Matt Gonzalez, Alan Kaufman and others forming a FREE UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO

January 30, 2010
Contact: Alan Kaufman, 415-573-5766 or Akpoem2 [at] aol.com

Matt Gonzalez, Alan Kaufman, Diane Di Prima, Diamond Dave Whittaker, Martin Holden, other stalwarts of the San Francisco alternative scene call to establish a FREE UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO (will next meet Sunday, January 9, 2011 at 10A.M at Viracocha, 998 Valencia Street at 21st Street, the Mission, San Francisco)

In a first step meant to deliver a blow to the corporate privatization of university education, such stalwarts of the San Francisco scene as attorney and political activist Matt Gonzalez, Outlaw poet Alan Kaufman, Pirate Radio’s Diamond Dave Whittaker, Beat legend and San Francisco Poet Laureate Diane Di Prima, Revolutionary Poets Brigade Chairman Bobby Coleman, and Berkeley University Bookstore founder Martin Holden have joined over two hundred other activists, poets, artists, educators and revolutionaries in an effort to establish a Free University of San Francisco. The Group now have a webpage up (Free University of San Francisco on Facebook).

The group met on December 19 in the underground theater at Viracocha in the Mission and with over fifty persons in attendance declared the birth of the Free University .

Seated around the table like resistance conspirators, the assembly listened as Alan Kaufman delivered the opening remarks in which he called for the formation of “a university that will make the highest level of education available, completely free, to any individual who wants it, regardless of color, creed, age, gender, nationality, religion or immigration status—a university free of money, taught for free to any who want it.” (Kaufman’s complete remarks can be found at Citizen Journalist Evan Karp’s online newspaper, Litseen.com.)
http://litseen.com/2010/12/22/free-university-an-experiment-in-education-and-culture/
The group plan a weekend-long ‘Free University Teach-in’ on February 5th and 6th, during which Diane Diprima, Matt Gonzalez, Alan Kaufman and others will deliver no-cost university-level lectures on a series of topics ranging from DiPrima on 19th Century Visionary Poetry to Gonzalez on Aspects of Arrest Law to Kaufman on the Avant Garde Innovators Jack Kerouac, Jackson Pollack and Thelonious Monk. The lectures will be ongoing from 9-5 of each day and anyone can attend.

On Sunday, January 9, 2011 at 10A.M. the next public planning session of The Free University of San Francisco will take place at Viracocha, 998 Valencia Street at 21st Street, the Mission, San Francisco. Public and members of the press are welcome.