BAMBD Street Vendors

The time has come for Pan African street vendors to unite for cultural and economic prosperity. Ancestor Amiri Baraka told us "to stop thinking like we Americans." If we were truly Americans there would be no need to renew the Voting Rights Act, since we've been here in involuntary and voluntary servitude since 1619, 400 years of loyalty to the English slavemasters, now known as Americans.

I say let's think in a Pan African paradigm. We want the BAMBD to be an African Marketplace on the !4th Street corridor, initially in the Center City area and especially on the eastside of Lake Merritt that was claimed by Pan African vendors and Pan African people en masse after the Bar B Q Becky incident of blatant white supremacist behavior rooted in arrogance, racial superiority and ignorance.

Pan African vendors want to vend daily as Euro and Latin Americas do in San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland. Vending and entrepreneurship is one avenue Pan and North American Africans can overcome economic discrimination. Everybody wants to sell to us but don't want to buy from us. Too often we don't want to buy from us! You know the white man's ice is colder, or the Arab's, Chinese, Korean, Latin and/or Indigenous. But look at the plethora of Pan African vendors at Bay Area and Oakland festivals, e.g., Art and Soul, Pride, Joy, Juneteenth, Umoja, Pan African Family Day, Malcolm X Jazz/Art Festival, et al. Vendors want to vend and now have SB946 to do so legally on the streets of Oakland, California.

Some people are concerned that with the BAMBD corridor being gentrified by development of commercial buildings and market rate housing, the BAMBD idea is dead in da water.

But street vending in the BAMBD can be an immediate and long range cultural/economic project that must be included in the City of Oakland's Downtown Plan for the next 25 to 50 years. Few Pan Africans or North American Africans (my term for so-called Negroes) will be able to pay market rate rents or purchase buildings in the downtown area. We give honor and respect to Geoffery Pete, the Pan African/North American African man who occupies a piece of the rock with his venue Geoffery's Inner Circle at 14th and Franklin Streets in the heart of the BAMBD, with the Joyce Gordon Gallery downstairs.

Most of us will not be able to model Geoffery Pete and Joyce Gordon but life has infinite possibilities , though immediately we can vend on the street in the BAMBD, along the 14th Street corridor. We can build from the street to occupy skyscrapers, two, three, four....The multi-cultural Greenlining Institute owns a piece of the rock near 14th and Webster, across from the upcoming Carmel 600 unit market rate apartment complex. The BAMBD CDC, Inc., headed by Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, acquired a Community Benefits Agreement with Carmel Developers to rent office and business space in their development at below market rate. We were not able to obtain an equity agreement with Carmel especially for below market rate housing, the critical need in Oakland in general and the downtown area especially where many Pan Africans reside, mostly in subsidized apartments or SRO's (single room occupancy hotels). The City of Newark, NJ model requires developers to reserve 20% of new housing for below market rate. The survival of a community requires cultural and economic prosperity but housing is critical. Oakland's Chinatown is prospering party due to housing and economics. Chinatown or the Asian community combines cultural tradition and mores with economic activity, e.g., one can cross the street in their tradition, sell goods outside on the streets of their businesses, double park and little or no police presence. The BAMBD must emulate the Asian model.

What Pan African businesses cannot supply, street vendors should supply so that our money circulates more than once. Pan Africans must support Pan Africans, yes, we have a trade deficient with other ethnic groups! Most importantly, we have a trade deficient with each other. Don't say you love Black/African but won't buy from Black/African.

What is the purpose of the BAMBD Vendors Association? These are thoughts off the top of my head. Let us meet and come to a consensus for a BAMBD Vendors Association that is about cultural consciousness and economic prosperity.

1. A membership of arts/crafts/food and commercial merchandise vendors. We must also activate the Community Component of the Original Black Studies mission, thus we appeal to scholars to make themselves available at their individual Academy of da Corners, wherein knowledge is dispensed on the street, intellectual dialogue as well, an open mike of ideological exchange. We need community scholars to connect with people in the street to share their wealth of wisdom with common folk, some of whom have never met a black scholar in their life, not to mention a black author.

2.Membership should provide the vendor with reduced fee or free booth space in the BAMBD and other cultural events, festivals, conferences, concerts.

3.Member fees may cover permit costs, taxes, insurance, license fees, health insurance, burial insurance.

4.Member will purchase goods collectively at wholesale or below wholesale prices.

5.Members will acquire housing and transportation collectively.

6.Senior members will be cared for with respect due.

7.Member children will be trained in the Pan African entrepreneurial tradition.

8.Members will be provided security while vending in the BAMBD and elsewhere.

9.The Movement Newspaper will be the official organ of the BAMBD Vendors Association, wherein members can advertise and promote their events.

10. As per leadership, we know who traditionally runs the African marketplace. Therefore, we call upon African women to operate the BAMBD Vendors Association.