Laborfest: "Freedomland" by SF Mime Troupe

This opening event of the 21st annual Laborfest is produced by another San Francisco treasure, the 56 year old San Francisco Mime Troupe. The 4th of July weekend shows will take place July 3, 4 and 5, 2015 with live music at 1:30 p.m. and the 1.5 hour or so show at 2 p.m. The biggest crowd is of course on the 4th of July. Bring a picnic lunch, water, your suntan/sunscreen lotion as needed (and it is always sunny in the Mission District), sign the petitions that you like, and enjoy some of the best traditions of San Francisco with the SF Mime Troupe and Laborfest.

LaborFest was established in 1994 to institutionalize the history and culture of working people in an annual labor cultural, film and arts festival. It consists of a month of movies, music, bike rides, boat rides, bus rides, and walking tours so you learn labor history while you enjoy your rich labor cultural heritage. It begins every July 5th, which is the anniversary of the 1934 “Bloody Thursday” event. On that day, two workers Howard Sperry and Nick Bordoise were shot and killed in San Francisco. They were supporting the longshoremen and maritime workers strike. This incident brought about the San Francisco General Strike which shut down the entire city and led to hundreds of thousands of workers joining the trade union movement.

It is as a direct result of the 1934 general strikes of San Francisco, Minneapolis and Toledo that in 1935, we won Social Security, unemployment insurance and the right to organize labor unions. One of the tasks that remains is to win socialized medicine, guaranteeing free medical care to all from cradle to grave, paid for with our tax dollars, instead of paying for war.

This year's free original show by the SF Mime Troupe, performed by professional actors, is Freedomland. The synopsis is:

A door is blown off its hinges! Into a blasted room of scarred walls and shattered windows, armed with M-16’s, America’s bravest duck and dodge for cover, finally training their deadly gun sights on... an old black man watching TV on his couch? This isn’t Baghdad or Kandahar - its home, and for ex- Black Panther Malcolm Haywood, it’s just another wrong door police raid in the War on Drugs. So of course Malcolm is horrified when the grandson he’s tried to protect, Nathaniel, returns from serving in Afghanistan only to find another war zone at home - and one where young Black men like Nathaniel are in the crosshairs! Meanwhile the Mayor and the Police Chief - one desperate for votes, the other desperate to fund his militarized police force - ramp up the fear (and their shiny new tank) to fight the newest, drug threat to America. Worse than weed, meth, coke, crack, or crank, it’s... SNORF!!
See also http://www.laborfest.net/2015/2015schedule.htm
http://sfmt.org/schedule/ More Northern California shows