Fingerprints on a Hunger Strike: Launch For Tony Robles' New Book

The hunger strike refers to the Frisco Five.

San Francisco Arts Commission award-winning poet Tony Robles focuses on the Frisco Five’s hunger strike held in April and May 2016 in front of the Valencia Street cop shop, protesting police killings.

Robles also speaks of incarceration with a unique eye within the lens that is Frisco. The continuing displacement and neglect of elderly and low-income residents in the face of property development build another topic of concern, emerging from the poet's great love of San Francisco and all its inhabitants.

Kim Shuck, the current Poet Laureate of the City, maintains that "Robles does the work on the streets and on the pages" while he "speaks of the city as a relative with a life-threatening illness: with love and anger." Tony’s first book is Cool Don’t Live Here Anymore.

Jackie Ramos -- Poetess. Actress. Educator. Urban Health Researcher. Truth Liberator. Born and raised in Frisco.

Equipto -- Frisco Five Hunger Striker. A member of Bored Stiff, a hip hop group from San Francisco. He has collaborated with other artists such as Andre Nickatina, Berner. Just completed the "California Harvest Tour" of the Midwest and South.

Ben Bac Sierra -- Author of Barrio Bushido, English Professor at City College of San Francisco and a Renaissance Homeboy whose poetry and community work honors Frisco.

Tiny -- Tiny (aka Lisa Gray–Garcia) is a poverty scholar, revolutionary journalist, PO' Poet, spoken word artist, welfareQUEEN, lecturer, mixed race mama of Tiburcio and daughter of Dee and the co–founder and executive director of POOR Magazine/PoorNewsNetwork.

SaicoXskitS are members of a Tagalog English rap group called KASAMAS. Currently working together as a duo on an album that talks about Filipino Immigrants and migrants story and linking it back home. Saico and Skits are also community organizers in the South of Market whose work focuses on youth and tenants.