El Paso: Writers Resist

Benjamin Alire Saenz, Writers Resist, El Paso, Texas. January 2017.

January 2017


I'll confess. I saw Benjamin Alire Saenz' name on the Writers Resist flyer and that was all it took.  He is my literary cultural interpreter for El Paso. I would be there as a literary groupie.

But the Writers Resist event also promised a warm, lit shelter in advance of the cold front approaching America on January 20.

The Writers Resist event, in alliance with others around the country, ignited from a social media post by poet Erin Bilieu, when she wrote:  "We will not give in to despair. We will come together and actively help make the world we want to live in. We are bowed, but we are not broken."

The El Paso Library's Main Branch was the venue of El Paso's Writers Resist.

Dr. Rosa Alcalá - poet, literary translator, and UTEP faculty member - facilitated.

Dr. Rosa Alcalá, Writers Resist, El Paso, Texas. January 2017.

Writers read their own works or those of others, and two writers sang iconic folk songs.

Mike Duncan's throaty cover of a Bob Dylan song (A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall) was a highlight:

Daniel Chacón's story of what he brought to a cultural-diversity potluck delighted, both for its charm and its message:

And, of course, Benjamin Alire Saenz' soft-spoken but strong love song, as son to mother, to the river, and to all of humanity:

Writers who performed included: 

Rosa Alcalá
Bobby Byrd

Bobby Byrd, Writers Resist, El Paso, Texas. January 2017.

Andrea Beltran
Daniel Chacón

Daniel Chacón, Writers Resist, El Paso, Texas. January 2017.

Sasha Pimental
Robert Gunn 

Robert Gunn, Writers Resist, El Paso, Texas. January 2017.

Roberto Santos

Roberto Santos, Writers Resist, El Paso, Texas. January 2017.

Robin Scofield

Robin Scofield, Writers Resist, El Paso, Texas. January 2017.

Jeff Sirkin
Kathy Staudt

Kathy Staudt, Writers Resist, El Paso, Texas. January 2017.

Lex Williford

Lex Williford, Writers Resist, El Paso, Texas. January 2017.

My regrets to the writers whose names I didn't catch.

Writers Resist has moved from a one-day protest to a standing one - in the centuries-old tradition of artist protests in all lands, against tyranny of the spirit or the flesh.