I present to you my
Special Assistant
Angelo Jackson, Young Master Vendor
Holding down West Oakland
Don't hate Angelo
Learn from Angelo
Brothers and Sisters in the hood honor and respect him
He has caught the baton of black entrepreneurship and is running for a touchdown with his "general store" model and knowledge of the proper handling of people, i.e., treating his customers with respect and dignity!
I have stood watching Angelo do his thing. He knows the proper handing of people the Muslims tried to teach us in the NOI but many didn't the master the lesson. Go stand and watch Angelo engage the people with his beautiful bass voice. If I was still in theatre I would recruit him as an actor. Ayodele better find a role for him in her Lower Bottom Playaz. Angelo's voice is enough to make me return to theatre in the fourth quarter of my life. But no matter his voice, Angelo is a businessman and focused on all it takes to be successful. I have observed him serving the poorest of the poor, the white, black, hustler, rapper, pimp, ho, alas, who doesn't need soap, deodorant, toilet paper, incense, oils, men's drawers, etc?
But above all is his humble demeanor yet totally serious as a businessman. Somewhere between the time he used to visit my Academy of Da Corner at 14th and Broadway and when he opened his stand, he appeared to grow up and adopted his current serious persona. I am not sure if he went away for a "vacation" but all I know he is a most serious young businessman and clocks his dollars in an area where you get respect when you demand and demonstrate respect, otherwise one will have a serious problem in this hood, yes, where I grew up on Seventh Street and hustled Jet, Ebony, Chicago Defender and Pittsburg Courier and Detroit Black Dispatch. As per the black media, every Saturday I used to hear Oakland NAACP President Tarea Hall Pittman broadcasting her "Negroes in the News".
Angelo, I pass the baton to you! I shall put my resources to support you as the model of how to do for self, to transcend seeking a job that our beloved Dr. Yusef Bey said, "A job is nothing but an indirect welfare handout!" He was not a saint, but even with his "negrocites" or darkside, Dr. Bey provided us with healthy products, including bread, pies, cookies, fish and tofu burgers.
Angelo Jackson, Special Assistant to Marvin X, Planner and Organizer of the Black Vendors Association.
His "General Store" is located across from the West Oakland BART Station. A generous
grant from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation will enable Marvin X to plan the
organization and training of young people to be entrepreneurs and advocates of policy
changes to address economic inequities. Marvin plans to work with James Copes, organizer
of vendors at Lake Merritt. The Berkeley Juneteenth Foundation, Inc., under the direction of
Delores Nochi Cooper, is the fiscal sponsor of the Black Vendors Association. The BVA is also
associated with the Black Arts Movement Business District, CDC, founded by Dr. Ayodele
Nzinga, recently appointed Oakland's first Poet Laureate. She is the producer of BAMBDFEST,
Black August 2021. The official Bambdfest program will appear in Black Bird Press News and Review Magazine, published and edited by Marvin X. Dr. Nzinga is the Guest Editor of the BAMBDFEST 2021
edition devoted to the works of Bay Area poets.
For many years, Marvin X maintained his Academy of Da Corner at 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland. Despite perennial police harassment, the poet, playwright, essayist, continued teaching and educating the community at his Academy of Da Corner. Ishmael Reed said, "If you want motivation and inspiration, don't spend all that money going to workshops and seminars, just go stand at 14th and Broadway and watch Marvin X at work! He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland!" Harvard Professor Dr. Cornel West says, "He's Socrates teaching in the African hood!"
On January 19,2016, the Black Arts Movement Business District was established by the Oakland City Council. Community persons who forced the City Council to approve the BAMBD included Paul Cobb, Rt. Col. Conway Jones, Jr., Margaret Gordon, Aries Jordan, Menuhaim Adele, Marvin X, et al. The BAMBD begins at the lower bottom of 14th Street and ends at Lake Merritt and is part of the City of Oakland's Downtown Plan for the next 25 to 50 Years. Below is map of BAMBD.
Since 2016, the Black Arts Movement Business District has been working without a budget, maintained and sustained by the BAMBD, Community Development Corporation, established by Dr. Ayodele Nzinga.
In Oakland's budget just passed, $250,000 is allocated for the BAMBD, but it should be directed to the BAMBD, CDC.
Since most of us elders will be ancestors, the Black Vendors Association's focus is on the youth if they will step to the front of the line and accept the baton. "I said long ago if youth can sell dope, they can sell anything and it takes the same energy to sell legal goods as it does to sell illegal goods. If they can cut the dope, weigh the dope, package the dope, promote the dope, secure the dope, keep the money straight on pain of death, they can do the same with legal goods. As per jobs, many youth suffer post traumatic slave syndrome and will never be able to hold a job, so entrepreneurship is their way of survival and success. FYI, America discovered veterans returning home from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and numerous wars to maintain white supremacy, also suffer post traumatic stress and will never be able to hold study jobs, so America is sending veterans to schools and colleges to learn entrepreneurship. Vending may be the only way of survival for many of our youth in the hood. FYI, in the 80s when I was a Crack addict, I used to hustle the Homeless Newspaper in San Francisco, making often $400.00 per day to support my Crack habit. During the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco, I sold political buttons at Market and Powell and made $2,000.00 per day. The San Francisco Chronicle called me the Button King! The old men standing around Market and Powell watching me hustle buttons, estimated I made $300.00 per hour.
Then the white boys wanted to work under my non-profit papers so they could sell their cashmere scarves
in Union Square. They paid me to work under my papers to the disgust of the San Francisco police, who turned beet red when the white boys showed them my papers. Soon the Krishna white boys came to use my papers and when they fought over Union Square turf, I had to mediate and draw a map to stop their turf war. This is not hyperbole but the San Francisco police said the same thing about me that the New York police said about Malcolm X in Harlem, "He got too much power for a nigga!" You have no idea what it feels like to be harassed under the color of law daily by the police. No lawyer would take my case so I did the research to write a lawsuit but was too drugged out to file it. Meanwhile, the Chief Attorney for the San Francisco police told me and my partner, Hurriyah Asar, who sold at Market and Montgomery in the financial district. And she upset the SFPD with her Afrikan University Library stand of African goods, especially when the SFPD cited her and the judge dismissed the charges. The SFPD Chief Attorney, Lawrence Wilson, told us during a court recess, "If you beat us in court, I will go to the Board of Supervisors and change the rules!" And he did, but James Brown told us about the Big Payback. The payback is a mother...... FYI, Lawrence Wilson, Chief Attorney for the SFPD, was arrested for selling drugs out of his house and went to prison and when he came out died of AIDS. Better Ax somebody."
In conclusion, The Black Vendors Association is being established for the young people so they need not rob, steal and kill. When they can make $400 to $2000 per day legally, they will feel real good about themselves. Look above at my Special Assistant Angelo Jackson, look at his smile of success. He used to come by my stand at 14th and Broadway with his podnas selling CDs so they could buy weed and alcohol. I used to give them my newspaper to sell, didn't matter if they never came back with any money for me. I was happy they sold their CDs. In truth I never bothered to listen to what was on them. But look again at the plethora of goods on his table in the pic above, well stacked and I've observed him execute the proper handling of people as the Black Muslims used to teach. And he's posted up in what could be a very dangerous area. The boyz in the hood gather at the liquor store across the street from him. But he's so cool, humble and diplomatic which is probably why he is still alive.
One day I came by to distribute my newspaper and my grandchildren were with me. I had told them we were going to give out papers to killers in West Oakland where I grew up. When we arrived to Angelo's stand, the brothers were a few feet from him smoking weed. I told my grandson to get out and give them some newspapers. He said, "Grandfather, didn't you say there are killers?" "Grandson, get out and give them some papers. This is my turf, where I grew up, I know every motherfuckin' street in West Oakland and I ain't scared of no motherfucka on my turf. Get yo ass out and give them the newspapers." My grandson got out and gave the brothers the newspaper and returned to my car. We drove off."
In the above narrative, I've given you a lesson on selling and vending. You can do this all over the world. I left San Francisco after the death and memorial of a partner, flew to Seattle WA where they have a homeless paper. Got the paper and went to Pike's Market with their flying fish. Made $400.00 per day at Pike's Market. FYI, from San Francisco to Seattle I sold the homeless paper for $20.00 per copy. Better ax somebody. When I ran out of the homeless paper I'd sell any paper I found, including toilet paper! In San Francisco people called the homeless paper office to inform them a nigga was demanding $20.00 per paper. San Francisco wrote a law against "aggressive panhandling." That law was for me, not the brothers begging for quarters with a styrofoam cup. I have no memory of holding a styrofoam cup to beg for quarters. In fact, when people gave me quarters as they passed by, I threw it at them and hit them in the back.
When I sold at Pike's Market in Seattle and demanded $20.00 per copy, people called the paper office the paper manager told me about the snitches but was happy I was his top salesman as he recorded sales on his computer. I made enough money in Seattle to send my daughter Nefertiti money for her wedding. And you know the black pimps and hustlers are treated like gods by the white women in Seattle, even those Timberline, butch haircut mountain climbing lesbians. Sometimes I sold poster poems of my poems in the downtown area and when they read my For The Women poem, they cried real tears. Their tears humbled me and revealed the power of spoken words, even written words.
I will end with the day I was selling down town Seattle and the black mayor passed by with his entourage
and I told him to "get off my turf!" Some brothers eased up beside me to say, "Yo, Bro, that's the Mayor Bro!"
I didn't give a fuck. Reminded me the night I was hustling in San Francisco's North Beach where hustler's went after Fisherman's Wharf closed, around 9 or 10. Nightlife moved to North Beach so I was on the corner of Columbus and Broadway when Gov. Jerry Brown came by with his entourage on their way to City Lights Bookstore across the street. When I saw the Governor, my Crack/rut gut Night Train or Old English mind said to him, "Jerry Brown, you a motherfucka!" The Governor continued to City Lights with his entourage. But since I was hustling in the same spot when they came back, the Governor asked me, "Why you call me a motherfucka?'
"Jerry Brown, you know you a motherfucka!" The Governor and his entourage continued on into the North Beach night.
Contact information:
Marvin X
Black Vendors Association
510-575-7148
jmarvinx@yahoo.com
www.blackbirdpress.blogspot.com
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