The San Francisco International Arts Festival to Host Annual Holiday Fundraiser Online

The San Francisco International Arts Festival (SFIAF) will host its annual holiday fundraiser online this year and it is dedicated to the intriguing theme of Equal Protection Under the First Amendment. Funds raised from the event will be used for the organization's Spring 2021 program and (if needs be) the continued cost of legal action against the City & County of San Francisco.

The Festival invites the public to join via Zoom for a packed and interactive program of poetry and spoken word presentations hosted by performance artist, Nkechi Emeruwa-Neuberg. Featured artists (curated by Kimi Sugioka, the Poet Laureate of the City of Alameda), will address different aspects of the First Amendment. Featured performers include: Kim Shuck, Jack Hirschman, Josiah Luis Alderete, James Cagney, Kimi Sugioka, devorah major and Rosewater Vigilante. All told, there will FOUR poet laureates (three from San Francisco one from Alameda) on the program.

In addition to outstanding performances the evening will include "surprise" cameo appearances by several Bay Area luminaries, a sneak-preview of the Festival's spring 2021 outdoor season and an in-person chat with the Festival's legal team (Mark Rennie, Matt Kumin and Bill Martinez) as they review the Festival's First Amendment case against the City.

The lawsuit is the result of a bizarre series of events that began when the Mayor of San Francisco tried to rescind a previously approved City permit that allowed the Festival to present a series of small, physically-distanced outdoor performance events at Fort Mason. The Festival sued and won a Temporary Restraining Order (as widely reported in the BAY AREA MEDIA) allowing the program to proceed. The program, which was universally lauded as both safe and successful, was a prototype to fully test health and safety procedures for outdoor theatrical gatherings. The Festival's goal was (and still is) to develop comprehensive guidelines that can be replicated by other performing arts organizations in the spring of 2021. It is widely expected that there will be a plethora of applications for outdoor performance permits with the advent of warmer, drier weather in April and May.

Following the successful October prototype, SFIAF reached out to the City to continue the dialogue. But the organization's entreaties, including Letters to the Mayor and the Health Department and Public Petitions, were rebuffed. Instead the City Attorney filed to have the still pending case be dismissed from Federal Court. The lawsuit seeks equal status for the arts as those enjoyed by other First Amendment protected entities: religious worship and public protest. There is a court hearing currently scheduled for January 7, 2021.

Learn more at https://www.sfiaf.org/december_12_event.