3rd Saturday Poetry in Chinatown

LaborFestWriters: Writing by and for working people since 2005 Who We Are: "The corporate-controlled media amplifies the voices of the powerful and diminishes the voices of working people. We are dedicated to overcoming that." The LaborFest Writers grew out of a single afternoon in July 2005 — a writing workshop at the Exit Theatre in San Francisco's Tenderloin, led by labor writer Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Eight or nine people sat around a few tables in a dark little café and wrote about their first jobs. By the end of the day they had agreed to exchange email addresses. Twenty years later, the group still meets — now weekly on Zoom, since the pandemic. We are rabble-rousers, activists, leftist radicals, union members, immigrants, native-born and plain old trouble-makers — outside the literary mainstream and committed to staying there. Our writing spans memoir, fiction, and poetry. This is an unfinished and marvelous history. From Our History: > "Roxanne had told us that everyone has the capability to tell a story and write it down — that it is a basic human ability, like singing and dancing... We found strength and power in gathering every second Saturday to read our work, discuss it, and expose it to peers — for their perusal and reflection." — Keith David Cooley, LaborFest Writers History Parking tip: $8 all-day parking at St. Mary’s Square Garage.