Welcome to the EastSide Arts Alliance & Cultural Center!
We are an organization of Third World artists, cultural workers, and community organizers of color committed to working in the San Antonio and other Oakland neighborhoods to support a creative environment that improves the quality of life for our communities and advocates for progressive, systemic social change.
EastSide Cultural Center – Strong & Healthy!
Dear EastSide Family,
These were the words chanted by one of our favorite 5-year olds after the announcement that a new presidential team had been elected. She chanted this to a resounding drumbeat that said to all of us "listen up!"
Now more than ever we have to be strong - ready to participate in the reconstruction that is needed - and healthy - in mind, body, and soul. There’s a lot to do and through the creation and sharing of song, ceremony, dance, music, theater, poetry, posters, murals, and sculptures we will teach each other, build community together, and create new systems of mutual aid.
The EastSide Cultural Center builds our power at the local level by bringing poor and working-class communities together to imagine and fight for the neighbor hoods we all deserve. We all want to live in neighborhoods where folks are looking out for each other, where there are places for young and old people to share stories, places that are healthy and resilient. Grassroots community cultural centers are critical to that vision, and it is our work at EastSide to keep these spaces alive. Cultural work is important right now as we all look for ways to stay connected and imagine a better world. We do not intend to go back to “business as usual”. Cultural spaces are where we envision and actualize a world that does not focus on racism and greed but instead focuses on self-de termination and freedom.
We know there are many folks out there who love and appreciate the work we do. We are forever grateful for that support. We need every one of you to show your support by giving a donation today. Funds received from individual donors are what keeps our center going, in a time when culture is critical to building the world we want to live in.
Will you be one of the hundred people in our community that we need to sign up as Roots Supporters? Our Roots Supporters give a set amount each month – this can be $10 or $100 – whatever you are able to contribute*. Roots Supporters provide a known source of funding at a time when resources are hard to come by, allowing us to plan ahead in uncertain times and continue offering year-round programming. Please consider signing up as a monthly donor today, to sustain what makes our community vibrant and resilient.
Cultural spaces are critical for developing and deepening relationships between neighbors - and right now our interdependence is life or death.
Thank you,
The EastSide Arts Alliance Collective
* For monthly gifts of $40 and up you will receive a special surprise box of ESAA vintage swag - t-shirts, posters, books, stickers.
• PO Box 17008 • Oakland, CA 94601 •
EastSide Arts Alliance uses arts and culture as a way to build community power and self-determination. We have been serving our neighborhood for over 20 years. We now have a third generation coming to our cultural center. We are dedicated to building deep connections between and among working class & low-income communities of color, communities whose histories, stories and cultures are actively erased from mainstream narratives. Through year-round programming at our cultural center and other public spaces in East Oakland, EastSide provides an example of how progressive artwork and the growing traditions of cultural offerings offers a creative framework for community solidarity and inclusivity.
We believe that art can be healing and transformative when the intention is clear. The Project Sarai Mural and Beloved: An Insistence are a part of an ongoing commitment by artists, spiritual warriors, activists and abolitionists working together to end the culture of misogyny, child abuse, sexual violence and rape in our communities; and repair our collective humanity.
– the EastSide Arts Alliance Collective
EastSide Arts Alliance & Cultural Center
2277 International Blvd. Oakland, CA 94606 eastsideculturalcenter@gmail.com
The Project Sarai Mural and Beloved: An Insistence
Regina Evans (IG: @reginasdoor) and Amara Tabor Smith
Muralists: Cece Carpio, Leslie Lopez, Priya Handa, Frankie Gámez, Angelica Lopez, Inbal Rubin, and Sarai
Mural photo: Mark Lilly; Mural detail photos: Joe Keefe
Application due Jan 12!
VIRTUAL & RECORDED EVENTS CALENDAR
Self Respect, Self Defense, Self Determination
The ongoing onslaught of police & vigilante killings of African Americans around the country is symptomatic of the broadening repression in U.S. society’s rapid swing to the right, also characterized by the buildup of a fascistic prison industrial complex and an emboldened xenophobic commander-in-cheif.
The just call for Black Power identifies the struggle between Black people and oppressive political systems in the US and globally that are based on White Supremacy.
Black Power is a critical challenge to the hypocrisy of so-called American democracy and points to the disempowerment and disfranchisement of Black and all oppressed communities of color.
So we say: BLACK POWER MATTERS and support calls to DEFUND THE POLICE and DEFEND BLACK LIVES. This is a call to organize. We must continue to support organizations, alliances, united fronts and coalitions within and between our communities.
A global uprising demanding systemic changes in how we govern our own communities is underway. EastSide’s work is devoted to raising the cultural consciousness of our respective communities to fight for political empowerment. In the continuum of the artists and activists who came before us, are committed to:
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SELF RESPECT - To raise political and cultural awareness and values based on a progressive and de-colonized national consciousness
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SELF DEFENSE - To recognize police repression as a key component of institutional racism and White Supremacy and as an inherent feature of U.S. Capitalism.
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SELF DETERMINATION - Community control of our institutions and political empowerment for Black and all Third World and oppressed peoples.
