Beast Blog

Fun Night of Spoken Word for a good cause!

Jesse Townley for Berkeley City Council and daniland productions presents...

A Spoken Word Benefit for Jesse's Campaign Featuring:

Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys, Alternative Tentacles records)
Daphne Gottlieb (Award Winning Poet)
Meliza Bañales (Award Winning Poet)
many other speakers!

Friday, October 15th, 9:30 PM
$10, 21 and over
Starry Plough- 3101 Shattuck (@ Prince), Berkeley

Jesse Townley is a community-minded musician, KALX DJ, activist and volunteer running for Berkeley City Council (District 5).
Endorsed by progressive politicians, parties, & people, (Dona Spring: Berkeley City Councilmember, Matt Gonzalez: President, San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Paul Hogarth: Vice Chair, Berkeley Rent Board, John Selawsky: President, Berkeley School Board, Bands Against Bush, Bay Area, Do-It-Yourself Politics, Green Party of Alameda County are a few), Jesse needs your support in order to win! He does not have the deep pockets that other candidates do.

This great night of spoken word is a benefit for his campaign.

Jello Biafra: is former fronman for The Dead Kennedys, a former candidate for President of the United States, current head-man for Alternative Tentacles Records, and spoken word artist.

Daphne Gottlieb:This San Francisco-based Performance Poet stitches together the ivory tower and the gutter just using her tongue. She is the author of Final Girl , Why Things Burn, and Pelt. Why Things Burn was the winner of a 2001 Firecracker Alternative Book Award (Special Recognition - Spoken Word) and was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for 2001.  Recent press has praised her work as "fierce," "unapologetic," "scorching" and "deliriously gutsy." She has been widely published in journals and anthologies including nerve.com, Exquisite Corpse and the forthcoming Short Fuse: A Contemporary Anthology of Global Performance Poetry. She is the poetry editor of the online queer literary magazine Lodestar Quarterly , as well as Other Magazine and is a co-organizer of the all-girl spoken word festival debuting in September 2002, ForWord Girls.

Meliza Bañales: has been called, "The girl with the sense of humor of a jackknife." She originally hails from Los Angeles and is the youngest of four kids from working-poor parents. The first Latina to ever win a Bay Area slam championship, she has been a fixture in the poetry slam community for the past six years.  She has performed in just about everywhere--parks, bars, street corners, universities, restaurants, cross-country, internationally-- and with just about everyone from school children to Alice Walker, June Jordan, and Ana Castillo. Her work can be found in numerous anthologies and magazines, including Revolutionary Voices, Lodestar Quarterly, and Laundry Pen, and through her own publications, published on both Chula and Monkey Press.  Her work has often been called "edgy", "political", and "muy caliente". Always looking to fight the good fight, Meliza's work uses humor and personal stories to display larger truths and oppressions. Her first collection of poems, Say It With Your Whole Mouth, will be out in June, 2003 on Monkey Press. Her core belief, "The people are what make change. Look to each other, always, and you will have the power to change the world."  --Dolores Huerta.

Jesse Townley's campaign written up in the East Bay Express!