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Redwood City Community Action Rally, January 21 and Canadian Women’s March on Washington, January 21

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January 21, Saturday at 11 AM – 1 PM
Courthouse Square
2200 Broadway St, Redwood City, California 94063

Join progressive activist JOAN BAEZ, Congresswoman ANNA ESHOO, State Senator JERRY HILL, Supervisor CAROLE GROOM and many other local leaders for a non-partisan, multigenerational gathering to affirm community values about:

*Environment
*Education
*Healthcare
*Religious and Cultural Tolerance
*LGBTQ+
*Immigrants’ Rights
*Breaking the Glass Ceiling

Other Speakers will include the Reverends Kristi Denham, Marlyn Bussey, and Michael Arase-Barham; County Superintendent of Education Anne Campbell; Sequoia Hospital CEO Lee Michelson; environmentalists Diane Bailey and Alice Kaufman; and the list is growing.

On the list of musical performers is San Mateo County’s own legendary folk singer, JOAN BAEZ, and the JOHN HENRY BAND.

Local poets KALAMU CHACHE, CAROLINE GOODWIN and TANU WAKEFIELD will read.

Community groups include the AAUW, Sierra Club, and more.

You will leave the afternoon with the information you need to continue to make a difference.

This rally is inspired by and held in solidarity with the Women’s March on Washington and other local Women’s Marches held on Saturday, January 21st, the day after Inauguration Day. If you are interested in finding out more about one of the Jan 21 sister marches in the Bay Area please follow the links below:

San Francisco https://www.facebook.com/events/1516849161665234/

Oakland
https://www.facebook.com/events/299394117127175/

San Jose
https://www.facebook.com/events/277438035986908/

Women’s March Bay Area Website
https://womensmarchbayarea.org/

Other California Marches:
https://www.facebook.com/events/214100499025206/

15966293_1887766268171836_7232800696938119235_nThanks to Zena Hagerty of the documentary film company, HamiltonSeen, for giving this announcement to me to share with you. It’s heartening to learn that our neighbors on Turtle Island (North American Continent) are joining our Women’s March on Washington with their Hamilton Public Festival Event/Women’s March on Washington – Canada.  Zena says, “We will be meeting at the Hamilton City Hall forecourt at 12:00 pm with a march on to Gore Park to follow.”

Saturday, January 21 at 12 PM – 2 PM EST
Hamilton City Hall
71 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario L8P 4Y5

“We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.” – Malala Yousafzai

HERE ARE THE DETAILS:

**PLEASE NOTE: This is the official #WomensMarch and #WMWCanada for the Hamilton local solidarity event. It is *not* the contingent heading down to Washington, D.C. See the end of the event description for a link to that page.

THIS MARCH IS INCLUSIVE AND ALL ARE WELCOME.
On January 21 2017, the first day of Donald Trump’s Presidency, women-led marches, welcoming all participants, will take place across the world, with the largest expected in Washington D.C.. We call on people of all genders to gather in Hamilton as part of an international day of action in solidarity.

The purpose of this *non-violent*, *inclusive* and *intersectional* protest is to take a stand for and support women’s rights — the rights of ALL women — with women from all races, all religious communities, all political affiliations, cis or transgender and all sexual orientations. Violence, whether from or against the right-wing, left-wing, centre or independents, is not welcome and will not be condoned. We are unabashedly committed to intersectional feminism and inclusion.

We will gather, wherever we are, for the protection of our fundamental rights and for the safeguarding of freedoms threatened by recent political events. We unite and stand together for the dignity and equality of all peoples, for the safety and health of our planet and for the strength of our vibrant and diverse communities.

We will come together in the spirit of democracy, honouring the champions of human rights who have gone before us. Please spread the word, so that our numbers are too great to ignore and the message to the world is clear.

The politics of fear and division have no place in 2017.

This event is just the beginning.

Unite with us. Stand in solidarity.

******************************************************************
NATIONAL AND LOCAL MARCHES IN CANADA: Please visit http://canadianwomenmarch.ca/local-marches/

US Page is here, with links to other states’ pages: https://www.facebook.com/events/2169332969958991/

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“LET US”, a poem by citizen poet, Alan Kaufman … and your Wednesday Writing Prompt

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LET US
For the Poets of January 15th and the Women of January 21st

Let us
take ourselves aboard a bus
and travel to the dispossessed
And let us praise their dreamless eyes and hardened smiles
with rogue words of truth
to the killing fields of their hopes
The slum wards and ragged towns and stolen farms
Let us take to them the carnival of our mad and scattered lives
Let us bring them the mountain, let us give them the vision
of an open window, an unlocked door, a bed to sleep in, a plate of food
Let us give them the keys to the house of our love
Let us bare our throats tattooed with roses, our breasts sequenced with diamonds
our loins hot with dragons, our hands and feet pierced with beauty
Let us come to their dusty squares and drinking holes with canticles of magnificent defeat
Let us deliver to their mangers
of pollution and penitentiaries, shopping malls and tenements
the hard beautiful birth of the heart
Let us bring renewal, let us declare the death of despondency and tyrants
For I have seen our campfires beside the roads, like fallen still-burning miraculous stars
I have seen our bus voyaging to innocence
I have seen us tossed this century like a bone
after decades of science and war reason and corporation
art and Auschwitz
I have seen my vocation descend like a pen to a page
that can never be filled with enough truth
I have crossed a continent of despair and I swear to you, Poets,
I live for greater than myself
You, street-Latin Elizabethan hustlers, I tell you time has come to deal
death’s passionate kiss to kings
Time has come to bare our asses in Paradise
Time has come to write the Constitution with poetry and flesh
Time has come to costume up and ride
with words like steel-tipped whips
into the soul of American
and rage there and sing
till the mouth of every hungry child
is fed.

– Alan Kaufman

Thanks to Alan (Alan Kaufman – writer,poet, artist, teacher) for his willingness to share his poem here.

WRITING PROMPT

Alan Kaufman’s poem is published here with his permission and in anticipation of the event featured in the poster above and initiated by Alan along with Michael Rothenberg.  In coordination with their event, the theme for the January 15 issue of The BeZine is “Resist.”

We invite submissions for the January issue.  This is the second writing prompt to help you toward participation – online and/or off – in  this important event designed to push back against vulgarity, bigotry, xenophobia and misogyny. For The BeZine we invite world-wide participation – not against any one person – but against the renewed growth of these trends all over the Western world and the continued entrenchment – business as usual – for the rest of the world.

For the Zine, you don’t have to write a poem. You can do an essay, feature article, creative nonfiction, art or photography, or music video, which we hope will not only frame the issues but have constructive suggestions toward resolution.  No hateful language please. When you have written something on “resist” and if you feel comfortable submitting it to be considered for publication, email it to bardogroup@gmail.com

Save the date for both live and virtual events and prepare to submit your work or works to the Zine by January 10th, end of day. Let your work be both truthful and artistic . . .

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind — Emily Dickinson

The Zine submission guidelines HERE. The Zine mission statement HERE.

♥

THE WORDPLAY SHOP: books, tools and supplies for poets, writers and readers

LITERATURE AND FICTION oo Editor’s Picks oo Award Winners oo NY Times Best Sellers

 

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Happy Holy Days ….

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Wishing you every blessing throughout this holy day season. Let us be the peace and the peace will be with us.

Love,
Jamie

♥ ♥ ♥

THE WORDPLAY SHOP: books, tools and supplies for poets, writers and readers

LITERATURE AND FICTION oo Editor’s Picks oo Award Winners oo NY Times Best Sellers

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SPEAKING FROM THE HEART, prayer, poem, sacred text … and Wednesday’s Writing Prompt

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The Siddur of Shir Chadash

May the door of this home be wide enough
to receive all who hunger for love,
all who are lonely for friendship.
May it welcome all who have cares to unburden,
thanks to express, hopes to nurture.
May the door of this house be narrow enough
to shut out pettiness and pride, envy and enmity.
May its threshold be no stumbling block
to young or strained feet.
May it be too high to admit to complacency,
selfishness, and harshness.
May this home be for all who enter,
the doorway to richness and a more meaningful life.

This is from a Jewish book of daily prayers.  I think it may be meant for a wedding ceremony or perhaps as a blessing for a new home, but I can see it applied to a broader good. “Siddur” apparently means “order” and that sounds as hope-filled as “love” and “welcome”  … perhaps to the refugees that are arriving on so many foreign shores.

*****

From La Vita Nuova

In that book which is My memory . . .
before which little can be read,
Appear the words
‘Incipit vita nova:
Here begins the new life.

– Dante Allegro

This was written in the medieval spirit of courtly love but also sounds to me like warm welcome to people escaping violent, repressive and hopeless environments.  Today it’s them. Tomorrow it might as easily be you or me … let compassion and uncommon good sense reign.

*****

Excerpt from Surat al-Ma’ida, 48

“We have appointed a law and a practice for every one of you. Had God willed, He would have made you a single community, but He wanted to test you regarding what has come to you. So compete with each other in doing good. Every one of you will return to God and He will inform you regarding the things about which you differed.”

Surat = chapter of the Qur’an

WRITING PROMPT

Speaking from your heart, write a prayer, poem or psalm, or a prose paragraph that expresses a welcome to whatever person, family or group with whom you feel a connection and for whom you wish peace and safety. Click on the Mister Linky icon below and enter you name and the link to your piece so that we may all read and enjoy. (Please DON’T enter the link to your blog. DO enter the link to the relevant post.)  I’ll check back on this week’s Mister Linky for two weeks. You don’t need to link in something today.

May Peace Prevail In Our World, Our Homes and Our Hearts.