Join us tonight for a discussion on how to support our unhoused neighbors. Hosted by the CoH Public Speaker’s Bureau.

The CoH Public Speaker's bureau is a diverse team of community educators with lived experience being homeless in San Francisco who dispel myths, highlight truths, and advocate for evidence-based solutions. Join our campaigns and mobilize against harmful policy and rhetoric.

Projection of the film 'The Dreams We Share' (Mexico, 2025), (1 hr. 41 minutes) Valentina Leduc's debut film interweaves the Zapatista voyage to Europe with three projects of hope in different geographies, each sharing Zapatista principles of community organization: in the forests of Froxan, Galicia (Spain); in Lûtzerath (Germany) and in Juan C. Bonilla, municipality of Puebla (Mexico).

 "They Have Names: Hind Rajab" is a theatrical elegy for Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza in 2024. This one-voice lamentation blends myth, memory, and testimony. Through vivid language, symbolic imagery, and sacred silence, Hind returns not to recount death, but to be remembered as she lived -playful, wise, and full of dreams. “They Have Names: Hind Rajab” is not realism-it is ritual. A call to remember her name, to hear her voice, and to sit, even briefly, in the silence the world left behind.

Written by Mo Sati. Stage reading performed by Clara. Narration by Arnoldo Colibri Hummingbird.

Bring your family for a reading of “Little Rebels” by Yuyi Morales as we learn what it means to be a “Little Rebel” with an art activity, jarana, and percussion for all ages to participate! This event is part of 3rd Annual Enero Zapatista Bay Area: El común zapatista in the face of the storm: Reweaving relations and regenerating lands across borders. January 2026 is a month-long series of events organized autonomously by a group of individuals, organizations, and spaces. The aim is to gather and form connections through Zapatismo and the Zapatista struggle, across calendars and geographies, on Ohlone territory. 

Traiga a su familia a la lectura de “Peques rebeldes” de Yuyi Morales, y descubramos juntos qué significa ser un “pequeño rebelde” con una actividad artística, jarana y percusión para que participen personas de todas las edades. Este evento forma parte de la 3.ª edición anual de Enero Zapatista Bay Area: El común zapatista frente a la tormenta: Tejiendo relaciones y regenerando tierras más allá de las fronteras. Enero de 2026 será un mes de eventos organizados de forma autónoma por un grupo de personas, organizaciones y espacios. El objetivo es reunirnos y tejer redes a través del zapatismo y la lucha zapatista, trascendiendo calendarios y geografías, en territorio Ohlone. 

This event seeks to informally convene various kinds of artists and cultural workers who would be interested in organizing with each other towards the advancement of land reform in both the Bay Area and the state of California. It will be a potluck, primarily so we can eat and chat -- accompanied by live music + ambient dj sets. There will also be tables where people can demonstrate their visual art prints. 

The Plurinational Land Reform in CA Working Group emerged in 2023 as a grassroots collective of students and researchers seeking to bridge the gap between (farm)working and professional classes. It takes inspiration from the tactical innovations plus lessons which indigenous-peasant movements based in Bolivia, Guatemala, and Chile have experimented with to advance what they have coined as "plurinationalism". You can learn more about this concept in our Our Compass section.

We seek to apply these lessons to the context of California by aiding landless peoples in the identification, acquisition, and cooperative management of land. In particular, we seek to create coalitions between small farmers, tenant farmers, farmworkers seeking to become new-entry farmers, and indigenous peoples seeking territorial autonomy. In shorter terms, the creation of an indigenous-peasant alliance and movement.

We hope to not merely be a research arm for community-based organizations, but also an incubator for the necessary social movement infrastructure which effectively implements an agrarian reform program in the state of California. This can range from mapping, land acquisition, leadership development, organizational training, and agroecological education. We are always open to collaboration and discussion, and encourage anyone to reach out!

Other Dimensions in Sound is our Friday music series curated and hosted by Boohaabian multi reed player extraordinare David Boyce. Each week David will be inviting different musical guests to join him in our galeria for a night of sonic sustenance.

Tonight’s musical medicina is being provided by vocalist Saki Minamimoto, who is performing with Beth Schenk(alto saxophone), Kasey Knudsen(alto saxophone), Matt Munz(bass) and Brett Carson(drums).

Other Dimensions in Sound is our Friday music series curated and hosted by Boohaabian multi reed player extraordinare David Boyce. Each week David will be inviting different musical guests to join him in our galeria for a night of sonic sustenance.

Tonight’s musica is an afro futurist soundscapes in dub and blacktronica jazz also known as Black Edgar’s Music Box

Other Dimensions in Sound is our Friday music series curated and hosted by Boohaabian multi reed player extraordinare David Boyce. Each week David will be inviting different musical guests to join him in our galeria for a night of sonic sustenance.

Tonight’s musical medicina is an extra funky does of groovalicousness provided by Funkonya.

Join us this afternoon for a teach-in/overview of MIM(Prisons), USW, and AIPS and how we have built a robust revolutionary anti-imperialist prison movement over the years, the challenges we face, and new struggles to partake in. After the teach-in there will be work in the end for our monthly mailing out where we will pack newsletters, revolutionary literature, and organizing materials for prisoner comrades on the inside."

Launched in 2020, Anti-­Imperialist Prisoner Support (AIPS) is a mass
organization led by the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons
(MIM-Prisons) which aims to provide anti-imperialist prison organizing
from outside the prison walls. Specifically, AIPS members and chapters
will provide support for existing campaigns and projects led by
MIM(Prisons) and United Struggle Within (USW) and help develop and
support local campaigns to meet the needs of organizers inside.

!TONIGHT we have LIVE poets in the window!

Medicina Para Pesadillas is keeping the very special Mission tradition of poets reading on 24th street alive and well with this beloved literary series. Come hang and enjoy poets reading their work to the locura and life that is Calle Veinte Cuatro.

This month’s features are Lidia Yadira , Louie El Panadero Poeta and Raul Ruiz.

Have you been searching for a spot where you can sing karaoke while supporting local makers and getting all your holiday shopping done? Well look no further than Medicina’s Karaoke Tiangus Holiday Maker Market! Stop by from 2-6pm today and check out some of the beautiful and chingon creations made by our local artists(vendors include @xicanaollin, @yarrowslaps, @dragonsap, @txutxoperez, @l2diasolesito and more TBA) and belt out a corrido, pop song, or death meatl ballad on our karaoke stage. Hosted by the indomintable y always colorful Amanda Ayala.

Other Dimensions in Sound is our Friday music series curated and hosted by Boohaabian multi reed player extraordinare David Boyce. Each week David will be inviting different musical guests to join him in our galeria for a night of sonic sustenance.

Tonight’s musical medicina is Subterranean Fire.

TONIGHT come hear decolonized verses, spanglish poesia, Latine spokenword, Pocho poemas and neighborhood chisme at Speaking Axolotl, the Bay Area’s long running monthly Latine Reading series. 10 slot open mic goes up a las 6:50PM. Open mic poets have 7 minutes to read.

This month we are over la luna excited to have as our featuring, zooming in all the way from Argentina, Pola Gomez Codina.

NOTA; Speaking Axolotl is a BIPOC reading series which means Black and Brown folks only on the mic. Whyte folks are welcome to attend and listen but their presence is not required.

Three musical masters Francis Wong(saxopohne), Jinji Sayson(Kulintang/Dabakan) and Conrad Benedicto(Kulintang/Dabakan) spend the late afternoon in our galeria workshopping their unique current musical projects. A wonderful oppurtunity to see the musical artistic proccess at work and hear some killer musica.

Three authors read poetry and creative nonfiction that speaks to our moment. Samina will read from her debut memoir-in-essays and Sara will read from her award-winning poetry collection. Deema will read from the new edition of Water to Water: Gaza Renga, coauthored with Jewish American poet Marilyn Hacker. The readings will be followed by a Q&A and book signing.

Samina Najmi is a professor of English at California State University, Fresno. Her memoir-in-essays, Sing Me a Circle: Love, Loss, and a Home in Time, won the Aurora Polaris Award in Creative Nonfiction and was published Oct 1 by Trio House Press. It has received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and is featured among Poets & Writers’ five creative nonfiction debuts of the year. Samina is enrolled part-time in Fresno State’s MFA program in creative nonfiction, and this is keeping her humble. Daughter of multiple migrations, Samina has lived in Fresno since 2006 and watched with wonder her children, her students, and her citrus grow. Deema K. Shehabi is a Palestinian-American poet, essayist, and editor. Deema is the author of Thirteen Departures from the Moon and co-editor with Beau Beausoleil of Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, for which she received a Northern California Book Award. She’s also co-author of Water to Water with Marilyn Hacker and winner of the Nazim Hikmet poetry competition in 2018. Deema’s work has appeared in poets.org, Los Angeles Review of Books, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and in the anthologies Heaven Looks like Us and Ask the Night for a Dream.

SARA BORJAS is a Xicanx pocha, a Fresno poet and a poetry editor at Noemi Press. Her debut collection of poetry, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff was published by Noemi Press in 2019 and won a 2020 American Book Award. Sara was named one of Poets & Writers 2019 Debut Poets and has received fellowships from MacDowell, CantoMundo, The Poetry Foundation and others. Her work can be found in AGNI, The LA Times, and The Rumpus, amongst others. She teaches down ass undergraduates at CSU East Bay and will resist white supremacy and settler colonialism until Black liberation is realized and Palestine is free. Sara lives in Oakland and stays rooted in Fresno.

Join us for a film screening of The Wobblies: a 1979 American documentary film about the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The IWW took to organizing unskilled workers into one big union and changed the course of American history. This documentary tells the story of workers in factories, sawmills, wheat fields, forests, mines and on the docks as they organize and demand better wages, healthcare, overtime pay and safer working conditions. 

The screening will be followed by a discussion about the film, the current labor landscape, and ways to plug into the campaign for a general strike in SF. 

Light refreshments will be provided.

Instagram: @huelga_general_sf

Website: https://huelgageneralsf.org/

This even is being organized by Huelga General SF

Huelga General SF is organizing with workers, unions, youth, and community members to use our collective labor power to stop ICE.

Casi todos los pueblos han creado sistemas para el entrenamiento del cuerpo y la mente, tales como el yoga hindú, la gimnosofía griega, las danzas sagradas de África y Oceanía, y las artes marciales de China y Europa medieval. La Civilización Madre de Mesoamérica (Anawak) no fue la excepción.

KINAM es una práctica de entrenamiento psicofísico basada en la filosofía tolteca y en sus antiguas posturas de equilibrio y de poder, creada a partir de diversas técnicas de movimiento funcional, meditación, y "posturas de poder toltecas". En esta clase buscamos recuperar las raíces culturales de América Prehispánica a través de la exploración de nuestra atención y consciencia y el balance de nuestros centros perceptuales (cuerpo físico, mente, emociones y energía vital)

Materiales a traer: Un mat de yoga o un tapete, ropa comoda

*Apto para todas las edades 

Almost all cultures have developed systems for training the body and mind, such as Hindu yoga, Greek gymnosophy, the sacred dances of Africa and Oceania, and the martial arts of China and medieval Europe. The Mother Civilization of Mesoamerica (Anawak) was no exception.

KINAM is a psychophysical training practice based on Toltec philosophy and its ancient postures of balance and power, created from various techniques of functional movement, meditation, and “Toltec power postures.” In this class, we seek to recover the cultural roots of Pre-Hispanic America through the exploration of our awareness and consciousness while balancing our perceptual centers (physical body, mind, emotions, and vital energy).

Materials needed: Yoga mat and comfortable clothes
*All ages are welcomed

Join us tonight as we celebrate the opening of Familia-r: The Vaquera/x/o Through A Mexican-American Lens. This chingon exhibit displays over 50 photographs from Michael Papias' five-year long photography project,  Published by The Tortilla Press, this collection of work highlights the ceremonies, advocacy, and daily fight to keep Latina/x/o horse riding traditions alive in the colonial landscape known as Los Angeles. All work on display has been built using analogue photography methods---shot in the field, with Brown hands, on 35mm and 120mm film---emphasizing Michael's practice of centering invisible Brown labor.

Familia-r is a larger reflection of Michael's identity as a Mexican-American Orphan, having been part of the Vaquera/x/o community since his birth until his placement in foster care—Michael has now returned to his familia-r homeland after 15 years of being ripped away (from his culture, language, sombrero) and has worked to not just document, but also build community with the leaders that have continued to keep the sacred practices of Latina/x/o horse riding alive. 

As the Latina/x/o diaspora currently fights its way through another horrific chapter of colonial history, this collection highlights the community, adrenaline, and tenderness of the Vaquera/x/o in the colonial landscape——as we swing both arms, all four hooves, and intentionally create with our communities to preserve our knowledges for the next generation of Brown horse riders.

This event explores how Music and Poetry can work together to paint a picture and deliver powerful messages. Seven poets jamming live with Kim Font will take the audience through a sonic expirience worth checking out.

Poets: Hector Son of Hector, Josiah Luis Alderete, Norman Zelaya, Tamia Vides, Sarah Matsui, Patrick Holian, Rolando André López

Kim Font is; Diego Amaya(Drums), Daniel Melendez(Guitar), and Alan Aguilar(Bass)

No Kings, No Queens Chess Club is the super-chill community chess club that gathers the 1st Sunday of every month in the galeria. Hosted by Danny Cao, all ages and skill levels are encouraged to come. Never played chess? We'll teach you! Come hang out, talk chess and play a few games.

Other Dimensions in Sound is our Friday music series curated and hosted by Boohaabian multi reed player extraordinare David Boyce. Each week David will be inviting different musical guests to join him in our galeria for a night of sonic sustenance.

Tonight’s musical medicina is a very special tribute to our friend eyevee.

As Carmen Maria Machado writes, "I believe in a world where impossible things happen." Come for a night of queer and trans lit and community, a night of being impossible things imagining impossible things for our world and what we make of it. Featuring Adele Failes-Carpenter, Maria Derrick, Tala | mecca khanmalek, heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, and Alexis Aceves Garcia. 

Adele Failes-Carpenter (she/her) is a queer parent, public educator, and labor organizer residing on Ohlone land where she teaches Women’s and Gender Studies at City College of San Francisco. Adele has spent decades organizing with young people, GI resisters, anti-war veterans, and labor unions. As a writer and educator, she aims to tend abolitionist imagining and is committed to ongoing experiments in solidarity and the proliferation of possible futures. Adele was a Lambda Literary Summer 2024 fellow in Creative Nonfiction and is a MFA candidate at Antioch University in Los Angeles.

Maria Derrick (they/elle) is a trans, nonbinary, mixed 3rd-generarion Mexican American who grew up in Altadena, California. They are currently a student at City College San Francisco and taking a Poetry For The People class under the bestest teacher evva, Tehmina Khan. They love slinkies and disco music. They value community, silliness, kindness, revolutionary optimism, and a Free Palestine, Sudan, and Congo in our lifetime.

Tala Khanmalek | mecca monarch (all pronouns) is a queer, Iranian writer, editor, and scholar based in Berkeley, CA. They earned a PhD in ethnic studies from UC Berkeley and were formerly a professor of gender and sexuality studies. They are currently the Reviews and Interviews editor of Apogee and a Creative Capital Award fellow with heidi andrea restrepo rhodes. They publish creative work in a wide range of genres, including memoir, poetry, plays, and everything in between. 

heidi andrea restrepo rhodes  is a queer, non-binary, crip/disabled, brown, writer, artist, scholar, educator, cultural worker and creature of the Colombian diaspora. They are a professor of queer, feminist, and disability studies, poetry co-editor at Apogee Journal, and have been awarded fellowships with Zoeglossia, CantoMundo, Yale, and Radar Productions. Their previously published books include: The Inheritance of Haunting, Ephemeral, Afterlives of Discovery: Speculative Geographies in the Settler Colonial Imaginary, and Wayward Creatures. They live in Tongva lands in southern California.

Alexis Aceves Garcia is a t-boy poet & educator dreaming against the state. Their cross-discipline experiments glitch traditional poetic form to construct trans time & non-linear meaning-making. You can find their work in The Hopkins Review, Poets.org’s “Poem-A-Day” series, The Slowdown, The Best of the Net Anthology 2022, among others. Aceves Garcia has received fellowships from The Outpost Foundation, Jack Jones Literary Arts, and the Tin House Summer Workshop. Their latest callings include bringing plant offerings to the ocean and escaping linear time. Follow them on Instagram @loveloaf_.

Tonight join Bay Area Kulintang group Kulintang Dialect and learn kulintang while raising money for @nafconusa! 100% of donations raised will go directly towards disaster relief efforts in the PH.

Kulintang Dialect is a traditional five instrument kulintang band that performs kulintang classics mostly from the Kalanduyan line as well as Conrad Benedicto’s original compositions. Kulintang Dialect has released multiple albums available on all platforms via Gongs Away Music.We perform the traditional kulintang music passed down by the late Master Danongan Kalanduyan with fidelity, while also exploring with joy and courage how this music can express itself in new ways that are nourished by our own specific context on this American soil.

Instagram: @kulintangdialect

https://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/kulintang-in-den-hohen-al

pen

Mother/Earth is a reading and visual arts exhibition that explores the divine feminine, particularly mother and earth goddesses, and the artists' personal connection to spirituality, the earth and the divine mother. featuring Barbara Jane Reyes, Lourdes Figueroa, Ahimsa Timoteo Bolton, Sandra Maria Calvo and Michelle Marie Robles Wallace.

Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003), Poeta en San Francisco (TinFish Press, 2005), Diwata (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2010), To Love as Aswang (Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc., 2015), Invocation to Daughters (City Lights Publishing, 2017), Letters to a Young Brown Girl (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2020), and Wanna Peek Into My Notebook?: Notes on Pinay Liminality (Paloma Press, 2022). Daughtersong Diaspore is forthcoming in 2027. She is also the author of three chapbooks, For the City That Nearly Broke Me (Aztlan Libre Press, 2012), Cherry (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2007), and Easter Sunday (Ypolita Press, 2007).
Poems and essays have appeared in Asian American Literary Review, Asian Pacific American Journal, Chain, Hambone, Huizache, Maganda, Marías at Sampaguitas, Meridians, Ms. Magazine, New American Writing, New England Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, San Francisco Chronicle, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, South Dakota Review, Southern Humanities Review, The New York Times, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. An Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow, a recipient of the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, the Global Filipino Literary Award, and a San Francisco Press Club Journalism Award, she received her BA in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, her MFA at San Francisco State University, and she teaches in the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program at University of San Francisco. She has taught in the MFA programs at Mills College and University of San Francisco. She lives with her husband, poet and educator Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland.

Lourdes Figueroa is a queer chicanx oral poet &  poetry filmmaker whose work reflects their family’s experiences in el azadón— tilling the soil under the sun, in Yolo County. Based in the Bay Area, they have served as a family case manager, domestic violence advocate, housing advocate, interpreter, translator, and community organizer. Lourdes is the author of the chapbooks yolotl, Ruidos = To Learn Speak, and Vuelta (Nomadic Press) and most recently with La Universidad Autónoma De Nuevo León with their long verse poem I will kiss your mouth b/w the overgrown Milpa. They are a recipient of Nomadic Press Bay Area Literature Award for Poetry.  Discover her latest poems in the Mexican journal Tierra Adentro & latest poetry film Las Marimacha Fragments made in collaboration with Filmmaker Peggy Peralta within 3rd Thing’s Press A Good Symptom: A Serial Anthology of Time Based Disturbances. Lourdes celebrates your pocha marimachita tongue. A native of limbo nation, she continues to believe in your lung & your throat.

Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán is a multimedia artist, activist/organizer, and educator. An NEA and Tulsa Artist Fellow, they are the author of the chapbooks, Archipiélagos; Inquillry; Antes y después del Bronx: Lenapehoking; and South Bronx Breathing Lessons; editor of the international queer/transIndigenous issue of Yellow Medicine Review; and co-editor of the Native dance/movement/performance issue of Movement Research Performance Journal. Working with diverse communities to create multimedia dance events, their visual art, videos, writing, and performances have been shared internationally. Bodhrán organized an international womanist/queer/trans Indigenous roundtable dialogue on issues of water for Hawai'i Review. A founding co-organizer of the world's first transgender film festival, which became the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, they organized the world's first transgender Arab roundtable dialogue for Sinister Wisdom.

Sandy Calvo. Originally from Costa Rica and speaking no English, Sandy Calvo was brought to
California at the age of seven, along with her seven siblings by her parents seeking a
better future. After graduating from Verdugo Hills High School, Sandy attended
Occidental College where she received a Bachelor of Arts in English. Sandy holds
Master of Education degrees from both Stanford University and Mills College. Recently
retired from a career as an English teacher and secondary school administrator, and as a writer-poet, Sandy is the author of a chapbook, Prayer to Myself (1995), and her
poem, Mexico City, Summer 1990, was published in A La Brava (1996), a Queer ‘zine
edited by Jaime Cortez. Her poem, Snakes was included in The Yellow Medicine
Review-International Queer Indigenous Voices, edited by Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran
(Fall 2010). An early poem written as a college student was published in the College
Poetry Review (1976). A short essay, entitled Pandoura’s Box: A Tribute to Pandoura
Carpenter appeared in The Art Issue of Sinister Wisdom #73, edited by Fran Day
(2008). Sandy was an original member of the Indigena as Scribe writing group with
Cherrie Moraga and was the co-founder of Teachers as Writers with Marty Williams for
the Bay Area Writing Project. Sandy was a resident writer during the summer of 1994 atcHedgebrook Farm on Whitbey Island in the Pacific Northwest. In relation to her own visual art, Sandy has had the sense that it has been created and kept mostly private; even so, there has been public recognition and exhibitions of her art. In April of 2024 and April of 2025 Sandy participated as a guest artist at Project Artaud through the Open Studios with Mission Artists United where she exhibited her artwork and was a primary reader at two poetry readings. As a member of the former Bay Area’s LVA (Lesbian Visual Artists) several slides of Sandy’s art were included in the permanent LGBTQ Art Archives at Brown University. The collage Touching the Rock Woman, appeared as the cover of Breakthrough, the political journal of Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (Spring,1993). A collage, A La Carrera-On the Run, was included in We’Moon Calendar (1996). Also, during the 1990’s, several of Sandy’s
original pieces were exhibited in San Francisco at Lyon-Martin Clinic. Several works
were shown at the Mission Cultural Center as a part of group shows for the Queer
Latino/a Arts Festival, curated by the late Hank Tavera for the Queer Latino/a Artist
Coalition (1997/1998). In the 1990’s Sandy co-founded an art business, La Sala
Studios, with her ex -partner, Sarita Johnson. At the La Sala Studio shows, held at theirvhome in Oakland, Sandy exhibited and sold originals, prints, and greeting cards of hervartwork. Sandy regrets not documenting these showings of her art more carefully having understood them as “informal sharings” among friends and family and not as formal acknowledgments and interest in her visual art.

Michelle Marie Robles Wallace is a writer and painter. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, is a winner of two San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant, a Janavi Held Artist grant, a San Francisco Writers' Grotto Writing Fellowship , and finalist in Somos en escrito's Extra-Fiction Contest. She is an alum of The Community of Writers, Voices of Our Nation and Parakeet. Michelle was a reader/assistant at The Kimberly Cameron Literary Agency, founder and host of the Borderlands Lectura series and The Kaleidoscope Reading Series. She is a member of at Louis Place and the San Francisco Writers' Grotto.
Michelle has published short fiction, CNF and journalism in Alpinist, Vice, The San Francisco Chronicle, Narratively, Catapult, Remezcla, Complex, The Rumpus, The Tico Times, Yoga Journal, Pilates Style Magazine, Mountain Project, KCET, Women Arts Blog, Sun Song and From Sac, among others. Motherhood has broken open Michelle’s creativity in ways she never could have imagined. She began painting in the middle of the night during those early days when 3 am and 3 pm felt interchangeable. She is, among other projects, writing down the stories she tells her daughter at night, stories that outline a mythical, magical world that has sprung up because of her daughter.

Join us for our next community reading of the Two Year Edition of the New York War Crimes, taking place Monday, December 1 from 6:30-8:30pm at Medicine for Nightmares, 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110.

The 20th issue was published on October 7, 2025, two years after the Palestinian resistance in Gaza launched its Al-Aqsa Flood Operation and the Zionist regime unleashed its ongoing campaign of terror and starvation across the Strip. 

“Who will rise for Gaza?” The editors ask in the front editorial note. “It is the question that headlines our issue, the spirit of the times, the only question worth asking in our schools and streets.” Across 12 pages writers, organizers, artists and poets in Palestine, Lebanon, and beyond reflect on the past two years: the unconscionable loss and devastation, our martyrs, the failures of the movement, and the sacrifices we must make. 

Admission is free, donations are welcome. Posters and other printed materials for sale will benefit contributors. There will be an altar of martyred journalists. Please bring photos, objects, and offerings. Please mask up (masks will be provided.)

Read previous editions online at newyorkwarcrimes.com.

Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG) is a coalition of media, cultural, and academic workers who are committed to the horizon of liberation for the Palestinian people. We organize against Zionism and American militarism from within the imperial core. 

Casi todos los pueblos han creado sistemas para el entrenamiento del cuerpo y la mente, tales como el yoga hindú, la gimnosofía griega, las danzas sagradas de África y Oceanía, y las artes marciales de China y Europa medieval. La Civilización Madre de Mesoamérica (Anawak) no fue la excepción.

KINAM es una práctica de entrenamiento psicofísico basada en la filosofía tolteca y en sus antiguas posturas de equilibrio y de poder, creada a partir de diversas técnicas de movimiento funcional, meditación, y "posturas de poder toltecas". En esta clase buscamos recuperar las raíces culturales de América Prehispánica a través de la exploración de nuestra atención y consciencia y el balance de nuestros centros perceptuales (cuerpo físico, mente, emociones y energía vital)

Materiales a traer: Un mat de yoga o un tapete, ropa comoda

*Apto para todas las edades 

Almost all cultures have developed systems for training the body and mind, such as Hindu yoga, Greek gymnosophy, the sacred dances of Africa and Oceania, and the martial arts of China and medieval Europe. The Mother Civilization of Mesoamerica (Anawak) was no exception.

KINAM is a psychophysical training practice based on Toltec philosophy and its ancient postures of balance and power, created from various techniques of functional movement, meditation, and “Toltec power postures.” In this class, we seek to recover the cultural roots of Pre-Hispanic America through the exploration of our awareness and consciousness while balancing our perceptual centers (physical body, mind, emotions, and vital energy).

Materials needed: Yoga mat and comfortable clothes
*All ages are welcomed

Join us at Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore on Saturday, 11/22, at 4pm for an evening of poetry, music and storytelling from system-impacted writers and a community-rooted poet laureate. Together, they explore the dreams and nightmares born of struggle and survival, revealing how writing opens pathways to freedom and art becomes medicine.

Antonio López is San Mateo County’s 2025-2027 Poet Laureate. López is a poetician at the intersections of the arts, policy, and social change. He is the son of immigrants from Michoacán, México who moved to East Palo Alto in the 1980s. The first in his family to graduate from college, he holds degrees from Duke University, Rutgers-Newark, and the University of Oxford as a 2018 Marshall Scholar. His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous publications, anthologies and podcasts including Poetry Foundation, Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, The Slowdown, Poetry Daily, among others. His first book of poetry, Gentefication, was selected by Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Gregory Pardlo for the 2019 Levis Prize in Poetry published by Four Way Books. His second book, The Right to Remain Violets, is forthcoming from the University of Arizona Press. Antonio served his hometown as a councilmember and mayor for the City of East Palo Alto. From 2021-2023, he worked as field representative for the California State Senate. He serves on the board of several nonprofits, including El Concilio of San Mateo County, Mannakin Dance Theater, the Catalino Tapia Scholarship Fund, among others. He is currently finishing his PhD in the Modern Thought and Literature program at Stanford University. Antonio also serves as the Associate Director for Research and Advocacy for the coast side organization Ayudando Latinos a Soñar (ALAS).

Brian Shepperd, co-creator and co-host of the podcast The Th3rd Bridge, lives a life that embodies resilience, transformation, and leadership born from lived experience. Brian spent nearly 30 years in most of California’s worst prisons. Once immersed in gangs and survival culture, he made the decision to turn his focus inward, transforming those same hard-edged lessons into tools for growth, accountability, and healing. Today, Brian, who uses the pen name b.anthony.shepperd, is the published poet behind the book Confessions of a Compassionate Felon, a community builder, and an advocate. He leads with empathy and credibility, speaking from the place of someone who has lived the realities of incarceration and emerged determined to uplift others.

Pharaoh Elisha Brooks, @Pharaoh_Elisha on Instagram and @PharaohElisha on YouTube, is the Substance Use Disorder Treatment Program Director for Kingdom Builders Transitional Program. He was fortunate enough to be found suitable from the parole board after being incarcerated for 17 and a half years. Today, Pharaoh is a writer, author, musician, producer, poet, actor, counselor, rapper, and singer. His EP, Building 18: The Hip Hop Poetry Project, is available on Spotify and Apple Music and he is working on his first novel. He feels fortunate to share his story to help uplift the same type of communities he once tore down.

Trey Xavier Watkins is a jack of many trades. A musician, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, motivational speaker, and mentor, he finds balance in the breadth of his pursuits. He has published eight novels, including his crowning work The Creation, Death, and Resurrection of Theodore C. Andrews III. Drawing from a past that includes life as a bank robber, drug addiction, and 27 years behind bars, Trey offers audiences a unique perspective on politics, relationships, and the justice system. He came to realize later in life that everything he endured had a purpose: it was his to write about. 

Other Dimensions in Sound is our Friday music series curated and hosted by Boohaabian multi reed player extraordinare David Boyce. Each week David will be inviting different musical guests to join him in our galeria for a night of serious musical medicina..

Tonight’s heavy dose of sonic sustenance is being Mystery School(Philip Greenleif and David Boyce)

TONIGHT come hear decolonized verses, spanglish poesia, Latine spokenword, Pocho poemas and neighborhood chisme at Speaking Axolotl, the Bay Area’s long running monthly Latine Reading series. 10 slot open mic goes up a las 6:50PM. Open mic poets have 7 minutes to read.

This month we are over la luna excited to be hosting Mexican journalist and author Daniela Rea who will be reading from her new book Fruto.

After the birth of her first child, the relentless work of motherhood left award-winning Mexican journalist, Daniela Rea feeling overwhelmed, despairing, and afraid of losing her identity. She took up the tools of her trade and began a series of interviews with other women, some mothers, some caregivers. As she listened to their experiences of providing care for others, sometimes under extreme circumstances, she began to find a place and a meaning for her own story. Fruto examines the personal and social contradictions of care. Fourteen voices weave in and around Rea’s own, punctuated by diary entries from her first days of motherhood and reflections on her upbringing that are sparked by a lengthy interview with her own mother. Throughout, she engages with an international women’s chorus of philosophers and feminists, poets and essayists, and the result is a compelling page turner that chronicles a journey of listening in search for meaning.

“Daniela Rea’s Fruto is a calm room late at night where women gather to talk: with their stories and their words they take care of each other and then, by sharing that, they care for all of us.”–Miriam Toews, author of Women Talking

“This transformative book is the product of eyes that see across generations, ears that truly know how to listen, and a mind that understands the complexity of systemic forms of violence. Daniela Rea’s brilliant, polyphonic imagination casts the philosophy of care in an entirely new light.”–Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive: A Novel

Daniela Rea (Mexico, 1982) is a journalist, documentary filmmaker, author of three books of narrative non-fiction, and a contributor to various collections of essays. Fruto, published to wide acclaim in Mexico in 2023, is her most recent book. She has received various awards for her work, including Mexico's National Journalism Award (2018); the Gabriel García Marquez Prize (2017, 2019, and 2022); and the Premio Alemán for Journalism (2021). She is interested in the tension between horror and beauty, and recognized for her work on social issues, violence, social justice, and human rights. She is a founding member of the Red Periodistas de Pie; part of the Global Network of Investigative Journalism, and co-editor of Pie de página, a journalism portal created with the support of the European Union. She lives in Mexico City, Mexico.

Esta noche, ven a escuchar versos descolonizados, poesía en spanglish, spoken word Latíne, poemas pocho y chismes del barrio en Speaking Axolotl, el ciclo mensual de lecturas Latíne de larga trayectoria en el Área de la Bahía. El micrófono abierto de 10 espacios comienza a las 6:50 p.m. Los poetas participantes tienen 7 minutos para leer.

Este mes, estamos emocionadisimos de recibir a la periodista y escritora mexicana Daniela Rea, quien leerá fragmentos de su nuevo libro Fruto.

Tras el nacimiento de su primer hijo, el incansable trabajo de la maternidad dejó a la galardonada periodista mexicana, Daniela Rea, abrumada, desesperada y con miedo a perder su identidad. Recurrió a su profesión y comenzó una serie de entrevistas con otras mujeres, algunas madres, otras cuidadoras. Al escuchar sus experiencias brindando cuidados a otros, a veces en circunstancias extremas, empezó a encontrar un lugar y un significado para su propia historia. Fruto examina las contradicciones personales y sociales del cuidado. Catorce voces se entrelazan con la de Rea, intercaladas con entradas de su diario de sus primeros días como madre y reflexiones sobre su crianza, inspiradas en una extensa entrevista con su propia madre. A lo largo de la obra, dialoga con un coro internacional de filósofas y feministas, poetas y ensayistas, y el resultado es una lectura fascinante que narra un viaje de escuchar en busca de significado.

Fruto, de Daniela Rea, es un espacio tranquilo en la oscuridad de la noche donde las mujeres se reúnen a conversar: con sus historias y sus palabras se cuidan mutuamente y, al compartirlo, nos cuidan a todas. –Miriam Toews, escritora de Women Talking.

Este libro transformador es fruto de una mirada que trasciende generaciones, de una capacidad de escucha excepcional y de una mente que comprende la complejidad de las formas sistémicas de violencia. La brillante y polifónica imaginación de Daniela Rea ilumina la filosofía del cuidado desde una perspectiva totalmente nueva. –Valeria Luiselli, escritora de Lost Children Archive: A Novel.

Daniela Rea (México, 1982) es periodista, documentalista, autora de tres libros de no ficción narrativa y colaboradora en diversas antologías de ensayos. Fruto, publicado con gran éxito en México en 2023, es su libro más reciente. Ha recibido varios premios por su trabajo, entre ellos el Premio Nacional de Periodismo de México (2018), el Premio Gabriel García Márquez (2017, 2019 y 2022) y el Premio Alemán de Periodismo (2021). Le interesa la tensión entre el horror y la belleza, y es reconocida por su trabajo en temas sociales, violencia, justicia social y derechos humanos. Es miembro fundadora de la Red Periodistas de Pie, integra la Red Global de Periodismo de Investigación y es co-editora de Pie de página, un portal de periodismo creado con el apoyo de la Unión Europea. Vive en la Ciudad de México.