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.

Enjoy an evening of experimental rasquache sensibility with a visit from Calle Soledad Presa, a small artist-run press from San Antonio, Texas. Exhibiting a small collection of codex libros, poetry books, photography artist books, visual broadsides, journals, y mas. There will be a showcase of numerous projects such as Type Letters are Molecules, Llanuras Mares Y Tiempos, and the latest edition of the poetry book ROSARIO.

The night will also include an intimate poetry reading with artist Diana Lizette Rodriguez, Hilary Cruz Meija, and Raul Ruiz

CALLE SOLEDAD PRESA (San Antonio, Texas) is an artist-run experimental rasquache press, founded by Diana Lizette Rodriguez. The press is created from the landscape, location-time meditations inside the Central Public Library which is located on Soledad Street. Calle Soledad es Rasquache. Trabajando con lo que tenemos. Lo visible y invisible. We work with what we have in hand and publish everything by hand. We work with the ephemeral. Ungraspable conditions of images & words. The press works on multiple projects, physical objects such as poetry books, art books/prints, Códex/Códices, Recording Tapes, journals & notebooks. Everything we make is one of one. The press focuses on developing relationships with other artists/poets, writers or first time bookmakers to guide them through a process of creative book developing, one-on-one editing, archival consultation, and insightful directing towards their own self-publishing. We engage with concepts of rethinking, reshaping and reimagining what the book can be. We believe the bookmaking process is a spiritual one, being guided by spirit, ancestors, and those with vital force that guide us.

THE THINGS THAT CAN NOT BEEN SEEN BUT ONLY TRANSMITTED IN A SINGLE TIME & SPACE.

Calle Soledad Presa also teaches poetry, visual art & bookbinding workshops across Texas and BEYOND. Calle Soledad Presa honors all bookmakers, specifically the Otomi People who have inspired, given their wisdom and aided the press’s vision. We also honor the artists/theorists like Tomás Ybarra-Frausto who have contributed their years of work for a press like this to exist.

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 we have a heavy duty double dose of musical medicina as guitarist Karl Evangelista plays the music of Sonny Sharrock.

TONIGHT we are joined by a very special visit from this city’s sixth poet laureate; La Mission’s own Alejandro Murguia! Alejandro will be reading from his new collection of short stories The Other Barrio(2025,Arte Publico Press) Fronteriza poeta Maria Esquinca will open the night reading from their nuevo libro When Heaven Sinks.

Alejandro Murguía is a professor in Latina Latino Studies and the Sixth San Francisco Poet Laureate(2013-2017). He is the author of Southern Front(2009)and This War Called Love(2002)(both winners of the American Book Award)and the poetry collection Stray Poems(2014). His non-fiction book The Medicine of Memory highlights the Mission District in the 1970s during the Nicaraguan Solidarity movement. He is a founding member and the first director of The Mission Cultural Center. He was a founder of The Roque Dalton Cultural Brigade, and co-editor of Volcán: Poetry From Central America.

María Esquinca is a Xicana educator, poet and journalist. A fronteriza, she was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico and grew up in El Paso, Texas. She currently teaches newcomers who are recent immigrants at San Francisco International High School. Her debut collection, “Where Heaven Sinks” was the 2024 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize winner, and was selected by Juan Felipe Herrera. 

The SF Indian Classical Session at Medicine for Nightmares is back! 7pm show starts, $10! The Indian Classical Sessions are an informal gathering dedicated to sharing the meditative beauty, ecstatic energy, and sheer majesty of South Asian music. Hosted by percussionist, drumset and tabla player Sameer Gupta, this gathering focuses on curating 4 short live sets that represent different influences and traditions surrounding South Asian music. Our goal is to connect, build our raga music loving community, and share South Asian classical music in an impromptu, casual and attentive setting.

Featured sets are: Aadi Agrawal - Bansuri, BayRaagis Khayal Ensemble - Vox, Saptarshi Mukherjee - Vox, Subarna Bhattacharyya - Vox

$10 suggested donation

Join us for an afternoon art platica with Tortilla Press whose exhibition Familia-r: The Vaquera/x/o Through A Mexican-American Lens is currently on view in our galeria. Tortilla Press will be joined in conversation with poet Maria Esquinca.

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.

María Esquinca is a Xicana educator, poet and journalist. A fronteriza, she was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico and grew up in El Paso, Texas. She currently teaches newcomers who are recent immigrants at San Francisco International High School. Her debut collection, “Where Heaven Sinks” was the 2024 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize winner, and was selected by Juan Felipe Herrera. 

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 musical medicina.

Tonight’s sonic sustenance is an entity of instrumetal noise rock known as Wall of Fog.

Has this pinche pocho ever disrepected your poetry? Boo’d you at a reading that you featured at? Prank called you in Spanglish? Misgendered your chihuahua or laughed at your whyte partner? Well now at long last the overly sensitive y chillona Bay Area poetry community will have it’s day of reckoning! Join us tonight as this Pocho Poet is roasted low and slow in front of a live audience featuring severe tongue lashings by Marisol Medina-Cadena, hector son of hector, Maria Esquinca, Rolando Andre Lopez Torres, Kevin Madrigal Galindo, Norman Zelaya, and a very special surprise roaster! This promises to be a desmadre of poetic proportions with some possible violence.

Brough to you by PBS(Pocho Broadcasting Service)

Tonight Jerome Scott and walda katz-fishman, authors of Motown and the Making of Working-Class Revolutionaries: The Story of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, bring their book tour to the Bay Area. They’ll draw on the dozens of oral histories that make up the book and engage in a conversation covering the rise of the League from 1968 to 1971 in Detroit, the centrality of political education to the project, and the process of transformation through struggle that created working-class revolutionaries. 

Jerome Scott is a former autoworker, labor organizer in the auto plants of Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s, and member of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, was the founding director of Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty & Genocide. He is a contributing author and editor of popular education toolkits and books including The United States Social Forum: Perspectives of a Movement, The Roots of Terror, Today's Globalization, and The Critical Classroom. 

walda katz-fishman is a scholar activist, popular educator and author, and professor of sociology at Howard University. She was a founding member and former board chair of Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty & Genocide. She is a contributing author and editor of popular education toolkits and books including The United States Social Forum: Perspectives of a Movement, The Roots of Terror, Today's Globalization, and The Critical Classroom.

Dispatches from Resistant Mexico, a series of shorts on Indigenous resistance in Mexico, featuring the premiere of Lekil Kujlejal (40  min). In the mountains of Chiapas, a Tzeltal Mayan community organizes into a Community Government, as part of a movement that seeks to maintain and recover the millennial community practices of Lekil Kujlejal, or “right living”. Lekil Kujlejal seeks a holistic way of living that promotes mutual care and respect for nature and is rooted in the belief that all beings are interdependent. Films by Chiapas Support Committee member Caitlin Manning. Discussion with the filmmaker following the screening.

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 tenor saxophonist Raffi Garabedian.

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 featuring San Pancho Pochismos y Xibalba Poetics with our two feature Josiah Luis Alderete and Angel Dominguez. Josiah Luis will be reading from his new chapbook “Cuernitos de Umo y Other Fragmentos” and Angel will be reading from his forthcoming collection “Don’t Tell My Mother If They Kill Me”

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.

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.