as soon as that is over and a few announcements are made. So we are usually underway by 7:10 or 7:15. The feature usually goes on about an hour later.”
– Poet-host DAN BRADY
Sacred Grounds Café
7:00pm
2095 Hayes Street at Cole
SF 94117-1127
415.387.3859
map
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featured readers
Café Cam
Al Young
Claire J. Baker | Dan Brady | Marvin Hiemstra
Kit Kennedy | Ken Saffran
San Francisco Peace and Hope is proud to announce a poetry reading celebrating the first anniversary of its magazine debut in San Francisco on June 6, 2012, featuring readings by AL YOUNG, CLAIRE J. BAKER, poet-host DAN BRADY, MARVIN HIEMSTRA, KIT KENNEDY, and KEN SAFFRAN. Founding editor ELIZABETH HACK and creative director NIYA C. SISK will comment on the evolution of SF Peace and Hope, and where the exciting online journal now stands.
Informed by the idealism of the 1960s, San Francisco Peace and Hope is a continuing labor of love produced by the poets and visual artists of the Bay Area. For the new edition — which launches Ftriday, May 18, 2012 — advisor Al Young, California’s former poet laureate, has updated his One Two-Step Foreword. Writer and web designer Niya C. Sisk of Ritual Labs and Niya’s Place, has freshened the journal’s cool look.
Contact: Elizabeth Hack, Founder/Editor
Email: sfpeaceandhope@gmail.com
Website: sfpeaceandhope.com
Sacred Grounds Café | 415.387.3859
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Photo: Kindness of Strangers
In the flickering December light of 2010, following a late Rockridge luncheon devoted to SF Peace and Hope’s launch, Elizabeth Hack, Niya C. Sisk, and Al Young smile for their savvy waitress.
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Posted in What's at Stake | No Comments »
May 8th, 2012
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Al Young
Jimmy at home in 2006
Al Young
Mountain View Cemetery, Piedmont, CA 
Sandy Simon
Jimmy Lynn (James Curl Lynn), a friend of Al Young, is interred in a crypt beside his mother’s at Mountain View Cemetery in Piedmont, California. An only child, Jimmy took care of Rachel Fuller, his schoolteacher mother — at first on Long Island, then in Oakland — for her last 12 years.
Al Young and Jimmy Lynn at the popular Berkeley Bowl in the summer of 2005.
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THE HOUSE ON DANA STREET
(from “Med Café Stories”)
He, the new young man never knew
what to make of Jimmy Lynn’s house
on Dana Street in Berkeley,
writers coming and going, mostly blacks,
talking revolution never tired of
talking about what it was all about
being black
what the whites did to the blacks.
We got those college degrees, yeah!
Some writing movie scripts, some
writing poetry, some doing it all,
Al Young sitting late night on a stool
at the kitchen counter, paying respect
to his older friend, Al was relaxed,
while Jimmy was in motion,
Al listening to Jimmy telling it like it is.
Listening closely to Jimmy’s paranoia
which as it turned out,
we said one by one, “it wasn’t paranoia,
it was hieroglyphics on the wall.”
World politics vindicated Jimmy.
At Jimmy’s house, some writing novels,
some writing plays, Big Herb
Handsome, devilish, and trailing a
King’s robe behind him.
“Won’t you come in and have a cup of tea
I’ll tell you about my play,
The Day of the Nigger.
Let me explain the storyline, it’s the
day all the white people are killed
except, of course, some women.”
He grinned.
Jimmy, an intellectual who supported his art life
working on the docks,
gave free room and board to one young man,
“until you get a place,” he said.
The new border, light-skinned, ethereal, smiled
dreamily; was he listening? to urgent discussions in
this Parisian Left Bank on Dana?
While they talked revolution, the young man’s soul
whispered dreamily, “Lena Horne Lena Horne”
He was inside his own song and sweetly melancholic
as if he knew then he would later die young.
When I met him, he was floating, flute in hand
into the Med Café, speaking in rhyme, keeping time.
Some thought it odd but all thought him beautiful, with
sea green eyes and gold skin.
I couldn’t understand his words but sat with him
xxupstairs
where the blacks sat at the Med if not at Robbie’s.
The new boarder dreamily wafted in and out
of the Dana Street flat, like a mirage,
like a collage on the wall,
to be viewed or ignored by writers, musicians, artists,
smoking pot, making movies, talking about Camus as if
the subject was inexhaustible.
Jimmy let him stay there, saying wistfully,
“I just wish the young man would pick up his socks
and underwear from the floor.”
“But he’s so beautiful,” I said.
The young man overhearing, smiled sadly,
“Yes, of course, I am beautiful.
My mother is LENA HORNE!”
– JESSE BEAGLE
from Poetry In Jazz: Selected Writings 1987-2011
(Beatitude Press | Berkeley, CA)
© 2011 Jesse Beagle
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Posted in What's at Stake | 1 Comment »
April 4th, 2012
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© Lillian Kemp
SONG
You’re wondering if I’m lonely:
OK then, yes, I’m lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.
You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely
If I’m lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawns’ first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep
If I’m lonely
it’s with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it’s neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning
© Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich at a Glance (5:58)
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Posted in What's at Stake | No Comments »
March 22nd, 2012
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www.gov.ca.gov
Juan Felipe Herrera Named California Poet Laureate by Governor Brown
UC Riverside Professor a renowned poet
Published: 03-22-2012 | California Arts Council
Photo © Randy Vaughn-Dotta
Governor Jerry Brown has appointed Juan Felipe Herrera as the California Poet Laureate. Herrera, 63, is the author of 28 books and currently serves as the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. He was a professor and chair of Chicano and Latin American Studies at California State University, Fresno, from 1990 to 2004 and a teaching assistant fellow at the renowned Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa from 1988 to 1990. Herrera’s work has received wide critical acclaim, including numerous national and international awards. The appointment requires Senate confirmation.
The mission of the California Poet Laureate is to advocate for the art of poetry in classrooms and boardrooms across the state, to inspire an emerging generation of literary artists, and to educate all Californians about the many poets and authors who have influenced our great state through creative literary expression.
GOVERNOR’S PRESS RELEASE
The California Arts Council manages the nomination process for the California Poet Laureate as established by law. After a call to the general public for nominations, applications are reviewed by an expert peer panel to narrow the number. Panel recommendations are sent to the Governor’s office for additional vetting. The Governor makes the final selection and names the California Poet Laureate, who must be confirmed by the Senate.
The California Arts Council and AlYoung.org congratulate Mr. Herrera.
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Posted in Resources and Links, What's at Stake | No Comments »
February 24th, 2012
Book-banning has a distasteful history. Catholic priests burned Mayan books in 1562, Nazi Germany banned 4,100 or so books from 1933 to 1939.
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Courtesy Salon.com
Friday, Jan 13, 2012 2:47 PM PST
Who’s afraid of ‘The Tempest’?
Arizona’s ban on ethnic studies proscribes Mexican-American history, local authors, even Shakespeare
BY JEFF BIGGERS
Salon.com
As part of the state-mandated termination of its ethnic studies program, the Tucson Unified School District released an initial list of books to be banned from its schools today. According to district spokesperson Cara Rene, the books “will be cleared from all classrooms, boxed up and sent to the Textbook Depository for storage.”
Facing a multimillion-dollar penalty in state funds, the governing board of Tucson’s largest school district officially ended the 13-year-old program on Tuesday in an attempt to come into compliance with the controversial state ban on the teaching of ethnic studies.
The list of removed books includes the 20-year-old textbook Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, which features an essay by Tucson author Leslie Silko. Recipient of a Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, Silko has been an outspoken supporter of the ethnic studies program.
“By ordering teachers to remove ‘Rethinking Columbus,’ the Tucson school district has shown tremendous disrespect for teachers and students,” said the book’s editor Bill Bigelow. “This is a book that has sold over 300,000 copies and is used in school districts from Anchorage to Atlanta, and from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine. It offers teaching strategies and readings that teachers can use to help students think about the perspectives that are too often silenced in the traditional curriculum.”
© 2012 by Jeff Biggers | Salon.com
>>> To read Jeff Biggers’ full Salon.com account of Tucson’s heinous book ban, click here >>>
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Authors on Tucson’s Mexican-American Studies Banned Book List Respond
Courtesy COLORLINES.com
Colorlines
By JORGE RIVAS,
Tuesday, January 31 2012, 10:05 AM EST
Go to the original
Arizona’s ban on the Mexican American Studies curriculum used in Tucson high schools went into effect on January 1st. Several authors who are on the banned list have made statements.
“Administrators told Mexican-American studies teachers to stay away from any class units where ‘race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes,’”Jeff Biggers wrote on Salon.com.
The Progressive has compiled responses from authors included in the ban including Sherman Alexie, Winona La Duke, and Junot Diaz.
Alexie’s book “The Lone Ranger and Tonto’s Fist Fight in Heaven,” was on the banned curriculum of the Mexican American Studies Program. An excerpt from his response via The Progressive:
Let’s get one thing out of the way: Mexican immigration is an oxymoron. Mexicans are indigenous. So, in a strange way, I’m pleased that the racist folks of Arizona have officially declared, in banning me alongside Urrea, Baca, and Castillo, that their anti-immigration laws are also anti-Indian. I’m also strangely pleased that the folks of Arizona have officially announced their fear of an educated underclass. You give those brown kids some books about brown folks and what happens? Those brown kids change the world. In the effort to vanish our books, Arizona has actually given them enormous power. Arizona has made our books sacred documents now.
My essay “To the Women of the World: Our Future, Our Responsibility” was also included in the book. Interestingly enough, if I were going to ban one of my essays from a public school, this would probably not be the one. The essay is the transcript of my opening plenary address to the United Nations Conference on the Status of Women in 1995, held in Bejing, China. Other books and writings banned include those by famed Brazilian educator Paulo Friere and, in a multiracial censorship move, Shakespeare’s The Tempest was also banned.
Book-banning has a distasteful history. Catholic priests burned Mayan books in 1562, Nazi Germany banned 4,100 or so books from 1933 to 1939.
Junot Diaz’s book “Drown” was also part of the banned curriculum of Mexican American Studies. Diaz won the Pulitzer prize for “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” His response to the Progressive is below:
This is covert white supremacy in the guise of educational standard-keeping—nothing more, nothing less. Given the sharp increase of anti-Latino rhetoric, policies, and crimes in Arizona and the rest of the country, one should not be surprised by this madness and yet one is. The removal of those books before those students’ very eyes makes it brutally clear how vulnerable communities of color and our children are to this latest eruption of cruel, divisive, irrational, fearful, and yes racist politics. Truly infuriating. And more reason to continue to fight for a just society.
© 2012 COLORLINES.com
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Tuesday, January 24, 2012
AICL Coverage of Arizona Law that resulted in shut down of Mexican American Studies Program and Banning of Books
This is a comprehensive set of links to AICL’s coverage of the Arizona law that led to the shut down of the Mexican American Studies Program in Arizona and the subsequent banning of books used in the program. It will be updated as my coverage continues. My primary source of developments is David Abie Morales, a blogger in Tucson who writes The Three Sonorans.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
Monday, February 6, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
Thursday, February 23rd, 2012
Friday, February 24th, 2012
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Additional information outside of AICL:
For insider updates from Tucson, read these blogs (on a daily basis):
Tuesday, January 24, 2012:
Wednesday, January 25, 2012:
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CNN is reporting that Norma Gonzales, a teacher who taught in the MAS program, has been reassigned to teach American history and was asked to teach out of a textbook that says the Tohono O’odham tribe mysteriously disappeared. She has two Tohono O’odham students in her class. Among the books no longer being taught in the shut down MAS program is Ofelia Zepeda’s Ocean Power. Zepeda is Tohono O’odham, teaches in the American Indian Studies program at the University of Arizona, and won a MacArthur Genius Grant.
Monday, January 30, 2012:
Efforts to support Mexican American Studies teachers and students:
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To order a copy of Precious Knowledge, a documentary of the Mexican American Studies program (view trailer here):
-
Send an email to preciousknowledgedvd@gmail.com
-
Send a check made out to DOS VATOS PRODUCTIONS to:
Dos Vatos Productions
4029 E. Camino de la Colina
Tucson, AZ 85711
The DVD is priced as follows—Individual: $28, Community Group, High School, Public Library, Non-profit: $40, University and public performance rights: $200
© 2012 American Indians in Children’s Literature
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“I’m a native Tucsonan (Born April 18, 1938 at St. Mary’s Hospital) who has lived in San Diego since 1962, working with children as a teacher, vice-principal, principal. I retired from San Diego City Schools in 1999 but I’ve continued working with young people in the areas of drama, writing prose and poetry, playwriting, and movement. I’m a father, grandfather, great grandfather, husband, athlete, and community activist who rises everyday to do what I can to make the world a better place. Working with children makes that a somewhat easy task as they are game for anything.” [Mr. McCray, former Arizona Wildcat, is also a basketball legend -- A.Y.]
There’s this book ban
in Arizona
which is supposedly
in the USA
where book banning
isn’t supposed to take place
but they went on and did it anyway.
And it happened “quicker than
you can say,
Jack Robinson,”
an idiom
from a long ago day.
Here’s a play by play.
First there was
SB1070
that they say
was to get a hold
on immigration
aka
Harass a Mexican
to make your day.
And before you could yawn
and say: “What’s going on?”
Mexican American Studies
was gone.
And the book banning
came along
like lyrics
free versed
in a rap song.
Lawd, have mercy,
something’s gone
way wrong.
When I took
a look
at the books
on the list
that Arizona doesn’t want to exist,
I wondered,
“Am I stoned?”
It was chilling
to my old bones.
I counted 88.
And according to the
Grand Canyon State,
William Shakespeare’s
“The Tempest”
doth not appeareth too great!
And it blew my mind
to find
James Baldwin’s
“Fire Next Time”
as that book
was as essential
as oxygen
in the development
of my Colored, Negro, Black, African American
social and political mind.
Because of cats like James
I ain’t the least bit blind.
And Paolo Freire,
my main man,
loving mentor to the oppressed,
blessed with the gift to help a people in distress rise like birds lifting to the skies, on to hopes and dreams, banned.
Ain’t that a trip?
Cast aside
by people who’s brains
are made of “Yee! Ha!” and rawhide.
Alongside Howard Zinn,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
our long time friend,
who hipped us
to a People’s History.
Jonathon Kozol
who exposed before us all
the Savage Inequalities,
in our communities,
in our society,
inequities
to which our schools give root.
And those fools
Fahrenheit 451?d
Zoot Suit
and other Luis Valdez plays
that help folks
understand their roots,
their pachuconess,
their vatoness,
their eseness,
their chicaness…;
And down, too,
went Culture Clash.
They flatout don’t want
young Chicanos
to think and laugh.
Oh, man, that’s a gas.
It’s like a mass dash
to bash what they see as the underclass.
And what’s their fear of
“Like Water for Chocolate?”
an immaculate love story
of tense human emotions,
intertwined with food and
recipes and Mexican traditions…
The powers-that-be
simply cannot tolerate imagery
wherein brown children
learn the wonders
of their culture,
who they are,
where they’ve been,
how they’ve come
to the various situations
they find themselves in.
But the powers-that-be
are a bit tardy
because the children
are already
Rethinking Columbus
and the sins
perpetrated against them,
like the one they’re
wrapped up in in this very second.
They already know the truth.
They’ve had Chicano Studies.
Recuerdo?
They live what they’ve learned,
loving life,
feeling good about themselves,
giving to their world,
as that’s what their learning
has concentrated on.
So, powers-that-be,
your hateful ugly grandiose plan
to keep Mexican Americans
from living free
is pretty much over and done.
The Chicanos will win
because when a people
are up on their feet
trekking on a path to full liberty,
a path to a life of dignity,
they can’t help but overcome.
That’s Pursuit of Freedom 101.
Watch out, Arizona!
© 2012 Ernie McCray | From the Soul: An Old Sonoran’s Take on the World
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Posted in What's at Stake | No Comments »
Niya C. Sisk
Debate: Tucson School’s Book Ban After Suspension of Mexican American Studies Program, Pt. 1
Debate: Tucson School’s Book Ban After Suspension of Mexican American Studies Program Pt. 2
