ACTION: missing summer school in Los Angeles

Peace & Prosperity to you all,

Over on Face Book, I have a Cause up known as Summer Arts Simple & Easy (S.A.S.E). to help facilitate parents and kids finding affordable if not free summer school alternatives in the Los Angeles area. Included in that is also the offer to provide a series of my own and help other artists I know in setting up their own. Hit me up if you are down.

Below is the recent news item I posted in the Cause. There are two other projects that I know of working to fill this summer gap and they can use your PARTICIPATION. I am also urging members of S.A.S.E. to donate $25. If you've got $25 and want to help out, we are right now fundraising for the Boys & Girls Club of Venice. They are maxxed out. More details below. If you are on Face Book, please join the Cause and donate the cash!

1) PAPEL (People's Assembly for Popular Education & Liberation), an alternative summer school set-up by LAUSD teachers and parents launched last week offering classes @ 100 N Toluca St, Los Angeles, CA 90026. Click on their name and you will be taken to their blog. if you live out that way and want to support with a course of your own, please contact them directly.

2) USC has chimed in with an on-line resource for classes. SOS Classroom . They have a site with kids showing up, making use of the computers there. Please check out their site to see how you can help. The curriculum is free and open to everyone and is "crowdsourced." Very exciting.

3) We have a beneficiary! After reading an article in the Argonaut, I decided to call the Boys and Girls Club of Venice to see how we could be of help. In case you have not heard, this one facility alone is currently seeing 400+ kids per DAY due to the cancellation of summer school. Aileen Martinez explained to me the dire situation they are in: 10 student positions were cut due to budget issues prior to the closing, so they are short-handed, while servicing their community at record breaking levels. It is time to raise some funds and if you are out this way, sign up to volunteer. It is simple to give to them. Just click that you want to donate on our Causes page and walk through the steps! It would be great if you could each give $25, but every bit helps.

Now, right after I decided that we should raise funds for an existing organization and offer volunteer support, I got word that 826LA is also struggling under the weight of closed summer school. While Boys & Girls Clubs charge a very modest fee per week for their summer program ($25 - $35 per week), 826LA is free. They need us, too. So here's the deal:

826LA is having their Paddle Boat Regatta next weekend in Echo Park. Fundraising has already begun, but they are over $1000 short of their target. You can help them out by going directly to their website page for the regatta and donating to any team the tickles your fancy. You can also help them at their two sites in LA, here in Venice and in Echo Park by volunteering to help a child with their writing and reading. I will contact them directly to see if they would be up for a movement theatre-based writing project at either site.

There is so much undone here; it boggles the mind. This weekend I finally made it out to the boardwalk only to see a bunch of kids being arrested by a bunch of police. In fact, the police presence has been significantly increased here in Venice, no doubt, in response to the closure of summer school. This is the only response we can expect from the police. They are doing the job they know how to do. Therefore, it is up to all of us who know how to engage kids with excitement, art, and yes, love, to make ourselves available and PARTICIPATE in saving the kids. This is not metaphorical. The five kids I saw getting carted off can vouch for that.

Let's get the membership up on the Cause! Invite your friends and don't be 'shame to ask them for $25 for the Boys & Girls Club of Venice. If you have a B&GC in your neighborhood, ask them if they need help and let us all know. If you are participating in a project that needs volunteers, please post it to the board. It is my hope that we can rotate beneficiaries every two weeks. More than that, it is my hope that you will give a class of your own. Read the recommendations on how to go about that on the Causes page.

be the love and light,
-Anna

NEWSLETTER: making that change

Alafia, peace unto you

This has been such an incredible week of takin it higher: the people of Iran tryin to get full representation; the President Obama trying to get that health care thing movin while First Lady calls you to take to the streets and be of service serve.gov; Twitter discovers it is a weapon of mass communication; communities across the US battle to get their summer school back for their kids; perhaps the most embattled Republican governor in the union admits that he knows love and screwed it up; California lawmakers become the bane of the state's existence, pushing citizens to new histrionics/heroics; LAUSD thinks about raising taxes to save services; and the king or pop, loved and reviled, champion of innocence and erstwhile destroyer of it, lord of the catchy phrase, video cultural emissary, changer of the world, uniter through a sequined glove-- MICHAEL JACKSON, has passed away today. Strut on, bruh.





Afrolicious. Afrologia. Afrodelic. Afropoesia. Afrologica. How big is your 'fro? Fractal, improvisational, polemical, but always moving with spirit and in service to lifting us all up! That's the Logic of the Afro--sign up, read up, be up, act up--you can move mountains, now make it beautiful


BLOWIN BACK DA 'FRO right now, is the knowledge that no matter how twisted we think ourselves to be, no matter how ridiculous we allow ourselves to act, when we open up, the love and light will shine through each and every time. Play that video one more time and take the lesson.

HIGHWAYS
1651 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404
FAR FROM HOME by KEITH GLASSMAN
Friday, June 26 + Sautrday, June 27 @ 8:30 PM; $20/$15
"Choreographer Glassman presents a suite of dance and performance works that reveal the underbelly of our intercontinental community. In dialects foreign and familiar and with movement ranging from enigmatic gesture to shout-and-holler Krump dancing, the cast of twelve uncovers the secret of cultural endurance - and long life!" Yup, takin it higher still. Go see Ms. Pat Payne rock this here stage.


JAPANESE-AMERICAN CULTURAL & COMMUNITY CENTER
244 S. San Pedro St, Little Tokyo, Downtown LA
Free Screening in JACCC Plaza of Astroboy, Gigantor, and Voltron
Friday, June 26, 7:30 PM
Bring picnic, hairs, blankets jackets, kiddies and have a good time watching these classic animated films that probably inspired all of those kids who grew up to make sci-fi effects, video games, and a user-friendly internet. Don't miss this one.


THE ECHOPLEX
1154 Glendale Blvd, Los Angeles, CA
826LA's Tiny Vaudeville #4, for the kids - but not *for* kids
Tuesday, June 30 @ 8 - 11 PM; pay what you can with on-line pre-reg/$15 at the door
If you don;t know about this fabulous little org that could, you should. 826la has two sites, one here in Venice and another cross town in Echo Park that has an afterschool open-door policy for homework help and they hold special writing events on weekends and during the summer. Some pretty amazing folks turn up as the teachers. This fundraiser looks like a big laughs, with professional actors doing a staged reading from the many student-created books that 826la publishes. Great cause. Cool place. Check it out.

Oh, my Lovelies!
I will add on to this later. I need to get up and dance to the Off the Wall album, or maybe Thriller. Cause when all is said and done, all we have is sound, soul/soles and sweat. Boogie down to get up. Sign up on http://www.serv.gov for a project in your community to make that change. If you are an artist in LA, please consider signing up to give summer classes to students in LA through an initiative I am developing with KAIPS called S.A.S.E. If you are a school teacher, we need you, love you and hope that your local prevails in Sacramento to stop the budget cuts. Peace y'all. I'll be back in a few hours with some classes and several other interesting shows that I thought you might like to hear about.

in love with the music,
-Anna