Denver's
Five Points Jazz Festival today
Experience the music, culture and roots
of Denver's historic Five Points neighborhood at the free 10th Annual Five
Points Jazz Festival today, Saturday, May 18. Along Welton St. from 11am to
8pm, six stages present many of Denver's finest jazz musicians. Other events
include tennis lessons for kids under 10, food vendors, beer and wine,
kid-friendly lectures, art exhibits and more. Click here to see the music lineup!
KUVO Denver 89.3FM station's founder
Florence Hernández-Ramos [aka novelist Manuel Ramos' wife] will be recognized
for her significant contributions to jazz with a Five Points Jazz Tribute
Award. Flo helped to found KUVO and became the first female Hispanic president
of a public radio station, holding that position for 23 years. She is now
Executive Director of the Latino Public Radio Consortium. Other award recipients will be drummer Nat Yarbrough, posthumously, and
vocalist Hazel Miller.
Rebel –
A Voces on PBS
Special
[Rec'd from Kirk Whisler, Hispanic Marketing 101]
Rebel is the story of Loreta Velazquez, Confederate
soldier turned Union spy. She was dismissed as a hoax for a hundred
and fifty years, but new evidence shows Loreta, a Cuban immigrant
from New Orleans, was one of an estimated 1000 secret women
soldiers of the American Civil War. Deftly weaving lush dramatized
scenes of Loreta's riveting tale, vivid storytelling, archival material,
and animation, this is a film about a woman, a myth and the politics
of national memory. Who was Loreta Velazquez? Why did she fight? And
what made her so dangerous she was erased from history?
Art in Sacramento:
• 1,000,000th
public comment opposing the Keystone XL pipeline was submitted to the U.S. State Department. At about the same hour President Obama put out an Earth Day
proclamation saying "nothing is more powerful than millions of voices
calling for change." Now we see if he means it! If not . . .
• Students at Rhode
Island School of Design, occupying their president’s office last week to demand
divestment, lowered a banner out the window: “We May Be Art Students, But We
Can Still do the Math.”
• Mayors
announce commitment to fossil fuel divestment
11 cities committed to divestment,
to keep city funds out of fossil fuel stocks and push their employee pensions
to divest from polluting corporations. Cities extend from tiny Bayfield,
Wisconsin, which has just 530 residents, to international icons, like the City
of San Francisco, where Supervisors voted unanimously to push the city’s retirement
fund to divest $583 million from fossil fuels.
In Ithaca, NY, Mayor Myrick, one
of the country's youngest mayors committed to divestment after high school
students asked him to protect their shared future.
Since last fall, this divestment
campaign has spread to over 300 colleges and universities. Now, there are over
100 petitions on the GoFossilFree.org website targeting cities, states and
religious institutions. Sign a petition, here.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who
won a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in helping end apartheid in South Africa, said:
“The divestment movement played a
key role in helping liberate South Africa. The corporations understood the
logics of money even when they weren’t swayed by the dictates of morality.
Climate change is a deeply moral issue too, of course...Once again, we can join
together as a world and put pressure where it counts.”
 |
| Chief Theresa |
From 350.org:
In June, Fearless Summer protests will take place at
mining and drilling sites around the country. In Canada, First Nations peoples
connected to the Idle No More movement are hatching plans for Sovereignty Summer to coordinate nonviolent
direct actions on Indigenous lands in the midst of fierce anti-extraction
battles.
As the planet lurches
past 400 parts per million concentrations of CO2, the moment has come. The following phase of the fight is called Summer Heat.
During the final weeks of
July, from the Pacific Northwest to the coast of Maine, from the Keystone
pipeline route to the White House, to the Utah desert where they’re getting
ready for the first tar sands mine in the US, there's one essential message:
it’s time to stand up – peacefully but firmly — to the industry that is
wrecking our future. Click here for more info: joinsummerheat.org/map
Summer Heat will be a
powerful focus for thousands to show the courage needed to lower the
temperature, before your home is demolished by the next Hurricane Sandy or an
oil pipeline bursts in your backyard.
This summer can be an
historic show of solidarity not just with the Americans who suffer most from
fossil fuels, but with people across the planet whose lives are at risk as the
world warms.
Es todo, hoy,
RudyG
I'm fascinated by Laura the Union spy. Yes, let's get the full story out. I truly believe there are so many other hidden stories of our minority people's heroic actions in time of war in our nation's behalf, and I believe they're buried, as Laura's was, because these folks were deemed not important enough to honor. Let's hope the passage of time will unearth all acts of heroism.
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