Description
Poetry. Current Affairs. Housing Justice. Racial Justice. Do you need to dream bigger; open your eyes wider; let your imagination soar and think outside the box? Then DEAR CITY COUNCIL is for you. In a combination of public comments, selected poems and essays, Mark Lipman weaves the story and challenges facing a modern day Mayberry, Culver City, California, as it tries to come to grip with its racist past and looming corporate future, where the land speculator is king, and Jeff Bezos rules. At the center of this modern day dystopian nightmare, reporting in real time, the poet, Mark Lipman, calls to account in words of powerful truth, the options and alternatives this community still has before it's too late and Culver City has just become another column in some accountant's book.
Will Culver City find its way to reimagining public safety that puts the well being of all ahead of the status quo of policing every social woe? Will they put justice in the budget and solve homelessness, as they easily could, or will they continue to kick the can down the road? Will they up-zone to the sky and become a mini-Manhattan, or will they follow the path of true social and racial equity with a Homes Guarantee and a Green New Deal? Will the Heart of Screenland finally find its heart, or will it be lost forever? All this and more we explore in DEAR CITY COUNCIL, but if you want to know how the story ends... well, that's literally up to you.
Author Bio
Mark Lipman, is the founder of Vagabond and the Culver City Small Press Book Festival; recipient of the 2015 Joe Hill Labor Poetry Award; winner of the 2016 International Latino Book Awards for THE BORDER CROSSED US (VAGABOND, 2015); editor and publisher of RISE (VAGABOND, 2017) and EXTREME (VAGABOND, 2018); a writer, poet, multi-media artist and activist, is the author of nine books, most recently, DEAR CITY COUNCIL (VAGABOND, 2021); THE ROLE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY POET IN SOCIETY AND A STRATEGIC VISION FOR THE 21ST CENTURY (VAGABOND, 2020); Imposing Democracy; Poetry for the Masses; and Global Economic Amnesty. His work has also appeared in such notable international anthologies as, Poetry of Resistance (The University of Arizona Press); 21 Poetas por la Paz, (21 Poets for Peace), (Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco) and Coiled Serpent, (Tia Chucha Press). Co- founder of the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition (USA), Agir Contre la Guerre (France) and Occupy Los Angeles, he's been an outspoken critic of war and occupation since 2001 and uses poetry to connect communities to the greater social issues that affect all of our lives, while building consciousness through the spoken word. Currently, he serves as the Vice-Chair of Culver City's Committee on Homelessness and is a board member of POWER (People Organized for Westside Renewal); member of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), Ground Game LA, Veterans for Peace, Occupy Venice, the Revolutionary Poets Brigade, 100 Thousand Poets for Change and the World Poetry Movement.
Author City: LOS ANGELES, CA USA