The video from my last speaking engagement back in November is viewable here. The presentation and the event overall went really well. I got to meet plenty of cool folks (old and new) who came into town for the 6th national conference hosted by the Harm Reduction Coalition. It was a particularly exciting year for me due to the conference being held in my hood of Oakland, CA. My talk was on the role of the drug ecstasy within the local hip hop scene.
Ecstasy & Hip Hop - Part 1 of 3, (Parts 2 and 3 here)
My latest video uploads include a speech conducted in New Orleans. I've had this footage sitting around for several years and a friend finally inspired me to put it online (thanx Erin). Anyway, it is from the 2004 Harm Reduction Conference. I was speaking on a panel about how anti-drug laws target youths. My population was ravers.
Ravers in the Drug War - Part 1 of 2, (Part 2 here)
In May 2005 - the month I graduated from San Francisco State University - my short film Children was being shown at the New Zealand Human Rights Film Festival. At the same time, I started noticing people on campus who were soliciting sponsorships for an organization called Children International. Basically, sponsors pay $18 or more a month to help a poor child in the United States or another country of their choice. At first, I couldn't commit. I promised myself that I eventually would though. It would have been hard for me to have said no since I created a piece of work about child laborers in poor countries which was being shown halfway across the world at an event about human rights. Making a film about the issue is one thing, but if I'm not contributing anything beyond that, then I'd just be a hypocrite. After all, $18 a month is cheaper than a cell phone bill. So I signed up to be a sponsor just a few days before my graduation. I wanted a child in China, but they didn't have programs there. So I ended up with Blanca, a cute little girl from rural Guatemala.
My Sponsored Child in Guatemala
