Once There Was a Town: The Port Chicago Story

The local nonprofit Artist Advocacy Foundation announces a fundraising event: Once There Was a Town: The Port Chicago Story, an original docudrama for voices – compiled, edited and directed by Jeff McKinnon. This live, multi-media spoken-word event features nine actors and over 150 images and film clips of the town and its residents. It will benefit the nonprofit Artist Advocacy Foundation to help fund AAF’s “Jeff McKinnon – Theatre Group Scholarship,” to be presented to a graduating senior at Santa Ynez Valley Union High School. Wednesday, January 29 – at the Maverick Saloon in Santa Ynez, 7 p.m., (doors open at 5:30, seating is general admission on a first come basis.) Advanced tickets can be purchased online at artistadvocacyfoundation.org.

Port Chicago was a town founded in 1907 on the southern banks of Suisun Bay, in Contra Costa County, 20 miles northeast of San Francisco Bay. It is best known as the site of a devastating explosion at its Naval Munitions Depot during World War II and the subsequent mutiny trial of striking black sailors protesting the unsafe working conditions prior to the explosion, which killed 320 persons, over 200 of them black sailors. Assembled from taped and written transcripts, Once There Was a Town tells the story, in the words of town residents, of a bucolic small town that came to be defined by a military tragedy resulting in a government buyout and expulsion of the town’s residents by 1968.

Artist Advocacy Foundation supports, produces and promotes artists, events and programs that Aspire to Inspire; specifically, ones that may not have the funds to carry out their work without financial assistance. Since March 2020, the Artist Advocacy Foundation has given grants to 80 different artists, events and programs around the country, including musicians, painters, photographers, poets, filmmakers, community-centers, and more.