EDTalks (But Mostly Listens)

Artist Ed Saavedra launches Season Two of a conversation series launched in late summer of 2024 in collaboration with Brick at Blue Star

San Antonio, TX, EDTalks (But Mostly Listens) A Live Conversation Series with Ed Saavedra and Special Guests is back with another round of thought-provoking conversations for 2025.

Long before achieving institutional validation, host Ed Saavedra was dialing from his stepdad’s rotary to interrupt dinners in at least three counties to hear directly from the artists, activists, historians, journalists, outcasts, and musicians he admired most (and who for whatever reason still had their numbers listed in the phone book). Decades later, in an age warped by anti-social media, where in-person, immersive conversation is a rarity even for folks whose digital avatars list thousands of “friends,” Saavedra invites audience members to join him and a guest (or two) in Southtown’s living room, Brick at Blue Star. Drinks available for purchase from the most emotionally intelligent polymaths east of the Pecos. Snacks included with admission (while supplies last) & made with love by the finest culinary artists in a three-hundred-mile radius.

6-7 Happy Hour, 7pm Talk

Wednesday, January 8

Brick at Blue Star

108 Blue Star

$5 suggested donation at the door.

All door donations and 100% of Naomi Shihab Nye’s book proceeds from the January 8 event will go to the Hanoon Foundation (https://hanoonfoundation.org). Regardless, EDTalks (But Mostly Listens) is “pay what you can.”

6-7pm: Happy Hour

7:00pm: Introduction/Preliminary Conversation

7:35pm: Break for snacks & drinks

7:50pm: Conversation continues

8:40pm: Questions from the audience

9:00pm: Closing reception or another twenty to thirty minutes of conversation

Audience members can submit questions/comments to the host via notecards at any point in program, and an audience microphone will open at 8:40pm on Talk nights for questions.

January 8: NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

Poet/Author/Editor/Educator

January 22: ROLANDO BRISEÑO

Artist/Cultural Adjuster

February 5: DAVID MONTEJANO

Sociologist/Historian

February 19: BRIAN BUEHLER

Assistant Federal Public Defender (McAllen)

and

JUSTIN TULLIUS

Immigration Resource Attorney (Bexar County MAC)

March 12: JOSHUA “LAKEY” HINSON

Place Maker/Chalk Artist

March 26: MARCO CERVANTES (AKA MEXSTEP)

Rapper/Producer/DJ/Associate Professor (UTSA)

ABOUT THE GUESTS:

NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

Poet/Author/Editor/Educator

January 8

Palestinian-American writer, editor, and educator Naomi Shihab Nye grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas, where she graduated from Trinity University and continues to live. On faculty at Texas State University, she has been Young People’s Poet Laureate for the U.S. (Poetry Foundation), poetry editor for The New York Times magazine, and the Texas Observer, and a visiting writer in hundreds of schools and communities all over the world. Her books include Grace Notes (Poems About Families), Everything Comes Next, The Tiny Journalist, Voices in the Air, Sitti’s Secrets, Habibi, This Same Sky, & The Tree is Older than You Are: Poems & Paintings from Mexico. Her volume 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, was a finalist for the National Book Award. The Turtle of Omanand The Turtle of Michigan have both been part of the Little Read program, North Carolina. She has received the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Texas Writer Award 2024, and Lifetime Achievement Awards from The Texas Institute of Letters, the Arab American National Museum, and the National Book Critics Circle.

ROLANDO BRISEÑO

Artist/Cultural Adjuster

January 22

Born and raised on San Antonio’s West Side, Rolando Briseño is a trailblazing Mexican American artist whose career spans more than five decades. Briseño earned a BFA in Art History, a BA in Art from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MFA from Columbia University in 1979. A member of the seminal San Antonio-based Chicano art collective Con Safo, he has exhibited widely, including a recent group exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York and is represented in the permanent collections of institutions including the San Antonio Museum of Art, American University Museum in Washington, D.C.; El Museo del Barrio, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Juan, Puerto Rico; and the Blanton Museum of Art at UT-Austin. His Dining with Rolando Briseño: A 50-Year Retrospective, (curated by Ruben C. Cordova and) featuring more than 75 drawings, lithographs, paintings, photographs, public artworks and pieces (that survived his home and studio fire) continues through February 9 at Centro de Artes Gallery in Historic Market Square. A complement to this show, Dessert with Rolando: A Retrospective Annex Exhibition, continues through January 22 at Presa House (the official afterparty host for Briseño’s talk).

DAVID MONTEJANO

Sociologist/Historian

February 5

San Antonio native David Montejano is Professor (emeritus) of the Graduate School of the University of California, Berkeley, where he also served as Professor of Ethnic Studies and History and Chair of the Center for Latino Policy Research. Professor Montejano is the author of the indispensable, prizewinning historical overview, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836- 1986 (now in its 14th Printing). The sequel, Quixote’s Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1981, also received acclaim and awards, including the 2012 Book Award from the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies and the T. R. Fehrenbach Prize (Montejano’s second). Before joining the Berkeley faculty in 2002, he was an Associate Professor of History and Sociology and Director of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. With the publication of Sancho’s Journal: Exploring the Political Edge With the Brown Berets (2012), a companion to Quixote’s Soldiers, Montejano completed his Texas trilogy, the culmination of nearly four decades of inquiry. Other writings include his edited volume, Chicano Politics and Society in the Late Twentieth Century (University of Texas Press, 1999) and essays in several books dealing with the Mexican American experience. Appointed by Governor Ann Richards, Dr. Montejano served on the Texas Commission on the Arts (1992-1998), and was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 1995. As Director of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas, he spearheaded several initiatives in higher education, including the design of the Texas Top Ten Percent admissions plan, which became state law in 1997. Montejano was also a consultant for the 2013 PBS series The Latino Americans.

BRIAN BUEHLER

Assistant Federal Public Defender (McAllen)

February 19

Originally hailing from San Diego, CA, and now living/working in the McAllen, Texas, area, Brian Buehler is an Assistant Federal Public Defender for the Southern District of Texas. He represents defendants accused of all manner of federal crimes, including white collar, drug, and immigration-related offenses. Buehler has previously worked in civil rights, as a law clerk, and at Legal Aid. All opinions expressed are his own, and not those of the Federal Public Defender’s office.

“The Office of the Federal Public Defender, Southern District of Texas, operates under authority of the Criminal Justice Act of 1964 (CJA), 18 U.S.C. § 3006A. It provides defense services in federal criminal cases and other covered matters to individuals who are financially unable to obtain adequate representation. A person’s eligibility for defender services is determined by the federal court. Defender organization attorneys may not engage in the private practice of law.”

JUSTIN TULLIUS

Immigration Resource Attorney (Bexar County MAC)

February 19

Before joining Bexar County’s Managed Assigned Council (MAC), Justin Tullius worked to restore a denatured creek behind his private law office in the county’s northeastern reaches. He has extensive experience representing vulnerable clients in New York City and throughout Texas. This former Associate Executive Director for RAICES (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services) is proficient in English and Spanish, and continues to study Levantine Arabic. When not immersed in legal matters, Tullius enjoys exploring homegrown and diasporic culinary wonders, endangered vernacular architecture, and regenerating a native prairie in his front yard.

“The Managed Assigned Counsel model is responsible for the assignment of qualified attorneys to represent criminally-accused indigent people in Bexar County. The MAC was established to comply with the Bexar Indigent Defense Plan, Fair Defense laws, and the Texas and US Constitutions. This structure will support assigned counsel with holistic defense including case coordination, litigation support, and technology innovation for the best possible outcomes!”

March 12: JOSHUA “LAKEY” HINSON

Place Maker/Chalk Artist

MARCO CERVANTES (AKA MEXSTEP)

Rapper/Producer/DJ/Associate Professor (UTSA)

March 26

Mexstep (aka Marco Cervantes) is a rapper, producer, DJ, and scholar based in San Antonio, Texas. He performs as a solo artist and is a member of the group Third Root, a hip-hop project of Charles Peters (Easy Lee), and DJ Chicken George (DJCG). Third Root’s latest single, “CG Forever” was released in late November. The first available work from the forthcoming Mind Elevation 2 is a heartfelt farewell to the late great DJCG (aka Jeffrey Henry, who passed in May of last year) facilitated by the group’s frequent collaborator/super-producer Adrian Quesada. Mexstep’s most recent single (with Principe Q) dropped September 14, 2024. Perfectly complementing his artistic work as a practitioner of “Trill Pedagogy,” Cervantes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). He researches sonic convergences in shared spaces through the use of critical race theory, diaspora studies, decolonial studies, and hip-hop studies with a focus on Black and Brown solidarity and cultural overlap. He has published in the American Quarterly, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, Association of Mexican American Educators, and Liminalities: Journal of Performance Studies.

ABOUT YOUR HOST

Thankfully, the sound system at Brick has fared much better than the battered rotary phone interdisciplinary artist Ed Saavedra was still using in the late nineties! The cord was so twisted and knotted (and the connection so scratchy) that by the time Willie Nelson rang in the fall of 1998, the subsequent 45-minute exchange almost ended before it started. Since then, Saavedra’s artwork has been vividly particularized in the bestselling Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth(p. 271) and acquired by numerous private and public collections — including (here at home) the McNay Art Museum and the San Antonio Museum of Art (an institution he once called, to no avail, to speak with Jesse Treviño during the reception for the artist’s triumphant post-Smithsonian hometown retrospective). Proof Through The Night, a group show the Seattle Times called one of the top ten must-see Pacific Northwest art exhibitions in Fall 2024 featured Saavedra paintings so fresh they were still wet on opening night. His one-person show at FL!GHT opened 30 minutes before the kickoff of the King William Krampus Parade, and closed two days before the end of last year.

SEASON ONE (2024) GUESTS:

AUG 7: ANANDA TOMAS, Executive Director, ACT4SA

AUG 21: MARIO MARCEL SALAS, Civil rights leader/scholar/politician/professor/KROV President

SEP 4: XELENA GONZÁLEZ, Storyteller/dancer/award-winning author

SEP 18: ALEX BIRNEL, Advocacy Director, MOVE Texas

Host or Publisher Brick at Blue Star