Thursday, January 27, 2022

Code Pink Valentine reading Feb. 14

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Love for the World, Love for CODEPINK

On Valentine's Day, we will be treated to an evening of poetry and testimony to inspire us to Love, Rise and Resist!

We will invite people to post Valentine's Day messages to drone warfare resister Daniel Hale and Julian Assange in the chat. Then CODEPINK will send the messages to them in prison.

Zoom webinar Feb. 14th from 5-6:30 pm PST


RSVP for the Zoom link!



MC: Jodie Evans, CODEPINK Co-founder and Cynthia Papermaster, CODEPINK Golden Gate Coordinator

With Joanna Macy, Anita Barrows, Nora Barrows-Friedman, Rafael Jesús González, Kelly Curry, Susan Griffin, Jennifer Hasegawa, and Dennis J. Bernstein.

Joanna Macy is a writer, with fourteen published books, including translations, with Anita Barrows, of Rilke's poetry, an eco-philosopher, environmental activist and a Buddhist teacher. In all her work, she draws on her wild love for the world. 

Anita Barrows is a poet and novelist.  She is a clinical psychologist who specializes in work with children and adolescents and a tenured professor of psychology at The Wright Institute, Berkeley.  Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy have done four published translations of the poetry and letters of Rainer Maria Rilke. 

Nora Barrows-Friedman is an associate editor of The Electronic Intifada and co-hosts both The Electronic Intifada Podcast and The Brief Podcast. From 2003-2010, she was the Senior Producer and co-host of Flashpoints. She has played cello since she was 11 years old.

Rafael Jesús González is Prof. Emeritus of literature and creative writing, and Poet Laureate of Berkeley. He was born and raised biculturally/bilingually in El Paso, Texas/Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, and taught at University of Oregon, Western State College of Colorado, Central Washington State University, University of Texas El Paso, and Laney College, Oakland, California where he founded the Dept. of Mexican & Latin-American Studies Dept. 

Meet Kelly, an author, publisher, relationship-builder and social justice activist who has been working as CODEPINK's Local Peace Economy Organizer for over two years. Kelly is known for her love of writing, storytelling and sharing healthy, living foods to create powerful, on the ground shifts of consciousness and build community globally. She does this work with The Electric Smoothie Lab Apothecary aka TESLA, which she founded.

Susan Griffin is a critically acclaimed feminist poet, essayist, lecturer, playwright, and filmmaker. She is author of more than twenty books, including The Eros of Everyday Life and A Chorus of Stones. The Utne Reader named her one of the “100 Visionaries Who Could Change Your Life.”

Jennifer Hasegawa is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet who has sold funeral insurance door-to-door and had her suitcase stolen from a plastic surgery clinic in Paraguay. The manuscript for her book of poetry, La Chica’s Field Guide to Banzai Living, won the Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award and the book was longlisted for The Believer Book Award in Poetry. She was born and raised in Hilo, Hawaiʻi and lives in San Francisco. 

Dennis J Bernstein is the host & Executive producer of Flashpoints on KPFA & Pacifica. Dennis is also an award-winning poet, most recently the author of Five Oceans in a Teaspoon with visualizations by Warren Lehrer; Five oceans won the 2020 IPPY Gold Medal Award for Poetry and the 2020 Best Book Award for Poetry by the American Bookfest. Bernstein also received the 2015 Pillar Award in Broadcast Journalism for his work as a front-line journalist whistleblower.

 WHEN

February 14, 2022 at 5:00pm - 6:30pm (PST)

 WHERE

Zoom

 CONTACT

Cynthia Papermaster · cynthia_papermaster@yahoo.com

 

RSVP for the Zoom link!




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Saturday, January 22, 2022

Minnijean Brown-Trickey: Living the Nonviolence Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Tuesday, Jan. 25


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The USF Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice

Minnijean Brown-Trickey: Living the Nonviolence Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

TUESDAY, JANUARY 25  1 – 2 p.m. 

Online – Zoom 

REGISTER NOW


Minnijean Brown-Trickey has practiced nonviolence as a dedicated strategy of racial justice and social change -- and as a way of life -- since she was a young student in Little Rock, Arkansas. Please join us for this special dialogue with USF President Fr. Paul J. Fitzgerald, S.J.USF Adjunct Professor Andrea McEvoy Spero, an educator and activist who develops curriculum and trainings for teachers engaging youth in the historical and current contexts of race, gender and human rights; USF undergraduate student Metyia Phillips '23, a recent member of the USF McCarthy Fellows in Sacramento Program; and Rafael Jesús González, retired professor, social activist, Poet Laureate of Berkeley, California


More about Minnijean Brown-Trickey

In September 1957, with the help of Daisy Bates, a prominent civil rights activist in Central Arkansas, Minnijean Brown set out to integrate Little Rock Central High School alongside eight other African American students. After they were assaulted by vicious mobs, and blocked from entering the school by the Arkansas National Guard called in by Governor Orval Faubus, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent 1,200 U.S. paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division to escort the “Little Rock Nine” to the school’s front door – desegregating Central High.

Although all of the Nine experienced verbal and physical harassment during their year at Central, Brown was first suspended, and then expelled for retaliating against the daily torment. She moved to New York and lived with Drs. Kenneth B. And Mamie Clark, the African American psychologists whose social science findings played a critical role in the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case.

In the intervening years, until the present day, Minnijean Brown-Trickey has not ceased to fight for social justice through the principles and methods of nonviolence. We are honored to have her visit our USF community in an intergenerational dialogue to discuss the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with Fr. Paul Fitzgerald, Dr. Andrea Spero and USF student Metyia Phillips.With Rafael Jesús González, Poet Laureate of Berkeley.




Minnijean Brown-Trickey & Rafael Jesús González


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Monday, January 17, 2022

full moon: Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)

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Luna grande de luz

    a Martin Luther King Jr.


La luna está hinchada de luz
cargando sueños sanadores
en un tiempo de pesadilla despierta
para celebrar el más grande 
soñador del país.


— Tengo un sueño — dijo, 
el sueño medido a sus tiempos
que su maestro el nazareno 
hacía dos mil años amplificó 
de las antiguas escrituras de su culto, 
el sueño ya estampado 
en las tabletas de barro de Ur, 
puesto en la cuenta de Tot, 
el sueño que cuando se cumpla 
nos hará verdaderamente grandes.


Los sueños que trae la luna
dicen: ¡Despierten! 
Hagan realidad el sueño;
    dejen de grandeza; 
        sálvense a si mismos.
            ¡Despierten!


                 
© Rafael Jesús González 2022







Moon Big With Light

    to Martin Luther King Jr. 


The moon is swollen with light
bearing healing dreams
in a time of waking nightmare
to celebrate the nation’s 
greatest dreamer.

"I have a dream," he said, 
the dream, fitted to his times,
that his master the Nazarene 
two-thousand years before amplified
from the ancient scriptures of his cult, 
the dream already pressed 
into the clay tablets of Ur, 
entered in the ledger of Toth,
the dream that when realized 
will make us truly great.


The dreams the moon brings
say: Awake! 
    Make real the dream;
        forget greatness; 
            save yourselves.
                Awake!


                     
© Rafael Jesús González 2022


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Wednesday, January 5, 2022

Epiphany (12th Night)

  

 
This feast-day, always joyous, is tonight darkened by the memory of the attempted neo-fascistic coup on the Congress of the United States on Epiphany January 6 last year. The pandemic, the ever more extreme weather of a fevered Earth, a virulent neo-fascism in the world makes it imperative that we make our revolution of justice rooted in compassion begun 2,022 years ago. Our only hope is that love prevail — of life, of the Earth, of each other. Amen.

Esta fiesta, siempre alegre, está oscurecida esta noche por el recuerdo del intento de golpe neofascista en el Congreso de los Estados Unidos en Epifanía 6 de enero el año pasado. La pandemia, el clima cada vez más extremo de una Tierra febril, un neofascismo virulento en el mundo hace imperativo que hagamos nuestra revolución de la justicia arraigada en la compasión que comenzó hace 2.022 años. Nuestra única esperanza es que prevalezca el amor — a la vida, a la Tierra, a los unos a los otros. Amén.

 


                    Manifestación


Nos sorprendió el lugar 
al que nos llevó la estrella
tan poco digno del nacer de un rey
pero nuestros cálculos no dejaban duda —
un establo oliente a paja y estiércol 
habitado por un buey y un burro,
ocasionado por corderos y cabritos.
El niño como todo recién nacido
nada tenía que lo distinguiera.
La mujercita como toda buena madre 
dulce y tierna, el hombre ya no joven 
mostraba ternura y solicitud.
Estaban aun más sorprendidos y perplejos
por nuestra visita que nosotros por estar allí.
Le dejamos los obsequios que de tan lejos
le traíamos: el cofrecito de oro cincelado
con leones y soles, la caja de marfil llena
de incienso, la urna de ébano llena de mirra
y partimos en silencio. 
Al fin el más joven de nosotros murmuró 
    — Tal vez traiga revolución.— 
Los otros dos guardamos en silencio 
la esperanza que su decir despertó.





                            © Rafael Jesús González 2022 






                Manifestation 


We were surprised by the place
to which the star brought us
so little worthy of a king's birth,
but our calculations left no doubt — 
a stable redolent of hay and dung 
inhabited by an ox and a donkey,
occasioned by lambs and kids.
The child like all new born
had nothing to distinguish him.
The little woman, like all good mother
sweet and tender, the man no longer young
showed tenderness and solicitude.
They were even more surprised and perplexed
by our visit than we for being there. 
We left the gifts we had brought from so far:
the little gold coffer chased
with lions and suns, the ivory box filled
with incense; the ebony urn filled with myrrh, 
and we left in silence.
Finally the youngest of us murmured,
        "Perhaps he brings revolution."
The other two kept in silence 
the hope his saying awoke.




                                    © Rafael Jesús González 2022

 



 
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Saturday, January 1, 2022

Blessings for 2022

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ç

El año nos llega con esperanza de derribar los muchos y grandes obstáculos a la justicia, la paz, al sanar de la Tierra, a la democracia y sería bien invocar a los espíritus de los buenos comienzos que quiten tales obstáculos para el bien de la vida.

Recibamos bien al año nuevo con esperanza y un firme empeño en no sólo resistir las fuerzas de la codicia y el hambre del poder sino con el amor transformar nuestro mundo para que nos dé para nuestras necesidades en armonía con una Tierra sana.

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The year comes with hope of bringing down the many and great obstacles to justice, to peace, to healing of the Earth, to democracy and it would be well to invoke the spirits of good beginnings to remove those obstacles for the sake of life.

Let us welcome the new year with hope and a firm resolve to not only resist the forces of greed and lust for power, but with love, to transform our world so that it may meet our needs in harmony with a healthy Earth. 



- श्रीगणेश


Invocación a Ganesh

Om Shri Ganeshaaya Namah


Sentado en el centro
(rodeado de calaveras)
donde el lazo de los años se anuda,
goloso señor cabeza de elefante,
levántate y baila la cuenta nueva;
con tu hacha derrumba
los obstáculos
a nuestro vivir,
pisotea los obstáculos
a nuestro amar,
y haz dulce el camino nuevo.
Que tus familiares
el ratón y la rata roen
al almacén de las bendiciones;
que tu serpiente hable.
Con tu colmillo
en el libro de lo que fue
escribe lo que pueda ser
y de tu caracol sopla
el sonido primordial de lo que es.




----------© Rafael Jesús González 2022

(Spillway 17, ontoño 2011,
derechos reservados del autor)


[De los muchos dioses hindú, Ganesh, dios de dharma y del buen agüero, es el más popularmente amado y venerado. Sus características son su cabeza de elefante y su barriga gorda que metafísicamente se dice contiene todo el cosmos. Sus familiares son el ratón y la rata porque roen por los obstáculos y frecuentan los almacenes de abundancia. Generoso donador de beneficios y derribador de obstáculos, él es el patrón de los comienzos, del desarrollo, de la liberación, de las empresas, tanto físicas como espirituales. Como tal, él es el primero de todos los dioses en ser invocado y se le pide su bendición al comienzo de un día, de una carta, de un rito, de cualquier empresa. Amable guía por las alturas y los abismos de la vida, se dice que él es la buena fortuna manifiesta, la sabiduría descubierta, el tiempo encarnado y la abundancia desbordante. Hay 1008 nombres para describir sus poderes divinos y su bendición es un verdadero don.]





Invocation to Ganesh
 
Om Shri Ganeshaaya Namah


Seated in the center
(ringed with skulls)
where the noose of years is tied,
sweet-toothed, elephant-headed lord,
rise and dance the new count;
ax down the obstacles
to our living,
trample the obstacles
to our loving,
and make sweet the new path.
Let your familiars
the mouse & the rat
gnaw through
to the storehouse of blessings;
let your snake speak.
With your tusk,
in your book of what was,
write what may be
and from your conch blow
the primordial sound of what is.



----------© Rafael Jesús González 2022

(Spillway 17, Fall 2011;
author's copyrights)


[Of the many Hindu gods, Ganesh, god of dharma and good portent, is the most widely loved and revered. His distinctive  traits are his elephant head and his fat belly metaphysically said to contain the entire cosmos. His familiars are the mouse and the rat because they gnaw through obstacles and frequent larders of plenty. Generous Boon-Giver and Remover of Obstacles, he is patron of beginnings, of growth, of liberation, enterprises, both physical and spiritual. As such, he is the first of all the gods to be invoked and his blessing asked at the start of a day, a letter, a ritual, any undertaking. Gentle guide through the ups and downs of life, he is said to be good fortune manifest, wisdom revealed, time embodied, and abundance over-flowing. There are 1008 names to describe his divine powers and his blessing is a gift indeed.]


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