I am "for hire" for a limited time only...*

Portland Bound: To all of you in the Northwest, my favorite region...

CHANGE IS THE ONLY CONSTANT: REVOLUTION BEGINS WITH PERSONAL
EVOLUTION. A FUNDRAISER AND ART GATHERING FOR AWARENESS AND
ACTION.

JOIN US FOR A NIGHT OF ACTION THROUGH ART. A FUNDRAISER FOR MAMMA EARTH & MAMMA LOVE.

OCTOBER 16TH, 2008

ARTISTS: ALLISON KRAMER, LAYLA LOVE & CLIMBING POETREE

This is a time of crisis, when it is necessary to determine if we are on the brink of World War III or the dawning of a new and improved way of life. Ours is a grassroots mission, united in the fight not only to preserve our remaining freedoms, but also to birth a whole new era of consciousness.

Layla has been dedicating the forces of her work into funding the natural healing process of her mother who has Multiple Sclerosis. At the same time, she remains true to her commitment to create a visual-aid bank for other artists, such as Climbing PoeTree and other non-profits who need images for web-sites, grant writing, auctions, articles, and gallery spaces.

Allison Kramer is a documentary photographer who gains a personal level of access into the most intimate and fearful moments of Layla Love's journey. Allison has been a dedicated journalist in this five-year (and running) coverage of Layla's life - in and out of hospitals, homes, and movements. She also has initiated the founding of the Jenny Love MS Angel Fund. Both Allison and Layla believe that through art we can transform the grittiest depths of reality into a meaningful source of inspiration.

Using spoken word to voice their hearts, Climbing PoeTree are brilliant examples of what we can create and become when living up to our greatest purpose. Their dedication to the creation and execution of hurricane relief efforts is an inspiration to anyone who witnesses the moving message brought forth by this dynamic duo. Alixa and Naima of Climbing PoeTree's motto is: Art is our weapon, our medicine, our voice, and our vision. They have spread this message with beauty and grace in nearly thousand shows across the nation, along with international tours.

Alixa and Naima performed during the opening night of Allison and Layla's New York premiere “Representing Women” last summer at the World Culture Open Center in Chelsea. It proved to be an inspirational and moving performance. Last year's exhibit was also the first fundraising event for the Jenny Love MS Angel Fund.

Allison and Layla began working together in London where they met at University and collaborated, on films and photography shows. They have since traveled throughout regions of the Middle East, Australia, Asia, and across the US, and have been featured on news programs, radio, and print media.

It is with great pleasure that we bring the performance, the art, and the intent out West - to the nation's most beautiful region. Now is the time we must come together more than ever. We urge you to celebrate with us, offering what support, press, and perspective you have.

This is not a time to hold back. Now we must leap front and center to create occasions that leave viewers not only visually stimulated and aurally satisfied, but also assist the active audience to find the fire in their own belly. It is a time for all of our stories and all of our testimonials to be voiced.

In an effort to get everyone involved in this project, Climbing PoeTree will provide fabric for audience members to scribe their own prayer, wish, and action, and include it in their ongoing project titled S.T.I.T.C.H.E.D. (Stories, Testimonies, Intentions, Truths, Confessions, Healing, Expressions, and Dreams). It is meant to “Create a future by rewriting our histories.”

Layla and Allison will also be taking pictures of people in the room - not specifically for event coverage but as interactive art. The project evolves as it unfolds - throughout the multidimensional actions within one evening.

Illustrating her experiences with the US healthcare system and the need to change it, Layla will be giving a 45 minute presentation using a story board of photographs and projections of images from her book, “We Are Never the Same Person Twice.”

Allison will be providing the viewers with rich and often challenging images; raw yet classic in nature. The juxtaposition of these two women is not one you might expect to work. It has been a long hard road and there have been fireworks as each tries to achieve their own respective visions. This is our time to celebrate this collaboration with you.

Thank you for your time and consideration. We plan to give all we have to this moment. We are happy to provide any further details, and are open to all suggestions and possibilities.

Bless and be blessed...

I will be displaying images from the movement, adding a gallery show, and contributing to the silent auction. Please join me in this most worthy event

Please attend this inspiring, fire-fueling, love-filled, art-rich event. If you cannot make it, send your good vibes and celebrate the living angels all around you. So that we may rise in joy and passion to the dawning of an ever brighter day...

*This image is of Liz Abzug and myself by Allision Kramer. The details of the event are posted below...

Hope to see you there.

Best,

//layla

Love in Training: Inspired by Ms. Liz Abzug and the possibility of FREEDOM ON OUR TERMS*

I was so inspired by the Freedom on Our Terms Convention, made possible thanks to Ms. Liz Abzug. The event commemorates the work of her mother, Bella, and the tens of thousands of women present at the 1977 Houston Convention. The event also continues to bring the wave forward by getting a bunch of new youth ready for the mighty task that stands before us.

In this video you can see the words are raw and unrehearsed, but it is all a matter of just raising our voices, and bringing them together no matter how afraid we might be of the the power and beauty that lie within. Now is the time - today is the moment. Let us all stand together and come close. Preserve the work done by our mothers, maintain the work done by ourselves...and stand for the work that is sure to be done by our daughters.

Please join me in supporting the next wonderful event brought to you by the Bella Abzug Leadership Institute.

BALI First Annual Awards Fundraiser — The Bella Award and Bella-Fella Award

We will hold our first awards fundraiser at the beautiful CITY HALL Restaurant located downtown in TRIBECA at 131 Duane Street (between Church and West Broadway) on Tuesday, September 16th, from 6:30pm to 8:30pm.

This year we will honor Erica Forman, Esq. and partner at Bryan Cave LLP as the very first award recipient of the “Bella Award” for her outstanding leadership as Chair of the BALI Board of Directors and someone who was there from the very beginning helping to form and create our organization and Institute.

The first Bella Fella Award will be awarded to one of our very strongest male supporters, Hon. Council Member and Chair of the New York City Council Finance Committee, David Weprin.

Come meet new and old friends of BALI and some “star” leaders, surprise guests and all sorts of fun supporters.

We will offer some great Hors d’oeuvres and wine as well as a cash bar.

The levels of supporters are the following:

TOP HAT - $500.00

FEDORA - $400.00

COWGIRL/COWBOY - $300.00

BERET - $200.00

BEANIE - $150.00

Of course students and moderate income supporters will also be welcome at a much reduced fee.

You can contribute and pay to attend this event by going to the Donate page on our web site and paying by any credit card on PayPal. Or you can reserve a ticket(s) for the event by leaving your name and number on our BALI event event reservation line: 212-346-9699.

Women Against Anti-woman Women

I was born the year of the Houston Convention where tens of thousands of women and good people gathered for the rights of women.

Freedom on OUR Terms! I have been riding the wave since birth, through its highs and its lows. And now my heart sinks deeper than ever before. Wow! What a terror! I read the front page of a newspaper that claims, "The issue of the glass ceiling is SOLVED!"

With Palin, everything that we have fought so hard for has gone terribly wrong. Misogynist pigs are laughing at us right now - oh, so you want to see a woman in office...well, we won't let you have one who speaks her own mind and fights for the rights of women everywhere, but we will provide you with a shadow of a nightmare wrapped in female form. Those assholes found the most anti-woman woman ever in an effort to bolster patriarchy. I will not accept your offering, Republicans. I not only decline, I refuse to live in a nation run by monsters - male or female.

Any person who hunts, kills, sends their own child into a heartless, unjust war threatens all my rights as a woman. Palin is not a person I want anywhere near the law-making process - let alone at the top where most checks and balances have already been eradicated.

I have the same kind of sickening fear in the pit of my stomach as I did four years ago...and 4 years before that. But now the face of evil is that of a woman who aims to re-flame the cycle of witch-hunting and is willing to wage war on her fellow women's bodies, our choice to love, as well as the separation of church and state that this nation was founded upon.

We must unite as women to say we support and celebrate those with politics that support us.

The sad thing is I really feel that all those white male Republicans - who have said countless sexist remarks about Hillary - are just thinking to themselves, "Look at this dumb blow-up doll of a woman! She is going to bring the big prize home to daddy like a good little girl."

This is truly a time of golden crisis...a time when good peace-loving people, animal rights and human rights activists alike, and even Mother Earth herself is at risk. This will not only have devastating effects upon America but on the entire world, which is already in deep in peril.

I will be praying with all my heart and soul as well as working with every resource I have to counteract this grim possibility.

I have faith in us still. The darkest hour is before the dawn. A new day is possible - not only possible but eminent. We are moving either toward the best moment: the millennial awakening or we are returning to the Dark Ages - and the dawn will belong to another generation.

I am ready for the breaking open of skies and the coming forward of light. I am ready for it now.

United We Stand.

This is my plea: that we all do all we can in this moment to bring forth all of our light.

May the healing and revolution come wide and deep.

I offer my whole life to the fight for women's equality. I live for it and I am willing to die on the frontlines for it. I pray it never comes to that, but I am willing nonetheless. That is how passionately I feel about the goddess within us all, the bearers of life. It is very disheartening for me to see a woman like Palin in a place of power. I feel so deeply hurt and betrayed.

But they will not succeed in their divisive tactics. I will never surrender the rights of my body, of who I choose to love, of equal pay for equal work, for the protection of Mother Earth, for the protection of every living being.

May we all do all we can to help birth the dawning of a new day.

-peace, love and other good things,

//layla

test your voice

50-city Tour: Join us please - The Women who are changing our world for the better - love to the revolution - all the sweat, tears, joy, and time...

Hurricane Season Tour

This is a wonderful tour. I have been blessed enough to be involved in photographing, building, and documenting for this monumental vision as it comes to life. We are coming to a city near you. Please join in the moment and in the movement.

*Revolution begins with personal evolution.
*I love every one of these women and the vision therein*

Kisses to the soul...

//layla

Love for Hurricane Season

Sarah Palin will NEVER have my vote.

My heart almost dropped through my stomach. I was walking around the Lower East Side late night - trying to get some air after working an 18-hour day. My eyes glanced down and there was one paper that read, "The issue of the glass ceiling is solved."

THE GLASS CEILING WILL NOT BE "SOLVED" UNTIL THE PORN INDUSTRY IS DESTROYED, UNTIL WOMEN HAVE EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK, UNTIL RAPE IS A CRIME PUNISHABLE BY DEATH...UNTIL 50 PERCENT OF THE VOICES IN MEDIA, GOVERNMENT, EDUCATION AND COMMERCE BELONG TO WOMEN, UNTIL WE ARE GIVE REPARATION FOR THE HUNDREDS OF YEARS OF ENSLAVEMENT, AND UNTIL WOMEN CAN BE REWARDED FOR MORE THAN JUST THEIR HOT BODIES AND THEIR ABILITY TO CARRY MALE WEAPONS THE WAY THAT SARAH PALIN DOES.

A fishing-hunting-NRA member who goes to bed every night with the oil industry is all I see in this woman.

Just because she is a woman, does not mean she gets one ounce of my respect. No Republican gets respect from me. No one who advocates the killing of innocent animals, people, war mongering, or oil drilling gets my respect. This world is falling apart at the seams thanks to greedy, murdering oil guzzlers. They have no consideration for life beyond the white walls of white America. And just because this KKK member has a cunt and a big smile to hide the devil within, she is not fooling me.

Let us be clear: McCain does not give a fuck about women. When Hillary Clinton - a MUCH more qualified woman was running for office - he avowed to 'beat the bitch.' He is a hell raiser and a fucking piece of shit who wants to destroy any chance this world has of beauty and resurrection.

If you vote for these two, you vote America into the grave.

# If Obama's magnificent DNC speech didn't make you fall even more in love with him, how about checking out McCain's SERIOUS screw up "CBS Edits McCain's Whopper Out of Broadcast" (w/original video) on YouTube. On a more grown-up note, Sarah Palin is grody. McCain's awful running mate is Anti-Gay, Anti-Abortion, Pro-Gun. She loves fur coats, hearts Moose Burgers, and is an Evangelical Christian who believes that Creationism should be taught in schools. She is TOTALLY our cup of tea. (Anyone have a noose so we can hang ourselves if we have to call her our VP?!). Of course nothing is more interesting than Campbell Brown calling her out. This is the MySpace page of the teenage boy who impregnated her daughter. That's an articulate kid!