Black Bird Press News & Review

Thursday, August 16, 2018

Aretha

Daughter of a preacher

Little sista of Mahalia

Bailed Angela

Aretha

Artistic Freedom Fighter

Soul songbird supreme

Queen of Soul

Queen of Rock and Roll

"If Elvis is king," Amiri Baraka said,"Who is James Brown, God?"

Classic woman

Like Bessie Billie

Sarah Nina

Let Queen Aretha sing

From heaven down

Let the Black Bird sing

Honor her crown.

--MARVIN X

8/15/18

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Black Bird Press News Popular Posts

Marvin X New Poem: The People of Nowhere

Muhajir,

Where is the love for the LOST people? Thank you for reminding us.--Fahizah Alim

Poet Marvin X and Muse Fahizah Alim

The people of Nowhere
Live lives shut in shut out

Seldom venture out

From nowhere to some where.

No church no concert movie

Walk in the park

Eternal house arrest

No chains handcuffs

A mental prison

No guards cept boys on the block

Who go nowhere

Never leave turf

Cept in body bags

No motel love ballers

Laundry room love

Hot girl upstairs

No where girl

Sex on the dryer

Mama can't dry clothes

Mama go nowhere

No mama time

Jail time sons

Mama time at court

Visit prison sons

No mama time

Nowhere life.

--Marvin X

8/14/18

Tuesday, August 14, 2018

"The Turning Point" The San Francisco State '68 Strike

Marvin X is writing The Untold Story of the Black Student Revolution at San Francisco State University, 1968. Marvin X was a member of the Negro Students Association that became the Black Students Union. He obtained a B.A. and M.A., English/Creative Writing and later taught in the Black Studies Department, 1974-75.

San Francisco State Strike 1968, Black Students & Third World Liberation...

Sunday, August 12, 2018

San Francisco's Hunters Point enjoys the Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience at private house party

Marvin X rocks Hunters Point Private Party

He was the featured artist at a birthday party that morphed into a 1960s Conscious Party (Defined; As per the 60s, a conscious party begins as a normal party, music, food, drink, then the music stops, lights on, brothers and sisters rap revolutionary black nationalism. Music up, lights up, party back on. Later, the same rap session continues on whatever subject at hand.

Before he read, Marvin X thanked his host who requests anonymity. "First of all, I thank the brother for inviting me to his party. I had no idea he was of Black/African consciousness. He has taught me to never underestimate another Black man, especially when you know little about him, though I did suspect the brother was literate because he did accept my books. I was humbled when I entered his apartment and saw my books at the foot of the shrine to his mother.

I am totally impressed with newfound knowledge of my friend. I am impressed this conscious party happened in Hunters Point, so often derided for ignorance, internecine violence, police violence and other actions of socalled hood life. But if you know Bay Area history, Hunters Point is the only hood that revolted in the streets against white supremacy in the 60s. Yes, Oakland gave us the Black Panthers. San Francisco State University gave us the Black Student Union and Black Studies. Hunters Point gave us a mass uprising. Duncan Barber, a co-founder of Black Arts West Theatre in the Fillmore, was featured on the cover of Newsweek about the HP rebellion.

I told the conscious party goers I was impressed on my way down Third Street to the party, especially by the Red, Black and Green on light posts. When I sensed the audience really didn't understand the Red, Black and Green, I said, "Marcus Garvey gave us this flag for the Pan African nation, in conjunction with his philosophy of Africa for the Africans, those at home and those abroad. I read that Marcus Garvey reacted to a white racist song of the time "Everybody Got a Flag Cept a Coon."
Garvey was inspired to give us the African Universal Flag: Red for the blood we've shed after 400 years of enslavement under chattel and wage slavery. Black for us as African and Aboriginal people), green for our land, Africa. I informed them we have the Black Arts Movement Business District in Oakland along the 14th Street corridor, from the lower bottom to Lake Merritt. FYI, as a result of BAR B Q BECKY, Oakland Blacks are still occupying Lake Merritt on Lakeshore Avenue on Sundays. Vendors are there with Black art and crafts. People enjoy the sun, Sundays. Come out and check out the people's revolution. Yet, after repeated requests and offer to pay the cost, Oakland will not fly the Red, Black and Green. So kudos to Hunters Point!
--------------------------------

San Francisco's Hunters Point enjoys
the wild crazy ride
of the Marvin X Experience

San Francisco's Hunters Point residents were overwhelmed by the Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience at a private house party. When Marvin X arrived to read, he noticed a senior woman reading intently his Mythology of Pussy. The party was for a friend's birthday, but when the friend spoke he said it was to celebrate Black people. It was the first time X heard his friend express Black/African consciousness. The friend had commissioned at artist to do a painting now hanging on his apartment wall. X didn't know his friend was into Black Art. X saw a little shrine to his friend's mother, with her coin-purse full of pennies. He told us his mother taught him to not beg for pennies but to be self sufficient.

X didn't know his friend hired musicians for the party. X asked the musicians if they would accompany his reading. They agreed but were slightly upset when X jokingly asked they not upstage him. They informed the poet they will be with him all the way and would not upstage him or drown him out as some musicians are known to do to vocalists and/or spoken word artists. The vocalist/guitarist and saxophonist/vocalist got the party started with Home Town Blues. Next tune The Sky is Crying "look at the tears roll down the street."

X grabbed the mike, told the musicians to accompany him with Home Town Blues. He read Parable of A Real Woman. The house of mostly women got silent. One sister was so fired up she joined X at the mike. He told her, "Don't mess with me while I'm reading." She eased her body off him and he continued reading. The party goers listened carefully to the Parable. When he finished to applause, one sister said, "Now, I don't know bout that Parable of a Real Woman. Seems like the woman did everything for free and gave him her money. I don't know about that." (See Parable of a Real Woman by Marvin X, The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Black Bird Press, Oakland CA.)

After hearing Parable of a Real Woman, the musicians were fired up. They told the audience X inspired them to perform another Marvin's classic What's Going On. The guitarist told the sax man to open up What's Going On with a solo, and he did a melodious rendition.

Marvin X couldn't help watching the woman reading his Mythology. When he saw she was at the end of the 18 page pamphlet that is biblotheraphy for those lacking manhood and womanhood training in the new post-patriarchal order, he asked her what she thought? She replied, "You say a lot of things I have thought about but I thought I was crazy to think some things you wrote. Now I don't feel crazy. I know I ain't crazy as you!"

After the host passed out free earrings by a local craft woman, X decided he would give out free literature to all present. Mythology was his choice. People made him autograph it. As it is much stolen, before he departed, a women told him her copy was missing and she needed another. She accompanied him to his car for another copy. X tells everyone, "Don't let your friends still it." Some people have come back three times because their Mythology disappeared. Some told him when they loaned Mythology to their friends, the friends said they were not going to return it.

A caterer was in the kitchen preparing the food. And the food was good Soulfood, except pork for me. A girlfriend told me, "You eat pussy, you might as well eat pork!" But there were Vegan dishes as well as chicken, beef salad, cobbler, cheese cake, shrimp pasta and more.

When the musicians asked if I was ready to do another number, I told them yes. I decided to read Parable of Woman on the Cell Phone. Since the scene is a funeral at which a sister is talking on her cell phone in her coffin, I requested some "Zion" music but the lead musician didn't get it, although the other musician did, as did a deacon seated next to me on the couch. I preceded my reading by apologizing to any religious persons in the audience, with my eyes on the deacon, although I think I demolished him with Parable of a Real Woman. After a few lines, the largely female audience went stone wild. I could hardly read the next line.

I finished and sat down next to the deacon. He had loosened up from his straight demeanor at the start of the party, especially after the caterer brought him some of her delicious food. They seemed to have a personal relationship. No matter, he asked my views on religion, something I suspected he would do.First he asked if I was a Mason. I said no. Then he wanted to know if I was in the Nation of Islam, which I told him I was, having joined Mosque #26, San Francisco, 1967. I told him I'd written a book Beyond Religion, Toward Spirituality. He wanted to know what I said in it. I told him I was going to read my Parable of the Heart, then said if it ain't in your heart, churches, mosques, temples don't matter. As he departed the couch, he nodded as if he understood the spirituality I laid on him.

And why should I doubt the deacon. Should I doubt him as I doubted the consciousness of the host?

--Marvin X
8/12/18
Hunters Point, San Francisco CA

Marvin X Notes on Oakland Black August Conference, 2018

BLACK AUGUST NATIONAL CONFERENCE, Oakland CA, 2018

Overview by Black August Organizing Committee

This Black August National Conference has been called for by various prison slavery abolitionist and youth developement activist under the unity and leadership of the founding elders of the Black August Organizing Committee.

The purpose of this Conference is to formulate legal services and litigation teams for at risk youth and longest held prisoners. Establish programs to provide housing and resource access training for homeless youth, adults and newly released citizens.

We will continue to try to stem the increasing flow of our youth to jails and prisons. The numbers of youth who are homeless or simply in the streets aimlessly can be drastically cut down with organized effort within our communities.

During the course of this Conference we will establish the necessary programs that will give us the greatest potential of achieving our goal.

This Conference will bring together in unity the working spirit of comrades of the Black August Commemoration prison movement from around the country to establish a set of tactics and strategies that will be used going forward in our collective and individual efforts to better serve our youth and to liberate our brothers, sisters, comrades, family and friends from the neo-slavery prison system.

The conference will extend into various annual Black August events scheduled in Oakland, Los Angeles and other areas around the country. There will be cultural performances, pilgrimage tours, dedications and tributes throughout the month. Events will be posted here soon.

There is no time like the present for this Black August National Conference to take place. If you or your organization have been in support of or hosted Black August Commemorations and programs in the past, you are invited and strongly encouraged to RSVP this conference by registering with the National Planning Committee here on this Eventbrite invitation as our special invited guest. Food and lodging information will be added to this invite as registration submissions are received. You can also reach us at banationalconference2018@gmail.com for additional info. Registration is strongly suggested but not required.

Hosted by Oakland BAOC.

"FOR SURE THE HOUR FOR WHICH WE YEARN
SHALL YET ARRIVE
AND OUR MARCHING STEP WILL THUNDER
WE SURVIVE"

Black August organizers and participants, left to right: Mama Efia Nwangaza, Human Rights Advocate, Greensville, SC,Shaka Al Thinin. Back left: Kumasi and Marvin X
photo Wanda Sabir, SF Bayview Newspaper

Marvin X Notes on the Oakland Black August Conference, 2018

Oakland's National Black August Conference on Incarceration was attended by a spirited group of people concerned about the millions of North American Africans in America's jails and prisons. Yes, America, home of the brave and land of the free. America, why then do you have more people in jail and prison than any nation in the world?

After Mama Ayanna's libation to the ancestors, organizer Shaka spoke on the origin of Black August as per prisoners and the community. Black August originated around the death of prison movement messiah George Jackson.

Hip Hop brother Naru was MC. Kumasi was the featured speaker. He is the griot of Black August, the undisputed historian and original source on the North American African created American Prison Movement. Life is a mother. Yesterday I was talking with a mutual friend of Kumasi's in Toronto, Canada. He told me the griot would be at Oakland's Black August. BAM! As I entered the event, there was Kumasi. We embraced and agreed to talk later.

Kumasi's lectures are a minute by minute narrative on how North American Africans navigated the American Gulags. In 1966 Black students from San Francisco State University as members of the editorial staff of Black Dialogue Magazine, were invited to the Soledad Prison Black Culture Club, chaired by Eldridge Cleaver and Alprintice Bunchy Carter. Kumasi says this Black Culture Club is the beginning of the Black Prison Movement and the American Prison Movement. As I observed and Kumasi has lectured, this club was a revolutionary military organization. Indeed, upon my visit as an editor of Black Dialogue Magazine, among several staffers who were also members of the BSU at San Francisco State University, the meeting was under military discipline.

At today's event, I asked MC Naru if I could introduce Kumasi since I deeply appreciated his role as Master Griot of Black August and the American Prison Movement. I gave Kumasi a short introduction and he took the mike, slowly weaving his story of Black August from beginning to the now.

He told how North American African Muslims had to fight to win the right to practice Islam in the jails and prisons of America, e.g., the fight to have Qur'ans, prayer rugs, imams, no pork diet. After long struggle legally and resistance within the walls to suppression of the Black identity. Kumasi told of the fight over hair styles that inmates demanded to express. Alas, only after a struggle were Black hair products allowed in the prison system.

Black August took upon itself the task of protecting Black inmates from predatory behavior by guards, white nationalists and black exploiters, those unconscious elements in the prison population.

Kumasi noted today as he has on other occasions, "It was kill or be killed, there was no other choice. You guys had your revolution on the outside, we had ours on the inside."

He said Black August let the Department of Corrections and they right wing white sycophants know, "For every one you take of us, we shall take three of yours!"

In conclusion, Kumasi called for support of the National Prison Strike on August 21, 2018. "Let
us never not connect with our brothers and sisters behind the walls."

"Malcolm X talked about the Ballot or the Bullet, well, the bullet didn't work so now we must make the ballot the bullet! Form Youth Political Organizations to get out the vote. It must not be about individual politicians but about policies in our Black Agenda. If the politicians don't do right, well...there shall be consequences!

Kumasi ended by introducing a Sister from the South Carolina Prison Movement. Sister informed us of conditions in the South Carolina slave holes, stripped suits, slave labor on the chain gang. South Carolina, Gullah Blacks, brought rice from Senegal, 60% kidnapped Africans arrived at South Carolina ports, Charleston, etc., 500 year old city of slavery and white supremacy domination.

Sister was Queen Mother of Rastas in South Carolina, former SNCC worker with Kwame Toure, Stokeley Carmichael, and H. Rap Brown, Imam Jamil Alamin.

She gave a graphic description of the recent explosion at a prison in South Carolina that left 12 inmates dead and others injured. She said the explosion was State sponsored. It wasn't about cell phones. She noted how when prison authorities recognize a natural leader, they ship him out to another facility as they did with a revolutionary brother. He departed with State troopers and a person from the Public Affairs Office. They wanted to be in charge of the narrative.

Sister said the fight for prisoner rights is a daunting task. We've fought to have African Liberation Day in prisons, Kwanza and other identifying markers of our humanity, especially while we are victims of involuntary servitude under the US Constitution.

I was asked to speak but introducing Kumasi was enough for me.
If I had seized the opportunity to speak, I would have said this:

Soldiers of the Black Liberation Army,

We have reached a critical hour in our struggle, we need a bold program to free our soldiers in captivity. I suggest we tell ole' pharaoh to let our people go. I would like to see Black August and the American Prison Movement endorse sending a delegation to President Donald Trump to kindly suggest he consider a general amnesty of political prisoners and the general population, including the violent criminals. After all, it is a sociological fact that violent criminals have the lowest rate of recidivism.

I suggest Black August issue a reply to my suggestion. No matter his right wing expressions, he pardoned Jack Johnson and a Black sister. Shouldn't any means necessary be made to free our people from the American Gulag?

We need a delegation to meet with President Donald Trump on the matter of a general amnesty for all prisoners. If you issue the statement that Black August would like to meet with President Trump on the matter of a general amnesty, I think I can make it happen, and I do not need to be in the delegation although I am willing and have no fear of dealing with Pharaoh to tell him to let our people go!

Peace and Love in Black Liberation,
Marvin X

Friday, August 10, 2018

From Crack Heads to Cell Phone Heads

They teach in Recovery that addiction is addiction is addiction. This is why I employ the harm reduction model in my own drug and alcohol addiction. Yes, I am still a dope fiend/alcoholic but I practice harm reduction, i.e., I pay my rent, wash my ass, clean my house (a little), communicate with my children and grandchildren, etc. I do revolutionary work, I write write write. If I die as a dope fiend/alcoholic, I don't mind joining my friends in Dope Fiend Heaven or Hell.Iin the words of our beloved Hillary Clinton, "What difference does it make?" In the words of Chris Rock, "Yeah, I said it, I said it!" Motherfuckas say I'm a crazy motherfucka and all my friends were crazy, i.e., Sun Ra, Amiri Baraka, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, et al. But what did the sane, sober motherfuckas do in the revolution? You got to be a crazy motherfucka to challenge the USA, US Army, Navy, Air Force,
Marines, National Guard, FBI, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, police, snitches and agents provocateurs. You got to be a crazy motherfucka not to care about death, prison, exile, house arrest and the plethora of amenities that await revolutionaries or anyone who challenges the capitalist system, the blood sucker of the poor, the exploiter of the 85% or 99% deaf, dumb and blind.

Sadly, Elijah was right when he said they are hard to lead in the right direction, easy to lead in the wrong direction. He said, "Why do we love the devil? Because he gives us nothing!" After 400 years in the Wilderness of North America, the socalled Negro don't want nothing but a job, the reason he was brought here in the first place, for free or nearly free labor, from chattel slavery to wage slavery. In 2018, he still lookin' for a job, good job. Give that nigga a good job and he will sell out his mama! Then when the boss fires his ass, he goes home and beats his woman. Yeah, she been by his side all the way, loving him, giving him babies, washing his dirty drawers, sucking and fucking him at his pleasure, but he wants to misplace his aggression upon her, not the white man who pimped his ass then gave his job to the white woman, or some gay, lesbian, transsexual or trysexual motherfucka and poor brother (and sister) thought they had a good job for life, thought they were part of the pimp's family. FYI, I ain't got nothing against nobody for their sexual life, but when brothers and sisters bring shit to me, I'm gonna tell it like it is. You can't fire me, don't care if you sell my books. I rather sell my books directly to the people. Fuck book stores, I rather give the people the 40% discount book stores charge. After my labor of writing, why do you deserve 40%, and wholesalers want 65 to 70%, then here come the tax man for his 10%, what the fuck!

I ain't trying to be nobody's leader, I don't want nobody to follow me around the block and I sure ain't following nobody around the block. As they say in prison and jail, ride yo own beef.
Let everybody be the leader, let everybody be the central command. When the US invaded Cambodia to destroy the Viet Cong Central Command, the Viet Cong said, "America cannot destroy the central command because we are all the central command!"

But as I recall my days as a Crack Head (documented in my play One Day in the Life, especially the scene made into a one act play by Ed Bullins and myself, Salaam, Huey Newton, Salaam), I recall running through the streets of San Francisco's Tenderloin and the Streets of West, North and East Oakland with Crack in my hand, rushing from the dope man to my house or hovel as it usually was, sometimes it was a TL alley or Hindu Hilton hotel room, SRO, dumps so dilapidated there was no locks on the doors, but one didn't care as long as one had a space to hit the pipe and go crazy.

But the Crack era has subsided or morphed into the Opioid zone as per chemical drugs. But, alas, there is now a drug more sinister and vile that all other drugs combined: the Cell Phone. Rather than addicts running through the streets with Crack in hand, we now see a global addiction to cell phone psychosis, yes, beyond a neurosis, yes, cell phone psychosis, a total break with reality in which the addict almost never removes the object of their addiction from their hand, literally, never: not while walking, talking to another human being, eating dinner, defecating, sexual intercourse, yes, the
entire daily round is consumed with cell phone in hand. Any any attempt to remove this vile object full of radiation may be the cause of cancer but most certainly the disconnection of human to human interaction in real time, I mean the touching, hugging, kissing, physical interaction between human beings. Lovers nor families can meet without this devil device in their midst.

The Cell Phone heads are thus addicts in a pandemic worse that all the world's chemical drugs combined. We cannot imagine the destruction this device is doing to socalled civilization. Yet, when used in the positive, most especially as a repository of knowledge and information, the cell phone is without peer, after all, it is a computer of the first order. And Becky will tell you any and everything you want and need to know, just Google her. But imagine, many have never Googled Becky, they spend their daily round stalking lovers and would be lovers with the mantra, "Where you at, where you at?" Sadly, the person asking probably doesn't know where he/she is at. Ask them, "Are you on the North East corner of Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive? After all, Dr. Frantz Fanon told us the oppressed man/woman is disoriented, he doesn't know where he is, and most especially who he/she is. Tell him, "You are a North American African." You are not a Continental African, European African, Caribbean African, Central and South American African. Becky will tell who you are.
And if you can't spell, she will say, "Did you mean....?"

Friday, March 12, 2010

Parable of the Cell Phone

Parable of the Cell Phone

We have come to the death of speech. The era of high spiritual consciousness shall make speech unnecessary because we shall be keen enough to read thoughts up close and from afar. We shall understand as we understood not so long ago the glance of an eye from mama when we were misbehaving. There was no mistaking what mama's eyes were saying to us: straighten up and fly right or face the consequences.

In the old days, lovers and friends of long time could communicate without speech: they could read each others minds. This is also true when those of high consciousness have met for a short time. It all has to do with the Oneness of being, the One Mind that propels the universe, the universe of thought and the resultant action.

Speech is thus a kind of laziness and redundancy since we already know what we are thinking. And how often have we called someone thousands of miles away to hear them say they were just thinking about us or they had just mentioned our name in conversation. Or, they knew we were sick or someone was dead.

So how strange it is that we think the cell phone is an invention of high technology when it is, in fact, already obsolete in the era of spiritual consciousness. Furthermore, 90% of phone conversations are of no importance whatsoever. It is similar to when man discovered the wheel, surely many wheels were rolled down the hill for fun and entertainment.

The cell phone is such a device, and has become dangerous to our health. The Los Angeles train wreak happened because the conductor was text messaging. So we have new technology taking us backward into danger and death, rather than forward into life more abundantly.

People are so overjoyed with the new technology they cannot eat without it, cannot have sex without their cell phone in hand. What is more important, reaching a climax or talking to another girlfriend or boyfriend or business partner? Not only should the cell phone be banned while driving, but while eating and making love. Unless you are President Obama, that shit you talking about ain't hardly important. Aristotle said long ago that there were very few things in life really important.

And the last thing a woman needed was a cell phone. After all, (as if the man doesn't do the same Goddamn thing) she walks talking, sits talking, sleeps talking, eats talking, screws talking, on the toilet talking, in the bathtub talking. She will be in her coffin talking on the cell phone.

Sister

Yeah, these nigguhs is here at my funeral. Yeah, that bitch is here. Now you know I don't like that bitch. I should get out this casket and beat her motherfuckin ass. How dare she come to my funeral after I caught her and my man fucking. They can fuck forever now cause I'm outta here.
Yeah, I'm gone baby girl. But did you hear that other bitch sing that song I don't like? Yeah, how dat hoe gon sing a song I don't even like at my funeral. I should get out this casket and whip her ass too.

These nigguhs is too much for me. I'm so glad I'm outta here. And my man sittin there cryin crocodile tears. You know he gonbe at one of his other bitches house tonight. She gon be feelin all sorry for him. I should send my spirit over her house and bust up they shit. Know what I mean. I should just command my spirit over her place and fuck it up.

Now bout this heaven shit, Girl. We go see when I get there. Better be some fine nigguhs up in heaven or I'm goin down to hell. I am not gonna be where no mud duck lookin nigguhs is. And I gotta be there for eternity. Hell to the naw. Cause I know I'm cute. Did you see what I had on at my wake last night. Yeah, was I cute, girlfriend? I told dem funeral people don't be makinme look like no damn ghost wit all dat gray ass makeup. Have me lookin cute leavin here.

Well, girl they bout to close the casket. I'm so sorry you couldn't make it but everybody got up and said they little piece. They didn't stop nobody from saying what they thought about me, but you know it was all lies. Nigguhs oughta stop lyin like that. Half them nigguhs hated my guts.
You shoulda seen that hoe came dressed like mother Hubbard, crying all over my casket, bout to knock me ova. I started to raise up and slap dat bitch, but I kept my cool. I just kept lookin up at the ceiling.

Girl you take care. I hope they got some damn cigarettes in heaven, and they better have some Hennessey, I swear, or I'm going straight to hell.
Let me get off dis phone. Later, girl.

It is a new addiction and thus detox and recovery are in order. Go sit somewhere and listen to the inner self, don't be afraid, let self talk with self! You do have a self, right?

Most importantly, the cell phone may be a danger to our health, causing brain damage from radiation. In Europe, pregnant women are banned from using the cell phone. And with the I-phone and U-phone, Black Berry and Red Berry, the multi-uses include greater radiation. So keep talking, Mr. and Mrs. Negro, African, Aboriginal.

But let's talk without talking. The time has arrived to use the mind God gave you, as my mother said to me so eloquently and repeatedly, although it took at least fifty years to sink in. May you rest in peace, Mom! If you don't use it, she said, you will lose it!

So let the Divine Mind flow through us and between us. Instead of medicating on drugs, why not use and exercise our minds to the highest level. Try the silent mode rather than the incessant talking loud but saying nothing as ancestor James Brown told us.

Sometimes talking is a way of avoiding the other person because they never get the chance to speak. And this is the intent of the person dominating the conversation. Thus, constant talking is a devious attempt to block truth. The truth is often in the silence, or what you don't say.

Now some of those who are unable to shut up suffer a nervous condition and are in need of therapy and medication. Silence is probably their best therapy and medication. For sure, there is an apparent disorder in the personality that is preventing them from reaching higher consciousness, i.e., to speak without speaking, to hear without listening, to see without looking.

By the way, I cut off my cell phone service. ESP me.

--Marvin X
Yuba City Jail
10/6/08

Revised 3/12/10

Monday, August 6, 2018

Notes on the Untold Story of the Black Student Revolution at San Francisco State University

Former San Francisco State College/University students and members of the NSA and BSU and community brothers, founders of Black Dialogue Magazine, a critical BAM journal: Aubrey LaBrie, Marvin X, Abdul Sabrey (Gerald LaBrie), Al Young; Arthur Sheridan, founding editor and Duke Williams.

Part One: The Visionary Students ine the Untold Story of the Black Student Revolution at San Francisco State University

--Marvin X

8/6/18

When we have been asked to recall the significance of our Black student revolution on campus and in the community, most of us had no idea what we were doing. Perhaps we were guided by the liberation energy in our DNA. For sure, many of us had no idea we were continuing the liberation struggle of those who came before. In our newfound white supremacy knowledge, we imagined we invented the wheel of Black liberation, after all, we morphed from Negro Students Association to the Black Student Union.

But how did we get from Negro to Black? Imagine, we members of the NSA fought the name change to BSU. I was there and even I may have put up some resistance to the name change, no matter I had just transferred from Oakland's Merritt College where I received a proper dose of Revolutionary Black Nationalism from Donald Warden's Afro-American Association and from peer group study with fellow students Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Ernie Allen, Richard Thorne, Ann Williams, Ken and Carol Freeman, Issac Moore, Maurice Dawson, et al. Peer Group study was our black studies. Then there was Rap sessions on the steps on Merritt College. Rapping meant extemporaneous speaking (free style) on political events, especially the national liberation of African states freeing themselves of colonialism, while we came to understand we were victims of domestic colonialism.

We studied E. Franklin Frazier's Black Bourgeoisie, Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth, the writings of Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela's writings and the Sharpesville Massacre. On the eve of Kenya's independence, we studied Jomo's Kenyatta's ethnography of his Kikuyu tribe, Facing Mount Kenya. AAA member wore sweatshirts with Kenyatta's picture.

Many of us Merritt students were unofficial followers of Malcolm X, especially after he addressed seven thousand students at UC Berkeley. I listened to him later that night at the NOI Mosque on 7th and Henry in West Oakland. Judy Juanita wrote a story about Black Nationalists at Merritt, featuring Isaac Moore and myself in the student newspaper.

Conscious parties was a most useful ritual in our revolution in consciousness at Merritt. A conscious party is when we gather for a social party but it is pre-planned that at a certain point the music stops, lights come on and we rapped on revolution, then we again played the music and turned down the lights. This was often repeated throughout the evening.

As revolutionary black nationalists, no white people were allowed, no matter than some brothers were with white women. Perhaps we were narrow minded nationalists when we refused to consider the plea from brothers with white women than their woman was black in consciousness, and she probably was, but this notion didn't work as the but erliberation movement morphed from integration to Black Power. When Eldridge and I founded the Black House Political and Cultural Center in San Francisco, 1967, and Mrs. Amina Baraka was there with Amiri who used Black House at their community headquarters (she was also pregnant at this time with their first child, Obalaji, she neveut r lets me forget how my partner and BAM comrade, Ethna X. Wyatt, aka Hurriyah Asar, told a woman at the door who said she was Native American and white, "The Native American can come in but the white got to go!"

Merritt students connected with RAM, the Revolutionary Action Movement, headed by Robert F. Williams, (Negroes With Guns) and Max Stanford to produce SoulBook, the revolutionary black nationalist magazine, featuring the early writings of Grace and James Boggs, Little Willie of South Africa, Askia Toure, Ken and Carol Freeman, LeRoi Jones, aka Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Marvin X, et al. Soulbook was a critical publication of the BAM/BLM.

FYI, the Oakland Afro American Association's Los Angeles representative was Maulana Ron Karenga. Did Kwanza originate in Oakland. Ask AAA member Ed Howard.

As per Marvin X (Jackmon) and the West Coast Black Arts Movement, his first writings were published in the Merritt College Student Magazine and later Soulbook Magazine. Creative Writing instructor Adam Miller had the dramatic troupe Aldridge Players West before Black Arts West was founded by Ed Bullins and myself, San Francisco, 1966, Fillmore Street.

In short, the AAA had created a well of Black consciousness in the Bay, not to neglect Oakland was the end of the line for Amtrak, including the West Coast headquarters of the Pullman Porters Union, the first Black union in America, with C.L. Dellums, uncle of recently deceased US Congressman and Mayor of Oakland, Ronald V. Dellums (RIP). Most importantly, Oakland's Seventh Street and San Francisco's Fillmore were the cultural and economic Harlem of the West!

Sweet sweet codeine: Nigeria's cough syrup crisis - BBC Africa Eye docum...

Sunday, August 5, 2018

Marvin X Notes on the Untold Story of the Black Student Revolution at San Francisco State University, 1968 b

Notes: Revolution, Youth, Old Age, Sickness and Death at San Francisco State University

Black Students at San Francisco State University ignited the longest and most violent student rebellion in American Academic History, 1968, in their struggle to establish Black and Ethnic Studies, joined by Third World peoples. Howard University Sociology Professor Dr. Nathan Hare was recruited for Chair of Black Studies at SF State College/now University, but he was rejected by the administration that had no desire to establish Black and Ethnic Studies at SFSC/U. Another critical issue was BSU/Black Panther Minister of Education, George Murray. "They" wanted him removed as lecturer in the English Department.

In 1968 I was underground in Harlem, NY, after I refused to fight in Vietnam. I dropped out of SFSC/U a short time the SFC/U Drama Department produced my first play, Flowers for the Trashman, at the suggestion of my English Professor, Medievalist, John Gardner. After the Drama Department’s production, an honor for an undergraduate, I dropped out of college to establish my own theatre in the Fillmore, across from Tree’s Pool Hall as described in Bernard’s narrative. Bernard mentions Leonard’s Bar B Que, Sun Reporter Newspaper, Half Note Club on Divisadero, Bunny Simon’s Play Pen and the jazz venue The Both/And.

Bunny Simon gave Black Dialogue Magazine his venue for a writer’s conference. If my memory is correct, cerca 1966, we performed my second play Come Next Summer, starring Bobby Seale as a young revolutionary trying to find himself. A white Communist, Saul Einstein, was trying to recruit the young black revolutionary. Soon after Bancobby Seale and Huey P. Newton founded the Black Panther Party.

This is why I say the Black Arts Movement was not the sister but the mother of the Black Arts Movement.

When LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka came to SFC/U with his Communications Project that included plays, poetry and a film Black Spring, now lost, it advanced the radical consciousness of BSU students and others. After George Murray performed the Preacher in Ben Caldwell’s The First Militant Preacher, he was never the same, he thereafter donned the persona of the revolutionary and was soon appointed Black Panther Party Minister of Education, as well as a member of the BSU Central Committee.

George Murray

and I were undergrads at SFSC/U. He was a conservative poet from the Church of God in Christ, a church in East Oakland founded by his father. Knowing George as an undergrad, I would have never suspected he would become Minister of Education of the Black Panther Party. Yet my deepest suspicions told me George was revolutionized when he performed in LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka's SFSU Communications Project, 1967.

Contrary to Larry Neal's classic essay on the Black Arts Movement, in which vhe asserted, "The Black Arts Movement is the sister of the Black Power Movement

8/4/18 Marvin X Notes on the Untold Story of the Black Student Revolution at SFSU, 1968

How ironic to sit reading the life stories of my comrades in the Black Student Revolution at San Francisco State University, then stopping to call one of the student warriors, Judge George Colbert, in his hospital bed, with another warrior at his side, Terry Collins.

Last night I was in San Francisco at the home of Drs. Julia and Nathan Hare. Julia was asleep. Dr. Hare was editing my next book Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X, Introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare.

I am relieved he agreed to edit the manuscript, he has allowed me to get into my top priority project: The Untold Story of the Black Student Revolution at San Francisco State University.

As I perused the life stories of BSU and Strike leaders, given to me by BSU strike leader Bernard Stringer , I thought about the fact that their narratives fit perfectly into the central theme of North American African Literature and liberation struggle: How I Got Ova', i.e., how I survived the American genocide of North American Africans.

The early life of fellow students Bernard Stringer and Sharon Treskanoff (just for starters in my perusal) was depressing enough in the delineation of their comic-tragedy ( see Diop, Cultural Unity of Africa) of North American African students, not to think of my own narrative Somethin' Proper, Autobiography of a North American African Poet, Introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare), Black Bird Press, 1998. Sharon Treskanoff's story is a plethora of what North American Africans endure in these hells of North America. An old North American African is reported to have said, "Being Black ain't so bad, it's just inconvenient!" To escape this pervasive inconvenience, my daughter, Muhammida El Muhajir, has returned to our Motherland, Africa, now residing in Accra, Ghana, along with 5,000 North American Africans in Accra, Ghana. My daughter told Al Jazeera, "...Ghana may not have electricity 24/7, but they don't have white supremacy 24/7.... When I visit expensive stores, restaurants and hotels, nobody follows me around. Police do not kill people for no reason!...."

Muhammida as child of conscious parents (her mother Nisa Ra, was part of the Third World Student Revolution at UC Berkeley when she met Marvin X, Lecturer in Black Studies, 1972. When Muhammida produced her inter-generational discussions in Brooklyn, NY and Philadelphia entitled Black Power Babies, and after reading the narratives of Bernard Stringer and Sharon Truskenoff, we must not submit to the reactionary narrative our liberation struggle was a failure, although the Black Liberation Army, coast to coast, suffered a military defeat by the overwhelming forces of the USA oppressor. But we have brainwashed our conscious children to continue the revolution until victory.

Sharon's narrative was full of joy and pain, Texas, San Francisco Hunters Point paid. As per Bernard Stringer's childhood joy and pain, I know well because his father operated a grocery store in Fresno at Dunn and Thorne Streets. My grandmother lived on Dunn, across the street in the projects so I grew up in Mr. Stringer's store, a tall black man who spoke with authority. I don't think anyone ever robbed Mr. Stringer's store. I think Bernard concurred.

Sharon came from conscious parents in an interracial family, they were progressive and aggressive social activists.

What we see here is the story of generations of freedom fighters. The BSU students did not jump out of the box. First came the Negro Students Association. So we evolve, struggle and pass the baton to our children. Don't think they don't know what to do, alas, freedom is in their DNA!

Shortly before he joined the ancestors, Amiri Baraka was asked after his reading at UC Berkeley, "Mr. Baraka, what was your greatest achievement?"

He said, "I survived!"

So as I continue reading the SFSU BSU student narratives, I am honored to be in the number! Dr.y Nathan said we were the very best of our generation, who did all we could for our community, and I must add sometimes to the neglect our our families. But in Muhammida's Black Power Babies, our children said they appreciated us as conscious parents, even though we forced them to wear African garb and did not allow them to celebrate Xmas, Easter, 4th of July and other white supremacy myths and rituals.

We appreciate so much the griot Phavia Kujichagulia when she spoke on the inter-generational discussion at Laney College at the 50th Anniversary of the Black Arts Movement, "Yes, I brainwashed my daughter, washed all the white supremacy out of her brain. There is a pic of Kujichagulia in awe of her daughter speaking.

In summary as we imagine a conclusion to this Untold Story, the beat goes on and on and on. We were students who once thought we knew everything but found out we didn't know shit except white supremacy mythology and rituals. But in the Sixties, we know North American African students, at San Francisco State University, but also coast to coast, Columbia University, Cornell U., Howard U., South Carolina State, Orangeburg, SA. The Freedom Riders, students who sat-in, who worked in SNCC for voter registration in the murderous dirty south. Students who called for Black Power! Students who challenged the very ideology of Civil Rights. Malcolm X helped clarified our struggle was about Human Rights.

At San Francisco State College/University, we, North American African students, were slow to realize we were entitled to parity as per Associated Student funds. This sparked a revolution in our human rights consciousness.er

If I may speak on behalf of my comrades in the NSA and BSU, we give praise to our ancestors, elders and all those who assisted our liberation for human rights, especially at SFSU. As Bernard Stringer stressed in his narrative, we thank the white and black community who sometimes gave us scholarship money, yes, mothers in the hood who were inspired we was seeking a college education, white people who saw we were sincere and helped us with employment, housing and food. We thank them as we proceed with The Untold Story of the Black Student Revolution at San Francisco State University, a work in progress.