The Society for Disability Studies is holding its annual conference at San Francisco State University from June 8th through 11th. The theme of the conference is Conversations & Connections Across Race, Disability & Identity. The conference coincides with activism by people in the Bay Area and on the East Coast to start a national organization for and by disabled people of color. There is a registration fee for the conference, but the following events are lower cost:

The photo exhibit Brown Disabled Broken Bodies: A Tour of Police Brutality Cases Against Disabled People of Color will be up on June 10th from 5-7PM in the Nob Hill Room. Photos of people such as May Molina, a diabetic woman who died in Chicago police custody when she was denied access to her medication, will be on display.

On Saturday June 11th from 12:30-2:30pm in the Richmond Room, there will be a panel entitled: Coast to Coast African Americans' Grassroots Incentives. The organizations to be represented are from the East Coast and California dealing with people of color with disabilities, and especially African Americans.

Also on June 11th, from 7:30-9:30pm in the Richmond Room, Black AND Disabled Artists Sharing, or BADAS, will perform Black Disabled Art History 101 with a slide show. Artists include Hip-Hop artist Keith Jones, Jazz poet Charles Curtice Blackwell, Safi wa Nairobi, and Leroy F. Moore.

As part of the conference, there will also be a Color of Disability photo exhibit of the two political conventions focusing on people of color with disabilities by Safi wa Nairobi.

For more information about the exhibit and performance, email Leroy Moore, sfdamo (at) yahoo.com | Society for Disability Studies | Leroy Moore's website

On Saturday, June 11th, La Peña Day will be celebrated in Berkeley with a 30th Anniversary Street Festival. The La Peña Cultural Center is a community space that includes a cafde, music and dance classes, and performances. The festival will be held from 12pm-6pm at the intersection of Prince & Shattuck streets. There will be free live music, food, drink, free kids' activities, including a kids' stage, and arts and community booths. With Pachasiku, Rafael Manriquez, La Peña Afro Cuban Youth Ensemble, La Peña Bomba Class, Jesus Diaz & QBA, La Familia, Youth Movement Records, and DJ José Ruiz. La Peña is creating a community history project- they ask that people visit La Peña's booth at the Street Festival and bring photos or memories from past events to enter into the community history journals.

Other Celebratory Programs:
Fri. & Sat. June 10th and 11th ¡Vivan los treinta de La Peña! with CANTINFLAS!, a celebrated bilingual play written and performed by Culture Clash's Herbert Sigüenza. This tribute to comedian & movie actor Mario Moreno captures the fusion of the comic's clever word play.
On Friday, June 17th, the La Peña Community Chorus celebrates La Peña's 30th Anniversary in a concert of retrospection and vision with some of its favorite songs from the last 25 years, as well as the most recent additions to its repertoire of music that celebrates justice, peace, unity and hope.
On Saturday, June 18th, Quetzal will be in concert. The leading Chicano band from LA returns to Berkeley with its high quality songs with upbeat rhythms and powerful lyrics in a mix of Mexican, Cuban, Latin American rhythms, jazz, and rock supercharged by its dynamic vocals. Read more

A Reclaim The Streets Party was held on Friday, May 20th in Palo Alto. Partygoers met at Lytton Plaza at University Ave. and Emerson at 8pm. Photos: 1 | 2 Report: 1

From the RTS Callout:
Our everyday lives are fucking boring. From where we work to when we sleep, when we go to school and where we play, every aspect of our lives is beyond our control. We have to work, to shop, and to go to school to survive, but these repetitive activities deprive us of what make us really alive: freedom, creativity, spontaneity, adventure, excitement, and love. Our cities are planned to keep us content, isolated, and passified - we want excitement, community, and revolt! When was the last time you danced like no one was watching - when was the last time you ran like it really mattered?"

Flyer for RTS | Palo Alto RTS Web Site

From the newswire:

"Zizek told the audience why he was a philosopher. He does not want to explain and account for the unaccountable, and instead wants to "render strange something we accept as given." Seeing things in a new way to "help us get a small shift of perspective to see the unexpected, implicit consequences" of thought and actions. "We do not know where we truly are," he stated, adding "we do not know what is really going on. We are in a radical crisis," he concluded."

Read More
Listen to Q&A; with Zizek

On Sunday April 24th, Berkeley celebrated the anniversary of the founding of People's Park. There were, as always, speakers and performers on stage, donated from Food Not Bombs, and a skate park. Scheduled speakers included former UC Berkeley professor Ignacio Chapela and an update about the Pepper Spray Trial. There were also performances by Hightower, the Brass Liberation Orchestra, MC Wavy Gravy, and more. Audio

Indybay Coverage of the 2003 People's Park Anniversary Celebration | 2004 Anniversary | People's Park Website

On April 7th the "Made in Palestine" art exhibit opened at SomArts Cultural Center. San Francisco was the first stop of the exhibit after it opened at the Station Museum in Houston, Texas. The Station Museum, described "Made In Palestine" as "the first exhibit of contemporary Palestinian art ever displayed in the United States." Gabriel Delgado, exhibit curator, Jim Harithas, director of the Ineri Foundation, and Tex Kerschen, chief curator traveled in the Middle East for a month and met with artists in Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria to select the works to be included in the exhibition. The exhibit was on display until April 21st.
Photos | SomArts Program | Debut US tour of "Made in Palestine" exhibition

On April 2nd 2005, SF Reclaim the Streets and the Coalition for Transit Justice invited the community to come out to Dolores Park for a party to oppose a MUNI fare increase. Hundreds started to gather around noon and around 1:30pm a march left ending up in front of the Castro Theater (near the intersection of Market and Castro). A street party continued on Castro St until around 3:15pm. The party then moved up Market, turning right on 16th to the 16th St. BART station.Finally, around 4:30 the party moved up mission and back to Dolores Park where live bands peformed into the evening.
Photos: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | | Archived Breaking News | SF RTS Website | Past Coverage Of MUNI Fare Increase | Past SF RTS Coverage: 2000 | 2001 | 2004

Cultural Links will sponsor the 8th annual Radical Performance Festival on March 18th and 19th in at the SomArts Cultural Center in San Francisco. The show on Friday night will include Sparlha Swa, Shailja Patel, the Brass Liberation Orchestra, Ashley Brockington, SoulOgraphy, Julia Butterfly, the Vietnamese Artists Collective, Arts in Action poets, and others. Saturday night's performance will include Sistas in the Pit, Copper Women, Colored Ink, Matt Gonzalez, Kreatibo, Blue Buddha, Samsara, Deep Dick Collective, Dancers Without Borders, Pick Pocket Ensemble, Art in Action Poets, and antics by the Big Tadoo Puppet Crew. The two shows will benefit Art in Action Youth Scholarships and the From Attica to Abu Ghraib Conference

Radical Performance Fest Website | SomArts Website | Indybay's Coverage of the 2004 Radical Performance Fest

The Borderland Film/Arts Festival is a rich multi-layered exhibition which began on 11/29/2004 with a series of interventions in San Francisco. On 12/02 the program opened on a wider front with a film festival, gallery reception and live radio broadcast by Enemy Combatant Radio. The Borderland Collective has gathered a diverse range of multi-disciplinary artists and participants to "share an understanding of both the physical Mexico/U.S border and the more implicit socially constructed borders that surround us all." The month-long exhibition investigates a multitude of perspectives "of borders or borderlands and how the artist either contests the border construction or has been shaped by it." Related Indymedia coverage: Juarez caravan | AFTA

Thousands of music fans convened at Oakland's Henry J. Kaiser Center on Saturday, November 13th for the second annual We the Planet Festival of music, consciousness and activism, which was organized by Circle of Life and the Spitfire Agency. This year's groundbreaking concert featured The Roots, Mickey Hart, Michelle Shocked, The Coup, and Third Eye Bind, and was co-hosted by activist Julia Butterfly Hill and spoken word poet Aya de Leon. this zero-waste event also included Pushing the Boundaries for a New World: A Series of Rabble-Rousing Interactions with Today's Leading Activists and Visionaries (daytime activism workshops on Music, Arts & Activism, Indy Media, Beyond Voting, and Direct Action & Civil Disobedience). The afternoon workshops took place at Laney College. More event info. Photos: 1 | 2 | 3

Fault Lines newspaper and Indybay were present with an outreach table. Catch us again at another event...

In San Francisco's annual Video Riot, now in its third year, video artists come from all over the Bay Area and beyond to transform an entire inner city wall into a gigantic drive-in theater. The wall becomes a montage of numerous video projections, lasers and a low power FM station transmitting the soundscape for the event. This year’s video riot, “Last Gasp of Freedom,” was held on 11/07/2004 in the wake of the presidential election. With the Video Riot having survived four years of the incumbent regime, and faced with persevering another four years, video artists made a statement to the nation in the way they are most fluent. Photos