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 5 minutes to read.

!This month’s Speaking Axolotl is being guest curated by Yen La Poeta and features Zaifen King L., Bryan Chavez Castro.

Zaifen King L. is an independent Mexican author of oneiric and emotional narratives. Her stories explore love, obsession, loss, and transformation through characters who inhabit the space between the intimate and the strange. Her work blends sensitivity, emotional tension, and an intimate gaze into human bonds, creating tales where pain, beauty, and discomfort coexist in the same space.Her writing is distinguished by melancholic atmospheres, unsettling images, and a profound exploration of what remains within people even when they try to leave it behind.

Bryan Chavez Castro is a poet, writer, and translator from El Salvador’s rural east. He was the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Fellow at UC Berkeley, where he studied comparative literature. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Antiphony, Huizache, Acentos Review, and elsewhere. His translations appear in The Offing. He now lives in Oakland, CA.

Yenia Jimenez is a poet, community storyteller, whose poetry explores identity, memory, culture, love, survival, and the lived experiences of marginalized communities. Her poetry is rooted in personal experience, cultural history, and community, using raw and intimate storytelling as a form of reflection, resistance, and connection.

Yenia has been featured in Huizache Magazine and founded her own poetry collective Molcaje Poets to uplift and highlight poets from across the diasporas and create space for diverse voices to be heard and celebrated.

Her work extends beyond the page through poetry workshops, youth programming, curriculum development, open mics, and community arts projects. For Yenia, poetry is more than an art form; it is a way of remembering, questioning, connecting, and story telling through prose.

Celebrate the new book by Aimee Suzara, Birth Language, which centers a Filipina-American time traveling through her history, twisted and haunted like the roots of a balete tree. The book fuses English, Spanish, and Tagalog. It employs archival texts from as early as the 1500s when European conquistadors and explorers encountered the pre-colonial Philippine islands. Guided by the babaylan (shaman) and populated by mythical creatures like the mananngangal, kapre, and sireno, the collection celebrates a history of resistance, reclaiming and redefining the self despite colonization, assimilation, and cultural loss.

Aimee will share poetry from her book and converse with guest poets Yaccaira Salvatierra and David Maduli about shared themes in their work.

Aimee Suzara is a Filipino-American poet, playwright, performer, and educator Aimee Suzara is the author of the poetry book BIRTH LANGUAGE (Tia Chucha Press, Aug 2026), SOUVENIR (Wordtech Editions 2014), which was Willa Award Finalist, and two chapbooks, Finding the Bones and The Space Between. Her poems, prose and plays have appeared in Kartika Review, California Language Association Journal, Orion Magazine, Raising Mothers, Poets.org, Mom Egg Review, and Women Re-Creating Classics (Bloomsbury 2025), among others. Her commissioned play THE REAL SAPPHO was supported by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation New Works program and the National Endowment for the Arts. Suzara was a 2025 San Francisco Foundation / Nomadic Press Literary Award winner, and has been been awarded fellowships and residencies by Poetry and the Senses at UC Berkeley, Mesa Refuge, the Key West Literary Seminar, A Room of Her Own Foundation, Hedgebrook and the Atlantic Center for the Arts.  As a multidisciplinary performer, she has collaborated with dance theater and music ensembles such as Deep Waters Dance Theater and the Grammy-Award-winning Kronos Quartet. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley and Mills College.  Based in Oakland, California, she teaches writing at Bay Area colleges and universities and through her coaching business Wild Tongues. 

David Maduli is a father, educator, and author of Alemany Bay Window/Redwood Coast Record Crate (Sampaguita Press, 2024). His work, often inflected by many years as a DJ and school teacher, received the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. Born in San Francisco, he resides in Oakland, where he completed his MFA at Mills College with a fellowship in Community Poetics.

Yaccaira Salvatierra is a California-based poet, translator, mother and dedicated educator. She is the author of the poetry collection Sons of Salt (BOA Editions, 2024), which explores themes of maternal resistance, structural violence, and absent fathers. It was named one of the "Best Books for Adults" by the New York Public Library. She is currently translating Estancias de Emilia Tangoa by Peruvian poet, Ana Varela Tafur. She lives and teaches in Oakland.

Drumming Up Resistance is an engaging presentation by anthropologist, musician, and author Umi Vaughan based on his latest book, Silencing the Drum: Religious Racism and Afro-Brazilian Sacred Music. Drawing on years of conversations with religious leaders, musicians, and community activists across Brazil, Vaughan explores the resilience of Afro-Brazilian sacred traditions in the face of religious intolerance and cultural erasure. The program features rare audio recordings made with master musicians in Brazil and concludes with an opportunity for audience discussion—and perhaps even a little communal music-making. Don't miss it!

Umi Vaughan is an artist-scholar who reimagines life and celebrates culture through a Black diasporic lens. His training includes a B.A. in Fine Art and Spanish Language from Morehouse College, a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan, and music making in communities across the African diaspora, especially the Bay Area, Peru, Colombia, Cuba, and Brazil. He is the co-author of Silencing the Drum: Religious Racism and Afro-Brazilian Sacred Music, author of Carlos Aldama’s Life in Batá: Cuba, Diaspora, and the Drum and Rebel Dance, Renegade Stance: Timba Music and Black Identity in Cuba. To learn more visit UMIART.ART.

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 dose of musical medicina is being provided by Ochs/Johnston/Mezzacappa/Davis.

!TONIGHT we have poets in our front window!

Come by tonight and listen to Bay Area poets reading their work in our front window to Calle 24, the most living loving street in all of San Francisco. This month’s poets are hector son of hector, Michelle Ibarra, Arnoldo Colibri Hummingbird, and Luz de Nacar.

Hector son of Hector is an Oakland poet. He is a child of Mexican immigrants, works in a hospital, dreams of short stories and writes poems in secret.

Michelle Ibarra is a Xicana poet with roots in both San Francisco’s Mission District and South San Francisco. Her poetic practice is heavily influenced by the 1970s Xicanx art movement, Rasquachismo, her working class upbringing, and her hatred for the governing state. Through her work, she explores queer sexuality, Catholic iconography, drug user liberation, and love at the end of the world. She has an upcoming zine called Three Love Poems and A Song of Despair.

Luz de Nácar (they/them) was born in East Los, raised in Puebla and Veracrúz, and currently survives in Oakland. As a transterritorial two-spirit romantic, they make prayers out of art —music, poetry, carving— for the feeding of ancestors and Spirit by connecting to personal anqd cultural symbols that strengthen their relationships to nature as a mother and expression as medicine.

arnoldo garcía, un colibrí, is a migrant native of the Río Grande valley. His first poems were stanzas of vetavel fields and hanging vines of hops stretched across telephone poles. Arnoldo runs the small neighborhood publishing operations called editorial Xingao, dedicated to promoting poets & artists of colors, and runs the poetry blog, La comuna | the Art of the Commune

An invitation for community to shared and stamp  their  stories and their community  trhough a carving session hosted by Oaxacan printmaker Pavel Acevado. Pavel and community will carve in collaboration a  6 feet Humpback carving whale, an ancient mammal that thrives to this oceans. This evento is FREE to the public, no experience necessary all materials are provide by the artists. 

Pavel Acevedo, originally from Oaxaca, Mexico, is a contemporary relief printmaker whose work explores themes of migration, identity, and cultural hybridity. Moving to California in 2010, Acevedo has built a practice rooted in both his Oaxacan heritage and his lived experiences as an immigrant in the United States. His art reflects a dialogue that is neither strictly Mexican nor American, but instead a layered, contemporary reality shaped by crossing borders and adapting to new environments.

Working primarily in relief printmaking, Acevedo employs plywood and linoleum blocks to create powerful portraits and images that draw upon the pre-Hispanic codex as well as contemporary urban life. His subjects often include friends, community members, and symbolic figures that embody the diverse populations of California. By weaving together references to ancient visual traditions and modern narratives, he constructs imagery that speaks to continuity, resilience, and transformation within migrant experiences.

Acevedo’s educational foundation was formed at the School of Fine Arts Oaxaca (Escuela de Bellas Artes), complemented by workshops at the Rufino Tamayo Workshop, where he deepened his knowledge of printmaking techniques. After relocating to California, he established himself within the artistic communities of Riverside and East Los Angeles. His studio, Urge Palette Art Supplies in Riverside, serves as both a workplace and a hub for creative engagement. His prints and murals can be found throughout the region, including significant displays at the Riverside Art Museum and in public spaces across the city.

Among his notable projects are his contributions to the Utopia/Dystopia portfolio, curated by artist Miyo Stevens-Gandara. For this series, Acevedo created prints that juxtapose portraits of a solitary woman and two men, symbolizing the multiplicity of narratives that shape the Los Angeles experience. Through such works, Acevedo affirms his role as both an artist and storyteller, chronicling the intersections of culture, migration, and community in contemporary life.

Block printing workshop for community activists. We'll have tools, paper, tinta, and small blocks, and start off with a conversation about printmaking as cultural and political expression. Second Wednesdays in March, April, and May. Suggested donation $20 for artist and book store.

Clase de grabado para activistas de la comunidad / Tendremos herramientas, papel, tinta, y pequeños bloques, y empezamos con una conversación sobre el grabado como expresión cultural y política. Segundo Miercoles en marzo, abril, y mayo. Donación sugerida $20 para artista y librería.

Fernando Martí (he/him) is an artist, poet, community architect and housing activist, originally from Ecuador, based in San Francisco, Ramaytush Ohlone land.

Fernando Martí (el) es un artista, poeta, arquitecto comunitario y activista de vivienda, originario del Ecuador, y basado en San Francisco, tierra Ramaytush Ohlone.

Shades of Brown is a Nuestra Causa fundraiser and the official launch of our first apparel collection, Brown Brilliance. The collection was created as an extension of our organizing work, celebrating the identity, creativity, resilience, and brilliance of the communities we come from and serve. Proceeds from the drop will directly support Nuestra Causa’s community programs and organizing.

The evening would include a reception featuring food from street vendors we organize alongside; the debut of our Brown Brilliance T-shirt collection, a report-back on our work, poetry from formerly incarcerated poets, recognition of program participants/fellow organizers, and a short panel highlighting the story and creative process behind the Brown Brilliance project. We’d close with remarks and time for everyone to connect and mingle.

Nuestra Causa is a community-based organization rooted in San Francisco’s Mission District. Our work centers on violence prevention, youth leadership, support for currently/formerly incarcerated people and their families, street vendor rights, food justice, and community-led advocacy. 

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.

Richard Villegas Jr. reads from his irreverent new memoir, Your a Fat Suckr Bich: Notes on the Merry but Perilous Work of Schoolteaching in Los Angeles — a twenty-year veteran's unfiltered account of life on the front lines of the public school system.

Based in East Los Angeles, Richard Villegas Jr. is a writer whose work spans television, theater, fiction, poetry, and cultural criticism. He was the originator and consulting producer of the half-hour drama series Vida for Starz, contributing to the show’s development from 2015 to 2020. His essays and articles have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Playboy.com, and New American Media. His ten-minute plays Cochino and La Tina Duty were presented at Casa 0101 as part of the Brown and Out Play Festival IV and VI, respectively. He is the author of La Música Romántica (CreateSpace, 2014), a collection of short fiction, and I Heart Babylon, Tenochtitlan, and Ysteléi(CreateSpace, 2011), a hybrid work of short fiction, poetry, and essays. His writings on teaching and queer identity in the classroom are published on his Substack, The Alphabet People: The LGBTQ’s of Teaching Kindergarten.

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 we have a double dose of sonic sustenance featuring Nikita Manin on clarinet(1st set) and Rainbow Eclipse(Nader-modular synthesizer and David Boyce-saxes and efx) playing the 2nd set.

Founded in San Francisco in 2022, Kitchen Table is a reading series centered around poetry and literature, food and drink, and culture and politics. The core of the events are the questions: What feeds your body? What feeds your mind? Writers share their work as we all share a local pop-up's food or drink. Featured readers for this evening are Dāshaun Washington, Jeanne Powell, and Cecilia Lei.

Pop-up collaborator: Half Baked Hapa

Dāshaun Washington is a poet from Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His work has received support from Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Lighthouse Works, Ucross Foundation, Millay Arts, and beyond. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Poem-a-Day, New England Review, The Nation, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He currently lives in San Francisco and is a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, where he was previously a Wallace Stegner Fellow.

Cecilia Lei is a reporter, producer and podcast host based in the East Bay. She covers immigration, the criminal legal system, AAPI issues, as well as other local communities. Her work has appeared in KQED, Apple News, SF Chronicle, NPR and Vox Media. Cecilia is also a co-founder of COYOTE Media Collective, a worker-owned newsroom in the Bay Area that launched in 2025.

Jeanne is a published poet and essayist. She holds degrees from Wayne State University and the University of San Francisco. Jeanne has taught in the CS, UB and OLLI programs at universities in the City. Her books in print include MY OWN SILENCE and WORD DANCING from Taurean Horn Press. Her poems have appeared in several print and online journals, including Essence Magazine, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal and the tenth anniversary issue of Drumvoices Revue from SIU-E. Jeanne Powell's poem, "Next Time" won first prize from the Detroit Writers Guild in 2002.

Earlier this month, people from all over the world gathered in Cuba to commemorate the historic leader of the Cuban revolution Fidel Castro on the 100th anniversary of his birth. Cuba today is being brutally punished by the US government for daring to forge its own path of independence and social equality — the ideals that Fidel fought his entire life for. Join us for an evening of reflection and discussion on the life and legacy of Fidel and the urgent need to end the genocidal US blockade on Cuba. 

Initial speakers include: 

Gloria La Riva is a longtime Cuba solidarity activist and member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. She is a recipient of Cuba's Friendship Medal for her years of Cuba solidarity, awarded by the Council of State.

Jonathan Thomas is a UPS Teamster and shop steward with Teamsters Local 315. He traveled to Cuba this month with the Hatuey Project to deliver cancer medications to children's hospitals in Havana — a direct act of solidarity against the U.S. blockade. 

Sponsoring Organizations:

The Cuba and Venezuela Solidarity Committee exists to build solidarity and support for the two sister republics in the United States and opposes US aggression in Latin America + anywhere else in the world.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cubavenezcte?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

The Party for Socialism and Liberation exists to carry out the struggle for socialism inside the United States, the center of world capitalism and imperialism. The PSL stands in solidarity with working-class and oppressed people around the world who are resisting capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination. 

Get your karaoke playlist ready and start practicing your favorite songs for Karaoke Tianguis hosted by the colorful @xicanaollin. Come shop from amazing makers and artists while we move through the karaoke sign up list. Bring friends, family, and loved ones. If you can talk, you can sing! No judgment, lots of fun!

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 we have a two sets of musical medicina happening with Ark of Bones(Chris Evans-cello and efx David Boyce-saxes and efxs) playing the first set and Darren Johnston(trumpet) and Ben Goldberg(clarinet) playing the second set

Noche de Movies is back! Our monthly movie series returns just in time for those chilly San Francisco summer nights. This month we are over la luna excited to be screening John Sayles’ Lone Star with cinematic introductions by Marisol Medina-Cadena.

In the Texas border town of Frontera, Sheriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) digs up the past when he finds an old skull in the desert. As he traces the murder of Sheriff Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson) 40 years earlier, Deeds' investigation points toward his late father, the much-loved Deputy Buddy Deeds. Ignoring warnings not to delve any deeper, Sam rekindles a romance with his high school sweetheart while bringing up old tensions in the town and exposing secrets long put to rest.

Join us tonight for a conversation with authors of books in the Vagabonds series, a collection of radical pamphlet-style books from Pluto Press. 

Decolonizing Money author, Julio Linares speaks in conversation with the authors of Community Safety in the Fourth World War, Annie Paradise and Manolo Callahan from the Bay Area's Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy. 

Decolonizing Money: The Promise of Abolishing the US Dollar, by Julio Linares presents an anarchist theory of money which sets out strategies for collective liberation beyond state and capital. Drawing on anarchist, abolitionist and anti-colonial feminist traditions, Julio Linares makes the heretical argument for a grassroots democratic movement to abolish the imperialist US dollar as a necessary step towards the cancellation of debt and establishing a worldwide basic income. Linares shows that money, beyond a store of value and a medium of exchange, is a series of promises a society makes to itself – and he challenges us to make them otherwise.

Julio César Linares is a community organizer and economic anthropologist born in the territories known today as Guatemala. He holds an MSc from the London School of Economics where he studied and worked on projects with the late David Graeber. He serves as Public Outreach for the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN). He lives in Berlin, Germany.

Annie Paradise is a member of the Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy (CCRA), a transterritorial research collective, and a collaborator with the Universidad de la Tierra, Califas, an autonomous learning initiative, both based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a researcher and co-convener of the Counter Counterinsurgency Lab, and together with Manuel Callahan and others, facilitates Methodologies Against Forgetting and Oblivion (MAFO).

Manuel Callahan is the co-founder of the Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy (CCRA), a transterritorial research collective based in the San Francisco Bay Area with connections to struggles across Southern Mexico. Since 2003, he has facilitated the Universidad de la Tierra, Califas. For over three decades, he has been a primary activator of Acción Zapatista, including work with the Zapatista Autonomy Project. He is both a researcher and co-convener of the Counter Counterinsurgency Lab.

A welcoming space for queer musicians and songwriters to share their work, connect, and build community. Performers can sign up online in advance, join as walk-ins, or be featured as a monthly Featured Artist.

Featured Artist Bio:
Brian Dublin is an LGBTQ+ Filipino-American Singer/Songwriter from San Jose, CA.  By sharing his story and life experiences through his songs, he hopes his music can make his listeners feel seen, inspire them to live their truth and share their story as well.

Tonight join author Radhika Singh with comrades Mayuran Tiruchelvam and Rama Ali Kased in conversation about Earthly Playing Field—a speculative tale connecting ongoing People's movements against global imperialism through a queer, Sufi love story.

Radhika Singh lives, writes and teaches in Queens, New York. Her fiction speculates on the presence of magic in this world, the connection to spirit and consciousness, and the power of the people to organize for collective liberation.

Dr. Rama Ali Kased is an Associate Professor in Race and Resistance Studies at SFSU. A seasoned community organizer, she has founded organizations including Arab Woman in Active in Arts in Media (AWAAM) in NYC and the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) in SF Bay Area. 

Mayuran Tiruchelvam is an Assistant Professor at SFSU’s School of Cinema. His filmmaking is fueled by a vision for a more compassionate and openhearted world, and his activist work focuses on the abolition of prisons and policing, as well as solidarity-building between global communities in resistance.

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 we have a double dose of heavy duty sonic sustenance with Myles Boisen(guitar and efx) and David Boyce(saxes and efxs) playing the first set and Insect Life(Ben Goldberg-clarinet, Raffi Garabedian-tenor sax, and Danny Lubin-Laden-trombone Ben Davis-cello) playing the second set.

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 5 minutes to read.

!This month’s feature is Nicaraguan poet Carlos Bojore, who will be reading from his new book “Me Duele Hasta El Aire”!

NOTE; Speaking Axolotl is a BIPOC reading series which means BIPOC poets only on the mic. White folks are welcome to sit and listen but their presence is not required.

Join us for an afternoon of tatreez, Palestinian embroidery, as we come together in community to stitch. A tatreez circle is a gathering of tatreez artists who stitch together while sharing stories and learning from each other. All levels of experience are welcome but this is not meant to be a workshop. We will not be teaching tatreez but are happy to help guide you on what you need to get started before the event. **Bring your own projects and your own supplies.**

What is Tatreez? Tatreez is the art of Palestinian embroidery that has been practiced in Palestine for centuries. A practice passed down generationally from mother to daughter. Taking inspiration from the land and everyday life, Palestinian women hand stitched motifs and patterns directly onto their thobe that represented their social status, the villages/regions from which they hailed and their individuality.

Can I join if I'm not Palestinian? YES! This is a space for Palestinians and non-Palestinians who share a love of tatreez. Regardless of who practices tatreez, it is important to always remember the history of this beautiful art and the role it plays today in the Palestinian resistance movement, both in Palestine and within the diaspora. These circles are a safe space for Palestinians and our allies.

If you’re new to tatreez and have questions please reach out to sfbaytatreez@gmail.com.

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 being brough to you by Mutant Audio(Scott Foster-guitar, David Boyce-saxes and efx, Cairo McCockran-drums featuring Evelyn Ficarra-sound design and flute)

!TONIGHT we have poets in our front window!

Come by tonight and listen to Bay Area poets reading their work in our front window to Calle 24, the most living loving street in all of San Francisco.

andrea isabel (she/her) is an MFA in Writing candidate at the University of San Francisco. Through both poetry and prose, she examines cycles of time; relationships; and lesbianism. In addition to writing, andrea is the Founder of a Bay Area-based BIPOC lesbian artist collective, “WOVEN, lesbians weaving worlds.” Usually, she is gazing at oil paintings in small galleries, sipping Syrahs in San Franciscan wine bars, or witnessing evening colors blend into the Pacific’s horizon.

Andrew Ignacio was born and raised in North Jersey, parents both from Pampanga, Philippines. He moved to San Francisco last August with his wife and 7 year old. He works at Bayanihan Equity Center in SoMa. Before SF, he lived in North Georgia for three years. Before that, he spent seven years teaching English in South Korea. Andrew writes about all that he has learned from his own culture and from everywhere he has lived. 

marvin flores is a chicano poet and educator based in the south bay. currently in a fellowship with youthspeaks for their 2026 Public Poets fellowship. he is also enrolled in school of arts institute program for a BFA in writing.

Maya Raveneau-Bey is an Oakland born and raised fighter blessed with creative prowess. She treats her poetry like a graceful dagger, relentlessly conquering ignorance, inaction and chains. She has been honored in spaces such as the 2025 Brave New Voices festival winning first place, the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate as a two-time finalist, and performing as the sole poet for Barbara Lees Inaugural Celebration. She is an anticipated 2029 graduate currently attending CSU Northridge studying Film Production with a minor in Africana studies on track to becoming the next Ryan Coogler.

Join Adam Johnson, host of the Citations Needed podcast for a reading and discussion of his new book, How to Sell a Genocide: The Media's Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza. Adam will be joined in discussion tonight by Oman Zahzah.

As bombs rained down on Gaza in October 2023, images of mass death and destruction gripped the world, and openly genocidal statements from Israeli leaders foretold the magnitude of horrors to come. But the US media was quick to downplay, obscure, and repackage an emerging campaign of extermination into a slick “war on terror” framework.

How to Sell a Genocide is an indictment of the US corporate media’s role in enabling—and, at times, directly inciting—one of the most devastating campaigns of mass killing in modern memory. Johnson unpacks how major news outlets like the New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC systematically sanitized Israel’s war crimes, hid the US’s central role, and dehumanized the Palestinian people.

Drawing from deep, original data-driven analysis, Johnson dissects the mechanics of propaganda, from the selective empathy, strategic omissions, overt racism, and repetition of state-sanctioned falsehoods, to the demonization of humanitarian workers and dishonest coverage of campus protests. With clarity and moral force, Johnson argues that the genocide could not have been sustained without the active, ongoing complicity of the US media.

All royalties from the book will be donated to the Middle East Children’s Alliance.

Omar Zahzah is Assistant Professor of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies in the Department of Race and Resistance Studies (RRS) at San Francisco State University. He is a frequent contributor to independent outlets such as The Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, and The Palestine Chronicle. Omar is the author of Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle, co-published by Seven Stories Press and The Censored Press in September 2025. Omar's new book, A Question of Violence: Palestine in American Academia After October 7th, is forthcoming from Seven Stories Press and The Censored Press. 

Adam Johnson is a media analyst and co-host of the podcast Citations Needed. His writing has been featured in the Nation, In These Times, the Intercept, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle.

How do we inhabit our age while staying young in the ways we want– and what’s going too far? We can’t predict our healthspan, but let’s discuss how we’ve probably influenced it, whether it was worth it, and where we go from here.

Interested? Join this open, facilitated community discussion.

Hosted by Louise Wo & Brian DeSimone

Louise Wo is an experience designer, event producer, facilitator, and founder of Gemlike, a studio that partners with social impact organizations to create gatherings that cultivate belonging, joy, and collaboration. She has produced and facilitated gatherings for organizations including The Skoll Foundation, Wikimedia Foundation, Kiva, and Save the Redwoods League. She is also one of the Co-Creators of Future of Us, a civic imagination initiative and festival in San Francisco. As a community leader, Louise serves on the Young Professionals Committee at Glide Foundation and performs with Broadway Bares San Francisco, a charitable fundraiser supporting people living with HIV, homelessness, and food insecurity.

Brian DeSimone is an executive portrait photographer and artist based between San Francisco, navigating connection and belonging through art and technology. Twenty five years of hospitality, six years of executive portraits, and a standing belief that the encounter is the product.

Crate to Canvas is coming to San Francisco!

The Big Leagues Rare Soul Collective (TBL) and El Filmero Productions present a unique art installation inspired by the rare soul record collecting scene, celebrating vinyl crate digging culture through a combination of art, music, and film. Experience original artwork and photography from TBL members, vinyl sets spun from their personal collections, and a screening of the award-winning short documentary, Souleros(2022).

Souleros explores Northern California’s rare soul collectors (known as Souleros) whose dedication to vinyl collecting keeps the legacy of overlooked soul artists alive. Featuring vinyl music sets and/or artwork by: Aveets · TUFF · Discos Olvidados · Space Cholo · Xaztecra · Joshua De Leon · Pisto · Jose Niño · Laughing Boy

Opening Night
Saturday, August 8, 2026 · 7–10 PM
Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore & Gallery
3036 24th St., San Francisco

Closing Night
Saturday, September 26, 2026 · 7–10 PM

FREE ALL AGES EVENT

Tonight Reggie Edmonds Vasquez and company share some poems in honor of their debut chapbook, Ecology of the Hood, out now through Foglifter Press.

​WINNER OF THE 2025 Start a Riot! Chapbook Prize!

Ecology of the Hood is a love letter to streets. It asks the question; What if the hood was not a collection of problems, but a complex ecosystem of living organisms, all mirroring the same survival against an inherently hostile world? The politics of environmentalism and Black Liberation collide with each other in cycles of extraction, survival, decay, and regeneration. This collection seeks to refute the idea that the rose growing from concrete is misplaced or forgotten. The gardens we grow belong here. They are proof of life in a world obsessed with our deaths.

Reggie Edmonds-Vásquez (they/them) is a poet, educator, and cultural curator from Richmond, CA. Their work explores Black, queer, and gender-diverse identities and has earned recognition from Nomadic Press, Afro Urban Society, and the Museum of the African Diaspora. A three-time Berkeley Grand Champion and national finalist, they direct programming at Rich Oak Events. Their debut chapbook Ecology of the Hood (Foglifter Press) was selected for the 2025 Start a Riot! Chapbook Prize.

Nia Pearl is an award-winning poet, writer, and environmental justice advocate working at the intersection of art, activism, and public engagement. She is an established host and event curator passionate about creating participatory spaces for creative expression and literary dialogue. Nia’s writing has been published in Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, The Town: An Anthology of Oakland Poets, Painting the Streets: Oakland Uprising in the Time of Rebellion, When We Exhale: An Anthology of Black Women: Rooted in ancestral medicine, and terra:soul: echoes from the future ancestors. She is one of the recipients of the 2023 Nomadic Press/San Francisco Foundation Literary Awards.

Baruch Porras-Hernandez has featured and competed in Poetry Slams all over the country, and Canada. The Berkeley Slam changed his life. He has been doing this for so long, most of those Slams don’t even exist anymore. He has been the headliner three times at the legendary Berkeley Poetry Slam, was one of the first features at The Capturing Fire National Queer Slam in Washington D.C. back in 2010, he is one of the only three winners of the Radar Poetry Slam, and won The Moth Slam, in LA 2014. Other credits include The Northbay Slam, BawdySlam, Oakland Slam, UCSanta Cruz Poetry Slam, The Coast Slam, and is one of the winners of the LitSlam in San Francisco. He has been called a “Multi Hyphenated Artist!”, and “Daring, candid, inventive!” by the San Francisco Chronicle. He’s the author of the small poetry collections I Miss You, Delicate and Lovers of the Deep Fried Circle from Sibling Rivalry Press, and has been published in several journals and anthologies, like Split This Rock, The Racket, Foglifter, Assaracus, The Tusk, Bold Italic, QuietLighting, and Write Bloody. He has received fellowships and taken part of residencies from Banff Center for the Arts, Berkeley Rep, Carolyne Moore Writers House, and the Lambda Literary Foundation. He’s performed all over North America including shows with the Rumpus, BusBoys and Poets, SF SketchFest, RADAR Productions, Writers with Drinks, LitQuake, has won the MOTH in LA, and is a two time winner of Literary Death Match.

Josiah Luis Alderete is a full blooded Spanglish speaking Pocho y left handed callejero de Aztlán who has been part of La Area Bahia’s spoken word scene for over twenty years. He is the curator and host of the long running Latinx reading series Speaking Axolotl. He is the author of two books of poetry “Baby Axolotls & Old Pochos(Black Freighter Press 2021) and the chapbook “Fuchi Faces de los Estados Jodidos”(For The Pueblo 2023). This year he has the honor of being the Poetry Center’s Mazza Writer in Residence at San Francisco State. Along with his bookstore sister Tân Khanh Cao,Josiah tends the portal known as Medicina Para Pesadillas Bookstore y Galeria on 24th street in La Mission.

Kevin Madrigal Galindo (he/they) is a first generation hijo de su ch!#g@$a madre from South San Francisco by way of Zapopan, Jalisco. You can find Kevin's work in The Boiler, Bozalta, Foglifter, and KQED. When Kevin isn't writing, he teaches nutrition and cooking to elementary school students and seniors en La Misión. Kevin helps organize When The Smoke Comes, a free creative writing workshop in Oakland that seeks to not only imagine an end to oppression, but to better prepare us to bring it about. Feed the people! Feed the land!"

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 we have the groovalicous vibes of Funkonya in the Portal(Kirk Peterson-bass, Sean Alford-drums and Vern-guitar)

Kitchen Table is a series centered around poetry and literature, food and drink, and culture and politics. The core of the series is intimate poetry, performance, and conversation with the feel of a salon, with three or more writers sharing each month and a local pop-up sharing their food or drink with us. 

Samantha Stevens (she/they) is a queer, Black, disabled writer and educator from the East Coast living in California on occupied Coast Miwok land. They have received fellowships from The Watering Hole, Community of Writers, Trillium Arts, Esperimento Sul Respiro, The Ruby, Kearny Street Workshop, and others and are a graduate of the MFA in Poetry at the University of San Francisco. They are the recipient of the 2022 Deathrattle/Oroboro Penrose Poetry Prize. Their work is forthcoming or featured in The Iowa Review, The Seventh Wave, Foglifter, Fruitslice, and others. Often working to dream and exist in new ways, Samantha seeks to build an integrative liberatory practice centering writing, movement, meditation, and ritual.
Their first collection, “There is joy here, I promise.”, explores the body, mental health, illness, loss, ancestral inheritance, and queerness and was a finalist for the 2025 CAAPP book prize.

Adrienne Mitchel is the Food Editor at Embarcadero Media and producer/editor at SavorNation. Based in Mountain View, she's always on the hunt for the next food story (and the next bite to eat!). Adrienne received a BFA in Broadcast Journalism and Documentary and minor in Visual Journalism from Chapman University in 2022.

James J. Siegel is the author of the poetry collections “The God of San Francisco” (Sibling Rivalry Press) and “How Ghosts Travel” (Spuyten Duyvil). He is the host and curator of the monthly Literary Speakeasy show at Martuni’s piano bar in San Francisco, which has been running for over a decade. His poems have been featured in several journals and anthologies, including Foglifter, the Cortland Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and more.

Joe Wadlington is a writer, artist, and drag queen. He grew up in the Appalachian Mountains near, but not near enough, to Dollywood. Now he lives in San Francisco.
He has worked in digital marketing and social media for a decade and was most recently The Global Creative Lead of Twitter’s SMB team. He’s been published in The New Yorker, The Rumpus, Architectural Digest, Food & Wine Magazine, The Chronicle, The Bold Italic, and the satire collection Loose Lips (Grand Central Publishing). Along with Danielle Truppi, he is the co-creator, co-producer, and co-host of the monthly literary show “Happy Endings.” Happy Endings is a monthly night of stories, poetry, and comedy. It has raised thousands of dollars for San Francisco writers, has been included in three literary festivals, and been positively reviewed by The San Francisco Chronicle and Broke-Ass Stuart.

Esperanza Cabrales (they/them) is a queer Xicana slam poet, performer, jewelry maker, teaching artist, and educator based in Oakland.  They lead poetry workshops through Bay Area Creative, working with TK through high school students. Esperanza organizes the Nepantla exploratory workshop series for QTBIPOC Creatives + Allies. Their work celebrates shared spaces, approaching emotions with curiosity, and the beauty of queer and cultural identities. 

This month’s pop up is Treat Street PIzza