Special Benefit Reading

Commemoration, Compassion & Community:
A Day-long Fundraiser for the Victims of Hurricane Katrina
Poetry, Music, Film, Theatre, Food

Sunday, September 11, 2005, 9 AM to 11 PM
Busboys & Poets
(www.busboysandpoets.com)
14th & V, NW, Washington DC
U Street/Cardozo Green line Metro

Americans gave generously to the victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Let's honor that spirit of giving with a day of fundraising for the Americans whose lives have been shattered by Hurricane Katrina. Funds collected, as well as a portion of proceeds from restaurant and bookstore sales, will be donated to the People's Hurricane Fund/Young People's Project and the Southern Relief Fund of the Mississippi Workers Center for Human Rights, organizations led by and working directly with low-income communities of color in the effected areas.

All are invited to bring a poem to read - one of your own or any poem that speaks to you in these difficult times. The organizers will also have poems available to choose from, if you like.

Hosted by Busboys & Poets, cosponsored by D.C. Poets Against the War, CodePink, Teaching for Change, and The Fund for Women Artists.

Highlights of the day, to date (more details to follow):

10 AM - Anu Yadav will perform excerpts from her one-woman show in progress, Capers, about residents displaced from the Arthur Cappers public housing development in SE Washington.

10:45 AM - Camille Dungy, reading her own poetry and the poems of Sterling Brown, D.C.'s first Poet Laureate.

11 AM - Kathryn Blume will perform excerpts from her acclaimed show The Accidental Activist, chronicling her launch into anti-war activism when she founded the Lysistrata Project. Kathy's first DC appearance!

12:30 PM - Shahid Buttar, Guerilla Poet, Organizer, Lawyer.

1 PM - Conscious Hip Hop by Princesss of Controversy - Activist, Artist, Diva.

3 PM - Poetry by Luis Alberto Ambroggio, Naomi Ayala, Laurie Blair, Kyle Dargan, Esther Iverem, Reuben Jackson, Judith McCombs, Jennifer Steele, Kathi Wolfe, Andrea Wyatt, and others.

7 PM - Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear, and the Selling of the American Empire, a film narrated by Julian Bond. Examines how a radical fringe of the Republican Party used the trauma of the 9/11 terror attacks to advance a pre-existing agenda to radically transform American foreign policy while rolling back civil liberties and social programs at home.

9 PM - Jazz by The Sanga Equation, a straight-up standard jazz quartet with repetoire spanning the whole of jazz history--from Thelonnious Monk to Stevie Wonder. Members: John Paul, piano; Jamal Borden, bass; Steve Helfand, drums; Lena Seikaly, vocals.

For more information: Pamela Pinnock, Busboys & Poets, ppinock3@comcast.net, 202-528-4987 or Sarah Browning, DC Poets Against the War, browning@womenarts.org, 202-545-7959.