2011

Over one hundred years has passed from the time that ten infantry and cavalry companies with 200 rounds of ammunition each, and three days of cooked rations, under the command of Mackenzie, were standing ready. To the Uncompahgre Nation he said “If you have not moved by nine o’clock tomorrow morning I will be at your camp and make you move”

     Captain James Parker reports, “The next morning, shortly after sunrise, we saw a thrilling and pitiful sight, the whole Ute nation on horseback and on foot streaming by. As they passed our camps their gait broke into a run. Sheep were abandoned, blankets and personal possessions strewn along the road, woman and children were loudly wailing. And so we marched behind the Indians, pushing them out, he (Mackenzie) sent word to all the surrounding whites, who hurried after us taking up the land...” “As we pushed the Indians onward we permitted the whites to follow and in three days the rich lands of the Uncompahgre were all occupied...”

     Moved by force onto the Uncompahgre Reservation a vast waste land of 2.9 million acres in Eastern Utah, driven out at the point of a rifle, by an Extermination Order issued by Governor Pitkin “ ...It is impossible for the Indians and whites to live in peace… unless removed by the government they must necessarily be exterminated...”

      Leave Colorado or die was life for Utes in 1881. Moved in September onto the Uncompahgre Reservation a severe winter followed, killing almost half of the Uncompahgre, The other half bitterly set out to defend this place. Never forgetting the lies told to Ouray, the promises of the Brunot Agreement broken, forgotten, all of the lies, and then the theft of all their land, finally exiled into the desert of Utah.

      They determined to defend it against the encroachment that began almost immediately, when mining interests, cattle and sheep owners, began a process of trying to take what the Government had given to the Utes, by Executive Order signed into law by Chester A. Arthur on 4^th of March 1882.                                         

    This began a series of events that all American citizens should hang their head in disgust with. The theft, deceit, fraud, dishonest reports and testimony, and cold blooded murder are all a part of a story whose time has come and is well worth telling and listening to. There is truth and finally it is becoming known to us all.

      So many of the gilsonite and oil deals were done under the shroud of secrecy. The systematic removal of the majority of Uncompahgre to the Uintah Reservation occurred.  Government sanctioned theft, taking of millions of tons of minerals, billions of barrels of oil and scars left that crisscross the land. The State of Utah is reaping the financial benefits, without any regard for the Utes.  This is a fragile land with a delicate balance of water, heat and drought, deep snows, and torrential rains.

     Now, one hundred years later we carry the scars of our families torn apart by the trails of disaster left in the wake of this wanton destruction and near annihilation of our people. We have weathered the long winters of our defeat. We have suffered, we have survived. Now it is time to find the truth and regain what has been lost, what has been stolen that is still ours.

     We see the past in the light of day, looking at all of the incidents, uncovering all of the lies and deceit that has not only lain on the land but on our hearts and minds as well.

      We take these steps, hesitant at first and stronger with every step to regain not only the control of the lands and the right to use that land in a way that we see fit, but also to remember ourselves one hundred years ago We look to the future and see ourselves able to hold our own and take care of our land. We are the greatest Environmentalists the ones that know that within the folds of earth on the Uncompahgre Reservation lay not just oil and gas and the means to secure to us our economic future, but also our loved ones.

     We come together as a people with wounds to heal and strength to gather to bind us up and build a nation.

      We come together carrying the wounds that are handed down by those that lost their lives unnecessarily.

       We come together to ask the one man that can make a difference, the one man that can return our land to us, the one man that can listen to our request. We ask him simply to use all of his power, and all of his great mind and will, to rid our land of the lies that bind it from us, to make things right to end the theft and to return the land to us for our use and control. That man is President Obama. We ask that he return a land that is scared, as are we. To return our land that has been taken by theft and deception and lies and then to lie no more.

     We are not asking for a second chance or a hand out we are asking for what is ours by birthright, the land that is in our blood that is rightfully ours.

     All of us can sign this petition, every one, whether we live here or not.

To sign the online petition go to:

http://www.petitiononline.com/UNO12345/petition.html

***please put this exciting event on your calendar!***

tickets are now on sale at:

http://missionculturalcenter.org/MCCLA_New/events.html#sins_invalid  

or call 415-643-2785 or visit the box office to pay the low income/disabled rate.  

PLEASE TELL YOUR DEAF FRIENDS - THERE IS ASL INTERPRETATION ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 29.  READ ON FOR MORE INFO!

Sins Invalid’s new Artists in Residence (AIR) Program, in conjunction with the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, presents:

Resident Alien

A collaborative theater piece by emerging artists with

disabilities, using music, spoken word, film, photography and wearable

sculpture to explore imagination, hospitalization, our bodies,

and the land we live on.

2010 AIR Artists: Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi, Colleen Nagle, Fayza Bundalli, Lateef McLeod, Matthew Blanchard, Redwolf Painter, Tee,

and Nomy Lamm (Program Director of AIR)

WHAT:  Resident Alien:  The Sins Invalid Artists In Residence Show

WHEN: January 28, 29, 2011 ***ASL interpretation on the 29^th***

TIME: 8:00 PM

WHERE: Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts  (2868 Mission Street, SF, 94110)

TICKETS: $15/$10* (*low-income/disabled)

PUBLIC INFORMATION: (415) 643-2785, or info@sinsinvalid.org

BUY TICKETS NOW: http://missionculturalcenter.org/MCCLA_New/events.html#sins_invalid

*For low income/disabled rate, call the box office at 415-643-2785, or buy tickets in person during box office hours.

Sins Invalid is a performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and queer and gender-variant artists who have been historically marginalized within society.  Our performance work shows that all bodies are beautiful, exploring themes of embodiment and sexuality that challenge normative understandings of disabilities, so as to instead offer a vision of inclusivity and liberation for all communities.  Co-founded by Patty Berne and Leroy Moore in 2006, Sins Invalid offers work unlike any other in the United States.  Our work challenges, destabilizes, and reorients common definitions of the body, beauty, and sexuality, drawing the audience into new conversations through the visceral experience of the performance. 

In order to expand upon our poignant, seductive, visually stimulating and politically informed performance work, Sins Invalid has launched our new Artists In Residence (AIR) Program, with the intent of fostering the skills of emerging artists with disabilities.  Program Director Nomy Lamm, a well-known Bay Area performer, writer and vocal coach, has worked with the AIR participants for the past nine months to develop and produce this performance.  Participation in skill building and visioning workshops, artistic collaboration, and one-on-one mentoring has allowed these artists’ visions to coalesce and translate into a stage-ready performance.  The participants embody a variety of disabilities and artistic disciplines, and they are all LGBTQ and/or people of color, providing a breadth of experience that is evident within the wide assortment of performance.

Colleen Nagle has scored original music for the show, and performs as Pathces the Girl Pirate, a “crazy” girl plotting her magical escape from a mental institution.  Fayza Bundalli and Redwolf Painter have created an interwoven piece exploring familial history and the ways in which experiences of colonization are embodied and passed down through generations.  Through the perspective of their travels through health, illness and pain, they explore the nuanced paths through which healing arrives.  Lateef McLeod has adapted his poem “Not of This World” into a collaborative piece that reclaims disabled bodies from the stereotypes of being monstrous, alien, freaks, to being beautiful, whole, loved and loving human beings.  Matthew Blanchard makes his cinematic debut with “Construct,” an experimental documentary directed by Daniel Cardone as part of the HIV Story Project’s compilation of short films honoring the individual lives of People With AIDS (PWAs), entitled “Still Around.”

On Friday, January 28^th and Saturday, January 29^th, Sins Invalid and the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco, California will host the debut performance of “Resident Alien.”  The show will begin at 8 PM, with tickets being sold at $15/$10* (*low-income/disabled) and ASL interpretation on the 29^th. 

About the Featured Artists:

Chun-shan (Sandie) Yi makes body adornments for the disabled bodies with metals, fabrics and found objects. Her work examines the potential of art to address the relationship between the body and social standards pertaining to beauty and disability. She has a BFA and MA in art therapy from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. She had worked as an art therapist for four years in Chicago and Taiwan before she began pursuing a MFA degree at UC Berkeley in 2009. She has exhibited in Chicago, Ann Arbor, San Francisco, Berkeley, Prague and Hong Kong. She was featured in PISTIL magazine, Fall 2005 and was the recipient of 2006 Disability Arts and Culture Honor. She recently published an article in an edited book in art therapy.

Colleen Nagle lives in San Francisco where she writes and creates music about the intersection of hope, hardship, and mental health. Colleen's creativity also extends onto the web, where she has been building web sites for nonprofits, small businesses, and community driven projects for a living for the past 13 years. During her artist in residency with Sins Invalid, she has worked collaboratively to create music and words to incorporate into the performance.

Fayza Bundalli is a poet, femme, a healer in a long line of medicine womyn.  Vancouver-grown and San Francisco-based, her poetry connects her South Asian roots to her queer identity.  Fayza has been published in numerous undergraduate student journals, from philosophy to gender studies, and is currently completing her Masters of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley, where she co-chaired the Diversity Task Force.  She interns at the AIDS Health Project in San Francisco.

Lateef McLeod is a phenomenal black poet with cerebral palsy who just published his first poetry book entitled A Declaration Of A Body Of Love this year. He is also in process of writing a novel tentatively called The Third Eye Is Crying. He was also a cast member of the 2007 Sins Invalid performance. He works at United Cerebral Palsy of the Golden Gate as a grant writer and blogger and for the World Institute of Disability as an intern. He has earned a BA in English from UC Berkeley and a MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. You can gain more information about Lateef from his blog at teefdabiggafigga.blogspot.com.

Matthew D. Blanchard was born and bred a white trash, Euro-mutt, slut, queer American kid, and escaped the double-locked, triple-chained closets of conservative Southeastern Virginia, only to be embraced by the welcoming arms of GAY MECCA’s chaotically corrupt, Crystal-lined, “Tina-torn, AIDS-quilted” community of wanton, woebegone whores & hustlers.  The life Matthew has led since arriving in the Bay Area in 2003 contrasts with his former life as a thespian erudite.  However, with drug dependency, disease, disfigurement and depression has come the recovery, rehabilitation, reconstruction and resilience of his “last-stitch, last-chance life.”  Today, above all else, Matthew is grateful for God’s boundless love of and faith in his own purely imperfect and human desire “for elaborate beautification and solemn self-betterment.”Matthew has studied performance arts in Paris, France, Florence, Italy, and at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.

Redwolf Painter is a two-spirit, mixed blood, heyoka, ex-punk storyteller from Alaska.

Tee is a visual artist living and working in San Francisco. As a person of color, Tee is a fierce social justice activist and likes to facilitate workshops breaking down the systems of oppression. Different topics such as disability, sexuality, gender, and social class are frequently explored in both the arts and during workshops.

Nomy Lamm is a writer, performer, and voice teacher living in San Francisco.  Her band, nomy lamm & THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, is a flexible platform for collaboration with everyone and everything.  She performs with Sins Invalid, writes an advice column for Make/Shift Magazine, and is currently working on an MFA in Creative Writing at SF State.

"We child care advocates are celebrating, but some parents may not know what is happening, they fell through the cracks in November and they've fallen through them again.  Some of them gave up after hearing their childcare ended in November or December.  We cannot find some of these parents."
--Maria Luz Torre, Organizer for Parent Voices

1.  A little herstory

Welfare in Amerikkka is a big pain in the you-know-what.  It's the same thing in California.  Child Care is a small part of that big pain, but, for poor and just-barely-making-it single and married parents with children--it's as big a pain as the Big W.  Don’t get me wrong, child care was probably the best thing that happened after welfare reform because legislators realized as an afterthought ,duh, that 70% of the participants are young children.  Parents were required to work but they forgot about the children! Grudgingly, they added child care but parent advocates almost have to fight for it every budget cycle.. However, President Clinton made Welfare in America tougher, shortening the time poor parents could be on it to five years.  Period. Even more reason why child care support was important beyond the five years.

Child Care is, at the Federal level, a two headed beast.  Stage 1 and 2 Childcare, funded through a.k.a. TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families--a 1996 Clinton creation), is available in most states; Stage 1 is for unemployed parents receiving cash assistance, Stage 2 is for parents who have gotten jobs, a training program, or are going to school/college.  California is the only state that has Stage 3 child care.  And the last 3 Governors have been trying to abolish it – the crown jewel of a program that tries to move parents from welfare to work because this is the only thing that realistically helps children to learn while their parents earn.

Getting into Stage 3 is as much a Catch-22 as what happens if you still need help after your generic and very personal five years have run out on getting welfare assistance. You can only get on Stage 3 if you have used Stage 2 child care. You can't sign up for Stage Three until the very last of the 24 months of Stage 2. If you sign up just a little bit too late, too bad, you don't get it (and this often happens if a family has not been in an approved work-activity and thus skipped their Stage 2).

2.  Out With The Governator, In With Jerry The Gentrifier of Oakland, CA

The Reign of the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is over, but the memories of his constant failed and successful attempts to cut this and that desperately needed benefit for poor parents, and for their children, will last a long time. 

Stage three child care served 81,000 children (in 60,000 families) in California until the fall of 2010.  Governator Schwarzenegger vetoed that part of the state budget in October.  Twelve hundred and nine children in San Francisco lost Stage Three child care before Parent Voices and other organizations began fighting to get cuts restored.

California Legislature Assembly Speaker John A. Perez also got involved, pledging some of the 15% cut in the Assembly's budget ($6 million) as a bridge fund.  He also asked the First Five Commissions (FFC) all over CA for help until Stage 3 child care could be restored.  The Legislature (slowly, so very slowly...) passed a budget, but couldn't muster enough votes to overcome the governor's veto of child care funds.

November 2010 was full of more activity from activists, Speaker Perez, an Alameda County District Judge (who extended Stage 3 coverage until December 31st for Bay Area families), and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.  The court order was an end-run around Schwarzenegger.  It's nice to have something like that available, not so nice to actually have to fight to get a judge to enforce it.

Perez announced $40 million more in bridge funds. San Francisco's Proposition 10, a.k.a. prop 28, which funds the local First Five Commission's childcare program for children ages 0-5, got some love, a supportive resolution, from the Board of Supervisors (BOS).  Supervisor Eric Mar is on San Francisco's FFC.

Families were sent notices that their child care would end in November, more notices went out about an end to coverage New Year's Eve.

Things began to look up a little in December, 2010, but, as Maria Luz Torre of Parent Voices said, some parents panicked and disappeared before child care activists could contact them about what else was going on.  One hundred families, about 10% of the total concerned in Alameda County (across the Bay from San Francisco), vanished.  

Speaker Perez introduced Assembly Bill 1 (AB 1) to reverse the veto and restore Stage Three Child Care in early December.  Jerry Brown officially became Governor of California January 3rd, 2011; January 10th he included Stage Three Child Care funding in his 2011-2012 state budget proposal.  January 14th, Speaker Perez announced that AB 1 was effective retroactive to January 1st, 2011, good news for poor families that need it.

Good news, bad news.  The bad news is that Jerry Brown wants to make it harder for parents to get into the Stage Three Child Care program.  His budget reduces eligibility from 75% of the State Median Income to 60%, which means that a familiy of three must gross no more than $3000 a month. 

There's a powerful, and funny video on YouTube, of a candidate for political office running on the "The Rent Is Too Damned High" political party ticket.  Well, yup, the rent IS too damned high, and other necessities of life (like food) are more expensive. 

What's a family to do if they make too much money to get Stage Three Child Care services, but they're still barely making ends meet because the Bay Area is one of the most expensive places to live in Amerikkka?

Jerry Brown isn't Governor Moonbeam any more, he became Jerry the Gentrifier of Oakland (he loved it when the U.S. Supreme Court said it was okay to condemn private property if a developer wanted it for a mega-bucks project, even if that project had nothing to do with "improving" a city or town). California stopped being the Moonbeam state years ago too.

Parent Voices is across the street from a school on Church Street in San Francisco.  I spent a bit of a Saturday with organizer Maria Luz Torre and my POOR Magazine family member Jewnbug (the poormagazine Parent Voices skolah) a while back for an outdoor sidewalk sail to raise money for the organization. 

The comments from Maria at the beginning of this article are not the last word.  Maria also repeated how important it is for poor parents to "stay connected to Parent Voices, POOR Magazine, or other groups in the fight--if they don't they miss out" on what they deserve.  It isn't easy, but fighting back gets results.