Poets against War & Racism | Poetas contra la guerra y el racismo
Poets
- Amira Ali
- Arnoldo Colibrí Hummingbird
- Rafael Jesús Gonzalez with Gerardo Omar Marín
- Invited poets & performers
- Open mic.
- Update with short new video on the Congreso Nacional Indígena congress held October 2016 in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.
This is the first gathering of Poets Against War & Racism.
Thursday, February 23, 2017 | 7:00-9:00 p.m.
At the Oakland Omni Commons | 4799 Shattuck Ave, Oakland, CA 94609
Donation requested: $5.00-25.00
No one turned away for lack of money.
…
We have invited several poets and will also have an open mic.
Chiapas Support Committee will be showing a 15 minute video of the recent CNI congress held with the EZLN whose first sessions were held in Oactober 2016. The video will be part of an update on the EZLN-CNI proposal to form an indigenous council of government and to run an Indigenous woman for President in Mexico’s 2018 presidential elections and other developments in Mexico.
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Why?
The challenge is to reclaim our power of self-determination and live our lives and words in community that resists and begins to dream how to govern itself. The infinite war that the U.S. started in 2003 added another layer of callousness and numbing, distorting our consciousness and our language.
As a result, racism and war has become normalized to unprecedented and new levels with the new U.S. regime taking office and power.
Questions and poems:
- How will we reclaim all the Black lives lost? How will we change the relationship we have with each other and with the original peoples when we are uninvited guests on Indigenous lands?
- How do we live in community where everyone belongs and has something important to contribute, to do and to say?
- What is to be done?
- What is to be dreamt of together?
What are your key words? What are our powerful words?
* No Ban
* No Walls
* No DAPL
* No war on the natural world and her peoples
* No more migrant deaths
* Tear down the wall of death
* Yes to Indigenous and women of color power and leadership
* Yes to poetry, peace, bread, living wage jobs or income, justice…
* Yes to water & life
* Yes to Black Lives Matter
* Yes to trans-border poor people’s soldarirty and power
* Indigenous peoples lands everywhere you stand…
* Everyone is a poet.
This first gathering to to let loose some outrage, begin to learn how to dream together and each one continue to what they are best at to stop war and racism in all its forms, end homophobia, islamophobia, transphobia, stop destruction of the natural world…
The four directions call you to Oakland painting by arnoldo garcía (17″x35″ acrylic on canvass-paper; 2000?)
Chiapas Support Committee 