Vox Feminista

Say No to 20 More Years of Coal in Boulder!

noreply@blogger.com (Vox Feminista) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:54:00 +0000

RALLY FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY!

"Our Power. Our Future. Our Choice."

Tuesday, August 3rd at 4:45pm on the corner of Broadway and Canyon.

Boulder is at a critical juncture. We can lock ourselves into another 20-year contract with Xcel Energy – with more fossil fuels and ever-increasing rates – or we can chart a new future based on local and renewable energy.

The Boulder City Council is meeting at 6pm on August 3rd to decide our energy future. Come let the City Council and Xcel Energy know that YOU are ready for renewables!

T-shirts and some signs will be provided for use during the event, but please feel free to bring your own.

Spread the word! Bring friends and family!

For more information on the 20-year franchise agreement with Xcel and alternative paths forward, go here.

If you want to learn more about the franchise agreement and what options Boulder has moving forward, join us this Saturday, July 31st in the VG Burgers parking lot at Broadway and Arapahoe. There will be live music, sign-making materials for the rally on the 3rd, and refreshments! This event will last all day – from 11am til 11pm – so stop by whenever you can!

Hands Across the Sand in Boulder

noreply@blogger.com (Vox Feminista) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:35:00 +0000

UPDATE: The Boulder Hands Across the Sand event is this Saturday, June 26, from 1-3 p.m. We will meet on the lawn area between the Boulder Municipal Building and the Boulder Public Library. The Boulder Municipal Building is located at the southwest corner of Broadway and Canyon. Hope you'll join us!

Hands Across the Sand

noreply@blogger.com (Vox Feminista) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:47:00 +0000

What's it going to take to protect the nation's beaches from more oil drilling once and for all? A historic outpouring of support -- one that overshadows all the money and influence Big Oil has in politics.

Vox is participating in gatherings of hundreds of thousands of Americans, standing together on June 26 to permanently protect our shores from offshore drilling.

Hands Across the Sand began with a flash rally earlier this year in Florida and quickly turned into the largest-ever gathering of citizens united against drilling -- and for protecting the state's famous shores. The statewide movement, called Hands Across the Sand, helped put to rest plans by the Florida legislature to repeal the state's long-standing moratorium against more drilling.

Sign up here to attend a Hands Across the Sand gathering near you, on June 26. The Boulder gathering will be from 1-3 this Saturday on the lawn area between the library and municipal building on Canyon Blvd. Hope to see you there!

an idea

noreply@blogger.com (Vox Feminista) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 21:46:00 +0000

a hole in the bottom of the sea; the strangulation of the entire ocean

food chain. the engine of our lives- oil! what we kill the earth to feed

to our machines: oil! it's like the black plague, but more insideous,

heartbreaking and endless.

we don't know how to process it.

we don't know how to react.

so we don't and it goes on and on, they say till next year.....what!!

isn't this oil catacysm tragic and insane and totally overwhelming!

oil, woven as it is like oxygen, into every aspect of our lives.

we were born into a world already wrapped in it's web, but there's another

world, another web.

i haven't known what to do, but i know this. and i'm exhausted from

feeling so powerless and deeply freaked out.

but i have an idea:

i think everyone's feeling it, and none of us, lacking solidarity networks

and the ability to truly LINK UP, (beyond digital devices and other

bullshit), knows what to do.

what if we started to organize in order to gather in big groups to mourn,

to grieve and to, feel it, to face it directly, let it in, and then

figure out how to take responsibility for stopping it.

fuck b.p. !! why do they get to be the only ones held "responsible"?

they are incapable of any honest response and can't feel any of it cos

they're a dead entity. and they bring death to all they touch.

we of the living, breathing hearts need to step up.

or otherwise, we are granting our consent to these criminal projects run

by insane strangers. and we don't want that. i know we don't want that!

this isn't about feeling guilty and culpable.

this is about community and grassroots power and living solutions.

we may not all be deep-sea engineers, but we can move. we are alive and

attached to this one planet, and we know what needs to be done.

hope is so close to denial that i don't trust it anymore. but hope has 2

beautiful daughters: anger and courage. anger at how things are and

courage to change these things.

let's see what's really possible. let's mobilize and start talking about it.

any ideas for where and when?

in love and rage, oak

D.I.A. Report

noreply@blogger.com (Vox Feminista) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:43:00 +0000

D.I.A. (Denying Intrinsic Alienation?)

The music piped into the airy arc of skybridge is as disembodying as the landscape. Indian chanting, flutes and drums swirl dripping high fructose irony over the benumbed migratory sheep toting valises on wheels. The suddenness of all this lightness and space, a gift after the dark grip and fascist shadow of Homeland Security. The lines. The paramilitary uniforms. Remove coat, scarf, belt, shoes, computer. Many plastic bins hold my life sliding away. Separate gels, 3 oz. only, into separate plastic squares. No water. No yogurt. No bean dip. Why? Because we said so that’s why. Stripped bare in an endless lineup, watching helpless as my belongings disappear in a herd through the evil conveyor belt of radiation. Big fucking brother thinks he can see inside my heart. No way, or they’d never let me fly.

“Miss!” some guy is calling, “Miss!” I look around and there, inside a glass box like a giant Barbie on display, a middle aged white dude, tapped to get my attention. “I think my cell phone’s in with your shoes”. Behind him, uniformed goons are running wands over another freedom loving man’s body. “Miss…” He speaks to me as if nothing- him in the box, me in my socks, the raidioacitve wanding, or his words- is strange. “Nope. Not with my shoes.” I silently wish him courage and move on, towards the skybridge.

What won’t we put up with in the name of safety? What terrible humiliations will we not grow accustomed to in order to fall for the national lie that these ridiculous acts and props can keep us safe from a few centuries of karma coming down like steely rain? Everywhere around me people are re-lacing their shoes, putting their shit back together, comforting their children, being scoped and wanded . A display of adaptation- our most dangerous superpower.

“The security code has been raised to orange. Please report any suspicious behavior..” I want to do tai chi. I have 2 hours before boarding. I find a space that seems out of the way and is, ironically in front of the Gold Star Hideaway, or whatever they call the reserved space for the privileged rich and military personnel. Too much traffic here by the elevators, but I persevere, just to block their smooth transition, just to challenge them to adapt to me. I move on after the first third, comforted by the thought that for sure I’ve made it onto their film of the day.

Under the video of “The Extreme Ice Survey”, I stop. I always to, to pay homage to this nightmare unraveling. No one ever watches, it seems, but me; a full wall screen of the glaciers of Antarctica, time lapsing, collapsing, unavoidable. No way to adapt to this. But they do. On the screen, glaciers collapse, travelers pass, eyes averted. I close my eyes. Sink into my feet. Begin. Heels together, bend knees, shift weight into the left leg. Glaciers surrender in unreal time to the urgent flow of music. Arms lift as if drawn by invisible pulleys. Gateways of wrists, shoulders, elbows open. Beside the screen is a mural of Antarctic ice fields. Shift weight. Turn. At the lowest left hand corner, a tiny human figure in an orange anorak faces the vastness, like science. Hold the world. Like a human. Step out. The music flows all round me, relaxed, I say inside, relax. Am I holding the world right? I face the ice, step, follow my hips swinging slowly to the corner. Face airplanes taking off and landing out the wall tall window. Nobody stops. Nobody slows. Adaptation is instantaneous. The airplanes zoom off with the false speed of glacial collapse, time lapse, the madness of motion, relax: what is real? Push. Grasp the sparrow’s tail. Urgently the music tumbles as ice tumbles, urgent as planes speeding off, as unseen departure times near; I slow it all down. The melting poles, the speedy people, the jets blasting off and back again. Lift. Turn. Single whip. “The terror alert has been raised to Orange..” I feel the bubbling well. Sink my roots, 3 pins in each foot. Feel the dragon. The ice is clean as prophesy. The story becomes the future. The sign beside the streaming video images says “We believe that global warming is a non-partisan issue”- How did this come about? How did they get to put this here? Did they win an Irony Grant? Them and the chanting tribes in the skyway bridge? White crane spreads her wings. Brush knee, shift weight, push. 70/30. Feel the air under my hands. Feel the sadness of the beginning of the end. Stand in the middle like this. Invisible. Push. Turn. Play guitar. Now, meditate freak, go with that energy of otherness. It is the only thing bold enough to survive here.

Moving on, sideways through the world, past cameras and badges and ceaseless warnings. “Please report any suspicious behavior..” I am suspicious as anyone in my wild last-night’s-show-hair, my made up eyes and striped sweats and tai chi rooted trunk. I look for a phone to call Bobbie. How suspicious is that? Find one. Embark on a payphone terrorist action. My phone book is an actual phone book. I don’t know the time and have to ask strangers- have to talk to strangers, try to make eye contact. How suspicious… Try to function in the narrow wide world of U.S. culture without a cell phone. There are no public clocks anymore, and no public phones. Convenience for some destroys convenience for all. “The threat level has been raised to orange” Liars! It’s been orange for 9 years. “Please report any…” I look for an unflushed toilet in the women’s room. Know this means they’re broken and one piss won’t cost me 5 gallons. Suspicious. I stand before the automatic faucet, hands obediently extended, praying for water. One after another, on down the line, no response. Am I doing it right? Shit, I hate this. One responds. Try to brush my teeth. Try to spit. Response withheld. No water when you need it.

Suspicious means you don’t blend. I don’t blend. But somehow, I am invisible. Strange metaphor of this culture’s denial. What’s different should stand out. How suspicious that I am invisible. Me and the glaciers and the un-flushed toilets. Unassimilated. The rest pass by, nibbling the sugared glass. The smell of roses trailing dappled velvet. All the illusions jostle like the lines of passengers trying to survive security. A greenhouse is not a garden. A garden is not a jungle. This culture is a blender. The engines of convenience and custom whirs us all into it’s brutally indifferent blades, and if you don’t grab hard, hold fast to the ragged edge of the farthest wall, you’ll be shredded by the jagged teeth and made smooth. Homogenized. The roar is all there is. But the billboard images surrounding you in the spinning ‘tank are happy shiny people. Cognitive dissonance is a clang that completes the 4th wall and holds you pinned to stillness and obedience beneath it all. Waving flags with your shoes in your hand. Standing inside a glass box for all to see, here where no one sees. Please report any suspicious behavior. Man, oh man, have I got a report for you!

Written by Oak

Spring Show Audition!

noreply@blogger.com (Jess Steinitz) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:59:00 +0000

Vox Feminista is looking for activist performers, musicians, dancers, etc. who are interested in making art for social justice. Please note that this audition is only for performers (no peanut galleries, please).

The audition will be held on Sunday, Jan. 31st at 2pm at the Mercury Cafe in Denver (2199 California St).

We are looking for outrageous, strong 5 minute (or under) original performances concerning issues of:
- Non-human Rights
- Global Climate Change
- Food
- Education

Comedy is always appreciated. Shows are projected to be from late March to mid May.

Even if you cannot make this audition time, please contact us anyway!

Mobilize for Climate Justice

noreply@blogger.com (Jess Steinitz) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:17:00 +0000

Tomorrow--November 30th--is a day of action. It is the 10th annniversary of the non-violent shutdown of the WTO meeting in Seattle, and it is one week before the beginning of the Copenhagen climate negotiations. So if you are able to participate in non-violent civil disobedience to help mobilize the world for climate justice, please sign the pledge here.

If you've heard enough about climate change, then do something about it. Civil disobedience may be less sexy than taking off your clothes for climate change--or it may not be--but it will certainly be more effective.

Killing Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Vox Feminista) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:34:00 +0000

The ruins the prisons the radioactive lands
The labs, the security state, the gated community the virtual space

Technology scared all other options out of town
lied about the possibilities
and burned the whole house down
ripped from the ground you found ourselves
engorged on information: indigestible shit,
ploughing past eden
with never a chance to say NO to it
Society reshaped with no one’s permission
centralized command & control, every empire’s mission.
And now that beams and nets surrounds you how to ever break free
how do you even protest this relentless reality?

you been taken hostage by the electronic mob
inside mirrored halls of digital throb
the social order of science dictated by appliances
traded relating to space and time
for the fascination of autistic minds
while your shells dwell in high tech cells
business as usual here in hell.
Caged in the stranger’s dream of isolation
deserted your lives like your land to his desolation:
Tricknology.

A flickering blue nothing the only something
But the real gift’s for the boys in charge
industry and military- it was never for us
but you jump on the internet like its some bus
to somewhere real, you say, i’m cool, here’s the deal,
I just use it to get information
your masters say, that’s right: yet in formation!

They got ten thousand devices, the interlocking whole
tumblers click into locks, cocked and ready to roll
Hardware and software, you just suck it up
Have any people ever been so sure about so much?
Stole plastic fire and gardens of steel flowers,
They mesmerized you with hi tech superpowers

Listen in at creation’s keyhole to the death of birth
this insane culture led to war against the earth
grown so spectacularly stupid, trading lucid futures
for living just behind the eyes and in your fingertips
the battle for survival lost to your machines
the sold out film playing all the time on every screen
this complex entertainment package death rehearsal
with the whole family microwavin nachos during the commercial

plugged into voluntary amputation,
bathed in a broil of electronic recreation
suspended into that net like French fries
you go down, this giant science experiment,
from the fire stick to the silicon chip,
proliferation of cancers and profit
the subdivision of our spaces mirrors the race to obliterate time
as you accelerate, they replicate
fill the planet with plastics so you never ever die

The machines are your prosthetics now
cos you’re perpetually disabled, conceptually bowing down
lost in days no longer the size a’ the steps
your obsolete feet would take if you cd. make them walk
lost in life no longer the speed of our skin-
what’s it cost to be skinned alive like this?
surrounded by shiny objects with hideous stories
you sit, parcels in imaginary transit flitting lit
in flight over cables, under killer satellites
what’s it gonna take to fight the buy in?
All life is sold out, tied up outside in the killer sun
panting in the heat of logical outcomes.
Yr bodies disappearing leaving eyeballs, earbuds
& fingers tapping unconscious symbols that chase
memories of relationship from no place to no place.
Extended by devices, hurled down mechanical rails
hanging off of shining infrastructures by one fingernail
yr. mama’s a transcultural commodification
your daddy’s electromagnetic radiation
orphaned into outer space digital prisons of lies
dazzled while impossible electric fields multiply
& burning white glitches tear holes in the sky
carrying bloodless devices as if they’ll save your lives
not seeing how they’ve taken over what’s left of your lives
and you never ask the most radical questions.
WHY have you become this metabolized?

Your kids leashed to their rooms by cords
Now playin means stayin inside
cos that’s where the outlets let em ride
hypnotized by images their hearts can hide inside.
Indoctrination starts early
for the people of the screen
taught to crave gleaming lifelessness
over the open secret of nature you don’t even miss anymore
part whore / part slave
everybody pickin virtual cotton
in the digital plantations of cyberspace.

But I was born ten thousand years ago
when people spoke to nature
I don’t drink your cool-aid, won’t eat your fear
The murder of epiphanies surrounds me, bodies disappear
Hear me disrupt with inconvenient questions
send out spells like bubbles to shake up yr digestion
wanna wake every kid to what he knows is true
before you put a playstation 3 into his hands
he knew
Before all the contests enacted out of context fooled her
before dazzling techno fantasies ruled her
before reality ceased to be real for her she knew:
We are dreams of seeds, breath of beasts
we are shadows cast by clouds and the roots lyin’ underneath
murmurin on the other side of all the buzzing brightness
woven into our animal memories
blue and green, before the great loneliness

I say, don’t teach kids Science till you’ve taught em Connection
and the love of nature, not a world of rejection
time to end the trance so they can transcend
dance till their senses catch fire again
send em to fight the microwaving of the planet
to reject techno-imperialism; the final radicalism
Fuck the functions of division, self enclosed; we want collisions!
They’ll plant their feet in the realm of the mothers
Re-seed the silicon valleys of despair with vegetable eyes
drive their stakes deeper till they hit pulsing strata,
life wants wings, not weights, the fake gravity of data
The life force is a groundtone so constant
we hear it as silence and see it as air
There are dragons buried beneath our cities here
Primordial energies greater than bombs or electricity
They hold the mystery and pray for jailbreaking
dance out of your cages, enraged and enraging
it’s now safe to turn off yr devices, for life
attach to creation as you unplug
& text message all your friends this:
wake the fuck up!

Written by Oak

Let's Celebrate 20 Years of Vox!

noreply@blogger.com (Jess Steinitz) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:06:00 +0000

The first Vox show occurred at Penny Lane Coffee House in Boulder on October 27, 1989. Comprised of artists, musicians, poets, dancers, feminists, mothers, daughters, and lovers, Vox Femina was a one night variety show that gave birth to what has become Colorado's premier radical theater troupe.

This fall, Vox Feminista will perform its 20th anniversary show and we want your input!

What is your all-time favorite Vox show?
What are your favorite pieces from Vox shows?
How has Vox touched your life?

We'd love to hear what you have to say, so please use the comment function below to weigh in!

Love,
The Voxies

Welcome!

noreply@blogger.com (Vox Feminista) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:32:00 +0000

Welcome to the Vox Feminista blog! We will use this space to talk about books and music and people and other things that inspire us, and we'd love you to hear what inspires you, too! This is an open space that we are eager to share with you.

If you have a sensational topic for a blog, drop us a note in the comment section and we promise to give you our thoughts on the subject--whether they're extraordinary, absurd, or even grotesque.

Please use either the "subscribe via email" or "subscribe via reader" function so that you'll know when something new has been posted. (If you don't know what a "reader" is, you're not alone. Just subscribe using your email address and move on with your life.) And have no fear, there is no spam involved in this.

Thank you for being a part of Vox Feminista. We look forward to reading what you have to say!

Love,

The Voxies