🏴 Screening & book event for ‘The Blue Agave Revolution’ by Oso Blanco

The Blue Agave Revolution: Poetry of the Blind Rebel comprises magical realist and speculative fiction from the co-authors, an imprisoned Indigenous freedom fighter and a life-long anti-imperialist and decolonizer of European descent. Oso Blanco has a story and poetry cycle, and additional poems and stories, including with collaborators, written painstakingly behind prison walls. Many of the poems and the story cycle are set in Mexico during the revolution of the early 20th Century. Novick adds a selection of his poems written over the course of many decades, some recent political analysis, and two speculative works set in the near future, reflecting situations analogous to anti-fascist struggle. Below are some excerpts from the description, bios and dedications in the book itself.

The Blue Agave Revolution: Poetry of the Blind Rebel is a collection of political poetry, short stories, other writings, and profiles of political prisoners, by two activists, Michael Novick and Byron Shane of Chubbuck, AKA Oso Blanco. These two writers express their desires for freedom, Native rights, anti-racist justice, as well as equality for All Life and Peoples. These writers are life-long artists, creative and political writers, poets and journalists. Each at different levels.

Byron Shane Chubbuck is a Cherokee Nation citizen who is also Choctaw and Celtic, a Wolf Clan Cherokee and a sovereign. He comes from the Chickamauga band, a direct descendant of Nancy Ward. He wrote his first book in the third grade, “Shane the Crane Lost His Feather.” He published Love Me Rebel Love in 2011. He won the Poet of the Year award with the New Mexico Poetry Society. He published his first poetry in 1988 in a Canyon City Colorado newspaper. He has many poems in various poetry books published, and works with writers Elizabeth Frias and Joseph Jordan as well as Michael Novick. Byron Shane of Chubbuck has traveled all over Mexico and has a deep love for its amazing peoples. He has vast experiences in Pulque making, chemistry, ART, and scraping a living from the ground up. He says to the Houseless – who he feeds and aids – “I have been you. You are me! I am commanded by my Creator to love all humanity and all Living beings.” He is now in Federal prison for the Robin-in-the-Hood bank robbery case. Byron and Michael have a deep love for all races and humanity. They seek the revolution towards love and a new, good world, when all are Free, treated with respect as well as compassion.

Michael Novick grew up in an immigrant, working-class, Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, has traveled in Mexico, mostly in solidarity with the Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional Mexicano, and taught school in L.A. for many years. Michael edits, publishes and writes for Turning The Tide, which is distributed free to prisoners for over 30 years, and is dedicated to the just treatment of people and to anti-racist actions. He went to Cuba with the 50th Venceremos Brigade in 2019. He lives in Los Angeles with his spouse, Avon Leekley, who has also contributed to the production, editing and proof-reading of this volume. He is the author of White Lies White Power/The Fight Against White Supremacy & Reactionary Violence, and has been writing poetry on occasion since the second grade. Some of his poems have been published by the Revolutionary Poets Brigade and Vagabond Books, and his other writings have appeared in Brother: A Forum for Men Against Sexism and many other alternative press publications, such as Change Links community calendar. He has been active as an elected listener delegate in the democratic governance of KPFK and Pacifica radio, and was recently named interim General Manager of that radio station, seeking to increase it community engagement and orientation, and openness to expressions of solidarity and liberation in political, cultural and economic spheres. He was challenged by Oso Blanco to write some short fiction for this volume, but is most comfortable writing essays and socio-economic, political analysis, a few pieces of which are also included.