Breaking News
On the Life and Times of
Marvin X
indefatigable and peripatetic poet/planner/organizer/philosopher
"Marvin X is Socrates teaching in the African hood."--Dr. Cornel West
"He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland. Don't spend all that money going to seminars and workshops on motivation and inspiration, just go stand at 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland, and watch Marvin X at work!"
--Ishmael Reed, MacArthur Genius Awardee
"He's the USA's Rumi, Hafiz, Saadi!"
--Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club
"His poetry is orgasmic!"
--Fahizah Alim, Editor Emeritus, Sacramento Bee
"His reading put me in a swoon!"
--devorah major, Emeritus Poet Laureate of San Francisco
photo Adam Turner
The indefatigable and peripatetic poet/planner just received a $100,000 grant to organize a Black Vendors Association in Oakland. The project will be directed by James Copes, organizer of the Lake Merritt vendors. "With the limited funds of this grant, I will support James Copes organize Black vendors. I was impressed when the 30,000 mostly Latinx street vendors in Los Angeles got organized to advocate Gov. Jerry Brown to approve SB946 that allows street vending throughout California without police harassment, seizure of goods, excessive fines or requests for immigration papers. The mission of my proposal includes educating Black vendors to advocate for policy changes as per our cultural prerogatives and economic equity. For years whites and other ethnic groups have been vending on the streets of San Francisco and Berkeley, but Blacks in Oakland were denied vending rights. In San Francisco, I organized the first Black vendors on the streets legally with my non-profit papers. Soon I had over fifty white vendors paying to work under my non-profit papers, including white vendors in the lucrative Union Square shopping district. The San Francisco police turned beet red when the white vendors showed them they were working under a Black organization's papers.
You may think I'm guilty of hyperbole but the San Francisco said I had too much power for a nigger in downtown San Francisco. Between the SFPD and the Franchise Tax Board, I was harassed daily under the color of law. Lawrence Wilson, Chief Attorney for the SFPD told me and Sister Hurriyah Asar, founder of the non-profit organization I incorporated, "If you beat us in court, I'll go to the Board of Supervisors and change the rules." And he did, as whites always do when you master their game. In the hood we call it dirty pool! But, as you know, whites don't believe what goes around comes around, that's why they are so averse to Critical Race Theory. They don't like to be called devils, and especially don't want their children to be called such. Alas, how many centuries were we described as savages, primitives, monkeys, subhuman, beasts, by, yes, their scientists, yes, we were scientifically classified as a lower form of human life, but human enough to be experimented upon to establish the science of gynecology. Then came Eugenics, before and after Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood to murder black babies, and, Hitler learned from Margaret how to exterminate the Jews (Ah, irony of ironies, the Jews learned how to exterminate Palestinians, how to ethnically cleanse the occupied lands of Palestine, with the poppycock of Biblical scriptures to legitimize their Zionist mythology, although Jesus dismissed the Jews in John 8:44.
The parents of Bill Gates were Eugenicists , then Bill Gates and Belinda followed the family tradition, funding virus research in America that was clearly population control.
Bill funded germ warfare research in America, then exported it to Hunan, China, naturally in league with the Chinese Communist Party and military, and the plethora of American corporations who are in league with the Chinese for exporting cheap goods from slave labor, including Muslim Chinese slaves in concentration camps, but such goods are a boon to the globalist economy. Even black athletes and rappers defend the exploitation of cheap Chinese and Asian labor (North Korea) and elsewhere. If China is America's avowed enemy, why is she importing 80% of her medicine from China? Would you purchase medicine from you enemy? Well, Blacks in America go to white supremacist hospitals and doctors, then wonder why we are chopped up and die from merely having a common cold that was misdiagnosed on purpose. For that matter, we send our children to be educated in white supremacist schools, colleges and universities, then, as Ancestor Amiri Baraka exclaimed, "We wonder why our children come home from colleges and universities hating everything we're about, except they don't have a clue what we're about!"
Visions Magazine, a publication of the Berkeley Juneteenth Foundation, will feature an essay by the poet on Berkeley High Schools and How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy Types I and II, co-author is Abdul El, a Berkeley High School math teacher.
Oakland's BAMFEST 21
For BAMFEST 21 the poet's Black Bird Press News and Review Magazine, online and print versions, will feature Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, recently appointed Oakland's Poet Laureate. She is the founder of the Lower Bottom Playaz theatre company, founder of The Black Arts Movement Business District CDC and producer of BAMFEST, a celebration of the cultural district established by the Oakland City Council, January 19, 2016.
Ayo is Marvin X's star student after taking his theatre class at Laney College, 1981. She has performed and directed his plays, including In the Name of Love, One Day in the Life and Flowers for the Trashman.
Bio of Master Teacher Marvin X
Marvin is a Co-founder of Oakland's Black Arts Movement Business District. He is also Co-founder of the National Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, the most radical artistic and literary movement in American history. "The grouping of Playwright Ed Bullins, Journal of Black Poetry Editor, Dingane Joe Goncalves, Poet Amiri Baraka, aka, LeRoi Jones, Poet Sonia Sanchez, Poet Askia M. Touré, and Poet/playwright Marvin X became a major nucleus of Black Arts Movement leadership."--Kalaamu ya Salaam, Dirty South Black Arts Movement, author The Majic of JuJu
Cont., Critic James G. Spady
The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience
During BAMFEST, Black August, 2021, Marvin X will screen segments of his Black Arts Movement documentary The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience, produced and directed by Marvin X, Edited by Ken Johnson. FYI, the title comes from the description of a writing student who endured the poet for over five years. She described the mentorship of Marvin X as "The wild crazy ride of the Marvin X Experience." Her mentor says, "Thank you Aries Jordan, but most of all, you learned something which was your mission. Alas, did you learn as much at Mills College where you obtained your MFA? FYI, I taught at Mills in the Upward Bound Program. When the US Government who funds Upward Bound demanded the director, Connie Wye, close down my student production based on my book Woman-Man's Best Friend, Connie refused because she saw the students were inspired and motivated by my script. The USA pressured Connie until she suffered an aneurysm and died in the hospital. We wonder did Aries get a similar wild crazy ride at Mills? As you know, Mills is scheduled to close, although we hear Northeastern University has agreed to partner with Mills to keep it afloat.
A poet's history of the Black Arts Movement
Written, Directed and Performed by Marvin X
Edited by Ken Johnson
The following appear in this national history of the Black Arts Movement
Especially the role of Bay Area Artists associated with the productions of Marvin X
Coast to Coast
Artists include the following
Amiri Baraka, Amina Baraka, Askia Toure, Dr. Cornel West, Tarika Lewis, Destiny Muhammad, Suzzette Celeste, Raynetta Rayzetta, Geoffery Grier, Salat Townsend, James W. Sweeney, Phavia Kujichagulia, Nefertiti Jackmon, Naji, Tacuma King, Kele Nitoto, Fillmore Slim, Ayodele Nzinga, Cat Brooks, James Rhodes, Dr. Nathan Hare, Dr. Julia Hare, Ishmael Reed, Rev. Andriette Earl, Rev. Cecil Williams, Elliott Bey, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Elombe Brath, Sam Anderson, Sonia Sanchez, Omowale Clay, Muhammida El Muhajir, et al.
Marvin X returned to his former classroom at Laney College, The Odell Johnson Theatre. He opened for Donald Lacy's play Color Struck
photo Alicia Mayo
Left to Right: Marvin X, Black Panther Party Minister of Culture Emory Douglas,
Comic/playwright Donald Lacy, Attorney John Burris
Breaking News
Catch Donald Lacy interview with Marvin X on KPOO Radio, San Francisco,
Tuesday, June 29, 2021,
5PM
KPOO, San Francisco's Independent Black Radio Station
The House Joe Rudolph built
"Joe Rudolph taught me how to talk on the radio. He made me do 100 takes until I got it right to his satisfaction. Thank you, Joe, I know you are in revolutionary black radio history. I must recall for readers our last conversation at Oakland's Mosswood Park. Joe leaned against a tree and called me over, then whispered in my ear, 'Marvin, ain't gonna be no more like us is it? I whispered back, 'No, Joe, ain't gonna be no more like us. We the last of a generation of revolutionaries. All praise is due Joe Rudolph and all the brothers and sisters who've kept KPOO alive. Terry Collins, JJ, Donald Lacy, Avotchja, et al."
Ayo is Marvin X's star student after taking his theatre class at Laney College, 1981. She has performed and directed his plays, including In the Name of Love, One Day in the Life and Flowers for the Trashman.
A few books by Marvin X. One of the most prolific writers in the world, the Last Poets say, "Marvin X writes a book a month. After a reading and conversation with Amiri Baraka at the Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Marvin arrived in Houston, TX, at the home of his oldest daughter Nefertiti. After a dinner conversation about Eldridge Cleaver, Marvin wrote his memoir of Eldridge, My Friend the Devil, posting a chapter daily on the internet, Chickenbones.com. The rough draft is still there, written in about 30 days.
