May 6 Sunday
2-5 pm Mess Hall, 6932 N GLenwood
Labor Trade Show & Fashion Show at Mess Hall
Sewing Rebellion and Labor Trade Show featuring work curated by Frau Fiber. Frau Fiber’s background as a former textile worker taught her the trade secrets that she now gladly shares in her workshops.
Labor, trade, rebel, sew. Mess Hall has been reaping the benefits of the Rebellion so far this year, and we invite you to join us!
Labor Trade Show & Fashion Show
Event Date: Sunday May 6, 2-5pm
Location:
Mess Hall
6932 N Glenwood Ave
Chicago IL 60626
FrauFiber@gmail.com
http://www.messhall.org
The Sewing Rebellion is a cultural revolution where participants are invited to emancipate themselves from the global garment industry by learning the skills to produce your own garments. Frau Fiber, an artist, activist and former textile worker hosts free weekly workshops at Mess Hall where she shares her knowledge of the garment industry, pattern making, and sewing. She hopes to encourage the reuse, renovation and recycling of existing garments and textiles into ?new? unique garments tailored to individual tastes and body shapes.
The Sewing Rebellion is hosting a celebration of labor practices at Mess Hall: The Labor Trade Show and Fashion show. You are invited to contribute by exhibiting your labor practice within the context of a “trade show”. The Labor Trade Show will be held in conjunction with a fashion show of garments produced in the Sewing Rebellion workshops and a performance from the Synchronized Sewing Manufacturing Squad.
Phone: (773) 465-4033 on day of events.
It”s quicker to get us by email: messhall8@yahoo.com
Check us out at http://www.messhall.org for calendar updates and more. And feel free to forward this information on to the rest of the known universe.
May 9 Wednesday
5-7 PM National Vietnam Veterans Museum 1801 S. Indiana, reading from the Deadly Writers Patrol with Tom Deits, Tom Helgeson, Howard Sherpe, Steve Piotrowski and Craig Werner
Thomas Deits is a counselor at the Vet Center in Madison, Wisconsin, where he has worked since the center opened in November 1981. He is a Vietnam War combat veteran who served with 2 nd Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division “Big Red One” from February 1969 to April 1970.
Tom Helgeson is a Wisconsin native who served as an infantryman with the Americal Division in Vietnam from 12/67-12/68. He is a retired disability examiner who lives in Madison.
Craig Werner teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of several books including Up Around the Bend: An Oral History of Creedence Clearwater Revival; and A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America. A native of Colorado Springs, he worked extensively in veterans’ networks during the Vietnam War and was invited to join the Deadly Writers Patrol in 2004.
About the Deadly Writers Patrol:
Writer Group Communicates Emotion
The Deadly Writer’s Patrol started out innocently enough. A master’s degree student at the University of Chicago was living here in Madison, Wisconsin, needed a project to fulfill the requirements of a graduate writing class. Lisa Smith wanted to assemble a group of veterans and instruct them in a particular method of creative writing.
Assisting veterans in expressing themselves coherently, concisely and effectively is an admirable goal. Generally counselors rely on psychotherapy, particularly group psychotherapy, as the modality to allow meaningful self-expression. Learning to better express powerful emotion through writing tweaked my interest.
My experience as a counselor tells me that a veteran’s “combat voice” may predate military service. We learn the rules and methods of self-expression at home, in school, from peers, through our cultural and religious background, television, song, movies and the military. We adopt a style that works to accomplish our goals in each of those settings.
Like every other institution, the military relies heavily on language, and proper use and understanding of that distinct language. However, in the military, only a few people are allowed to speak. Debate is stifled. Silent respect is promoted. Mostly a soldier is at a loss for how and where to describe war and his or her role. War and its aftermath remain under wraps and thus seeming under control.
After Tet of 1968 (Vietnam War) and presidential elections in the same year, the military lost its ballast-a belief that the cause was just, essential and obtainable. As disheartened veterans began returning in number to “the world” and began to speak from their soldier’s voices, that world, the government, churches and schools discovered that veterans had a message to convey. Groups like Vietnam Veterans Against eh War spoke critically. Medals were hurled back into the political face of America. Veterans grew their hair long. Grass roots veterans groups popped up across the country, not rallying to the flag, but to a belief that the government which induced the war and the military brass that led the war did not share the intensity and destruction of the war.
Of equal strength were those veterans who felt our folly was in not winning the war. We failed to wage war properly.
Perhaps an even more numerous group of people existed who thought the war was part of duty and obligation to country but who stayed out of the fray between hawks and doves. Some veterans followed in step with the philosophy that government and military leaders knew what they were doing and the Vietnam War was essential to keep us free. Men and women in this group never questioned authority until years later when the traumatic events they experienced had outweighed the official explanation for the war. Theirs was not to reason why, theirs was but to do or die, and later cry.
America went on, business as usual, while many veterans’ lives were stuck in the mountains and rice paddies of Vietnam.
Lisa Smith offered to help Madison veterans purge their disheveled unvoiced feelings using the constructive and creative techniques of writing. She mentored or writing careers for a semester. Then without a trace she disappeared. We wrote onward.
One of the original members, Howard Sherpe, dubbed our group, The Deadly Writer’s Patrol. We have been meeting for eight years.
Current members are myself, Jean Duesler, Tom Helgeson, Lisa Photos, Steve Piotrowski, Howard Sherpe and Craig Werner.
Not all members are veterans but to each individual that single word, “Vietnam,” holds deep and deadly meaning. Lisa Photos teaches on topics related to Vietnam and wants her class to be as authentic as possible. Vietnam may not be directly mentioned in our stories but it is the backdrop, the curtain that rises and falls, the string that pulls the pin. Referrals for new members come in via the local writers’ grapevine.
Each member of our group, though highly functional, struggles with conveying personal experiences and feelings with the least amount of confusion and most accuracy. Through the writing and editing process we tend to build-in a sense that, with highly emotional issues like the Vietnam War, writers can’t be too careful about the message they are communication either in writing or verbally. Members are asked to convert rampaging emotion, political unrest and peer-to-peer discourse into a meaningful written passage for which they accept responsibility and ownership.
The Deadly Writer’s Patrol gives us the impetus to write with consistency, self-examine the way we express ourselves and, eventually, reach the final period-end of story. That process is hard emotional work. The end product is remorse, laughter, elation, sadness and guilt that we own and now publish.
When we get feedback, that, too, creates a myriad of feeling both enriching and sometimes disabling, so we write some more and the process continues while one story ends and another begins.
Group members also have slightly different ancillary roles. Howard is a graphic artist and often does our printing and artwork. Craig and Lisa are skilled editors so they help those of us who aren’t sure English is our primary language as we hurdle the barriers of style, substance and grammar. Steve is a culinary genius. When we have a meal he usually cooks. Tom brings the wryest humor, candy from San Francisco and other wondrous treats. I foster creativity and enrichment rather than disability.
We meet at a deceased member’s house. It was part of his will. And it’s now part of our will as well.
Thomas Deits is a counselor at the Vet Center in Madison, Wisconsin, where he has worked since the center opened in November 1981. He is a Vietnam War combat veteran who served with 2 nd Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division “Big Red One” from February 1969 to April 1970.
Reference
The Deadly Writer’s Patrol Magazine.
614 Welch Ave.
Madison, WI 53704
Email contact
Craig Werner
cwerner@wisc.edu
By Thomas Deits
May 9 Wednesday
7:00p-9:00pm Mess Hall 6932 N Glenwood ( http://www.messhall.org/ )
TALK WITH ARTIST VISHAL RAWLLEY
Bombay-based artist Vishal Rawlley works in film and video, print and web design, illustration, animation, installation, and more. His work largely concerns the propagation and preservation of various indigenous urban art forms and artistic practices; the city of Bombay is a regular motif in his projects. Join us for a talk with Vishal, in which he will discuss past projects such as TypoCity (www.typocity.com) and introduce his current project, VOICE WAVE.
Vishal Rawlley holds a degree in film and video communication from St. Xavier’s Institute of Fine Arts in Bombay. He has been awarded grants from the Daniel Langlois Foundation (Montreal), PUKAR (Bombay), and SARAI (Delhi). In March and April of this year he was a resident at OBORO in Montreal. Vishal’s website is: www.bombay-arts.com.
For more on VOICE WAVE (“The Legend of the Sea Lord”), see: http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=1986
Vishal Rawlley’s visit is made possible by the South Asia Language and Area Center at the University of Chicago. http://southasia.uchicago.edu
May 10 Thursday
May 10th @ 5:30pm
Local Reporting and Human Rights Abuses in Chicago: A Conference
Ever wonder why some things just don’t get the coverage you think they deserve in Chicago’s media? Come hear award-winning media professionals talk about the challenges and efficacy of writing on human rights abuses in our city.
Jamie Kalven-independent journalist and founder of the Invisible Institute
John Conroy-staff reporter for the Chicago Reader
Beauty Turner-assistant editor and reporter of Residents’ Journal
Salome Chasnoff-executive director of Beyondmedia Education
Moderated by Steve Edwards, host of 848 on WBEZ
@ Experimental Station (6100 Blackstone Ave)
For more information log on at http://shr.uchicago.edu
May 11 Friday
“Come one come all to the Opening of a Ghetto Gallery”
6pm
Location- Ghetto Gallery
7911 South EvansTime-6:00 PM.
Info-Ms. Beauty Turner-312-745-2686 wk -1-773-297-5619
$10 donation $12 at the door.
“Ms. Beauty Turner National Award winning Journalist /Activist/ Ground Breaking Researcher is opening a photo gallery to savor the flavor of public housings. Turner lived 16 years in the bowels of the ghetto of the infamous Robert Taylor Homes- during that time She took pictures, wrote stories and documented key events and she wants to share them with the world so she lined the walls with her photos.”
May 13 Sunday
Widowers’ Houses
2 pm TimeLine Theatre, 615 Wellington
Today’s program is a special Festival performance of George Bernard Shaw’s play.Widowers’ Houses with post performance panel: Fran Tobin, Beauty Turner, Jesu Estrada and Willie “J.R.” Fleming. (Panel begins at 4:15 pm).
- For this performance only
: mention the Chicago Labor & Arts Festival when making your reservations/picking up your tickets and get $5 off the $25 ticket price!
Francis X. Tobin
Fran Tobin been a community and coalition organizer and social justice activist for 20 years, since leaving college to fight Reaganomics in the 1980’s. He has worked in the peace movement as well as campaigns for affordable housing, living wages, economic justice and sustainability in groups ranging from Chicago oalition for the Homeless to Rogers Park Community Action Network to Sane/Freeze (now Peace Action). Currently Midwest Regional Field Organizer for National Jobs with Justice, a coalition of labor, faith-based, community and student organizations. Fran has also done volunteer activism work in several other countries, most recently as part of the “Shell to Sea” campaign in Ireland, which is challenging Shell Oil’s proposed gas pipeline through fragile bogland in County Mayo.
*Beauty Turner* lived in the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the
nation’s most infamous public housing high-rise buildings, for
sixteen years . She now serves as Residents’ Journal’s Assistant Editor, writing award-winning investigative articles and commentaries and co-directing the Advocacy and Outreach Initiative. Beauty is a well-known community activist as well as a regular columnist for the Hyde Park Herald and other community newspapers. For the last several years, Beauty has worked as a research assistant for Professor Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociologist at Columbia University. Beauty has spoken at many events, panels, and universities. She has served on the Executive Committee of the Coalition to Protect Public Housing and also on the Steering Committee of the October 22 Coalition, a campaign against police brutality.
Beauty is now a National award winning Journalist recognized by her peers with the First New America Award of it kind by the National Society of Professional Journalists, also a winner of a Stud Terkel, Peter Lisagore, Associate Press award, Chicago Association for Black Journalist award, Courageous voice award for her activism, Black Pearl award, Woman of the Century award, and a Shero award from the Empowerment Zone Committee. Turner has been feature on the front page of the Wall Street Journal in January 06 – a cartoon picture of her is on the right hand side of the paper and on the left hand side a cartoon picture of President Bush a paper she fondly calls “Beauty and the beast’
Turner has also been feature as a cover story in the Chicago Tribune Magazine (Beauty Treatment) on January 7, 07
Beauty’s mottos: A closed mouth will never get fed; nobody knows your pain unless you tell them; and I have yet to begin to fight or write for human rights!
*Contact: *(312)745-2686 or http://www.beauty@wethepeoplemedia.org
María de Jesús Estrada, Ph.D.: Born into a
farm-worker community in Yuma, Arizona, Jesú
Estrada has been a longtime anti-poverty and
equal rights activist. She received her
doctorate in Rhetoric and Composition from
Washington State University. She is currently a
professor of English at Harold Washington
College, where she emphasizes race, class, and
gender studies. She teaches a wide range of
literature from proletarian literature to
children’s literature. Jesú Estrada also sits
on the editorial board of the Tribuno del
Pueblo, a bilingual-anti poverty newspaper based
out of Chicago. Currently, Dr. Estrada is
working on a co-written book on peace.
Willie “J.R.” Fleming
Cabrini Green resident/organizer/documentarian/website designer and researcher with the
Coalition to Protect Public Housing. Fleming Presented Testimony before the U.N.
Office of the High Commission on Human Rights this Year. Fleming also led the March
on Right to return with public housing residents and leaders in New Orleans during the
Katrina one year memorial. He filmed and edited a gospelmentary titled “Voice of the
Voiceless” along with several other short videos on housing that can be found at
www.housingisahumanright.com
. Before joining the Coalition to Protect Public Housing,
Fleming was the director of a gang intervention music program for young men in Cabrini
Green, and is currently the Chairman for the Hip Hop Congress Community Chapter in
Chicago which deals with issues of social and economic injustice using music as a
platform to unite the people.this year Willie protested the U.S. Olympic Committee in Chicago noting that the olympis causes poor people to forcefully evited from their communities and homes. He also took part in training housing and homelessness advoates on how to utilize housing as a human rights mechanisms in the united states and and educating their communities in fighting for housing as a human right
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