Barbara Graves Memorial - February 24, 2018
Freedom Voices
Barbara Graves, activist, former AFSC staff and committee member, and a founder of Strawberry Creek Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), died at her home at the Redwoods, Mill Valley, CA on December 22, 2017. She was 104.
A memorial service will be held at Berkeley Friends Church, 1600 Sacramento Street, Berkeley, CA on February 24th. 2:00 p.m.
She volunteered in San Francisco's Tenderloin with residents on the margins of society facilitating a weekly Bible discussion group for decades and serving on the board of the Tenderloin Reflection and Education Center.
Born in Geneva, NY, in 1913, Barbara worked for the American Red Cross from 1942 to 1945 directing nursing homes for battle-fatigued Allied airmen in Britain in World War II. She received a bronze star for her service, unusual for a civilian. She was hired by the American Friends Service Committee in 1948 to administer AFSC work in Germany, working and living with local Germans in establishing neighborhood centers for five years. She then worked at the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Hospital from 1953 to 1962 as a psychiatric social worker, serving on and off AFSC committees. In 1962 she was recruited by AFSC as director of the VISA (Voluntary International Service Assignment) program in Tanzania, Haiti, Guatemala and India. She then went to UC-Berkeley for research based on her VISA experience and then to Emory University in Atlanta for study within a black social work environment. Back to California where she remained until her death, Barbara served as a leader in the Northern California AFSC, often as a consultant to solve organizational problems.
She risked arrest many times in opposition to U.S. wars in Central America and the Middle East. In 1986 she returned her Bronze Star in a ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial to protest the U.S. role in the conflict in Nicaragua.
She is survived by her adopted daughter Nia Marie Graves Patterson and co-parent Glendora Patterson.
Fractured Utopias: A Personal Odyssey with History
Roger Burbach
$19.95
In this revealing memoir, Roger brings the unflinching honesty he applied to his political work to bear on his personal passions and paradoxes as a husband, father and amorist. An award-winning author and editor of many books on Latin American social movements, US imperialism, 21st century socialism and globalization, Roger finished this manuscript just weeks before his death in March of 2015.
Living in the Land of the Dead: An Anthology of Anthologies Faithful Fools Poetry 2004 - 2014
Faithfiul Fools
With grit, grace, and elegance Faithful Fools
(a live/work non-profit) has collected an anthology of anthologies
representing over 100 poets selected from five different volumes
originally published by Will to Print Press. Edited by the University of
San Francisco MartIn-BarO Scholars (2014-15), and produced by Freedom
Voices Press, this collection will take you into the streets of San
Francisco's Tenderloin District where you will hear a panoply of voices
sharing art and wisdom drawn from harsh experience and existential joy.
"Welcome to Living in the Land of the Dead... Understand: this book
contains road maps, accident reports, and prayers and is filled with
human life crying like a helpless baby or the blast of a lonely horn..."
—Ed Bowers, a Faithful Fool and Tenderloin Poet
"This
book is a crossroads. A crossroads of people: a place where poets meet
one another, where students meet poets, where faculty meet Fools. This
book is a crossroads of life: a place where words meet the page, where
truth meets dreams, where the past meets the present. It is an oasis on
the long Silk Road of poetry that connects distant corners of the
world."
—Sam Dennison, a Faithful Fool
Class Encounters
Maketa Smith-GrovesA new poetry collection about people, place, and people in place.
$14.95
Maketa Smith-Groves is a reincarnate William Carlos Williams, recording specifics of an urban world so down and out that only those born of it are permitted to wander its ghost realm. When she brings this sensibility to a more familiar scenery, it is with compassion for its discarded broken denizens and exhausted working class ignored by the entitled, such as in L.A.'s bright horrors. Moving, accurate snapshots without a tough persona or preaching rhetoric. You haven't been here before. Marc Olmsted —poet, and author of Don't Hesitate Knowing Allen Ginsberg.
Maketa Smith-Groves has given her life to the poem, as these works so clearly and beautifully demonstrate. Her voice is strong, as she continues to practice the art and craft of poetry, with true devotion. This collection will take its place on the shelf of literature that lasts. Neeli Cherkovski —poet, memoirist and literary chronicler. His latest book of poetry is, The Crow.
The poems ... are marvelous! Elias Schneitter —poet, novelist, and co-founder, Sprachsalz Literary Festival. Co-author of, The Two Austrians of North Beach.
Maketa Smith-Groves is a truly important representative of American poetry. Her poetry unites the blues of Mississippi, the harshness of the struggle to survive in Detroit, and the sensitivity of an outsider in San Francisco. Hers, is a distinguished voice in American Literature. —Sprachsalz Literary Festival Review, Innsbruck, Austria.
104 Pages, Trade paperback. $14.95
ISBN: 978-091511723-9
Writing Workshop
Freedom VoicesWomen’s Writing Workshop at Faithful Fools
234 Hyde St. (at Turk)
2nd Saturday each month
from 11:30am – 2pm
Based on the Writing from the Soul practice
Write! Meditate! Listen & Share Deeply!
Workshop leader Kitty Costello is a longtime writer, editor, activist and teacher
Come access your truest voice, free from inner &outer critics.
New and experienced writers all welcome.
Refreshments served!
This workshop is free and open to all who identify as women.
Sponsored by:
Tenderloin Reflection and Education Center, Freedom Voices and Hedgebrook Women’s Writing Retreat.
House Keys Not Handcuffs
Paul BodenWith additional essays by Art Hazelwood and Bob Prentice
House Keys Not Handcuffs: Homeless Organizing, Art and Politics in San Francisco and Beyond.
Written by Paul Boden with additional essays by friends and longtime allies, Art Hazelwood and Bob Prentice. It includes 67 images created by printmakers, painters, muralists, cartoonists and photographers giving a history of the art made in the struggle.
House Keys Not Handcuffs is a reflection on over 30 years of homeless organizing in San Francisco. It is an attempt to sort out what went well and what did not as a community begins to organize in order to hold public and private institutions accountable. Its purpose is not only to distill the lessons we have learned, but to encourage others to document and reflect on their own experiences in the hope that we can collectively contribute to a stronger, more broadly-based movement. Artwork has always been a vital part of this organizing.
The book draws from the insights of Paul Boden, whose own experiences on the street as an activist, and as a co-founder of the Coalition on Homelessness and later, the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP), give him a unique and wide perspective. It is a voice for people who have no power or privilege except for their capacity to organize and demand social justice.
Imagining Lynd Ward
David A. BeronäIntroduction by Eric Drooker, Design by Art Hazelwood
The life of graphic novel artist Lynd Ward (1905-1985) is told by author and scholar David A. Beronä in a series of vignettes that are accompanied by woodcut prints illustrating the story. Seven contemporary artists provide the original woodcut prints. The illustrators include Olivier Deprez, Jules Remedios Faye, Drew Grasso, Art Hazelwood, Frances Jetter, Billy Simms, Kurt Brian Webb.
The vignettes include the childhood of the artist, his marriage, his graphic woodcut novels, and his later illustrated children's books. Graphic novel artist Eric Drooker provides an introduction to both Lynd Ward as well as the author.
64 pages, cover color, interior b/w perfect bound, 8.5 x 8.5 inches
$11.95
American Day Dream
Margot Pepper
Now Available!
classic like 1984 or Brave New World.”
—Jim Smith, The Venice Beachhead
“A great dystopian read that takes you on a journey around the
streets and scenic marvels of San Francisco. More than an Orwellian
dystopia, American Daydream draws on the revelations of Edward Snowden,
imagining where the National Security might be leading us in the future.
Added to this mélange is a passionate romance between the two main
characters, the utopian counter point of the story.”
—Roger Burbach, author of Fire in the Americas
“Margot Pepper’s literary incursion into Science Fiction is just like
her—daring, brave and fully imagined. She is a story goddess living in
and out of verses, whose political stance is vital and necessary.”
—Luis J. Rodriguez, author of Always Running and It Calls You Back
Related items:
Freedom Voices Celebrates 25 Years with Reading at City Lights Bookstore — Tuesday, November 18, 2014, 7 pm
Freedom Voices
City Lights Booksellers,
261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco
Freedom Voices Press Celebrates 25 Years with a Sneak Preview of 2015 Releases and our 2014 Award-Winner
with readings by Margot Pepper (left), Paul Boden (center), J. Douglas Allen-Taylor (right). MC, Jess Clarke
Readings from Sugaree Rising by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Freedom Voices
Frank Bette Center For The Arts
Saturday, January 25, 2014
7 p.m.
1601 Paru Street
Alameda
510 523-6957
