ORGANIZER: Susan Lamont, Peace and Justice Center
CONTACT: peacenik@sonic.net
TIME: Friday, September 23 · 8:00pm – 10:00pm
LOCATION: Gaia’s Garden
1899 Mendocino Ave.
Santa Rosa, California
A celebration of the art of poetry and its role in social change! The event in Santa Rosa is one of hundreds of readings taking place around the world. In addition to poetry, we’ll have music and food.
ADDITIONAL PEACE & JUSTICE CENTER ARCHIVES: https://www.100tpcmedia.org/index.html
Thanks for organizing this reading in support of 100,000 poets for change. I’m an award-winning Bay Area poet and activist involved in a number of actions in support of 350.org’s worldwide demonstrations on Sept. 24. Look forward to attending the event, and if there’s a place for me, reading some of my work. Thanks!
We’re giving people 5 minutes max! We want lots of voices. Let me know if you want to read. If we end up with too many (we’re not there yet), we’ll hold a second event in October.
Join the Peace & Justice Center of Sonoma County for an evening of poetry, music, and food, our local contribution to 100 Thousand Poets for Change, and part of the Center’s Creating a Culture of Peace series.
Please come early for dinner at Gaia’s Garden, a vegetarian treasure owned by local activists Susan Church and Ari Camarotta. There will be quiet instrumental music from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. (and during the intermission). Both the 8:00 and 9:10 sets will open with “change” music from local musicians. Moss Henry (www.mosshenry.com) will be one of the musicians. The 2nd is yet to be announced.
Here’s the poet lineup so far: Patrice Warrender, Lilith Rogers, Vilma Ginsberg, Attila Nagy, Margo Van Veen, Terry Ehret, Clare Morris, Phyllis Meshulam, Magick, Toni Wilkes, and Susan Lamont. Looking for some more men!
There is a $4 minimum purchase for the restaurant – you can have dinner, a salad, dessert, a glass of wine or beer, tea – lots to choose from.
The event is free above and beyond the $4, though donations to the Peace & Justice Center are gladly accepted.
I am trying to get in touch with the guy who started this and received a Proclamation from Santa Rosa City Council today. I am on the Art In Public Places Committee and we were talking about poets and poetry at great length at our meeting yesterday. This is in regard to giving Art in Public Places a way to engage the public in poetry, slam, whatever at public events or ceremonies. Please have him call me at 528-0736 or email quinkenn@sonic.net
Thank you so much,
Judy Kennedy
Hi Judy! Great, Michael will be in touch with you shortly. Thanks! Terri
Grace Unto You And Peace,
Hurray for Santa Rosa and the community which supports this event as well as the events which I am sure are planned for World Poetry Day, October 4th, 2011.
But without a ride home I am afraid that I will not be able to be there in body. You will have to be satisfied with my moral support.
Enjoy the vegetarian meal and poem a tide of good change for all of us!
Agape, kiitos, shalom, xie xie, salaam ja namaste,
Don as “Tauno”
Susan,
I was so happy to be part of the evening you hosted with the Peace and Justice Center at Gaia’s Garden. Thanks for all your work in bringing together the best company of poets, musicians, and activists.
Here’s the piece I wrote for the event:
How Fascism Will Come
“When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
—attributed to Sinclair Lewis
When fascism comes, it will greet us with a smile. It will get down on its knees to pray. It will praise Main Street and Wall Street. It will cheer for the home team. It will clap from the bleachers when the uninsured are left to die on the street. It will rally on the Washington Mall. It will raise monuments to its heroes and weep for them and place bouquets at their stone feet and trace with their fingers the names engraved on the granite wall and go on sending soldiers to die in the mountains of Afghanistan, in the deserts of Iraq. It will send doves to pluck out the eyes of its enemies, having no hawks to spare.
When fascism comes, it will sit down for tea with the governor of Texas. It will pee in the mosques from California to Tennessee, chanting, “Wake up America, the enemy is here.” It will sing the anthems of corporatization, privatization, demonization, monopolization. It will be interviewed, lovingly, on talk radio. It’ll have talking points and a Facebook page and a disdain for big words or hard consonants. It won’t bother to read. It will shred all its books. It will lambast the teachers and outlaw the unions.
When fascism comes, it will look good. It will have big hair, pressed suits, lapel pins. It will control all the channels. It will ride in on Swift Boats. It will sit on the Supreme Court. It will court us with fear. It will woo us with hope. When fascism comes, it will sell shares of itself on the stock market. It will get rich, then it will get obscenely rich, then it will stop paying taxes. It will leave us in the dust. It will kick our ass. It won’t have to break a sweat to fool us twice. It will be too big to fail.
When fascism comes to America, it will enter on the winds of our silence and indifference and complacency. And on that day, one hundred thousand poets will gather. In book stores and libraries, bars and cafes, in their houses and apartments, in schools and on street corners, they will gather. In Albania, Bangladesh, Botswana, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Finland, Guatemala, Hungary, Macedonia, Malawi, Qatar, crying, laughing, shouting. They will wrap the sad music of humanity in bits of word cloth and hang them, like prayers, on the tree of life.
Terry Ehret
September 23, 2011