As the Bay Area community reels in horror from recent gang rapes, a coalition of local arts and human-rights groups announce:

A Community Healing Ceremony, Free Multi-Arts Performance and Press Conference.

November 25 is the UN-mandated day to kick off 16 days of action for the elimination of violence towards women and girls, globally. Similar activities will take place around the world that day.

Bay Area musician and healer MamaCoAtl, an “Artivist” who first initiated this observance in the USA five years ago, said, “This significant day has been marked internationally since 1999. But, in 2004 in San Francisco, a few friends and I first began the commemoration with simple prayers at a Mission Street BART station for a societal healing of violence."

Human rights activist and radio host, Nina Serrano, added that, “While the femicide increases, the urgency to stop the violence increases. So this year our commemoration of the day has expanded to a broad coalition of arts, healing, human rights and feminist groups. ”

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The PRESS CONFERENCE includes:

- a Cherokee Opening Benediction by Nanette Bradley Deetz

-Proclamations by Mayor Newsom and Emily M. Murase, PhD (San Francisco Department of the Status of Women)

SPEAKERS include:

-City Supervisor David Campos

-Alameda Poet Laureate Mary Rudge

-MamaCoAtl

ARTS PERFORMANCE:

“They Are All Our Daughters! /!Todas Son Nuestras Hijas!” will Feature:

-poet Judy Grahn
-singer-songwriter and event initiator MamaCoAtl
-choreographer Anne Bluethenthal and Dancers
-musician Diana Gameros
-Aztec dancers Mixcoatl
-and other community artists...


*MC is Nina Serrano.

**Chief Luisah Teish and the Women’s Spirituality Program of the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology will lead the ritual healing.


---This is a FREE event---


Sponsoring Organizations:
the SF Bay Area Artivist Coalition on Gender Violence, ABD Productions, Survivors International, The SF Bay Area Chapter of the US National Committee of UNIFEM, and the Women’s Spirituality Program at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology (ITP).