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From Stephen Elliott
Oakland art gallery MOCO, a vital and exciting venue for visual and performing art outside the mainstream, turned one last Sunday.
Unfortunately, there was no celebration: a few days earlier, the gallery’s owner, Eli Reyes, was the victim of a brutal hit-and-run attack that broke her femur and landed her in intensive care.
...moreThis Friday, January 25th at 7pm, Diesel, a Bookstore in Oakland will be celebrating the release of ZYZZYVA: The Winter Issue.
The night will feature readings by a variety of West Coast writers, including Rumpus contributor John W. Evans.
...moreAt The Poetry Foundation, Garrett Caples writes a moving essay on the life of Alden Van Buskirk, a Vermont born, Dartmouth-St. Louis-Mexico-Oakland raised poet with connections to the Beats and a love for Rimbaud.
Van Buskirk (Van, to his friends) published only one, posthumous volume, titled LAMI, a largely autobiographical work collected by his close friend David Rattray.
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Rumpus contributor Matt Werner’s Oakland In Popular Memory is a collection of interviews with leading young artists from Oakland, and established artists who’ve influenced Oakland musicians.
Join Werner for a reading and discussion at his book release party this Thursday, May 31st, 6 p.m.
...moreDavid Hilliard, the original Chief of Staff of the Black Panther Party can walk you through the historically significant sites of Black Panther Party activity in Oakland.
He recounts the former congregation spots and the practical programs they implemented—the free breakfast program and the free healthcare program that screened for sickle-cell anemia, the streetlights they had put in for safety measures, as well as his friendship with Huey Newton.
...moreThis week in San Francisco, get in bed with Quiet Lightning, Microscopic Giant at Space Gallery, Laughter Against The Machine, Andrew Foster Altschul’s book launch, Literary Death Match, Stephen Elliott reads at BANG OUT X: Tough Love, and the Anger Management Reading Series presents Hostile Takeover.
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The shooting of Oscar Grant showed that Oakland is in serious need of a discussion on race. The poet and playwright Chinaka Hodge provided such a discussion in her groundbreaking play Mirrors in Every Corner
“Were I an aspiring farmer in search of fertile land to buy and plow, I would seriously consider moving to Detroit. There is open land, fertile soil, ample water, willing labor, and a desperate demand for decent food. And there is plenty of community will behind the idea of turning the capital of American industry into an agrarian paradise.
...moreFor the past couple years I have been an enthusiastic supporter of the Oakland-based AK Press, a small, “anarchist collective” press that publishes about twenty to thirty books a year, most of which deal with radical politics, current affairs, anarchist/leftist history as well as D.I.Y., gardening and homesteading, and the whole span of sex, drugs, punk-rock and outlaw culture.
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