Danny Cassidy Benefit Fund
Our friend Danny Cassidy is facing a challenging fight with cancer. As you know, Danny has been a tireless advocate for Irish culture, social justice and learning. In an effort to provide financial assistance during this difficult time, Danny and Clare’s friends are coming together to organize a testimonial and fundraiser event and appeal to the Irish and Irish-American community for help. Please join us.

Saturday, July 19th, 2008 (from 7-10 pm)

Harrington’s Bar & Grille
245 Front Street
Downtown San Francisco

The day will feature speakers, musicians, a raffle, an auction and door prizes.

Click here to download the raffle tickets (send by mail)

Raffle Prizes include:

• First Prize: $1,000 Cash
• Second Prize: $500 Cash
• Third Prize: Roundtrip plane ticket on Southwest Airlines
• Fourth Prize: Dinner for Four (4) at Foley’s Irish House and two nights at the Parc 55 Hotel

Other prizes for raffle and auction include: tickets to the Giants vs. Diamondbacks, gift certificates to local bookstores and merchants, Long Kesh Harp, autographed books by Danny Morrison, $500 tattoo gift certificate, two free tickets to Wilde Irish Productions, and more!

Daniel Cassidy was born in Brooklyn, New York. He was educated at Cornell University and received his degree in English and Creative Writing. He has worked for the New York Times, was a merchant seaman during the Vietnam War, a union organizer, a professional musician, and became an award-winning filmmaker. His film “Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs”, about the struggle for Civil Rights in the North of Ireland, was nominated for an Emmy and shown on PBS. His later film, "Uncensored Voices" won the San Francisco Film Arts Festival "Best One –Hour Documentary Award" and was also featured on PBS and Canadian television. He is a co-founder of the Crossroads Irish-American Festival and the Irish Studies Program at New College of California, where he taught Irish Studies and Media Studies for fourteen years, until the school recently closed.

His new book, How The Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads, was published by CounterPunch Books in July, 2007. It won the American Book Award for non-fiction in November 2007. In March 2007 Daniel Cassidy was given the "Top 100 Irish-Americans" Award from Irish America Magazine for his contributions to education. How the Irish Invented Slang:The Secret Language of the Crossroads has received scores of rave reviews  from top academics and scholars, newspapers, and magazines (in both English and Irish). Here are just a few samples: 

1. “This is a landmark book...” Professor J. Joseph Lee, Director Irish Studies, NYU, Professor of History, University College Cork.
2.  "Daniel Cassidy makes a powerful case for the influence of Irish on slang. Frank Mc Nally, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times.
3. "Cassidy’s book is stunningly original..."  Eamonn McCann, Belfast Telegraph,
4. “The book is essential to reading James Farrell, Eugene O’Neill, or Pete Hamill, and belongs on every writer’s reference shelf.” Professor Peter Linebaugh  
5. "A Humdinger of a Project: Tracing Slang to Ireland!" Corey Kilgannon, New York Times.
6. "Irish-Americans will be thrilled to know they have been speaking Irish all along in their slang and American English... With imagination and scholarship, Cassidy has restored this hidden treasure to us in a book that is filled with revelations, wit, and humor. Professor Robert Scally, NYU, author, The End of Hidden Ireland.  

Danny recently received several job offers from local universities and colleges, but was unable to accept them due to his illness. He also was forced to cancel scheduled readings all across the country while he undergoes costly treatment. Hopefully, if his health improves, he may be able to resume his life’s work of promoting Irish and Irish-American Studies, teaching, and writing.  He is still managing to write a bi-monthly column for the Irish Echo newspaper in NYC called, Slanguage.   
Log on to: http://www.irishecho.com/index.cfm.

Unfortunately, due to the sudden closing of New College, both Danny and his wife Clare's insurance coverage was terminated and Danny will now require ongoing and costly medical care. Danny and Clare find themselves in a very difficult financial situation: suddenly forced to live off their savings. He did not receive any back wages, severance pay, a medical benefits package based on his 14 years of continuous service, despite a union contract that called for these benefits. Both Clare and Danny  are coping with illness, inadequate or non-existent medical care, and a failure by his former employer to even pay back wages for time worked in Fall 2OO7. So a bad situation was made desperate by the way New College closed down - with no support structures for senior employees.     

We ask your help to support a community member, teacher, mentor, friend, writer, musician, and scholar who has helped educate hundreds of students for over 14 years. The Irish Studies Program gave birth to the Crossroads Irish-American Festival and has put on more than one hundred Irish and Irish-American cultural events, scholarly panels, and workshops, almost all of them free of charge to the community.  
Now is your chance to give back. 

Even if you are unable to attend the event, show your support by sending a donation to the address below. Please make checks out to the “Danny Cassidy Benefit Fund” and send to:

Danny Cassidy Benefit Fund
c/o Crossroads Irish-American Festival
P.O. Box 170672
San Francisco, CA 94117-0672

We thank you in advance for your generosity.

Beir beannacht

Friends of Danny & Clare Cassidy

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The Crossroads Irish-American Festival is an annual, cultural arts, and literary event in San Francisco that explores and celebrates the history of the Irish Diaspora throughout the Americas in creative performance, vibrant conversation and debate, music, film, readings, storytelling, theater, and more.

Irish-Americans possess a rich and diverse history that has greatly influenced the cultural, political, and creative landscapes of the United States and beyond. We aim to reveal these many and often hidden histories of the Irish in the Americas by convening public events with noted writers, musicians, actors, film makers, poets, historians, scholars, story-tellers and other local, national, and international figures who reveal  the meaning of an Irish-American heritage through their scholarly and creative works. The Crossroads Irish-American Festival is also committed to building an oral archive of the history of the local Irish-American community, as defined by neighborhoods throughout the City of San Francisco. We hope to accomplish all of these goals through the annual production  of the Crossroads Irish-American Festival in the month of March.

 All events are open to the public and most events are free. Crossroads is a project of Intersection for the Arts.