The Chiapas Support Committee presents the ninth annual CompArte: The Emiliano Zapata Community Festival to celebrate our movements and struggles for justice, peace and in solidarity with the Zapatistas and the Palestinian liberation struggle against genocide and occupation.

On Saturday, October 19, 2024, from 2:00-5:00pm (doors open at 1:30pm), at the Eastside Cultural Center (2277 International Blvd, Oakland, CA 94606), our commuity will gather to enjoy music, poetry, art and each other’s company and weave our dreams together in the sounds and rhtyhms of our movements.

CompArte started in the summer of 2016, when the CSC joined the Zapatistas’ call to convene justice artists and culture-maker warriors for liberation to bring their art, music, graffitti, music of all genres, dance, movement, film, theater and poetry together to join in the fight against capitalism. CompArte has been held every year since then and during the pandemic, the CSC held three sessions of CompArte on-line drawing in a local, regional, national and international audience sharing their work through the screens. CSCS has held ComParte at the Omni Commons, Peralta Park and with the support of the Eastside Arts Alliance over the last two years at the renown Eastside Cultural Center.

CompArte artists & performers

POETS

Persis Karim is a poet, essayist and editor as well as professor. She teaches Comparative and World Literature at San Francisco State University, where she also serves as the director for the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies. She is the editor of three anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature and has written numerous articles about Iranian diaspora literature and culture. Her poetry has been published in national publications such as Callaloo, Green Linden Press, Porter Gulch Review, Caesura, Nowruz Journal, The New York Times, and Reed Magazine. She has just completed co-directing/co-producing her first film, “The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life,” which is a documentary about Iranian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read and listen to Persis Karim poems: The Seed Collector’s Daughter, Comprehension, and Pomegranates

Mo Sati was born in Palestine, grew up in a refugee camp in Jordan, and now lives in Oakland. Mo is a poet, a writer, a playwright, and an artist. He participates in activist and cultural events nationally and internationally sharing insights about life as a refugee uprooted from his homeland. His poetry, writings, and artworks tell stories of the people of Palestine living under occupation. His work personifies emotions drawn from the day-to-day struggles of resistance to oppression as Palestinians fight to unshackle themselves from decades of military occupation. Mo’s play, a satire, “The Ice Cream War” will be presented by the Eastside Arts Alliance in a stage reading on Friday, October 25, 2024, &;00pm at the Eastside Cultural Center. You can also hear Mo read his poetry accompanied by saxophonist Daniel Heffez here. Follow Mo Sati’s work on Instagram here.

Darius Simpson is a writer, educator, performer, and skilled living room dancer from Akron, Ohio. He received an MFA in Creative Writing-Poetry from Mills College. Darius was a recipient of the 2020 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and is the author of Never Catch Me (Button Poetry, 2022). He hopes to inspire that feeling you get that makes you frown and slightly twist up ya face in approval. Darius’ poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The Adroit Journal, American Poetry Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and others. Darius believes in the dissolution of empire and the total liberation of all oppressed people by any means available. Free the People. Free the Land. Free All Political Prisoners. You can read work by Darius Simpson here.

MUSIC

AntiFaSon is a Son Jarocho project, a musical guest on Ohlone territory (aka Oakland). They amplify anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, anti-fascist and anti-extractivist feminist themes in Son Jarocho songs that form part of the larger history of Afro-Indigenous land, water and campesinx struggles. AntiFaSon will be performing with Corazón de Cedro. Follow AntiFaSon on Instagram: @somosantifason

Corazón de Cedro is an all-femme Son Jarocho and Arabic folk musical project based in San Francisco, California. The group’s arrangements explore the connection between Arabic and Mexican folk musical traditions through the Arabic oud, the jarana Jarocha, zapateado and more. Corazón de Cedro aims to serenade the diasporic heart through melodies, rhythms and poesia that speak of love, resilience, and our shared struggle for collective liberation. Featuring special duet by Evelyn Donají & Camellia Boutros. Corazón de Cedro will be performing with AntiFaSon. You can connect with Corazón de Cedro on Instagram here.

Davíd de la Gran writes: Un Musico Pobre. A community oriented musician/ composer of Garifuna-Caqchiquel-Ladino descent buscando su lugar y su voz en este mundo and finding it only by looking within. Davíd de la Gran on Instagram here.

Mónica María Fimbrez’s music reflects her Californian roots mixed with traditional, earthly and contemporary sounds of Latin America. A vocalist, multi instrumentalist and composer, her songs are innovative and expressive of a world where cultures coexist, where fear is transformed by compassion, where we learn to truly love ourselves, and where we view the world from an empathetic and holistic state of mind. Read more about Mónica María here and on Instagram.

Francisco Herrera Theologian, Cultural Worker, Singer-Songwriter, Francisco Herrera has produced seven albums (includes two children’s music in Spanish), writes scores for film and theater, working with producers like the late great Saul Landau. He has shared the stage with the Jon Fromer, Pete Seeger, Emma’s Revolution at mass actions as School of America’s Watch (up to 22,000 people), and the Battle for Seattle, with over 250,000 people shutting down the WTO in 1999 and massive demonstrations across the country. In 1987, Francisco shared the stage with Joan Baez and Jessie Jackson before 10,000 people there to bring attention to the brutal attack on Vietnam Veteran and Peace Organizer, Brian S. Willson, after the Navy Commander at Concord Naval Weapons Station gave the order to run over the protestors. However, Herrera’s most common place is not on big stages. He was actually at the small Nuremberg Peace Action when Brian was run over by the train. So close, in fact, that he was subpoenaed as the witness closest to Brian, David and Duncan. He can be found in intimate gatherings of women recovering from domestic violence, day laborers organizing for a universal wage, children becoming bilingual (Spanish/English), Interfaith groups shutting down private prisons; always performing uplifting and energizing songs that move, teach and inspire. His Latest album Honor Migrante crosses physical and musical borders to expose the grace and beauty of the migrant community as all of us with a rocking sound that brings together regional music from Mexico and the U.S. with a “Chicano Soul” style that permeates his eclectic choice of music. Learn more about Francisco Herrera online here.

Duo Madelina & Feña features multi-instrumentalist composer and writer Fernando Torres and multi-faceted puertorican Singer/interpreter and political activist Madeleine Zayas. Their eclectic repertoire is rooted in the Nueva Canción/Nueva Trova tradition of entertaining and educating about culture and pressing social issues.

Madeleine Zayas Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Madeleine Zayas is a Latin American singer/interpreter, dancer and choreographer and architect based in Oakland. She was co-founder of Buena Trova Social Club in 2012 and lead singer and co-artistic director of Madelina y Los Carpinteros since 2014. Madeleine has performed in San Juan, Puerto Rico, many U.S. Cities, and Santiago, Chile, and has shared stage with Wilkins, Cheo Feliciano, Inti Illimani, John Santos and Holly Near. She believes in art and cultural activism as a positive force of communication and a tool for social change.

Fernando Feña Torres is a Chilean exile, musician, composer and poet, journalist and founding ex member of Grupo Raiz. Fena is an expert in folkloric multi-instrumentalist. He began his musical career as a young boy inspired by the socialist government of Salvador Allende A former political prisoner and exiled into the U.S., he has collaborated with Teatro Campesino and has performed in Bay Area and internationally along with artists such as David Byrne, Pete Seeger and Holly Near.

To listen to Madelina y Feña’s new song for Gaza click here Would You

Listen to Madeleine Zayas in a live performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j5JOiLPVfM

ART

Daniel Camacho is a prolific painter and muralist. He paints mobile murals that can be and displayed at cultural gatherings, picket lines and marches and meetings. Camacho studied visual arts at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas in San Carlos, National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City and Painting and Sculpture at the National Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico City. He currently teaches Mexican and Latinx art to elementary and middle school students in the Bay Area. Daniel’s mural and bas relief work can be seen on different walls of Oakland’s Fruitvale District and in the Oscar Grant Plaza next to the Fruitvale BART Station. Follow Daniel Camacho’s art and work on Instagram here.

CompArte: The Emiliano Zapata Community Festival organized by the Chiapas Support Committee with the support of the Eastside Arts Alliance.