Hip Hop in Education-RBTR Film Festival update

Hey my beautiful friends and family, I am currently working on my new documentary about Women in Spoken Word and finishing up the editing on my project about an amazing non-profit from Brazil that should be done in October.

Also the first documentary I worked on is going to be showing in some film festivals coming up so come out and support! (yeah this has been my heart and soul and also one of the main reasons I have been pretty underground...you know following dreams, taking back the media and tell the stories that need to be told... the only true path to happiness, doing what you love... I am testing out that theory while I max out the credit card)

Thanks always for all your love and support. Please pass this on to anyone who may be interested.
www.mediamuxerista.blogspot.com

First off Reading Between the Rhymes will be shown this upcoming Tuesday at SFSU:

FilmFest 2005
Jack Adams Hall
Cesar Chavez Student Center 30th Anniversary Film Festival showcasing a variety of films by current and former SFSU students.
www.sfsustudentcenter.com/film

Tuesday September 27th 6:45 p.m.
"Reading Between the Rhymes" (2005)
Director: Keith Morikawa
Associate Producer: Maya Chinchilla
"Reading Between the Rhymes" is a documentary that explores the use of the hip hop culture in the classroom as a learning tool to engage and inspire youth. 27 min.


San Diego Asian Film Festival 2005
September 29 at 7:00 PM, UltraStar AZN/Cox Theatre 6
October 2 at 4:30 PM, Brickstones
www.sdaff.org

H2Ed Hip Hop Education Summit 2005 (Bronx, NY)
November 5 at 1:15 PM, Bronx Museum of the Arts
www.h2ed.net
(R.B.T.R. was based largely on last years H2Ed Summit. A mandatory event for all educators seeking alternative and creative ways to teach. You must register and obtain a summit pass prior to attending. www.h2ed.net for more info.)

H2O (Hip Hop Odyssey) International Film Festival
November 6-12, TBA
www.h2oiff.com
(New York's hottest Hip Hop event this fall and a world class event, promoting social awareness and youth empowerment through media)

Also, be sure to check out this months Edutopia Magazine from The George Lucas Educational Foundation. There's a meaty article, Hip Hop High, that focuses on, but of course, Hip Hop and education.

HURRICANE CARE, NOT WARFARE!

What's goin on folks...

In solidarity with the actions that will be taking place all over the country on the Weekend of September 23-25th we will be making our voices heard right here in downtown Oakland. There will be some great speakers & performers (check out some of the names below).

Please come through if you can.
Peaze,
S.H.

ps...also try to come through Dolores park in SF at 11am on Saturday the 24th. Info is below as well.

Let this administration know that they will never have the Bay!
_______________________

Please post & forward widely!
________________________


HURRICANE CARE, NOT WARFARE!
No Recruitment, No Draft.
Support GI Resisters: AN ARMY OF NONE!

FRI SEPT 23
4pm: Speak Out & Performances
Street Theatre, Spoken Word, Hip Hop & Samba,
Destiny Arts, Art in Action, Cesar Cruz, Aima (The Mamaz) and more!
Chevron Gas Station
Telegraph Ave and Grand Ave, Oakland
(19th St. BART)

5pm: March, Demonstrate
and Nonviolent Direct Action
Armed Forces Recruiting Center
2116 Broadway, btwn 21/22nd Sts
*******************************

MAKE ART, TAKE ACTION!
If you want to support the upcoming action
and/or participate in nonviolent civil disobedience
take note of the dates:

***Saturday, September 17th ****
ART BUILD FOR THE ACTION
3 – 6pm
Come make banners and signs
in the picnic area by the Berkeley Art Center
1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park (across the creek from Levana’s
“house”)
North Berkeley. Veggie BBQ – bring something to throw on the grill!
Directions: From Downtown Berkeley, go north on Shattuck till it
appears to end, turn right on Rose, then left right away on Walnut and
go down about a block. You will see the Berkeley Art Center on your
right.


***Sunday, September 18th***
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE PLANNING MEETING
6 – 8pm
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
344 40th Street between Broadway and Shafter, Oakland


***Thursday, September 22nd***
If you plan on risking arrest, please come to the nonviolent direct
action training and orientation.
NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION TRAINING & ORIENTATION
7 – 9pm, Nonviolent Direct Action and People Power training
The Spot, 1629 Telegraph Ave. between 16th and 17th, 5th floor


HELP TO SPREAD THE WORD!
DISTRIBUTE POSTCARDS FOR THE ACTION – THIS WEEK
Pick up at the Sat Artbuild(above), Destiny Arts (Beginning Monday)or
download
from website: CourageToResist.org
3900 Telegraph between 40th and MacArthur
Beebe Memorial Cathedral
*****************************************


If the government won’t listen to the people, we will stop the war
ourselves by
organizing campaigns to remove the pillars of support on which the war
depends.
By supporting counter recruitment, GI resistance and draft resistance,
we can
strategically cut off the supply of compliant troops. This action
supports
these people power campaigns that are key to the resurgent movement to
stop the
Iraq war and occupation, and policies of empire behind it.

While over 200 billion a year of our money is spent on the Iraq war and
occupation, money was cut from flood control projects that could have
helped
avert much of the disaster. Large numbers of National Guard troops that
might
have helped are in Iraq. The resources that are spent for hurricane
care dwarf
next to that wasted on warfare. We're working to uproot the system
behind the
Iraq war in the Persian Gulf and the government made disaster in the
Gulf
Coast. It is time to replace racism and poverty with economic and
racial
justice!

Recruiters grow desperate as more civilians, especially
African-Americans and
women, are refusing to enlist. At the same time, more and more enlisted
soldiers are refusing to fight this war for empire. Recruiters are
intensifying their campaign of lies upon our youth, and especially on
working-class neighborhoods and communities of color. Over $185
million a day
goes to maintain the occupation of Iraq, while here in California money
goes
into prisons instead of schools. Here, working class youth and youth of
color
are told "you can go into the military or to jail," and then once
enlisted,
soldiers refusing to kill are imprisoned.

How can we step up our support for youth to find alternatives to the
military, for those already enlisted who are refusing orders to kill or
going AWOL, and for Iraqis who are fighting for their lives under U.S.
occupation? Please join us on the 23rd, spread the word and bring your
friends.
There will be a safe zone for those not risking arrest.
*******************************************************

From A Nation Rocked To Sleep/
For Casey Sheehan

Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's
grave?
They say he died so the flag will continue to wave,
But I believe he died because they had oil to save.
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's
grave?

Have you ever heard the sound of a Nation Rocked to Sleep?
The leaders want to keep you numb so the pain won't be so deep,
But if we the people let them continue, another mother will
weep.
Have you ever heard the sound of a Nation Rocked to Sleep?

By Carly Sheehan

***************************************
People Power Can End the War Collective
An ad hoc group of youth, students, people of faith, veterans, military
families
and counter recruitment and military resistance support organizations
working to
support people power strategy to end the war and occupation.

Supported by: Veterans for Peace-Chapter 69, Central Committee of
Conciencious
Objectors, Courage to Resist, Art in Action, , Naked Souls Artist
Alliance,
Mother Speak, Fr. Louis Vitale

strategyproject@riseup.net
http://www.CourageToResist.org

Teatro Luna

Hey yall come out to see these outrageously funny and entertaining theater group on these two dates. You may also see me and other members of Las Manas on both of these nights.
9/13 & 9/17

SPECIAL PRESENTATION
Teatro Luna BLAZES into the Bay Area!!
Chicago’s all Latina Theatre Ensemble presents two hilarious/bitterweet productions to satiate the budding thespian in all. Galería de la Raza is proud to host Teatro Luna's ten-day artist residency...


Tuesday, September 13

“Aparicíon” - A Staged Reading

Aparicíon is the story of Natalia, a Mexican born Tejana whose day-to-day life is interrupted by the appearance of an Entity. As Natalia muddles through the complicated relationships in her life – an affair with her sister’s husband, her domineering and class-obsessed Mexican family, her friendships with a working class Tex/Mex woman and her new neighbor, a transplant from Chicago who is one of the only African-American men in her town – she struggles to bind this Being to her.

A Staged Reading @ Galería de la Raza
Free Admission
Time: 7:30PM


Teatro Luna
89/175
S-e-x-Oh!
West Coast premiere of Teatro Luna’s fourth ensemble built show about complicated and hilarious hilarious relationship between gender, culture and the very thing our abuelas forbade us to do.

SATURDAY, September 17

S-e-x-Oh! is based on autobiographical writing and community interviews, S-e-x-Oh! places the stereotypes about Latina sexuality – the virginal mother, the pregnant teen, the “spicy” sexpot- within the larger context of Latina lives and experiences. Nothing is off limits from masturbation, exploration, obsession, jealousy, phone sex, perverts and piojos, to the more serious topics of molestation and abortion. The stories in S-e-x-Oh! move discussion about Latina sexuality beyond the Virgin/Whore dichotomy portrayed not just in the popular media, but in our own homes as well.

Saturday, September 17
“S-e-x-Oh!”
West Coast Premiere
**USF's Gill Theatre (inside Campion Hall), 2130 Fulton St., San Francisco
Admission: $8-$15

Mainstream TV Observations-Katrina

Reposted from "Bob McCannon" mccannon@flash.net

I have been recording CBS and ABC news every night for the last five
nights and lots of ABC and FOX for the last five days. A couple
observations:

1) Today, CNN had an incredibly revealing story. Yesterday, a woman
got on CNN with a cell phone. CNN broadcast her plight. She and the
people around her were stranded in New Orleans; it was a miracle that
she got through. Within hours, "helicopters were buzzing around."
Shortly after, helicopters landed on the roof. Armed guardsmen escorted
buses to the place she was. She and her group were each given
antibiotics and instructions for followup since they had to wade
through the disgusting water to their buses. Where was this woman? I
guess you can guess the type of place she was. Yes, she and her 300
fellow strandees were in the Ritz Carlton hotel.

2) Tonight on the Lou Dobbs Show on CNN I saw the first, long,
mainstream TV news show on the extent of poverty in this country in
years; 20 minutes long, it was undoubtedly a shock to people who only
watch mainstream news.

3) President Bush had an amazing photo-op in Mississippi, holding two
black girls in his arms, kissing them; it went on for eight minutes and
was the clip shown on ABC and on Fox over and over, but not on CBS.

4) Tonight, for the first time, CBS showed an official, a Miss. mayor,
saying, "We have only 800 national guard troops, because we have 3,000
in Iraq.

5) CBS and CNN had references, recorded on radio, to the mayor of New
Orleans' expletive-filled criticism of the federal government,
delivered on radio today. FOX did not show it. No one put him on
television. Why not? I could not help but think of how often Rudi
Guiliani was on TV after 9/11. No one would put the mayor on TV. Why
not?

6) Lou Dobbs identified recent studies by Homeland Security that had
identified the 100,000 people in New Orleans who would NOT BE ABLE to
evacuate. You know who they were, the poor. The army corps of engineers
knew that the levees would not hold for a category four or five storm.

7) ABC had an unusual think tank official who noted that we got water
purification equipment to Tsunami victims within three days, but not
New Orleans.

8) ABC ran an amazing story about how when national guard troops
finally got to the Convention Center in New Orleans, where
indescribable horrors had taken place for five days, their FIRST action
was to send a highly armed force past sick, dying, and thirsty
Americans into the Center to get out a Spanish diplomat.

9) The first water and food that reached the Miss. strandees came from
religious organizations, long before FEMA.

10) Tom Oliphant, on the Lehrer News Hour, noted in the past, the poor
were always taken care of first. Clarence Page observed that during the
crisis in Haiti it looked better than New Orleans and that FEMA's
budget has been cut every year for years. David Brooks, normally a
Republican apologist, noted that this comes on top of Abu Grieve, corp
scandals, failure of public institutions from the time of Hurricane
Andrews on, and Bush spent "three days doing nothing." He also noted
that if the Republican primary were held today, "Rudi Guiliani would
win in a walk."

Hmmmm . . .

Have a good weekend,
Bob

"Looters"

From Poyter.org posted Sept. 2 http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45

Wisconsin editor tells staff not to use "looting" in captions
Romenesko Letters
Randolph D. Brandt of the Racine (Wis.) Journal Times wants his staff to use "taking." He writes: "We're not there. We can't really judge. In a flooded city that's been without largely supplies for a week, 'looting' could very well mean survival."
> AFP has Yahoo pull photo with controversial "finding" caption (AP)

Reporters Confront Leaders on Government's Response

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-media3sep03,1,5293837.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
KATRINA'S AFTERMATH
Reporters Confront Leaders on Government's Response
By Scott Collins
Times Staff Writer

September 3, 2005

News coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina turned confrontational late this week, as many reporters shed their stance of neutrality and joined numerous commentators in criticizing local, state and federal officials for their seemingly slow reaction to the calamity.

On Thursday's "Nightline," ABC News' Ted Koppel assailed Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael D. Brown for his inability to offer an accurate count of refugees at the New Orleans Convention Center: "Don't you guys watch television? Don't you guys listen to the radio? Our reporters have been reporting about it for more than just today."

On CNN, reporter Soledad O'Brien also lit into Brown: "How is it possible that we're getting better intel than you're getting? … Why no massive airdrop of food and water? In Banda Aceh, in Indonesia, they got food dropped two days after the tsunami struck."

"No one, no one in government is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and embarrassing and far-reaching calamitous things that has come along in this country in my lifetime," said CNN commentator Jack Cafferty. The cable network reported being flooded with e-mails praising Cafferty's diatribe.

Also on CNN, Anderson Cooper had a bristling exchange Thursday evening with Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who was thanking leaders and praising the emergency aid bill Congress was about to pass.

"Excuse me, Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting. I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi," Cooper said. "And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated…. It kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats."

On MSNBC, host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough called the situation in the Gulf Coast region "nothing short of a national disgrace."

Commentators who have proved friendly to Republicans criticized some of the relief efforts, if not the Bush administration directly.

Bill O'Reilly, host of Fox News Channel's highly rated "The O'Reilly Factor," told viewers Thursday: "The country expects the government to control law breaking in the hurricane zone, to provide food and shelter, and to prevent any person or company from exploiting this desperate situation."

News executives defended the tenor of the coverage, saying that reporters witnessing the devastation were best qualified to press government officials about reports that did not correlate to what they were seeing, they said.

"They should be challenged — how did it get this bad?" asked Steve Capus, senior vice president of NBC News. "Why did it take so long to get these people help? Something went wrong."

Reporters must not become part of the story, but it is appropriate for them to show emotion, Capus said. "What other side of the story is there when Americans are dying in evacuation shelters?"

Marcy McGinnis, senior vice president of CBS News, said she could not remember another disaster in which there was such a disconnect between what the government said and what reporters saw.

"It is part of our job to question them and to say, 'How can you say that, when we see something else with our own eyes?' " McGinnis said.

The tenor of the coverage stood in sharp contrast to the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the media won praise from many viewers for emphasizing national unity and tales of heroism.

"This story is in many ways much, much more complicated than 9/11," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism in Washington. "In some ways it's harder to cover…. The situation is still unfolding days later, so the frustration level is rising, not calming."

The turning point in the Katrina coverage came Thursday, when authorities stopped evacuating refugees from the squalid Superdome in New Orleans because of reports of shots fired at rescuers, Rosenstiel said. Journalists found it difficult to accept official explanations of why the extensive relief promised by the government had not reached refugees.

"The [Bush] administration threw the head of FEMA out there to the lion's den" to answer reporters' questions, Rosenstiel said.

Indeed, Koppel's grilling of FEMA's Brown proved pivotal to many viewers, who burned up blogs and online discussion with analyses of the exchange.

"Thank God Koppel is there to ask the common sense questions," a poster wrote at Americablog. "Kudos to Koppel for standing up to the White House spin," wrote Matthew Gross on his blog Deride and Conquer.

By midday Friday, the tone of the coverage seemed to be shifting. As troops began delivering food and water and President Bush toured the Gulf Coast region, CNN blared the headline "Help at Last" on its website.

But CNN.com also offered transcripts documenting differences in the official version and the "in-the-trenches version" of events, under the headline: "The big disconnect on New Orleans."

Some conservative commentators have accused the media of using the disaster as an opportunity to attack Bush.

"The only thing they can do is finger point, blame President Bush, rather than directing their concerns and energies constructively toward solving the problem," radio host Rush Limbaugh told listeners Thursday morning.

On Friday, the watchdog group Accuracy in Media criticized MSNBC for running an on-screen clock ticking the time passed since Katrina struck.

"MSNBC has made it quite clear that the purpose of this ticking clock is to try to blame the Bush administration for an alleged slow response," said AIM editor Cliff Kincaid.

Some politicization is to be expected, Rosenstiel said, adding that the size of the disaster was mitigating the divisiveness.

"This event is too big to fall along traditional political fault lines," Rosenstiel said. "This is a transcendent news story."

Times staff writer Matea Gold and special correspondent Allan M. Jalon contributed to this report.

: Minute-Men to arrive at the Mexican Heritage Plaza on September

This looks crazy.

Subject: Minute-Men to arrive at the Mexican Heritage Plaza on September
16th!!!
Importance: High



By the way, below is a description of the event and more information can be
found on: http://www.mhcviva.org/events/detail/2005-09-16-minutemen.html


Or

http://www.commonwealthclub.org/featured.html#minutemen



In Solidarity,



Lucy Hernandez

Community Organizer

Comité César Chávez


The Minutemen: Controversy Over Policing the U.S.-Mexico Border

Sponsored by the Commonwealth Club of California and the Mexican Heritage
Plaza

Mexican Heritage Plaza Theater, 1700 Alum Rock Ave., San Jose, CA
September 16, 2005, 11:30 a.m. (Registration), 12:00 p.m. (Program)
http://www.commonwealthclub.org/featured.html#minutemen


SPEAKERS:
* Chris Simcox, Organizer, The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps
* Art Torres, Chairman, California Democratic Party
* Michael Deleon, Minuteman Volunteer
* Marcela Medina, General Manager, Univision 14 KDTV - Moderator

DETAILS: The Minuteman Project, which has deployed hundreds of armed
volunteers in Arizona for a border watch, is currently enlisting volunteers
to patrol the New Mexico, Texas and California borders this fall. Simcox,
founder of the Minutemen, will explain their approach to border security.
Panelists will discuss the wisdom of having citizen patrols operating on the
U.S. side of the Mexican border to stem the tide of illegal immigration.
They will debate the tactics used by the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, the
need to protect the civil rights of immigrants, the issues around safety of
the volunteers and others, how we might improve the performance of the
Border Patrol and new ideas for restraining illegal immigration, such as the
Bush administration's proposed temporary worker-visa program. This forum is
part of the 'Salon de Mexico' series co-sponsored by San Jose's Mexican
Heritage Plaza, bringing influential speakers to the Bay Area to discuss the
leading issues affecting the Latino community today.

COST: $8 for Club/Mexican Heritage Plaza Members, $15 for Non-members, free
for Students