Episode one features the Latino Mural Movement of the 1960's, Nuyorican spoken word, and editorial cartoonist Lalo Lopez. Created in New York, the Nuyorican spoken word is a form of artistic expression that emerged from the tumultuous 1960's and continues to influence and inspire the American Puerto Rican community. Episode one includes interviews with Nuyorican poets Pedro Pietri, Piri Thomas, and Caridad (La Bruja), and muralist/artist Judith Baca.

Judith F. Baca

As a visual artist and one of the nation's leading muralists, Judith F. Baca is best known for her large-scale public art works. In her internationally-known "The Great Wall of Los Angeles", a landmark pictorial representation of the history of ethnic peoples of California from their origins to the 1950's, Baca and her planning and painting teams of approximately 700 participants produced 2,435 running feet of murals in segments over seven summers, from 1976 to 1984. The Great Wall along with the research and design for its continuance into the 1990's is currently underway.

Baca founded the first City of Los Angeles mural program in 1974. It produced over 400 murals and employed thousands of local participants during its ten years of operation. In 1976, she founded the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, California, where she still serves as the Artistic Director. In 1988 at the request of Mayor Tom Bradley, she developed a new city mural program based on the previous successful model of "The Great Wall of Los Angeles". This program, entitled Great Walls Unlimited: Neighborhood Pride Program, has produced over 85 murals in almost every ethnic community in Los Angeles. It has provided training for hundreds of artists and youth, making it one of the country's most respected mural education programs.

Pedro Pietri:

Pedro Pietri, one of the top Puerto Rican/Latino poets in the country. He is best known for writing Puerto Rican Obituary, a collection of poems dealing with the Puerto Rican reality in the United States. He is also, author of the play, "The Masses are Asses." His poetry is included in many publications, magazines, journals, newspapers, television, public television, and video productions. Pietri gives dynamic, exciting presentations that audiences love. He covers serious subjects with humor that leave people laughing and thinking.

La Bruja: 
Caridad De La Luz a.k.a. La Bruja, is a multifaceted performer and writer, known for her mesmerizing poetry and characterizations. She was featured on Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam for HBO. Spike Lee let her improvise her lines in his film Bamboozled. NYC's Hot 97 Street Soldiers hosted by Lisa Evers featured La Bruja for The National Puerto Rican Day Parade. She was even a featured  dancer for Vanessa Williams and Chayanne's music video for the movie Dance With Me.  La Bruja wrote and recorded commercial raps for McDonalds in both English and Spanish being aired on TV and Radio. She did the same for Cafe Bustelo which has played on Spanish NYC radio stations. She has also recorded music with artists such as Fat Joe, B-Real of Cypress Hill, Tony Touch, Afrika Bambaataa, G-Bo the Pro, and Boogie Boy Kid Delight RIP. Her one-woman show received raving support since 1998 from San Francisco to Switzerland. Now in 2003, the show has developed into Boogie Rican Boulevard, a fictional tale directed and developed by Nelson Vasquez (of Da Spanish Mob). She wrote and performs this theatrical, where she plays seven different characters struggling between the Puerto Rican tradition and the modern day values taught on the streets of the Boogie Down Bronx.

She was featured in JANE magazine as Girly Crush of the Month. She has also been featured on the pages of Viva-Daily News, Shout, Vibe, Source, XXL, BLU, AWOL, Italy's Aelle, One World, Mass Appeal, New York, Urban Sofrito, El Diario, Hoy, Miami Herald, Spoken Vizions and Stress Magazines, Puerto Rico's newspaper El Vocero, Ad Age and In The House Magazine. Her poetry was also published in El Centro journal for Hunter College. She is currently writing for the cartoon Lugar Heights and doing the voice of Roxy featured on ICaramba.com and mun TV alongside hysterical Nuyorican Rule comedians Angelo Lozada, Marilyn Torres and Eric Nieves (all featured on Showtime at The Apollo).  TV appearances also include HBO Latino, The Roof, Galascene, Primer Impacto, Urban Latino TV, public service announcements for AmericansForTheArts.Org, several NYC Cable programs and commercials directed by Spike Lee for IAM.com.  She is featured in the documentary Hip Hop Hope (about the effect of 9/11 on Hip Hop) screened in the first Tribeca Film Festival, and was cast as supporting actress in the independent movie directed by Deborah Granik called Down to the Bone as Lucy, a recovering addict and best friend to Irene (played by Vera Farmiga) trying to stay clean in a world of temptation. The world famous photographer, Daniel Valenzuela Hastings (shot album covers for Wu-Tang 36 Chambers, Gangstarr, Big Pun) co-wrote and directed her in psychodrama Stuck On Earth-The Serpent Woman with La Bruja as Piedad; the personification of pity, the symbol of mercy, and the Eve of humanity, holding heaven and hell in the same breath.

Theater performances include the Hip Hop Theater Festival NYC/Washington DC/IHX Miami, Ubu Enchained which toured in Poland and NYC, Pedro Pietri's El Spanglish Language Sandwich, and Hip-Hop festival Women Like This held in Switzerland.

This dedicated artist/activist makes time to teach writing workshops called "How can I change the world?" which was first developed first for The East Harlem Tutorial Program. She has since been a speaker at countless schools, universities, jails, health centers and community organizations around the country to shed light on the benefits of art, culture and self-expre

Piri Thomas

Author of:

Down These Mean Streets
Savior, Savior Hold My Hand
Seven Long Times
Stories from E1 Barrio

Born Juan Pedro Tomás, of Puerto Rican and Cuban parents in New York City's Spanish Harlem in 1928, Piri Thomas began his struggle for survival, identity, and recognition at an early age. The vicious street environment of poverty, racism, and street crime took its toll and he served seven years of nightmarish incarceration at hard labor. But, with the knowledge that he had not been born a criminal, he rose above his violent background of drugs and gang warfare, and he vowed to use his street and prison know-how to reach hard core youth and turn them away from a life of crime.

In 1967, with a grant from the Rabinowitz Foundation, both his career and fame as an author were launched with the electrifying autobiography, Down These Mean Streets. After more than 25 years of being constantly in print, it is now considered a classic.

In Down These Mean Streets, Piri Thomas made El Barrio (the neighborhood) a household word to multitudes of non-Spanish-speaking readers. A front-page review in the New York Times book review section May 21, 1967 proclaimed: "It claims our attention and emotional response because of the honesty and pain of a life led in outlaw, fringe status, where the dream is always to escape."

Savior, Savior Hold My Hand also received wide critical acclaim, as did Seven Long Times, a chronicle of one man's experience in New York's dehumanizing penal system. Stories from El Barrio, a collection of short stories, is for young people of all ages.

Piri's extensive travel in Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Cuba, Mexico, Europe, and the United States has also been perceptively documented in free-lance articles by him. His eye-opening experiences have contributed to a unique globalist perspective on peace and justice so necessary in these days of international problems and conflicts.

Piri currently resides in Berkeley, California, with his wife Suzanne Dod Thomas and two daughters. He is working on a book entitled A Matter of Dignity (the sequel to Down These Mean Streets), refining the play, The Golden Streets, publishing, recording, and distributing his poetry with music, Sounds Of The Streets and No Mo' Barrio Blues. He is also working with award-winning director Jonathan Robinson on an educational film, Dialogue with Society, with an award-winning director, publishing his books in audio form, and writing and recording more poetry with music, in addition to speaking at universities and schools and in the community throughout the United States.