EDTalks (But Mostly Listens): A Live Conversation Series with Ed Saavedra and Special Guests

Long before achieving institutional validation, host Ed Saavedra was interrupting dinners in at least three counties to hear directly from the artists, activists, historians, journalists, and musicians he admired most (and who for whatever reason 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 in Southtown’s living room, Brick at Blue Star.

6:00pm Doors

6:30pm: Music

7:00pm: Introduction/Preliminary Conversation

7:35pm: Break for audience to get snacks & drinks and submit written questions

7:50pm: Conversation continues

8:40pm: Questions from the audience

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

SEP 18: ALEX BIRNEL, Advocacy Director, MOVE Texas

As an advocate and organizer, Birnel fights for paid sick time, cite-and-release policies (won in San Antonio and San Marcos), and voting rights reforms in Bexar, Dallas, Hays, Webb, and Harris Counties. In his role with MOVE Texas, he leads a staff on issue-based campaigns affectIng the lives of young people while building power across the state. This team is actively working to close coal plants and to bring polling places to county jails.

ABOUT YOUR HOST

Thankfully, the sound system at Brick has fared much better than the battered rotary phone 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 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).