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March 4 Strike and Day of Action To Defend Public Education

12:34 pm By la Macha · Activism|California|Education · Comments Off

16 Feb 2010

California remains at the forefront of the Defend Public Education movement–or, for those not aware of what that movement is–the movement to keep the price of a university degree affordable for working class families. If you are in California, please join the protest! If you are outside of California and working at a university, see if there is some way to show solidarity with your fellow student/worker!!!

Please Invite Your Friends To This Event!

Want to receive updates? Contact us at: march4strikeanddayofaction@gmail.com

MySpace: http://tinyurl.com/yeugu4b
www.defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com
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March 4 Strike and Day of Action To Defend Public Education

On October 24, 2009 more than 800 students, workers, and teachers converged at UC Berkeley at the Mobilizing Conference to Save Public Education. This massive meeting brought together representatives from over 100 different schools, unions, and organizations from all across California and from all sectors of public education – Pre K-12, Adult Education, CC, CSU and UC – to “decide on a statewide action plan capable of winning this struggle, which will define the future of public education in this state, particularly for the working class and communities of color.”

After hours of open collective discussion, the conference democratically voted, as its principal decision, to call for a statewide Strike and Day of Action on March 4, 2010. The conference decided that all schools, unions and organizations are free to choose their specific demands and tactics – such as strikes, walkouts, march to Sacramento, rallies, occupations, sit-ins, teach-ins, etc. – for March 4, as well as the duration of such actions.

We refuse to let those in power continue to pit us against each other. If we unite, we have the power to shut down business-as-usual and to force those in power to grant our demands. Building a powerful movement to defend public education will, in turn, advance the struggle in defense of all public-sector workers and services.

We call on all students, workers, teachers, parents, and their organizations across the state to endorse this call and massively mobilize and organize for the Strike and Day of Action on March 4.

Let’s make this an historic turning point in the struggle against the cuts, layoffs, fee hikes, and educational segregation in California.

To endorse this call and to receive more information, please contact march4strikeanddayofaction@gmail.com and consult
www.defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com

_____________________________________
Endorsers:
Oct. 24th Mobilizing Conference to Defend Public Education
Statewide Coalition of University Employees
Statewide UPTE
Solidarity Alliance at UCB
General Assembly at UCB
CFT: CA Federation of Teachers
United Teachers Los Angeles: the largest teachers local in CA
AFSCME Local 444: East Bay Municipal Utility District
AFT 1021: part of United Teachers LA, represents over 10,000
California Labor Federation, which has over 2 million workers in unions
California Faculty Association [CFA]: CSU Faculty Union,representing the 23,000 professors, librarians, etc.
Student Senate for California Community Colleges (SSCCC) – the SSCCC endorses a march 4th day of action
Carpenters Local 713 passed AFSCME Local 444′s
CDPH Inter Union Organizing Committee: SEIU 1000, Stationary Engineers 39, CAPS, PEGS, and others have joined the March 4th Strike Call
Oakland Education Association- 2,800 teachers,counselors and librarians
Association of Raza Educators
San Francisco Labor Council
California State University Employees Union
California Teachers Association
Coalition for Equal Quality Education, Boston, MA
United Educators of San Francisco
Third World Assembly at UCB
SWAT at UCB

Sweet Toothed Solidarity 2 : A Bay Area Benefit for Mangos With Chile

8:05 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Arts|California|Culture|GLBT · Comments Off

15 Dec 2009

Who doesn’t love some Mangos with Chile, even more so when you’re talking about the tasty and thought provoking touring cabaret of queer and trans people of color performance artists. Bueno, they need some help paying off some debt after their latest tour in the U.S South. So if you’re in the Bay Area this Saturday, support and show some love. You’ll get some back. They will have a kissing booth after all!

Sweet Toothed Solidarity 2
A Benefit To Pay Off A Van for Mangos With Chili

Saturday, December 19, 2009
The Fairview House
1820 Fairview Ave, Berkeley, CA
near Ashby BART

come at 6 PM if you have a baked good
7:30-10 PM otherwise
donations welcome- all appreciated!

performances by Amir Rabiyah, Bea Sullivan, and Bananz/ Anna Whitehead
many-gendered peep shows
sweet treats
kissing booth
whipped cream surprises

as well as a reportback/ slideshow about Mangos With Chili’s Splendor and Grit: The Stunning South Tour and some of the amazing queer/trans of color Southern organizations we met and worked with along the way.

zines and crafts and I’m Too Sexy for the 501c3 t shirts for sale!

Mangos With Chili, an awesome grassroots queer and trans of color love and survival art outfit, just came back from their 17 day Splendor and Grit tour of the Southern U.S. 7 amazing queer and trans of color performance artists traveled from Esperanza Center for Peace and Justice in San Antonio Texas to New Orleans to Durham to DC, meeting with incredible queer and trans of color communities and sharing life-saving and changing QTPOC stories of love, resistance and survival along the way.

Because of drama with Budget Rent a Car, our van rental bill of $1,500 doubled to $3,100. We need help raising money to pay this debt off.

Please join us for an evening of sugary sweets to not only support Mangos With Chili, but in an effort to build stronger support, ally, and community networks. This is also an opportunity to learn more about queer of color grassroots arts institution building, and about queer and trans of color organizing in the South.

warmth*community love*friends*kisses for sale* cupcakes*gluten free cookies*stories*burlesque* love*support*bonfire*whiskey* hot pear cider*more love

***Donations encouraged and all are welcome***

for more information: mangos.with.chili@gmail.com
mangoswithchili.wordpress.com

you can also send money to use via paypaling brownstargirl@gmail.com (if you don’t need a tax receipt)

or through our fiscal sponsor, counterpulse, if you do- counterpulse.org

UC Berkeley to Investigate Police Brutality in Protests

1:58 pm By la Macha · California · Comments Off

24 Nov 2009

And speaking of the upheaval in the University of California system, Democracy Now! has some really important updates about the protests that happened after the UC board voted to increase tuition rates by over 30%.

Forty students were arrested Friday night after campus police entered Wheeler Hall, which the students had taken over earlier in the day. The students were part of a statewide movement protesting the UC Board of Regents decision to raise tuition by 32 percent. Students at UCLA, UC-Davis, UC Santa Cruz and San Francisco State also took over campus buildings last week.

On Monday, more than 200 students rallied at Wheeler Hall in Berkeley to protest against what they called overtly aggressive tactics by the police. Organizers say officers hit demonstrators with batons and fired rubber bullets.

What Happened to Our Movement?

24 Nov 2009

In light of the recent protests in the University of California system, Xicana scholar and activist, Cherrie Moraga, gave a pointed and stirring critique/speech to a graduation class at UC Berkeley. In it, she asks, “What happened to our movement?” in reference to the work done by activists of color in the 60s. What happened to that movement? And how can we start it up again?

What happened to our movement?

The current economic crisis makes its patently evident. It was literally bought off. As graduates, you came of age in a time where for at least a quarter century consumerism had been unequivocally conflated with citizenship. You have gleaned no other message from the mass media, except to maintain your individual freedom by maintaining the ‘free enterprise’ of those who have enslaved you to this new American ethic. What the Declaration of Independence described as an unalienable right – “the pursuit of Happiness” — has been reconfigured within the popular imagination as the ‘pursuit of purchasing power.’ Even the so-called public university system, which cost you considerably to attend, is being sustained by corporate interests and ethics of competitive privatization. So, in many ways you are not to blame, but you are responsible because it will be up to your generation and those that follow to literally stop passing the buck to the rich guys.

What is our response as progressives to these times of economic upheaval? Do we look to Corporate America to protect our rights and our pocketbooks, to define our family life styles and educate our children, even after the ruling class betrayed its own ever-trusting middle-class by robbing it of a lifetime of savings and the homes they were programmed to purchase? Where is the protest?

Read the rest of the speech here!

Mangos With Chili Presents Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead in the Bay Area Tonite & Nov. 15th

7 Nov 2009

MWC_Front_Vert2 Porque we remember our loved ones from our familias and community everyday and porque the mujeres that are involved in the creation of this project are beautiful and kick culo.

Mangos With Chili: the floating cabaret of QTPOC bliss, dreams, sweat, sweets & nightmares
proudly presents the premiere of:

BELOVED: A Requiem for Our Dead
because we refuse to forget you

Featuring:
Nalo Hopkinson
Charleston Chu
E. Rose Sims
SoliRose
Nico Dacumos
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Ms. Cherry Galette
and more

With video by Storm Florez, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Kortney Ryan Ziegler, and more

November 6th and 7th, 8PM
The Lab
2948 16th St
San Francisco, CA 94103
$12-16, no one turned away for lack of funds

November 15th, 8PM
Hechos en Califas Festival
La Pena
3105 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA
$12-16, no one turned away for lack of funds

In this highly anticipated premiere of the newest Mangos With Chili production, we invite you to join us at the crossroads for a night of conjuring, memory, mourning and celebration. Through elegies of story, song, dance, drag and more, the Bay Area’s noted and notorious queer and trans people of color performance crew will honor our erased, fallen and slain queer and trans people of color family lost to hate crimes, war, colonization, and genocide. We will celebrate our queer legacies and the ways we’ve found to survive through the beautiful resistance of memory, and whisper stories about grief, loss, healing, sweet darkness, and walking between worlds towards rebirth.

Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead will feature the brilliance and blaze of renowned Caribbean speculative fiction storycrafter Nalo Hopkinson; multimedia invocation performance art heart wrench by playwright and poet Nico Dacumos; In Memoriam, a new collaborative dance theater work by Charlston Chu and Cherry Galette; ancestral prayer/spoken love letter by writer and theater artist Rose E. Sims; a mixed media jazz dance cabaret extravaganza by Charleston Chu, an autobiographical musical journey traversing the Middle East and African Diaspora by virtuoso trio SoliRose; the powerful truth renderings of queer Sri Lankan writer and performer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha; and the premiere of Moorish Salt a burlesque-dance theater/ritual performance art piece by fusion dance artist and theater-maker Cherry Galette.

Mangos With Chili is a Bay Area based arts organization committed to showcasing high quality performance of life saving importance by queer and trans artists of color to audiences in the Bay Area and beyond. Founded in 2006 by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ms Cherry Galette, Mangos With Chili has performed to sold out houses across North America, wowing audiences in world class theaters, underground performance spaces, bars, and campus halls, with their high intensity, breathtaking performance, politics, and storytelling craft, reflecting the lives and stories of queer and trans people of color, while making art that speaks out in resistance to the daily struggles around silence, isolation, homophobia, and violence that QTPOC face. Mangos With Chili is a fiscally sponsored project of the San Francisco based arts organization CounterPULSE, which provides space and resources for emerging artists and cultural innovators: www.counterpulse.org. Mangos With Chili is supported by the Horizons Foundation, the Astraea Foundation, and the generous support of our community of donors.

Both venues are wheelchair accessible. The show contains material of adult nature. Parental discretion advised. Please refrain from wearing scented products to ensure that audience members and performers with multiple chemical sensitivity can attend.

For more information:
mangos.with.chili@gmail.com
mangoswithchili.wordpress.com

Protests at University of California Campuses

1:01 pm By la Macha · California · Comments Off

25 Sep 2009

In the face of huge budget cutbacks that many argue are little more than an effort to privatize public foundations, the students and faculty in the University of California system protested in huge numbers yesterday.

Daniella, a petite second-year Latina undergraduate sitting quietly in the shade echoed what many making the rallying calls were articulating. “My whole life I wanted to come here. If they increase the fees I will have to drop out. We have to fight this.”

via the LA Times

Among those in the crowd was third-year psychology major Vico Melgoza of Santa Ana. He said he was skipping two classes today to be there. “This is more important. That’s my personal belief,” said Melgoza, 21, adding that he was worried about how fee increases will affect not only his future but also future generations of low-income students. The fee hikes and cutbacks, he said, “are beating the people who are already beaten.”

From Time

The demonstrations did not disrupt schoolwork. A spokesman for UC President Mark Yudof said most classes were held and that “most of the action was at the rallies.” But there will be more rallies. Protest organizers at Berkeley said that discussions are under way for a march on Sacramento that would include participants from the UCs, the 23-campus Cal State University system and the states’ junior colleges. “This is just the beginning,” says Miller. “It’s a wake up call to students about what is happening to their education.”

Vivir Latino will keep you updated to future happenings!

Prison Riot in California

3:34 pm By la Macha · California|Controversia|Violence · 2 Comments

9 Aug 2009

art.prison.fire.newspro CNN is reporting that serious rioting broke out at the California Institution for Men in Chino, California last night.

More than 250 inmates were injured in a riot that erupted overnight at the California Institution for Men in Chino, a spokesman said Sunday.

Flames leap from a housing unit at a prison in Chino, California, on Saturday night.

Fifty-five inmates were taken to area hospitals with serious injuries, said Lt. Mark Hargrove, prison spokesman.

None of the facility’s employees was hurt in the melee, which broke out at about 8:20 p.m. Saturday at the Reception Center West facility, Hargrove said. The situation was under control by 7 a.m. Sunday, he said.

The scene of the violence was the medium-security housing facility with seven units, each of which houses about 200 inmates, he said.

Some 80 officers responded to the riot, during which a housing unit was heavily damaged by fire, he said.

Guards used pepper spray, “less lethal force, and lethal force options” to regain control, Hargrove said in a written statement.

The institution was placed on lockdown pending an investigation of the cause of the fighting, and visiting privileges were suspended.

I have friends that are both prison guards and prisoners. So when I hear news like this I get very anxious. I want both the guards and the prisoners to be safe, and yet it always seems like it’s the prisoners that are subject to “lethal force options.”

I hope that all involved people, including the prisoners, are ok. That everybody survived with the least amount of trauma.

Villaraigosa Bows Out, Won’t Run for Governor of California

6:53 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · California|Los Angeles|Politics|society · 1 Comment

22 Jun 2009

Along with celeb Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, L.A.’s Latino mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (and co-star of telenovela-like love dramas) had his sights set on becoming the Governor of the great state of California, but today has announced that he’s bowing out:

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced on national television today he would not be running for California governor in 2010 after flirting with a bid for higher office for months.

Elected to a second, four-year term in March, the mayor told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he wanted to devote his full attention to Los Angeles, which is facing its worst fiscal crisis in decades.

Villaraigosa’s decision adds a dash of clarity to the race for the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial nomination which, at the moment, appears will be between state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Brown has yet to say if he will run, while Newsom already has announced his candidacy.

The L.A. Times attributes the bow-out to the Mayor’s low approval ratings – 55% on the job he’s currently doing as mayor in L.A. — and the fact that historically, Los Angeles mayors have had a very hard time at gaining support in their quest for Governor of California. Oh, and the $530 million deficit for the city in fiscal year 2009.

Meanwhile, Mr. Villaraigosa was just re-elected as Mayor of the great city of L.A., which apparently means he has a lot of trabajo to do.

Any L.A. reader want to let us know the real deal? Is L.A.’s crisis just an excuse? Did Villaraigosa ever even have a chance to be governor? What’s his report card for L.A. looking like? Let us know in the comments.

Via / Los Angeles Times and Politico

Ex-Miss California: I Lost my Crown Because of the Gays

6:28 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · California|Controversia|GLBT|society|States · Comments Off

12 Jun 2009

carrie-prejean-parents Wow, I basically saw this one coming yesterday, word for pathetic word:

Former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean says she lost her crown because of a comment she made about gay marriage and not because she had been skipping appearances.

Prejean told Matt Lauer on NBC’S “Today” show Friday that she “absolutely” had been dethroned because of the comment, when she said marriage should be between a man and a woman.

Nice try, Carrie. But in another captivating display of my psychic prediction powers, pageant officials are saying exactly what I predicted yesterday: you couldn’t keep your commitments because you were too busy making anti-gay marriage appearances for the Evangelicals. And having hangovers.

So, bye-bye, La Jolla, Viva Miss Malibu!

Via / AP – Yahoo News

Miss California Loses Her Crown After All

10 Jun 2009

carrie-prejean

We called it the story that wouldn’t die, and apparently it still hasn’t. Miss California, Carrie Prejean – that bastion of morality and American values — has been stripped of her crown, after originally keeping it after a photo scandal. This time it’s not because of her liberal ways with her blouses but for something a lot less sexy – for slacking off. CNN reports:

Carrie Prejean has been dethroned as Miss California USA for “contract violations,” including missing scheduled pageant events, according to a state pageant official.

Prejean, 22, retained her title last month despite a controversy over topless photos, missed appearances and her statements against same-sex marriage.

Miss USA pageant owner Donald Trump decided to fire Prejean a month after he gave her a second chance.

“Carrie is a beautiful young woman, and I wish her well as she pursues her other interests,” Trump said.

Tami Farrell, Miss Malibu, will assume Prejean’s title and assume the responsibilities she apparently wasn’t able to be bothered with. Pageant officials say she violated her contract because she was unwilling to make appearance on behalf of the pageant.

My guess is that Prejean slacked off because she was out there trying to pursue her career as a spokesperson for the Christian Right’s anti-gay marriage movement. ¡Le salió el tiro por la culata!

Via / CNN

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