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!

Robert Reich to teach at UC Berkeley

That little feller from the Clinton Administration is a visiting lecturer in our midst:

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/01/12_Reich.shtml
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Robert B. Reich, former U.S. labor secretary in the Clinton administration, is a distinguished visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy for the spring semester, which began Jan. 13.

He will spend his time at the Goldman School teaching a course on wealth and poverty, giving public lectures, and working on a new book about leadership and change.

Reich said he is excited to be at the Goldman School, which, he said, "stands at the true pinnacle of excellence." He and Goldman School Dean Michael Nacht previously worked together at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

His first formal public lecture is set for April 13, with details to be announced.
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His university homepage

Vote Nationally, Blog Locally

I think of the East Bay as a political incubator, both for practices and ideas. Alameda and Contra Costa counties have more than 2.4 million people, more than some states with flags and U.S. senators (Vermont? New Hampshire?). Three local groups are operating web sites.

East Bay 4 Dean was the first. It runs a local bulletin board but mostly pimps the local meetups, very successfully, I might add. A few design observations: Three photos make it local: a bayscape, a Dean rally with marching band, and an even larger crowd in an auditorium watching Dean announce he's running. The message: Jump on the Bandwagon.

East Bay Kerry came along next. Full disclosure: I started it. An active group weblog, the site is mostly about issues, a bit about the campaign, and a little about organizing. Most real organizing seems to happen on mailing lists. I'm shooting for the blog to look at national events through East Bay eyes and listen to campaign spew through East Bay ears. As important, EBK can inform national policy with East Bay issues. Blogging is such a first-person activity, I hope personality comes through. Built with TypePad. The message: Campaigns are Conversations.

East Bay for Clark is the most polished looking, has the most engineering underneath it. Sparse content but useful "upcoming events" info. Built by national campaign staff, the site feels like an empty shell at the moment. That may change if more people participate in feeding the site. Someone on the Clark campaign gets that politics is fundamentally local, so they built dozens of these sites so locals can move in. The message: Clark is in the East Bay.  

Where are local sites for the other 6 candidates?

Save The Shipyard: Final Use Permit Hearing

Heads count in many situations, and this-here is one of them.
Do your part to keep Berkeley a place where art can thrive! (Free tacos, too!)

On Thursday, October 23rd, get yerself on down to:
City of Berkeley Council Chambers
2134 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, 2nd Floor
People's Republic of Berkeley

Taco truck catering starts at 6PM. Hearing starts at 7PM.

The Shipyard is a shipping container artist community in Berkeley. The Shipyard is yet another amazing Bay Area artist resource and venue that has been struggling for survival the last couple of years and could really use your help.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This report from Jim, tireless leader of The Shipyard:

The hour of reckoning has arrived for the Shipyard.

Two years and $12,000 after we started the Battle of the Papers and
Processes with the City of Berkeley, the Final Use Permit hearing for
The Shipyard is scheduled and guaranteed to happen October 23rd at 7pm.

This is the hearing where they decide whether we get to continue to
exist or we rent a truck and haul away all the containers.

We have submitted all the required drawings, environmental studies,
statements of intent, paid the fees, talked and retalked, redid the
drawings 4 times, brought in high end architectural consulting and
services, and all the rest of the stuff that always happens in these
messes.

And now the whole thing is on the line a! nd we need a big showing to
convince Berkeley that people care about the place and want to see it
continue to exist. Exist not just to collect large machine tools and
build unlikely edifices to misguided hubris, but also to have events,
workshops, gatherings, and shows- all those things we haven't been able
to do for two years while we were under the thumb.

WE NEED 200 PEOPLE IN THE ROOM FOR THIS HEARING.

200 people cannot be said no to.

Our neighbors are happy with us so I don't expect them out in force
against us, but who knows what will happen. These hearings are
arbitrary and you stand there helpless as decisions are made over the
foundation upon which you and many, many other people create, play,
live and generally do the things that matter most to them. Everything
could be fine, (as it was at the last hearing for design review, which
we passed), or everything could suddenly be all wrong. That is why we
ALL need to be there- to make sure it will all be OK, and not yet
another art space gets axed in the Bay Area, as has been the recent
trend.

So, with humility, concern, deep gratitude and all the other soft
things, I ask, actually plead, that you consider joining us for this
hearing.

The hearing starts at 7pm. You have to submit a speakers card by
7:15pm to speak. Speaking in favor of the project is good, especially
if you are a Berkeley resident, or even if you are not.

There will be a taco truck catering the event (at the curb) out front
from 6-8pm. Free tacos and horchata for all who show.

Again, the meeting is at:

Council Chambers, Berkeley
2134 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, 2nd Floor
Thursday, Oct 23rd, 7:00 p.m.

There will be a party (celebrating our success) afterwards at the
yard. More details on the after party will emerge soon.

Thank you in advance for helping to bring all this silliness to an end.

- Jim Mason

directions for west bay folk:
-off 80 at University, go east for about a mile.
-turn right on Martin Luther King Jr Way.
-go three blocks and find taco truck and venue on your right.

The Shipyard website

Secret Service Questions Students

Three weeks ago, an Oakland High teacher ratted out two students to the U.S. Secret Service for classroom conversation. It's a great drama. Civil liberties and the right to counsel vs. homeland security. Academic freedom vs. safety. Agents telling kids "we own you, you don't have any legal rights." In the crucible that gave us the Black Panthers and the Free Speech Movement.

KRON reported this story (terse, appropriate for the evening news), as did Alex Katz of the Oakland Tribune (more detail and interviews with the Secret Service), and JR at San Francisco Bay View (Long, with pointed commentary as you might expect from the National Black Newspaper of the Year).

John Brady Kiesling at UC Berkeley, Part 2

I went to John Brady Kiesling's talk at UC Berkeley, previously noticed here, and it was fantastic. A real American hero. Description of the talk (long) and impressions over at Tilting at Windmills.

Christopher Hitchens on the Free Speech Movement

(In)famous essayist Christopher Hitchens writes a pseudo-book review of The Free Speech Movement. It seems that Hitchens is doing a stint as a fellow at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, and he uses the book review as an excuse to discuss some matters of local political import.