Tidbits and Announcements - August 8, 2012

* Solidarity with Chicago teachers!
* Re: Women Farm Workers Win Sex Harassment Case (Peggy 
  Dobbins)
* Re: The Power of Gabby Douglas (Zita Allen)
* Re: Stochastic Terrorism (Wally Roberts, Gordon Fitch)
* Re: The Long, Lawless Ride of Sheriff Joe Arpaio (Germaine 
  Cook)
* THE DISSIDENT ARTS FESTIVAL 2012 - Aug. 17 & 18 - New 
  York City (Brooklyn and Manhattan)

==========

* Solidarity with Chicago teachers!
Chicago teachers authorize strike! Come build solidarity &
learn about the struggle
 
A discussion featuring a presentation by a Chicago Teachers
Union member
 
Thursday, August 23rd
6:30 p.m. 
at The Murphy Institute
25 West 43rd Street, between 5th and 6th avenues
19th Floor
 
Public schools, teachers and their unions are under attack
throughout the country.  The drive to privatize our public
schools and strip away teacher protections is only
accelerating.   In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel canceled a
promised 4% pay raise to Chicago teachers and proposed
lengthening the school day by 20% with only a 2% raise.  In
addition, Emanuel proposes implementing a merit pay system for
teachers--a similar system in Baltimore has led to 60% of
teachers receiving unsatisfactory ratings.  In response, the
Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has refused to back down and has
shown the power of solidarity, holding large rallies and
forging alliances with community members.  The CTU is
demanding smaller class sizes, fair pay and a diverse and
fulfilling curriculum for Chicago students.  This spring, 90%
of all CTU members voted to authorize a strike.  98% of those
voting authorized a strike.   
 
The CTU's campaign has met with some initial success.  Emanuel
recently agreed to hire almost 500 teachers, mostly arts, PE
and enrichment teachers.  These teachers will be hired from a
pool of laid-off, experienced teachers.  The result is that a
longer school day will not force teachers to work longer and
harder with no compensation.
 
While this victory is inspiring, the CTU's strike preparations
continue, as there has been no agreement on teacher pay, class
sizes, merit pay and other important issues.  It is urgent
that teachers, parents and community members show our
solidarity with CTU.  We also have a lot to learn from CTU's
struggle.
 
Come hear a presentation by a CTU member and help organize
solidarity for the Chicago teachers here in NYC!
 
 Stand with CTU! 
Sponsored by (list in formation):  Movement of Rank and File
Educators, Black New Yorkers for Educational Excellence,
Coalition for Public Education, Grassroots Education Movement
(GEM), Labor Notes, New York Collective of Radical Educators
(NYCoRE)

Contact [log in to unmask] to help organize the event or to
co-sponsor
 
==========

* Re: Women Farm Workers Win Sex Harassment Case

This is a signal triumph and where the women's liberation
should be grounded.

Reminds me of the woman who emerged as a leader in the Texas
Farm Workers in '79.  Her exact words are on the last page
of From Kin To Class, which I don't have a copy of here, but
they went something like this: 'I love my brother, but I am
in this strike to make a better life for workers.  My
brother is a trocadero. He gets paid for bringing in
strikebreakers. I must stand up against him and I do'

Peggy Dobbins

==========

* Re: The Power of Gabby Douglas

Remember Dominique Margaux Dawes-- the first African-
American woman to win an individual Olympic medal in
gymnastics and the first black person of any nationality or
gender to win an Olympic gold medal in Olympics!!!!

Dominique Margaux Dawes (born November 20, 1976, in Silver
Spring, Maryland) is a retired United States artistic
gymnast. She was 10-year member of the U.S. national
gymnastics team, the 1994 U.S. all-around senior National
Champion, a three-time Olympian, a World Championships
silver medalist and a member of the gold-medal winning
"Magnificent Seven" at the 1996 Summer Olympics. Dawes is
also notable as being the first African-American woman to
win an individual Olympic medal in artistic gymnastics, and
the first black person of any nationality or gender to win
an Olympic gold medal in gymnastics.

Zita Allen

==========

* Re: Stochastic Terrorism:  Triggering the shooters.

This is all well observed and written, but I do not believe
Portside or DailyKos should allow anonymous postings.
Anonymity on the web only encourages lies and distortions.
If people won't use their real names and publicly take
responsibility for what they are saying, why should we
permit them to inflict their views on us?

Wally Roberts
Williamstown, VT

===

So if someone shoots Beck, Hannity, or O'Reilly, this guy
will be responsible, because he stirred up hatred against
them?  The comments on the web site on the article are
impressively nasty already.

By the way, can anybody define 'meme'?

Gordon Fitch

==========

* Re: The Long, Lawless Ride of Sheriff Joe Arpaio

I couldn't read all of this, the guy is a PIG, pure and
simple.

Germaine Cook

==========

* THE DISSIDENT ARTS FESTIVAL 2012

TWO STAGES!   TWO DAYS!   TWO BOROUGHS!

Friday August 17, 17 Frost Theatre of the Arts
(Williamsburg, Bklyn) - and - Saturday August 18, the Brecht
Forum (Greenwich Village).

www.DissidentArts.com

The 2012 edition of THE DISSIDENT ARTS FESTIVAL will feature
an array of artists of conscience as it has over the past
seven years. Featured performers include legends of Free
Jazz and World Music KARL BERGER and INGRID SERTSO. Another
special feature will be a screening of `METROPOLIS' with
live accompaniment by the nine hand-picked improvisers of
the DISSIDENT ARTS ORCHESTRA. The Festival is a showcase of
cultural workers and serves as a bridge between the arts and
the progressive activist community; it's where revolutionary
New Music meets Topical Song and Free Jazz cavorts with
Dissident Poetry and Film! Our art is as rad as our politics
---as it must be...

=====

DAY ONE: FRIDAY AUGUST 17, 8PM - 11PM
17 Frost Theatre of the Arts - 17 Frost Street, Brooklyn NY
www.17frost.com

RADICAL SONGWRITERS FORUM:
8:00- Jackie Sheeler - post-punk music and poetry for the
Occupy era
8:30- Joe Kidd - from Ann Arbor---topical songs in and
beyond the tradition
9:00- Donald Johnson - ballads of work, struggle, life
9:30- FASTER - the duet of soprano saxophone/voice and
electric guitar/'junk percussion' twists song-form into
social satire

FILM SCREENING with LIVE ACCOMPANIMENT:

10PM - Fritz Lang's silent sci-fi/social change film classic
'METROPOLIS' (1927) with a live improvised score by  THE
DISSIDENT ARTS ORCHESTRA: John Pietaro
(xylophone/drumkit/percussion/musical direction), Mossa
Bildner (voice), Cheryl Pyle (flute), Quincy Saul
(clarinet), Rocco John Iacovone (soprano and alto
saxophones), Nick Gianni (tenor saxophone and flute), Ben
Barson (baritone saxophone), Javier Hernandez-Miyares
(electric guitar/keyboards), Nicolas Letman-Burtinovic
(upright bass).


DAY TWO: SATURDAY AUGUST 18, 4PM - 11PM
The Brecht Forum - 451 West Street, New York NY (212)
242-4201   www.brechtforum.org

FILM SCREENING and DISCUSSION:
4PM -'CULTURES OF RESISTANCE' (2003)- `Can music and dance
be weapons of peace? In 2003, on the eve of the Iraq war,
director Iara Lee embarked on a journey to better understand
a world increasingly embroiled in conflict...'

CONCERT:

6:00 -Jennie Litt & David Alpher - purveyors of the People's
Cabaret
6:35 -Cheryl Pyle & Nicolas Letman-Burtinovic - free flute
and bass + guests
7:05 -Angelo Verga - radical poetry
7:10 - Daphne Carr- guest speaker: Occupy Musicians co-
founder
7:15 -Radio NOIR - dissident swing and new realizations of
Brecht/Eisler
7:50 - Karl Berger & Ingrid Sertso - free improv/world jazz
by the legendary founders of the CMS!
8:40 -Upsurge! - from San Francisco---jazz/poetry for a new
day
9:25 -Crystal Shipp - performance art/spoken word of social
change
9:40 - Ras Moshe & Shayna Dulberger - revolutionary jazz in
the struggle
10:15-Nick Gianni Evolution - free jazz and more

About the Dissident Arts Festival...

Now, in the midst of right-wing fear-mongering and teabag
hysteria, progressive artists speak out for social justice.
The Dissident Arts Festival, now in its seventh year, is a
platform for cultural workers to sing, recite, improvise,
act and orate against war and inequity and in honor of the
struggle of workers and the globally oppressed---and with an
accent on an art that is as revolutionary and challenging as
the politics of progressive change . Event producer John
Pietaro, a percussionist, writer and cultural organizer, is
proud to present the Dissident Arts Festival in conjunction
with both the Brecht Forum, 17 Frost Theatre of the Arts and
-for the first time - new sponsor the Rosenberg Fund for
Children.

Originally based in upstate New York, the Festival began
life as `the Dissident Folk Festival' in 2006. Its primary
goal was the establishment of an annual showcase of
progressive protest music, poetry and performance art--
perhaps the only such fest in the nation. But this Festival
has always sought to bring together a wide variety of sounds
and styles, bending rules and breaking institutions whenever
and wherever possible; the vision of `folk' music
established by Festival founder Pietaro was often in
opposition to the standard concept and new music and jazz
were always in the mix. Among the past performers and
speakers were actor/raconteur Malachy McCourt, folk legend
Pete Seeger, poet Louis Reyes Rivera,  jazz violinist Gwen
Laster, hip hop ensemble ReadNex Poetry Squad, filmmaker
Kevin Keating ("Giuliani Time"), labor leader Henry Foner,
folksinger Bev Grant and many more. We presented tributes to
Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Bertolt Brecht and Phil Ochs
along the way. The Festival has also offered a voice to
progressive political candidates, particularly those of
independent parties and radical labor organizations. As of
2010, the Dissident Arts Festival became  a New York City
event and was added to the Brecht Forum's notable cultural
program. The Brecht Forum was established decades ago as a
center of Left education and culture in Greenwich Village.
And now we have become a 2-day, 2-borough event with the
affiliation of 17 Frost Theatre of the Arts, an independent
radical gallery and performance space in Williamsburg
Brooklyn.

THIS YEAR'S FESTIVAL promises to be the best yet featuring
an array of experimental and boundary-breaking artists in
every realm of radical music, from the acclaimed
explorations of Karl Berger & Ingrid Sertso, to the burning
free jazz of Ras Moshe, the innovative avant garde of Nick
Gianni, the nu sounds Cheryl Pyle & Nicolas Letman-
Burtinovic, the edgy sonic journey of Faster, and the new
realms of the bold and the old with Radio NOIR (a mini-set
of songs by Brecht and Eisler are hotly anticipated!). But
the 2012 Festival also presents an assortment of acts which
encompass revolutionary poetry, song, and/or theatre through
unique means: the outspoken San Francisco-based jazz-poetry
of Upsurge!, the post-punk agitated songs of singer-poet
Jackie Sheeler, the rad spoken word of Angelo Verga, the
`People's Cabaret' of Jennie Litt & David Alpher and the
multiple worlds of Crystal Shipp's performance art. We will
also present traditional topical songsters such as balladeer
Donald Johnson and the Ann Arbor-based protest singer Joe
Kidd and, Daphne Carr, a guest speaker from Occupy
Musicians. This year's film screenings include powerhouse
social statements of two centuries: `Cultures of Resistance'
, 2003, by Iara Lee (with discussion), and `Metropolis' ,
1927, by Fritz Lang---featured here with a live score by the
nine hand-picked improvisers of The Dissident Arts
Orchestra.

THE DISSIDENT ARTS FESTIVAL 2012 www.DissidentArts.com
Sponsors:
The Brecht Forum, 17 Frost Theatre of the Arts and The
Rosenberg Fund for Children

==========
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