Social and Economic Justice Music Festival Committee
Artist, filmmaker, and writer Kaylah Marin is dedicated to social causes, having worked with organizations such as the Dolores Huerta Foundation and the Garifuna International Indigenous Film Festival. As a former board member of Community Services United, she focused on health and economic restoration in Berkeley.
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Growing up in the border town of Calexico, California, Francisco Herrera always straddled two worlds. “My siblings and cousins and I used to sing rancheras and some mariachi at family parties, and when we got a little older we started some garage rock bands,” he recalls of his early musical exploits. But as he became more involved in the church and in particular with the Latin American school of Liberation Theology, Herrera began exploring ways to use music to further his goals of social justice.
Jimmy Kelly has been a social justice activist and Union advocate for decades. He founded the Western Workers Labor Heritage Festival to honor Martin Luther King Jr. birthday since it became a federal holiday in 1986. He has sung on picket lines for dozens of unions in California, the Pacific Northwest, with the Hormel Strikers in Minnesota, with airline strikers in St Louis and Pittsburgh, and with coal miners in Carmel, California. He performed at national solidarity marches on the Las Vegas Strip and on the Mall in Washington, DC.
Avotcja has been published in English & Spanish in the USA, Mexico & Europe, and in more Anthologies than she remembers. She is an award winning Poet & multi-instrumentalist who has opened for Betty Carter in New York City, Peru’s Susana Baca at San Francisco’s Encuentro Popular & Cuba’s Gema y Pável, played with Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Bobi & Luis Cespedes, John Handy, Sonido Afro Latina, Dimensions Dance Theater, Black Poets With Attitudes, Bombarengue, Nikki Giovanni, Los Angeles’ Build An Ark, Dwight Trible, Diamano Coura West African Dance Co., Terry Garthwaite, Big Black, The Bay Area Blues Society & Caribeana Etc.
- As a Cultural Activist, I span many years “with” diverse public, private and inter-faith community voices calling for social justice venues.
- I believe WE are ALL artists in the full sense of its meaning to have a VOICE to provide the underpinnings for social change: literary, visual performing and other creative skills to UNITE our communities.
- I coordinate and sing with Vukani Mawethu-a multi-racial community based social justice choir which sings freedom songs of Southern Africa, and songs of struggles in the United States and globally.
Rashida Oji (Regina Wells) is the voice of love. She makes every song her own whether singing from gospel, jazz, blues, rock or folk traditions, or her very own creations. She was a founding member of Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir, and has also performed with two iterations of Ojalá! as well as Rashida Oji and Middle Passage and Just Now Band. Rashida is proud to serve on the staff of GLIDE Church’s Center for Social Justice.
Hali Hammer is an award-winning singer-songwriter who performs with her partner Randy Berge and sings with Pat Wynne and Liliana Herrera in the trio The ReSisters. She sang with Freedom Song Network for decades and was a member of the chorus that sang onstage behind Nelson Mandela at the Oakland Coliseum. She is a founding member of Occupella and has been performing for many causes for decades. Hali is active in the San Francisco Folk Music Club (she is currently the Vice President) and was the coordinator of the 2003 Berkeley Free Folk Festival.
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Andreína Maldonado (She/her) is a Venezuelan performing artist, cultural worker, and founder of BienStar Consulting, based in ancestral Yelamu territory, also known as San Francisco, California. Celebrating her Indigenous roots, Andreína was born in Maracay, within the region of the Araguas Indigenous peoples on the Caribbean coast.
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