Oakland and Black Political History

 

Left to Right: Amiri Baraka and Marvin X

After a 47 year friendship, this may be their final pic. Yes, they enjoyed joyful times together. With Baraka, Marvin X says, "I always had to be in a poetic mode because he communicated to me in poetic language, not ordinary speech. If something happened on the west coast, he would immediately blame me for not taking authority in my area. When he read his play about MLK, Jr with multiple voices and I told him I could have assisted him. He said why didn't you?  If we were at a west coast event where the producers often tried to block me from performing, I'd say, "Baraka, I'm going on stage with you." He'd say, "Do I have a choice?" "No, "I'd reply. No one treated me like a brother more than Baraka. When I had an opportunity to bless him with a good money gig, he died, even though he had arranged for me to perform at the New York University celebration of poet Jayne Cortez but Baraka made his transition as well so Marvin couldn't bless him with a generous honorarium at the UC Merced 50th Anniversary celebration of the Black Arts Movement.

photo Celeste Bateman

 

Oakland and Black political history

 

In my narrative of North American African political history, the 1972 Gary, Indiana Black political convention was the final act of Ancestor Amiri Baraka's sojourn of love with Black elected politicians. He was disillusioned with their Machiavellian chicanery and schizoid rhetoric of representing the people when they were in fact bought and sold to whatever lobbyist paid the most for their votes. When I sought answers from Baraka on the black political quagmire, on one occasion I asked him did we have lobbyists? In the poetic linguistics of our conversations, he answered, "Yes, we have lobbyists, they just don't lobby for us!" I followed with, "Well, how much do they want to lobby for us?" I can't recall his answer. But when a group of us were at lunch in Oakland with a black Washington, D.C., lobbyist, when he was asked for whom does he lobby, without hesitation, he answered for whomever pays the most, whether Democrat or Republican, although his preference was Republicans because they usually pay the most, no matter Democrats are known as the big spenders. Ironically, he was a former Oakland black radical from the Merritt College/Soul Students Advisory Council/Black Panther Party era. 

 

If there is any doubt about the duplicity, chicanery and Machiavellian political personality of black lobbyists, we only need to relate the history of Sacramento black lobbyist Alice Hoffman, recently relieved of her post as State Secretary of the California NAACP. Alice acquired great wealth (as several other black women lobbyists have done in Sacramento, but Alice was the Grand Diva). She didn't hesitate to use her position in the NAACP to lobby for causes diametrically opposed to the national, state and local agenda of the NAACP, although she had no qualms about listing the NAACP as a sponsor of projects she lobbied for, of course for generous fees that did not accrue to the treasury of the NAACP. After a long history of misrepresenting the NAACP in her lobbying business, she was recently relieved of her post, after her lobbying became an embarrassment to the NAACP.

 

 

 

In my deconstruction of Baraka's political maturation, it was shaped when his NewArk political machine, i.e., Committee for Unified NewArk, ushered NewArk's first black mayor, Kenneth Gibson, into office, yet Baraka suddenly realized Kenneth Gibson had sold out to Prudential Insurance before inauguration day, as he informed me. To solidify his disillusionment with elected politicians that his machine continued to support in the name of blackness, from Gibson on down, no matter the black mayors were all indicted on corruption charges, some serving prison and jail time. 

 

Of course Baraka's disillusionment with cultural politics, I suspect, began with the termination of his  association with cultural nationalist Maulana Ran Karenga and his  US organization that was implicated in the assassination of Black Panthers Alprentice Bunchy Carter and and John Huggins in the BSU meeting room on the campus of UCLA, 1969. FYI, this was the same year and same campus from which Gov. Ronald Reagan had Angela Davis removed for being a black Communist. Also, the same time the governor removed me, Marvin X, from lecturing in Black Studies at Fresno State University because I was a Black Muslim who was under indictment for refusing to fight in Vietnam. When I went on a speaking tour of Los Angeles colleges and universities, including L.A. City College, Compton College, Southwest College, L.A. State and when I arrived at UCLA, when I was taken to the BSU meeting room, the blood of Bunchy and John was still on the walls! Supposedly, the murder was over control of the BSU at UCLA, a struggle between the Black Panthers and Karenga's US, aka, United Slaves.

 

Baraka told me Karenga was with him in NewArk when Karenga got the call about the UCLA assassinations. Baraka said Karenga turned white! This incident was the termination of Baraka's association with Karenga and his Kawaida religion, of which he had made Baraka the Imamu or spiritual leader in NewArk. Recently, Baraka's widow, Amina Baraka, noted her husband was a cult leader and her memories are not those of a happy camper. Although, I was blessed to be at the Baraka's house one night when the "cult" women testified of their time as devotees, recalling the songs and rituals that can only be described as beautiful, as my daughter, Nefertiti, who was present, can attest.

 

Recently, in a phone conversation with Mrs. Baraka, she informed me that black developers wanted to construct a housing project from Baraka's days with Karenga's Kawaida and the Committee for Unified NewArk, i.e., the Kawaida Towers, a below market rate housing development that was never realized. She informed her son, Mayor Ras Baraka and his brother, Amiri Baraka, Jr., that if they wanted to honor the legacy of their father, the project should not be called Kawaida Towers since their father disassociated himself from the Kawaida religion and any association with Maulana Ron Karenga for the reasons I have noted above.

 

She persisted in her attempt to set the historical record for those who don't know but claim to know, even when it is her own children! Amina loves to say, "If you're going to tell the story, just tell it right." I agree with her that there is no way her husband would concur to the long delayed housing development being named Kawaida Towers, no matter the ignorance of the Kawaida and Kwanza sycophants in the present era. Again, Amina insists those who claim they know our history but clearly don't know, need to know so they will not go around claiming to know that which they do not! Finally, FYI, Mrs. Baraka claims she is no longer Amina Baraka but Sylvia Jones, and finally, Sylvia Robinson. She no longer claims to be Amina Baraka. For those who question the transformation of her identities, I suggest you question those of her husband and all of us fellow travelers in the Black arts and liberation movement. If she doesn't have the human right to claim who she is in this space and time, do you when you are most likely of highly questionable gender identity. Yes, I love pricking the skin of the pseudo woke but go about their daily round in thin skins and are consumed by the linguistics of propriety, yet claim freedom of speech.

As per the Black Arts Movement, we were absolutely committed to freedom of speech and those of us who are true believers are still committed to such.

 

Let me conclude with east coast political history with this: although Mayor Cory Booker, another Prudential Insurance sycophant, escaped corruption charges to become U.S. Senator, his ephemeral tenure was as questionable as his predecessors. But with the election of Amiri Baraka's son, Ras Baraka as Mayor, and his other son, Amiri Baraka, Jr. as Chief of Staff, we know Baraka is rejoicing with pride from his Communist heaven! And we too are as proud of Mayor Ras and the citizens of NewArk informed me on my February 2020 book tour: "Marvin, we have never been so relieved in our lives as we are now with the tenure of Mayor Ras who has taken police pressure off our asses." Alas, the Mayor's mother, Amina/Sylvia, informed me she doesn't know what to say about the police walking the hood smiling." The Mayor was absolutely not in favor of police abolition, nor were the people I talked with on the streets of NewArk. I have advocated officials in other cities study the NewArk Model, but we know problems are more valuable than solutions. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oaktown fada gitdown 

 

 

Let us begin with Oakland as the magical city of radical resistance, especially with the emergence of the Black Panther Party, 1966, at Merritt College on Grove Street, aka Martin Luther King, Jr. This geographical location will have even more importance by the end of my narrative. Again we must note Oakland as a city of resistance. Like Fallujah, its resistance had to be totally wiped out, especially after Americans were hung from a bridge. Just as white phosphorus and other gases similar to napalm were used to defeat Fallujah, Crack and germ warfare was used to defeat the Black Panther revolution in Oakland with the total defeat of the people who fought against domestic colonialism. Just as the Haitians have yet to recover from their defeat of the Spanish, English and French, including their great military genius Napoleon, North American Africans in Oakland are known around the world as the city of resistance.  On my speaking tour in the dirty south, when I spoke at Texas Southern and said I was from Oakland, a young man followed me around the entire day. 

 

 

 

 

 

Oakland and the Central Valley

 

I grew up on 7th and Campbell in West Oakland and in Fresno, the central valley town between Los Angeles and the Bay. Fresno is historically important because as per North American Africans in California, it was the meeting place for Blacks during the West Coast Relays, where we all partied together and enjoyed the entirety of our California roots. For the most part, Central Valley blacks sought to escape the agribusiness and valley heat by migrating to the Bay or L.A. I enjoyed the valley and the Bay because my parents were repeatedly separating and reconciling, so my siblings and I experienced the valley and the Bay. Since my mother was born in the central valley town of Fowler, nine miles south of Fresno, and I was born there as well, and her parents and grandparents were pioneers from  the south, me and my siblings have no knowledge of the south. The south to us was departing Oakland and spending summers in Fresno with my grandparents who were from Oklahoma and Arkansas. Clearly my great grandfather, Ephraim Murrill, was somebody, to quote Khalid Muhammad, "Jesse Jackson didn't know who he was but he knew he was somebody!" I have no knowledge that my great grandfather didn't know who he was, but clearly the white folks knew who he was since the Fresno Bee Newspaper, 1941, gave him a grand obituary when he passed in Madera at the age of 99, declaring he was well loved by blacks and whites as well. The article said he lived the first twenty years of his life as a slave but saw Abraham Lincoln. I am so proud to know I am from the roots of Ephraim Murrill.

 

But I am proud to have descended from my parents, Owendell and Marian M. Jackmon, who were publishing their own black newspaper, The Fresno Voice, when I came from my mother's womb, May 29,1944. My earliest memories are watching my father set type by spelling backwards. I remember selling the Fresno Voice on the corner of F and Fresno Streets, down the block from my parent's newspaper and real estate office. Due to redlining almost every black in Fresno bought their first house from my parents. Fresno native, OIdell Johnson, Emeritus President of Laney College, reminded me of this fact not long ago. When my mother finally separated from my father in Oakland and returned to Fresno to establish her own real estate business, black women repeatedly reminded me she was their mentor. Of course Mom was, in addition to her real estate and income tax business, a spiritual counselor under the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science who believed in mind over matter, thus there was no medicine cabinet in my mother's house. We had to know the truth and the truth would set you free of any dis-ease or negative attraction.

 

In 1962, after graduating from Edison High in Fresno, I returned to the Bay and although I wanted to attend Howard University, my father sent me to his friend, Tom Berkley, Publisher of the Black Post Newspapers, who advised me to forget about Howard and go to a college in the Bay. "We have fine colleges out here, he said, you don't need to go to Howard." I enrolled at Merritt College and my life was transformed beyond my imagination. Alas, America and the world was transformed as well. Not only did the Black Panther Party spring from Merritt but Black Studies and the Black Arts Movement as well, including Kwanza. FYI, Maulana Ron Karenga was the Los Angeles representative of the Afro-American Association that held meetings at Merritt from which Kwanza evolved along with the Black Panthers, Black Studies and the Black Arts Movement, under the direction of the AAA intellectuals, including Attorney Donald Warden, Donald Hopkins, Fred and Mary Lewis, Henry Ramsey, Eleanor Mason, Paul Cobb, Ed Howard, Margot Dashiel, Ann Williams, et al. FYI, the parents of US Vice President Kamal Harris met at the Afro-American Association and Kamala was babysitted, nurtured and mentored by members of the AAA. If VP Harris is not rooted in the radical cultural consciousness of the AAA, nobody in America is. How can she appear so Miller Lites when she grew up in the AAA that gave us the Black Panthers, Black Studies and the Black Arts Movement?

 

Her Miller Lite approach to national and global affairs appears to be a denial of the radical ideological heritage she was blessed with from her parents. Kamala, don't fake the funk, or are you in the tradition of the elected politicians described above who ultimately subscribe to the reactionary mantra that politics has no permanent friends only permanent interests. Perhaps this is what made Ancestor  Amiri Baraka break from Black culture and politics to the Maoist Communist version of Marxist-Leninism. He never joined the USA Communist party of Gus Hall that his wife Amina joined, along with Angela Davis, Jarvis Tyner (brother of McCoy Tyner).  

 

Of course Baraka tolerated my and my Islamic ideological beliefs, perhaps in his deep found belief of the United Front which brings us to the pressing dilemma of how to make functional the rag-tag opportunistic black politics of Oakland, sandwiched between the  equally avaricious politicians and business leaders of Oakland's east and west sides. In the past and in the now, the eastside appears more astute at comprehending the necessary political acumen to achieve the trappings of upward mobility, yet the east is a victim of global gentrification with 40% of single family housing a commodity on Wall Street. So even with the Eastside's Black Cultural Zone and the concomitant support of black politicians, what shall be the endgame as the City of Oakland proceed's on it's 25 to 50 year plan for the downtown area. Alas, we suffered the entire tenure of black mayors who focused on the downtown area to the neglect of the lower bottom west side and deep east. 

 

Today, I was engaged with persons leading the vendor struggle at Lake Merritt and heading the Black cultural zone on the east side. I also had an extensive phone conversation with Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, founder of West Oakland's Black Arts Movement Business District, CDC. FYI, throughout my conversations Eastside Arts Alliance was part of the conversation. All of these institutions were discussed critically as per positive and negative components. 

 

By the end of the day I was exhausted with the negatives and the positives of Oakland's political, cultural, economic community. I was revived when the people from the different areas spoke good of each others, in spite of what Baraka called our "negrocities". But most of my interaction was with the leadership class, politicians, businesspersons, cultural arts leaders. 

 

Dr. Ayodele Nzinga mentioned the need for a townhall meeting of us all, i.e., yes, US ALL!  And suddenly the need  of Baraka's call for The United Front hit me and I agreed to myself that we can and must establish the United Front of Oakland, wherein we shall meet no matter our differing ideological persuasions, political, cultural and economic agendas. Don't we see the Democratic and Republican parties doing the same in the Congress and Senate. They hate each other but they meet for communal good and social security. We must do the same.

We can personally hate each other but love each other for the communal good. 

 

Elected politicians, we know your goal is reelection. Cultural and economic workers need long range funding, beyond the tenure of a regime. So let us hate each other but come together for mutual good as others do. Blacks must not come to the multi-cultural table to sit on the bottom rung of the ladder. Do you think Chinatown is not for Chinese. Do they apologize for the economic prosperity of Chinatown.

The Lakeshore residents are upset the blacks want to part three deep. If this is our cultural propagative, leave us the fuck alone. If we do this two days per week, leave us alone. You dominate the world 24/7, as if we need to remind you, so leave us alone. If you refuse to do so in league with politicians seeking your votes, you shall see us knocking on your doors in the South African manner to ask for your keys and your exit. No matter your cries of constitutional rights, no matter your guns, we shall ignore you in our desperation of centuries, yes, the eons of cries from slave ships and if and when you appear deaf to our cries we shall enforce your departure with our homeless army of the desperate, traumatized and the hoards suffering unresolved grief and suffering beyond your imagination in this world and the next.

 

Most recently I was horrified at the theft of South Africa by black South Africans. How ANC revolutionaries became billionaires overnight. But did I give a moment's thought to the centuries of South African white rape, plunder and slaughter? 

 

Then I watched a documentary on the Marshall Islands, in particular the Island of Bikini, origin of the swim suit but more importantly the island that was the testing ground for the atomic bomb wherein the islanders were guinea pigs and have never received reparations. I agree with Master Sun Ra, "You so evil the devil don't want you in hell."

 

My day ended at the store where I gave out copies of Black Street Magazine. A sister complemented me on my attire so I gave her a copy of the Bambdfest edition of my magazine and told her to hold on I will give her Black Street. I gave her Black Street then went on to shop at the grocery store but as I departed my car a brother called me from his car to show me his wife had given him my magazine. He told me how much he appreciated the magazine and let me know he has a barber shop down the street from the old Merritt College and said he would like more copies since his shop has achieves of black history. I went to my car to get him a stack of magazines and he was overjoyed. He told me he had Black Panther archives in his shop and asked me to stop by. I agreed. 

 

I was overjoyed at the positive attitude of his generation that I had dismissed but he and his wife inspired me to focus on the young generation who are hungry and starving for the knowledge of my generation.

--El Muhajir/Marvin X

10/1/21

from the forthcoming ESSAYS, PARABLES, POEMS, EL MUHAJIR/MARVIN X, BLACK BIRD PRESS, OAKLAND, 2022.

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Por favor, yo dice nada mas, por que?

--El Muhajir/Marvin X

10/1/21