Sunday, September 12, 2021

We Demand our own Security for Black Vendors at Lake Merritt


Black Vendor Association Planner/Organizer Marvin X met With Security Consultant Abdullah and Lake Merritt Bean Pie Vendor Clayton

  • The Juneteenth homicide at Lake Merritt has prompted Black Vendor Association planner/organizer Marvin X to enlist a security team for the Black vendors at Lake Merritt. "The female vendors feel very insecure after the incident. We must secure the vendors, especially the women. We understand the homicide could have been prevented by a security team since an argument between the persons involved had been going on for some time but escalated to violence since there was no intervention. 

    Marvin X invited his long time friend, Abdullah, aka Hillary X., to Oakland for advice as per security for the Lake Merritt Vendors. Brother Abdullah is a veteran security professional. He was a bodyguard for Attorney Johnny Cochran during the O.J. Simpson murder trial, also worked as a bodyguard for Heavyweight Champion Mike Tyson, and Nation of Islam Minister Farrakhan. Abdullah drove up from Los Angeles to check out the situation at Lake Merritt. We will consider his advice and prepare a proposal for a grant for security in the range of $100,000 annually (five year grant to ensure security and stability; to employ four part-time security persons, two males and two females @ $25.00 per hour X 4 hours. eight days per month. 

    Security is an emergency. Human beings deserve to feel secure. The first duty of a nation is national security. The first duty of a community is communal security. The first duty of a family is security of wife, husband and children.

    We call upon foundations and corporations to award us emergency  funds to provide immediate and longterm security to the Black Vendors Association, specifically the Lake Merritt Vendors under Director James Copes, founder of the Black International Marketplace of Oakland. 

    We thank the Silicon Valley Community Foundation for their generous grant to help us establish the Black Vendors Association. The award has allowed us to support Mr. James Copes and the Black International Marketplace of Oakland. 

    We featured the Black International Marketplace of Oakland in Black Street Magazine, official publication of the Black Vendors Association. See cover attached.

    Please consider making a generous donation to the Black Vendors Association, c/o Berkeley Juneteenth Association, Inc. You donation can be tax deductible. 


Saturday, September 11, 2021

Love Notes for Jerry Vernado, San Francisco State University Strike Leader

 

Jerry Varnado RIP

 San Francisco State University BSU Strike leaders Jerry Vernardo and Jimmy Garrett



In my early days at San Francisco State University, even after I joined the Negro Students Association, there were some Negro students were more blue than black. I wondered about those students who didn't come to the NSA especially during the fight to morph into the BSU. Even myself had doubts about the change to BSU, so how could I decry the Frat brothers and sisters playing Whist in the cafeteria bid nigga, bid, you black radicals shut the fuk up. Then the revolution came, from Negro to Black. The BSU took over from Negro Students Association, we submitted to Black. Even the Frat boys submitted, Jerry Vernado among the crew of frat boys and sorority girls who flipped into blackness and were true. Even Danny Glover was into drama but flipped to join Black Arts West Theatre in the Fillmore, my theatre with playwright Ed Bullins, Hillery Broadous, Duncan Barber, Ethna Wyatt, Carl Bossiere to name a few. We can't leave out the musicians who taught us ritual theatre like Rafael Donald Garrett, Monte Waters, Earle Davis, Oliver Johnson, Dewey Redmon, to name a few. 


But back to Jerry Vernardo and the BSU, inspired by the need for social justice he joined the BSU,joined the student revolution true and true. We remember Jerry, Danny, Benny, Terry, Jimmy, Maryanna, Abdul Sabri, Aubrey, JoAnn Mitchell, Ellendar Barnes, Judy Juanita, to name a few.

Jerry became a leader of the strike, suffered jail time as sacrifice. Learned he was from Mississippi, family tradition of civil struggle for civil rights.

But most of all I remember Jerry because he honored me. He said my poem Burn Baby Burn on the Watts rebellion of 1965 was the best poem could ever be. Other said the same that Burn Baby Burn ignited the 60s revolution. Jerry and others said, including Mrs. Amina Baraka, said Burn Baby Burn was the best poem for all times. In honor of Jerry I will read it to honor him.

I must tell the story of his legal advice. When I completed my autobiography Somethin' Proper, Black Bird Press, 1998, I asked Jerry for legal advice. I said Jerry read it for slander and libel. But Jerry first define libel to me. Jerry said libel is simply anything that is not true. So he read my manuscript and got back to me. He said Marvin you got to take out something that is not true. I said what Jerry. He said you quote Dessie X who said "Huey Newton's brother Melvin did not come from the same womb as Huey. You quoted Dessie X as saying Melvin Newton came from a baboon's asshole. Marvin, you got to take that out because it is not a true statement." And so I did.

I love you Jerry, you were a classic Black Man, a warrior true and true. 
Let me end with the poem Jerry praised me to no end.

Burn, Baby, Burn

Tired.
Sick an' tired
Tired of being
sick an' tired.


ST-race1408056001.jpg

Lost.
Lost in the wilderness
of white america
are the masses asses?
cool.


said the master to the slave,
"No problem, don't rob an' steal,
I'll be your drivin wheel."


Watts riot, 1965
Cool.
And he wheeled us into 350 years
of black madness

1965 Watts riots photo gallery

to hog guts, conked hair, covadis
bleaching cream and uncle thomas
to Watts.
To the streets.
To the kill.
Boommm...2 honkeys gone.

Motherfuck the police
Parker's sista too.
Black people.
Tired.
sick an' tired.
tired of being
sick an' tired.
Burn, baby burn...
Don't leave dem boss rags
C'mon, child, don't mind da tags.
Git all dat motherfuckin pluck,
Git dem guns too, we 'on't give a fuck!
Burn baby burn
Cook outta sight

watts riots, watts riot, 1965 watts riots

Fineburgs
whitefront
wineburgs
blackfront
burn, baby, burn
in time
he
will learn.

--Marvin X (Jackmon)
1965
from Soulbook Magazine, Fall, 1965


--El Muhajir/Marvin X
9/11/21

Friday, September 10, 2021

The Black Arts Movement Theatre and Marvin X's Moby Dick, Nadar Ali, and 9/11/1973

 


Marvin X and his "fish" Nadar Ali, Director of Imports for the Nation of Islam.

"When Marvin X recruited me into the Nation of Islam, he changed my whole life and that of my family.
The Muslims wanted me because I was an educator, the first black teacher at a high school on the white side of town in Fresno.  Because Marvin 'fished me' into the NOI, I was able to travel the world doing business for the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad."

On 9/11/1973, Nadar Ali was on the balcony of his hotel room near the presidential palace when the coup went down in Chile, directed by the USAs Kissinger, Inc. President Allende was removed and the brutal regime of General Pinochet was installed, leading to the murder of thousands and the disappearance of untold numbers of people.

Although in shock, Nadar continued to Peru to sign a contract to Import Whiting fish for the NOI.

FYI, Nadar wasn't the only "fish" Marvin X caught for the NOI. Marcel was the biggest pimp in Fresno and was a friend of Marvin's. In the late 60s Marvin came to Fresno and produced Dutchman by LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka. In the Black Arts Theatre, in contrast to the minstrel tradition of whites in black face, BAM actors donned white makeup to portray white characters, so Lula, the white woman in Dutchman, was portrayed by Marvin's partner and co-founder of Black Arts West Theatre, San Francisco, Ethna X, aka Hurriyah Asar. But Marvin needed a wig for Ethna so he asked Marcel if he could borrow one of his white ho's wigs. Marcel said yes as long as he would return it. Marcel made the great mistake of attending the production at Fresno State University or nearby. FYI, Nadar Ali was in the production as a passenger on the subway. When Marcel saw the Lula stab the black man, Clay, it flipped his good pimping mind. He told Marvin later, "Man, when that white woman stabbed that nigga, I thought about myself being in a motel room with one of my white ho's and she stabbed me. Who could I call? If I called the police, they would say, 'Nigga, let me speak to the ho and tell the ho to push the knife in further!' And I couldn't call my people because they didn't give a fuck about me pimping white ho's, and definitely not black ho's. So who could I call? Nobody!" 

FYI, Marcel threw in his pimping towel and joined the Nation of Islam, eventually made his hajj to Mecca and became an imam. RIP. Allahu Akhbar! 


Left to Right: Nisa Ra, former wife of Marvin X and mother of their daughter Muhammida El Muhajir; Sister Zoharah and Ethna X, aka Hurriyah Asar, former partner of Marvin X and Cofounder of Black Arts West Theatre, San Francisco, 1966.

Don't tell me about the power of the revolutionary Black Arts Theatre. If a motherfucka ain't running out your theatre butt naked, you doing some weak ass punk bitch shit! You better ax somebody. If them black bourgeoisie niggas is sittin' there with their suits and ties still on at the end of the play, your shit wasn't shit but some Miller Lite white folks pleasin' bullshit. Alas, it might be dog shit. They say the more you try to clean dog shit the more it stinks!
--El Muhajir/Marvin X
9/10/21





Black Street Magazine, Voice of Black Street Vendors in the Bay, A Quarterly, Summer/Fall 2021

























 

Saturday, September 4, 2021

Miles Davis - Time After Time (Live 1985)



Time after time
you fk my mind
flip flop
flip top box
come on baby
genius mind baby
don't drive me crazy

Nur is my Queen
no other will suffice
Nur quiets my soul
No other so bold
you know I'm wild man
catch me if you can
Nur got me like no other Queen can do
She is silent but reads me through n through
I would love to know more about this Queen
but I am King of this realm
She is Queen of this hour
Exercise your power Queen Nur
Angels give you this hour
Accept your King
Love him
Celebrate this is the
Queen and King hour
He may depart from you in the hour
Give him all your love
He knows life is momentary

Only one thing you need to know
Marvin X loves you
and he will let you know
you are precious to him
there's nobody closer
don't you know.
---Marvin X
9/4/21

Thursday, September 2, 2021

Alternative Facts


 Alternative Facts


There's facts
alternative facts
you can't see smell touch feel
like wind fact
u ever c wind
but that's a fact
there's votes you count
votes you can't
ghost votes
Stalin said don't matter who vote
who count votes is fact
beyond computer facts
beyond negroes standing in line facts
repeating constitution backwards facts
lynching facts prove some christians ain't christians
strange fruit facts Jesus wouldn't do
white folks lie facts
never tell truth facts
never put down butcher knives 
never turn into Buddha head facts
facts on ground Afghanistan
Vietnam facts whitey got his ass 
whupped 
Facts USSR won WWII not USA facts
How many soldiers USSR sacrifice WWII
gimme facts
Critical Race Theory ain't facts
Is White Supremacist American history facts
Whose facts
Mao said God is Chinese people
White people say white people God
We say God is Black in fact
Fact 9/11 inside job
Bush/House of Saud facts
Iraq no 9/11 facts
Nobody in Iraq do 9/11 fact
Saddam no nuclear weapons fact
Colin Powell lying motherfucker fact
9/11 Nine men from house of saud fact
yo facts my facts
some facts ain't facts
words don't make facts
tv facts ain't facts
FB facts ain't facts
Twitter Instagram ain't facts
CIA FBI Homeland Security facts
deep state facts ain't miller lite facts
what you believe ain't facts
what you think
what you feel
what yo psycho mind imagines
a fool imagines
a liar murderer thief
thief didn't rob woman
woman robbed him
gave him her purse
he just asked 4 dime
dime robbery fact
nigga do 25 2 life asking white woman 4 dime
dat's a fact
better ax somebody
Dr. Nathan Hare teach Fictive Theory
Everything whitey say is lie
until proven 
to be
Fact!
Al Qur'an say 
Lakum dinu kum
waliya din
To you your facts
To me mine.
Yeah 2X3=4
Dr. West say black minutes
ain't 60 seconds
black minutes I stop preaching directly
ask Granny bout directly
Boy amma beat yo ass directly!
and that's fact
Granny's backhand slap
fact
fact check smart ass.

--Marvin X
9/2/21

Friday, August 27, 2021

Egyptsia Featured Vendor in Black Street Magazine, the voice of Black Street Vendors, Black Bird Press Publication, Published/Edited by Marvin X

Egyptsia 

Featured Vendor in Black Street Magazine, Voice of Black Street Vendors, Black Bird Press Publication, Published/Edited by Marvin X 

Release date mid-September 2021

Submissions

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mxjackmon@gmail.com




Egyptsia

photo Jim Dennis

Wednesday, August 25, 2021

BAM without Jazz/Black Classical Music ain't Revolutionary Jazz, Conscious Rap can be revolutionary, Pussy and Dick rap, Gangsta rap nada

 


Don't Fuck with the Gemini Twins, Marvin X and Sun Ra

And if you can't comprehend Marvin X and Sun Ra, don't claim to understand the 

Black Arts Movement

Don't come at me with some weak ass revisionist shit about 

a Neo-Black Arts Movement

bout rap is classical

rap a child of jazz

conscious rap only

revolutionary

not pussy and dick rap

jewish rap steal black conscious rap dreams

jewish rap producers pussy and dick schemes

jewish rap producers like yellow girls video ho's

black girls no chance

yellow girls asians miss ann the plan

peckerwood white/black nigga pickerwood same

pimping blackness same

afrofuturism exhibit same

miller like my woman say

and she got my brain

Afrofuturism exhibit Miller lite she say

don't let me talk

I say same

don't curate no black shit

you go insane

think you know what you know

but don't know shit in yo white brain

you try to be honest true

but the black heart escapes you

the black heart you'll never know

you not evil

just down't know

how to pick cotton how it grow

was you in the cotton field miss ann

did that cotton prick your hands fingers

did you pick the hunid pounds

yo master told you so

can't see ta can't see

did you git yo hunid off da row

is you tired bitch miss ann

did you pick all that cotton on last row

did you weigh yo sack

was it full of dirt

did the contractor whip yo ass

fakin da funk

miss ann what you know

get yo ass out da cotton field bitch

tell yo daddy to kiss my ass

I'm robbin' da contractor today

fuck hunid pounds

me and my boys goin ta town

movie with the girls

buttered popcorn

finger fuck her same hand

til movie say THE END

popcorn gone

pussy dry

baby say bye bye.

Imagine life a movie

soon come The End

lights come on

white man killing Indians gone

you cheered for white man killing Indians

Yo grandmama Cherokeee

had long straight hair

but yo stupid mind make you cheer for white man

You so sick don't deserve no land

Let the white man pimp yo ass another hunid years

take all his virus vaccines 

take booster shots of his toxic white supremacy dreams

inject yourself like Tuskegee 

wonder why whitey didn't tell you it was all a lie.

you so stupid motherfucka

every lie whitey tell you you suck it in by and by

for chicken wing or leg

you so glued to whitey ass

you can't wait to get the pass

eat shitty food at his restaurant

Martin Luther King, Jr. told you where to eat

where to sit on the KKK toilet seat

Sunday brunch

fancy hat women sip fake drinks

praise Jesus

but black man they fuss

single women with everything

cept black dick

make 'em sing

thank you Jesus

their voices ring

chorus of love

when black man ring their bell

deliver them from hell

plastic dicks only work so well

Sunday brunch

church hats

no black man

oh well.

--Marvin X

8/25/21


minus Jazz/Black Classical music

kiss my ass

Ain't no BAM without Jazz

kiss my ass

you fakin' da funk

get da fk up outta here

my dear

you live in fear

BAM was straight revolution

we don't kiss no politician's ass

they give you but it don't last

new regime

new machine

cut yo funds

 so keep it clean

no politician kill BAM dream

New York cut Black arts funds

saw BAM no fun

poetry plays music of revolution

politicians play along

then cut funds

Baraka went home to Newark

Met Amina black as night

grew up on Howard Street

worst street in Newark

Ben Caldwell turned her on to Baraka

Sylvia was already into black arts

went to arts high school

didn't need baraka to teach her

blackness

he was detoxing from beatnik life in Village

Hettie Jewish girl

thought she had baraka for life

half jewish children

Baraka mama loved them so

Not them pica ninnies 

from Amina's womb

Would his mama love them now

Ras the Mayor

Middy Jr. Chief of Staff

Mama Jones

what you say

you love them half jewish girls

or Ras and Middy Jr

black warriors from your way

Them half jewish girls qualified in Baraka mythology

children without sin

it's parents do children in

children are children

no matter mother or father

they love each other

except interruption

unresolved trauma grief of mother

or father for that matter

wash guilt down the drain

let children love

they feel the spirit

DNA same

children live myth of fathers mothers

no matter denial

truth transcends myth

truth of children same

perform myth of mother dad

denial is sad

children don't know mother dreams

sometimes father too

children dream

think their dreams true

not from father mother new

children in denial

parental dreams children make true

in their blindness children swear

their dreams didn't come from you

No mama dad

this my dream and it's true

that's a lie chile

your dreams came from





your daddy and me

we see you dreaming our dreams

what can we say of you

Let us be silent until your dreams come true.

Will you then turn to us and say

Mama and daddy I confess I am you.

--Marvin X

8/25/21




Black Arts Movement co-founders, Marvin X and Sun Ra, aka, Father of Afrofuturism. Sun Ra and Marvin X perfected the Black ritual theatre BAM dramatists sought to create in Harlem NY at the New Lafayette Theatre and Barbara Ann Teer's National Black Theatre. Sun Ra began ritual theatre with his original music, poetry, synthesizer, light shows, dance productions, including music for Amiri Baraka's Black Mass. Sun Ra was solid in the Sankofa tradition of reaching back to Kemit/Egypt and forward to outter space as in Space is the Place, his cult classic produced in Oakland. 

Marvin X perfected ritual theatre with his production of Resurrection of the Dead, a myth-ritual dance drama, music by Juju, 1972. But Black Arts West Theatre musicians taught Marvin X ritual theatre as the poem below describes.

In the pick above Marvin X and Sun Ra  are outside Marvin X's Black Educational Theatre on O'Farrell between Fillmore and Webster, SF, 1972. Both brothers were lecturing in the Black Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Marvin was blessed to house the entire Sun Ra Arkestra when they couldn't afford the rent John Handy was charging. Marvin was blessed to have the full Myth Science Arkestra at his disposal, so he did not hesitate to house Sun Ra's Arkestra at the many spaces he occupied at the time by the grace of Allah.

Sun Ra's Myth-Science Arkestra performed the musical version of Marvin's BAM classic 
Flowers for the Trashman (See Black Fire, TDR, SOS, Black Dialogue Magazine). BET was Marvin's off campus classrom.  At BET Sun Ra's Arkestra had more people than in the audience of the old Greek church BET occupied. but Sonny's band played as if there was a full house.

For historical accuracy, we must note that before Sun Ra arrived, BET was blessed with the great musical sounds of Juju, under the direction of Plunky. They provided the music for Resurrection of the Dead, Marvin's opus magnum of ritual theatre. It included a name giving ceremony at which the actors were named for life by Imam El Muhajir, aka Marvin X. 

He and Sun Ra produced a five hour performance of TCB, i.e., the musical version of Flowers for the Trashman. The Harding Theatre production had a cast of fifty, including BET actors, Myth-Science musicians and dancers, plus the Raymond Sawyer dancers and the Ellendar Barnes dancers. Yes, five hours without intermission. SF Sun Reporter Newspaper reviewed this Marvin X/Sun Ra extravaganza.


Where is the jazz in my world
imagine BLM marched to Coltrane, Sun Ra, Shepp Miles
Liberation music supreme
no other sound except silent night
jazz liberation
thank you Pharaoh Sanders
the Harlem benefits we all did
musicians, poets, actors dancers
At the New Lafayette Theatre
Robert MacBeth Ed Bullins Sonny Jim
New Lafayette women so beautiful
But jazz foundation of revolution
avant guard expressed communal condition
oppression hollers wails of cotton fields
Billie's strange fruit
Lou Rawls Tobacco Road
What did I do to be so black an' blue
Wail Ayler brothers
Beat your drums Milford Graves
wild man banned from bringing jungle beats downtown
Stay in Harlem Milford
let natives hear your jungle beats
break open Harlem hearts
leave us heartless downtown
Milford your wild animal wails screams shouts
too mad for uptown civility
Max was mad enough with sassy Abby
Uppity wench singing bout freedom
And Nina singing bout them women
Mississippi Goddamn
Nina you got to go

West coast jazz at Black Arts West Theatre
Cross from Tree's Pool Hall on Fillmore
Rafael Donald Garrett
Monte Waters Big Band
BJ Oliver Johnson
Dewey Redmon
They taught us ritual theatre
running from stage to audience to 
Fillmore Street
bumper to bumper cars
musicians call and response to car horns
musicians and people are one
jazz alive black classical sounds
music of intelligence transcending pain suffering
liberation sounds
no other music sufficed to free our minds
blues told of suffering jazz told us to revolt
Armies march to music Sun Ra said
His band of angels and devils lead the way
I didn't come to play Jesus he say
You ain't gonna crucify me
All them people talking about freedom justice equality civil rights
They in the cemetery got they last rites didn't they
Stop teaching yo actors freedom Marvin X
They born free
teach discipline like me
how you think I keep my musicians together
discipline is what you see
Stop teaching freedom Marvin X
I can't use freedom round me
Creator set me free with discipline 
You gotta have discipline to be with me
My Myth-Science Arkestra born free
Maavin X Maavin X Sonny say
you so right you wrong
You took the truth out your play
the low down dirty truth
people don't want truth
they want low down dirty truth
X Maavin X you so right you wrong
Ain't you heard the righteous man is a laughing stock
Don't be so right you wrong
I serve the Creator God
I sing His song
Some of these people I don't know who they are
They ain't like the people I used to know in Birmingham Alabama
Some of these men are beasts
They so evil the devil don't want them in hell.
X Maavin X stop teaching freedom
and you all right with the Creator God
You be on the other side of time with me.
You know I was there when the hit man came to kill you
I was outside your theatre in the Fillmore when he came to me with your picture
He showed me your picture but I put the Ra hand on him and rushed away
See X Maavin X Creator God got the power today
I serve the Creator God and He bless me night n day
All the devil do is play music I call P and D
Pussy and dick is the music of today
Put discipline with pussy and dick
You'll go a long way
I don't want them women round my musicians
They spend the night with women come back next day
can't even play
come back hungry broke
begging me for breakfast money to eat
I tell them go back where you spent the night
Make them women fix you breakfast
Make them women treat you right
Don't come back to me hungry
when you with them girls all night
Sun Ra was a motherfucka
But he taught me discipline
Discard my freedom
Then I be all ite.
RA RA RA RA RA
Black Power
Jazz is music of revolution
Black classical music
fk fusion miller lite confusion
jazz low down dirty truth
teach the youth.
--Marvin X
8/25/21

P.S. Please consider sending Marvin X a generous donation as he completes his creative mission, giving more than a half century to. the Black Arts Movement and Black Liberation Movement. He suffered two self-imposed exiles in Canada, Mexico City and Belize, Central America; was deported from Belize back to America, thrown into jail and Federal prison because he refused to fight in Vietnam. Although he taught at Fresno State University, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, Mills College, San Francisco State University, University of Nevada Reno, Laney and Merritt Colleges in Oakland, Marvin's tenure was never permanent so he could support his family. He retired from teaching in 1981 from Reedley Community College in the Central Valley with a 97% student retention record. Since then he only lectures and reads his poetry at colleges and universities coast to coast. In the original mission of Black Studies, i.e., take knowledge to the community, Marvin set up his Academy of Da Corner in Oakland at 14th and Broadway, making himself accessible to all the citizens of Oakland and as community planner/organizer was one of the key founders of Oakland's Black Arts Movement Business District, established by the Oakland City Council, January 19, 2016. Marvin X is currently organizing the Black Vendors Association with a generous grant from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. He is working in association with James Copes, Director of the Oakland Black Vendors Association at Lake Merritt. We are urgently in need of funds to hire a long term security firm to prevent the incident that occurred on Juneteenth of this year. We would also like to employ are on sanitation engineers. With 18 million dollars taken from the OPD budget we think some of those funds should be directed to the Lake Merritt Black Vendors for our long term general fund, since the Department of Parks and Recreation is requesting a long term plan. We say Lake Merritt Black Vendors are an integral part of the Black Arts Movement Business District that extends along the 14th Street corridor from the Lower Bottom to Lake Merritt, and as such the Oakland Black Vendors Association is connected with the BAMBD and concomitantly with the City of Oakland's Downtown Plan for the Next 25 to 50 Years. We demand equity, call it reparations if you like. The City of San Francisco has established a reparations plan to address the decades of systemic racial discrimination, Oakland must do the same and no other space was a critical example of racial discrimination than Lake Merritt, a space all Blacks who grew up in Oakland can recall Lake Merritt was a restrictive space and is down to this day with the current neighborhood animus in direct violation of SB946, the State law on street vending.

If you would like to support the Black Vendors Association with a generous donation, please contact Marvin X at jmarvinx@yahoo.com or James Copes at oldschoolcopes@gmail.com. Your generous donation can be tax deductible.  Again, we thank the Silicon Valley Community Foundation for their generous grant to help us plan the Black Vendors Association. And we thank the Berkeley Juneteenth Foundation for serving as the fiscal agent of BVA. FYI, a $50,000 generous donation would enable us to employ a community security firm to satisfy our priority security needs. Our female vendors are especially concerned about the lax of security that allowed the homicide and wounding of six individuals on Juneteenth of this year. The incident has diminished visits to our Lake Merritt vending site on El Embarcadero, the one block area we have been restricted to by neighborhood animus and brick and mortar businesses along Grand Ave.
Since we have been restricted to this one block area, we demand the name change to Black Street from El Embarcadero. How many streets in Oakland are de facto white streets? MX