Image courtesy YBCA
UndocuNation: An Evening with Artists for Immigrant Justice
Thursday, May 3, 2012 , 6-9 pm
Art • Music • Peformances • Free • All Ages • Food & Drink
@ Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission St (Mission & 3rd) in San Francisco
*** First 100 guests receive a free pro-migrant poster ***
On May 3, CultureStrike coordinator Favianna Rodriguez is teaming up with other creative minds for UndocuNation: An artistic response to the Immigration Crisis. With talks, food, revelry and rabble-rousing, the event offers “an evening of culture jamming, visual art, and performances addressing the devastating consequences of our country’s broken immigration system.”
Sponsored by CultureStrike, Center for New Community, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), UndocuNation will use various media platforms to raise consciousness about the struggle for immigrant rights: music, installation art, readings and personal testimony–all “working to shift the national imagination on race, migration, and what ‘America’ should look like.” The event will take place at the YBCA Forum on May 3, 6pm, 701 Mission Street in San Francisco.
The event announcement puts artists at the vanguard of a massive and often ignored human rights struggle:
“2011 was a devastating year for immigrants. Once again, President Obama and his Administration Congress failed to administer relief to the estimated 12 million undocumented women, men, youth and children living in this country. On the contrary, they broke records by deporting over 1,000,000 migrants. Various anti-migrant laws were enacted in states like Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Utah. Alabama managed to come up with a law that far surpassed the evilness of Arizona’s SB 1070.
“Despite the fact that politicians tried to make it a living hell for undocumented immigrants in this country, loads of young folks came out of the shadows as undocumented and unafraid, giving the immigration movement that push of energy that it needed to challenge these laws and demand justice .
“The anti-immigrant movement continues to scapegoat immigrants for social, economic and environmental problems. ‘UndocuNation: an artistic response to the Anti-Immigrant Movement’ intends to encourage inclusive and artistic dialogue on the intersection of race, migration and art.”
The program will feature innovators and change makers like hip hop historian Jeff Chang, author Daniel Alarcón, and the conscious comedians of Laughter Against the Machine. A full list of artists and performers is below.
Go to the Facebook event page. And see the full press release.
For directions, go to the YBCA event page.
For more about Favianna and her work with CultureStrike, read this recent profile on Huffington Post, and see her blog and website on Favianna.com.
Performers, speakers and artists of UndocuNation:
Nato Green and Janine Brito of Laughter Against The Machine
Janine Brito started doing standup comedy in St. Louis and is now a rising star on the San Francisco scene. A sarcastic, snarky smart bomb of comedy funk straight from the 80’s, Janine has been featured in the SF Chronicle and The SF Weekly called her “a mean lesbian”. But she’s pretty sure that they meant it in a good way.
Nato Green, a San Francisco native and former union organizer, was named The SF Weekly’s Best Comedian of 2010 for putting on “legendary” shows that keep audiences “doubled over.” Nato is the creator of Iron Comic, the Iron Chefspoofing hit comedy game show that packed houses at SF Sketchfest four years in a row and the Bridgetown Comedy Festival 2010 and 2011.
Jesus Iniguez and Julio Salgado of Dreamer’s Adrift
Julio Salgado’s activist artwork has become the staple of the DREAM Act movement. His status as an undocumented, queer artivist has fueled the contents of his illustrations, which depict key individuals and moments in the DREAM Act movement. Along with Jesus Iñiguez, Fernando Romero and Deisy Hernandez, Salgado co-founded DreamersAdrift.com. The website aims to re-claim the narrative being about undocumented folks via music, poetry, writing, videos and art.
Jesús Iñiguez is a spoken-word reciter, slam poetry writer, hip-hop rhymer, full-time LOVER and forever a freedom fighter. AND, when time permits, a DREAMhead essayist very fond of wordplay. Also a videographer, photographer, and learner not afraid to err. Co-founder of Dreamers Adrift.
Dignidad Rebelde, an art collective featuring Melanie Cervantes and Jesus Barraza.
Oriana Bolden makes movies, screen prints and an occasional news outlet post/article. The majority of her work is about people trying to get free. Swing by www.projectprojecting.com to see what she is up to at any given moment.
Walidah Imarisha is a writer, organizer, educator and performance poet. She is one half of the poetic duo Good Sista/Bad Sista. Her work has appeared in dozens of publications, including the hip hop anthology Total Chaos. Walidah has facilitated poetry and journalism workshops third grade to twelfth, in schools, community centers, youth detention facilities, and women’s prisons.
Daniel Alarcón is the author of two story collections, a graphic novel, and Lost City Radio, winner of the 2009 International Literature Prize given by the House of World Culture in Berlin. He is Contributing Editor to Granta, and was recently named one of The New Yorker’s “20 under Forty.” Alarcón is co-founder and Executive Producer of Radio Ambulante, a transnational Spanish language storytelling podcast, which launched 2012.
Jeff Chang is the Executive Director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts and Committee on Black Performing Arts at Stanford University. He has been a USA Ford Fellow in Literature. He wrote the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award-winning Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, and edited Total Chaos. He was a co-founding editor of ColorLines.
Sean San José works as the Program Director of Theatre for Intersection for the Arts and resident theatre company Campo Santo. For Intersection he works with long term resident companies Campo Santo, the Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project, the Living Word Project (Youth Speaks’ theatre company), Felonious and host of composers, visual artists, and community groups.
Favianna Rodriguez is a visionary artist on a mission: To create profound and lasting change in the world. In 2009, Rodriguez co-founded Presente.org, a U.S.-based, nationwide organization dedicated to the political empowerment of Latinos.
Yosimar Reyes, a Two-Spirit Poet/Activist Based out of San Jose,CA. He has been featured in the documentary 2nd Verse: the Rebirth of Poetry, and published in Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry (Floricanto Press). His words have open up concerts for Carlos Santana in his latest endeavor Architects of a New Dawn. He is currently touring his self-published chapbook For Colored Boys Who Speak Softly.
Cloee Cooper organizes with the Center for New Community to expose and resist nativism. Since 2010, she has worked with people in more than 15 states to target organizations with ties to white nationalism. She produced documentary films on resistance to the anti-immigrant movement including “A Look Inside SB1070”, “Bernard’s Story”, and “Undivided” and is a regular contributor on imagine2050.net.
DJ Sloe-Poke 1) doesn’t mess around with any of the artsy stuff, 2) you won’t hear him tactlessly scratching and 3) he goes to a club to rock it. He has opened for shows as diverse as Mos Def, David Lee Roth, Yellowman & Jaguares. It really doesn’t matter who or what genre Sloe Poke is spinning for — he always has the perfect mix.
Imin Yeh works in the medium of woodcuts, screen prints, and downloadable craft projects to create large-scale installations and interactive artworks. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and has had recent exhibitions at SFMOMA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Jose Museum of Art, Incline Gallery, and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery.