Robert Garza and the Texas Death Row

Tonight was one of those nights in Huntsville where I wished the whole town would disappear off the face of the earth . Robert Garza was scheduled for execution. He was convicted under the Law of Parties, but as he said, "Where is the party?" No one else was ever sentenced in this case. Robert did not shoot the victims. Yet he spent 11 years on death row and was murdered by the State of Texas.

Robert was to have been executed at 6:00 so people stated gathering before 5:00 to stand vigil and protest this execution. 

As 6:00 came, there was no sign that the execution was happening. The Supreme Court was going over appeals until 8:00. So for 3 hours or so,  around 30 people gathered outside of the death house, the Walls Unit in downtown Huntsville, to stand with the Garza family and protest this damned system of capital punishment that is so broken, so irreparable, that it should be shut down immediately.

Delia Perez-Meyer is with Kory and Eric Garza outside of the Walls Unit as over 30 people waited there in Huntsville for the US Supreme Court to rule on Robert Garza's appeals. Delia's brother Louis is on death row for a crime he did not commit and she drove from Austin to be with the Garza family and friends even though she had to make the 3-hour trip back tonight so she could teach her students at 7:30 in the morning.

Karl Rodenberg from Germany is here for three weeks to visit all his friends on the row.

two of whom he affectionately calls his grandsons--the two Pablo's.

Folks came from Houston, Willis, Huntsville--both students and professors, Lufkin, Austin and Germany. 

When 6:00 came and went, we found out the high court was deliberating. Then 7:00 came and went and we were starting to get optimistic they would make a favorable ruling. We heard that Ruth Gader Ginsberg was asking questions. But at 8:00 we started hearing Robert's appeals were denied. 

The pain on Kory Garza's face tells the story of how the families of those being executed suffer the same excruciating pain as do the families of crime victims. Kory and her little brother Eric, who has a look like a deer caught in headlights, have stood with their mother Sylvia in defending Bobby for years and years. If only ALL those on death row had family support like this.

Kory was six years old when Bobby was sent to death row. She is now a junior in high school. Eric is ten years old and in 5th grade. He was a baby when Bobby was arrested. He has grown up knowing his brother only threw a glass partition and speaking to him threw a phone.

At 8:10 we saw Jennifer, Robert's wife, and his friend Yadira, Sylvia and Jaime, her husband, crossing the street. It was dark by now so it was hard to make them out. But Kory recognized her mother and began crying. Then Eric started crying and so many of us tried to comfort and support them. 

It was so awful knowing that Sylvia, the strong mother and woman, had spent so many years working to end the Law of Parties, working to educate people in the Valley about capital punishment, lobbying with all of us and our organizations that work together and meet at the capitol every legislative session to try to persuade legislators that the Law of Parties is so unfair, so wrong, so not in the interest of justice. I was in a lobby group with Sylvia this past spring and she had legislators or their aides spell bound as she spoke about her son. 

Sylvia always visited Bobby, always fought for him, and now Texas was slapping her in the face. Telling her that even though Bobby did not murder any of the four victims in this case, he deserved to be killed.


As darkness came, a few people had to leave but most stayed until the bitter end, like our friend from Germany, Karl Rodenberg. 
Karl visits several men on the row and will be here for three weeks. This trip he brought his sign from the German Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. He left it with Dennis to let others visiting from Germany hold when they are here. Standing with Karl is Sam Houston Prof. Dennis Longmire who is present at every execution.

This evening ended with us exchanging tears and hugs with Sylvia and Jennifer after the execution.  

I drove Yadira back to Houston as she was too distraught to function after witnessing her friend's execution. 

This was a horrible night that none of us wanted to happen. But it did. I hold the governor, the legislature, the Board of Pardons, and the Supreme Court guilty of murder. They are killers. They have allowed the injsutice of the death poenalty to continue and to murder Bobby Garza. The Garza family is now a crime victim's family.

Robert Garza, Presente!

 

Gloria Rubac   (cell) 713-503-2633   (home) 713-225-0211

Violinist Tarika Lewis will perform with Marvin X at the UC Merced Black Arts Movement Conference

Tarika Lewis was the first female to join the Black Panther Party. She has been a part of John Handy's band, performing internationally.

Bob Marley - WAR

Four Women Nina Simone

Black Bird Press News & Review: My Little Mosque, a poem by Mohja Kahf

Black Bird Press News & Review: My Little Mosque, a poem by Mohja Kahf

A poem every Muslim should read. Don't be in denial! Islam can be, in practice, as racist and sexist as any other patriarchal religion. The Dar Al Islam must be cleaned of contradictions as we enter the New Age of spiritual consciousness beyond religiosity, dogmatism, sectarianism and general narrow mindedness. Surely the straight path is clearly distinct from error!--Marvin X, Editor

Take Charge of Your Health with Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson

 

 

Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson

Invites you to:

TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR HEALTH

Saturday, September 21, 2013

9 AM – 2 PM

Oakland Technical High School Auditorium

4351 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94609

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

A complimentary lunch will be served 

Are you ready? Health care and how it is delivered is changing fast in the East Bay. Come to this informative event to hear straight from the hospitals and clinics about the services they provide and where to go for your health care needs. Hear the latest about how Obamacare will affect you, your family and your employees. The clock is ticking - you must be enrolled or face being fined by the IRS if you don’t have or purchase health insurance by January 1, 2014. Get all the details and take charge of your health today!

Experts will be present to inform attendees about: 

• Panel Discussion: How Health Care is Delivered Today in the East Bay and What it Will Look Like in Five Years
• Workshop 1: Small Businesses: When and How to Enroll your Employees in Obamacare
• Workshop 2: Medi-Cal Enrollment: Will I be Eligible in 2014?
• Workshop 3: How to Purchase Health Insurance through Covered California
• Workshop 4: Health Care Reform & Medicare: What It Means for You 
• Workshop 5: The Impact of Health Care Reform on Women

Please share this information with your family and neighbors and I look forward to seeing you on September 21!
Co-sponsored by: Alameda Alliance for Health, Alameda Health System, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Children’s Hospital, The Community Health Center Network, Corizon, Kaiser Permanente and Paramedics Plus.

 

Call for Papers: University of California, Merced, Conference on The Black Arts Movement, March, 2014

Sonia Sanchez, Queen Mother of BAM

 

Askia Toure, Rolland Snellings, one of the BAM Godfathers

 

 

 

 

Amina and Amiri Baraka, Queen and King of BAM

 

Marvin X, West Coast Godfather of BAM

 

In less than five years, America will celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the Black Arts Movement.  Sonia Sanchez, one of the leading voices of the Black Arts Movement believes that “The black artist is dangerous.  Black art controls the “Negro’s” reality, negates negative influences, and creates positive images.”  These positive images of blackness were celebrated on August 28, 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington.  At the 1963 gathering, Martin Luther King’s “I Had a Dream” speech represented the pinnacle of hope of freedom for all Americans.  The question that must be asked fifty years later is “have we achieved that dream?” We must all ask, with the upcoming 50^th anniversary of the Black Arts Movement, have the images of blackness in America changed?  Is blackness still seen as inferior? In Amiri Baraka’s poem “Black Art,” first published in the liberator in 1966, he writes:

 

Clean out the world for virtue and love,

Let there be no love poems written

until love can exist freely and

cleanly….We want a black poem. And a 

Black World.

Let the world be a Black Poem

And Let All Black People Speak This Poem

Silently or LOUD

 

Are black people speaking their poems, their truth about blackness? Has the Black Arts Movement created the hoped for change in how black people view themselves?

 

These questions and more will be explored at the International Conference on the Black Arts Movement and its influences at UC Merced, March 1-2, 2014.  The call for papers on a worldwide level is asking the larger questions beyond race, and culture  as we examine  what happened during the Black Arts Movement, and how that changed us as a nation, and as a world.  The Black Arts Movement, the spiritual twin of the Black Power Movement is noted for having changed how African Americans viewed themselves as a race.  African Americans in the 1960s and 1970s created a new vision of blackness, one that celebrated the uniqueness of black culture.  This call for papers invites scholars of all cultural and racial backgrounds to submit  work that illustrates the influence of the Black Arts Movement, both past and present.  The Chicano, Asian, Women’s, Disability Rights, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) movements were all influenced by the Black Arts and Black Power Movements, establishing new academic fields of study, and empowering those that society had marginalized.    
--Kim McMillan

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

SATURDAY, MARCH 1, 2014

1^ST Floor Lantern (Kolligian Library)

8:00 –  8:30 AM                        Registration, Coffee/Tea and Light Refreshments

8:30 – 9:00 AM                        Welcoming Remarks (9:00 am – 5:00 pm 

9:15 – 10:15 AM            Multicultural Panel (Lakireddy Auditorium)

                                    Belva Davis, Panel Moderator

                                    Juan Felipe Herrera, California Poet Laureate

                                    Genny Lim, Poet & Activist

                                    Al Young, California Poet  Laureate Emeritus

                                    Avotcja, Poet

 

10:30 – 11:30 AM            Black Power and Black Arts Roundtable (Lakireddy Auditorium)

                                    Nigel Hatton, Moderator

                                    Sonia Sanchez, Poet, Playwright, Teacher

                                    John Bracey, UMass Amherst

                                    James Smethurst, UMass Amherst

                                    Amiri Baraka, Producer, Writer, Activist (still waiting for confirmation)

                                    Marvin X, Playwright, Activist

 

11:30 – 1:00 PM            Luncheon

 

1:15  –   2:00 PM            Marvin X, Keynote Speaker

 

2:15  –   3:15 PM            Theatre of the Black Arts Movement (speakers TBA)

 

4:00  –   5:30 PM          Northern and Central California Voices of the Black Arts Movement Installation

                                  Merced Multicultural Arts Center

                                    S.O.S. – Calling All Black People:  A Black Arts Movement Reader

Discussion with editors:  John H. Bracey Jr., Sonia Sanchez, and James Smethurst

Dinner

 

7:00  –  9:00 PM         Theatre of the Black Arts Movement

(Excerpts from the plays of Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Marvin X, Ishmael Reed, Lorraine Hansberry, and George Wolfe) Performed by Michael Lange, Adilah Barnes, and UC Merced Students

(Must have purchased ticket for this event)

 

SUNDAY, MARCH 2, 2014

           

                                    Lantern, 1^st Floor Kolligian Library

8:30 – 9:00 AM          Registration, Coffee/Tea and Refreshments

 

9:15 – 10:15 AM         New Scholarship on the Black Arts and Black Power Movement (Lakireddy Auditorium)

                                    Mike Sell, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

                                    James Smethurst, University of Mass, Amherst

                                    Marvin X, Playwright

                                    Sean Malloy, University of Merced

 

10:30 – 11:30 AM       Black Studies & the Black Arts Movement

                                    Dr. Nathan Hare

                                    Sonia Sanchez

                                    Dr. John Bracey

                                    Judy Juanita

 

                                   

Lunch

 

1:15  –  2:00 PM          Ishmael Reed, Keynote Speaker

 

 

2:15  –  3:00 PM         Central Valley Voices of the Black Arts Movement

Nigel Hatton, Moderator

(Student Papers)

Give Birth to Brightness: A Thematic Study of Neo-Black Literature by Sherley Anne Williams  & Somethin' Proper, the Autobiography of Marvin X

 

 

Hotel:  Hampton Inn in Merced, CA will offer room discounts to conference attendees.              

Call for Papers

A call for papers for an international conference on the Black Arts Movement and Its Influences, University of California, Merced, March 1-2, 2014

 

In less than five years, America will celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the Black Arts Movement.  Sonia Sanchez, one of the leading voices of the Black Arts Movement believes that “The black artist is dangerous.  Black art controls the “Negro’s” reality, negates negative influences, and creates positive images.”  These positive images of blackness were celebrated on August 28, 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington.  At the 1963 gathering, Martin Luther King’s “I Had a Dream” speech represented the pinnacle of hope of freedom for all Americans.  The question that must be asked fifty years later is “have we achieved that dream?” We must all ask, with the upcoming 50^th anniversary of the Black Arts Movement, have the images of blackness in America changed?  Is blackness still seen as inferior? In Amiri Baraka’s poem “Black Art,” first published in the liberator in 1966, he writes:

 

Clean out the world for virtue and love,

Let there be no love poems written

until love can exist freely and

cleanly….We want a black poem. And a 

Black World.

Let the world be a Black Poem

And Let All Black People Speak This Poem

Silently or LOUD

 

Are black people speaking their poems, their truth about blackness? Has the Black Arts Movement created the hoped for change in how black people view themselves?

 

These questions and more will be explored at the International Conference on the Black Arts Movement and its influences at UC Merced, March 1-2, 2014.  The call for papers on a worldwide level is asking the larger questions beyond race, and culture  as we examine  what happened during the Black Arts Movement, and how that changed us as a nation, and as a world.  The Black Arts Movement, the spiritual twin of the Black Power Movement is noted for having changed how African Americans viewed themselves as a race.  African Americans in the 1960s and 1970s created a new vision of blackness, one that celebrated the uniqueness of black culture.  This call for papers invites scholars of all cultural and racial backgrounds to submit  work that illustrates the influence of the Black Arts Movement, both past and present.  The Chicano, Asian, Women’s, Disability Rights, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) movements were all influenced by the Black Arts and Black Power Movements, establishing new academic fields of study, and empowering those that society had marginalized.    

 

This conference, sponsored by the University of Merced’s African Diaspora Graduate Student Association, seeks papers that offer new scholarship on the Black Arts and Black Power Movements as well as new insights into the following areas of study:

 

◦                            Regional examinations of the Black Arts Movement

◦                           The Black Arts Movement -- national and international

◦                            Women authors of The Black Arts Movement

◦                            Male domination and the Black Arts Movement

◦                           The Politics and Art of the Black Power and Black Arts Movements

◦                           Symbology and the Black Arts and Black Power Movements

◦                            Cultural Legacies of the Black Arts Movement

◦                            Community Theatre and the Black Arts Movement

◦                           Clothing, Music, and Art of the Black Arts Movement

◦                            Race and the Black Arts Movement

◦                            The use of Poetry and Drama in the Black Arts Movement

◦                           The media and the Black Arts and Black Power Movements

◦                            The historical context of the Black Arts Movement

◦                            The Black Panthers and the Black Arts Movement

◦                        The influence of the Black Arts Movement on other cultures

◦                        The use of language as Art in the Black Arts Movement

◦                        The creation of the Black Arts and Black Power Movement

◦                        Film and the Black Arts Movement

◦                       The Intersection between the Civil Rights and the Black Power, and Black Arts Movements

 

Special invited guests include:  Sonia Sanchez, Ishmael Reed, John Bracey, James Smethurst, Mike Sell, Juan Felipe Herrera, Genny Lim, Al Young, Belva Davis, Marvin X, Adilah Barnes, Dr. Nathan Hare, and others.

 

Please send your one-page abstract and brief bio to Kim McMillon at kmcmillon@ucmerced.edu by December 18, 2013.

 

Call for Papers, Reports, and Studies:

 

The Black Arts Movement Conference invites the following types of submissions:

 

Research Papers - Completed research papers in any of the topic areas listed above or related areas.

  

Student Papers - Research done by students in any of the topic areas listed above, or related areas.

 

Poets Mohja Kahf and Marvin X. Mohja has connected the importance of BAM to Muslim American literature

Case Studies - Case studies in any of the topic areas listed above, or related areas.

 

Work-in-Progress Reports for Future Research - Incomplete research in any of the topic areas listed above, or related areas. 

 

 

Presentations:

 

Paper sessions will consist of no more than four presentations in a 80-minute session.  The session will be divided equally between the presenters.

 

Workshop presentations will be given a full 60-minute session.

 

Panel sessions will provide an opportunity for three or more presenters to speak in a more open session where ideas can be exchanged.  These sessions are 80 minutes.

 

Poster sessions will last 90 minutes and consist of a large number of presenters.  The following supplies will be provided for poster sessions:

•                Easel

•                Tri-fold display board (48 x 36 inches)

•                Markers

•                Push pins

•                Tape

•                Round table

•                Chairs

 

Submitting a Proposal/Paper:

 

Make your submission by

following these directions:

 

Create a title page for your submission.  The title page must include:

 

a.              Title of the submission

b.              Topic area of the submission (choose a topic area from the list at the top of this page)

c.              Presentation format (choose one: Paper Session, Workshop, Panel Session, or Poster Session)

d.              A description of your presentation, which should not exceed 150 words in total. Please note that       you are still required to send in an abstract/paper in addition to this description.

e.              paper author(s):

f.               EACH author, should list the following:

•                Full Name

•                Department/Division

•                University/Company/Organization

•     Email Address (all acceptance/rejection letters are sent via email, so it is very important to have a correct email address for each author.)

 

g. Email your abstract and/or paper, along with the above-described title page, to kmcmillon@ucmerced.edu.  Receipt of submissions will be acknowledged via email within one week.  

 

NOTE:  Conference papers, proposal, panels, workshops, and poster sessions will take place on the University of California, Merced campus concurrently from 9-4 pm on Saturday, and 10 am – 2:00 pm on Sunday, March 1-2, 2014.  Please use the following method for registration payment.

 

My Little Mosque, a poem by Mohja Kahf

     

Poet Mohja Kahf invited fellow poet Marvin X to read at  the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

 

Little Mosque Poems

By Mohja Kahf

In my little mosque
there is no room for me
to pray. I am
turned away faithfully
five
times a day

My little mosque:
so meager
in resources, yet
so eager
to turn away
a woman
or a stranger

My little mosque
is penniless, behind on rent
Yet it is rich in anger
every Friday, coins of hate
are generously spent

My little mosque is poor yet
every week we are asked to give
to buy another curtain
to partition off the women,
or to pave another parking space

I go to the Mosque of the Righteous
I have been going there all my life
I have been the Cheerleader of the Righteous Team
I have mocked the visiting teams cruelly
I am the worst of those I complain about:
I am a former Miss Mosque Banality

I would like to build
a little mosque
without a dome
or minaret
I'd hang a sign
over the door:
Bad Muslims
welcome here
Come in, listen
to some music,
sharpen
the soul's longing,
have a cigarette

I went to the mosque
when no one was there
and startled two angels
coming out of a broom closet
"Are they gone now?" one said
They looked relieved

My great big mosque
has a chandelier
big as a Christmas tree
and a jealously guarded
lock and key
I wonder why
everyone in it
looks just like me

My little mosque
has a bouncer at the door
You have to look pious
to get in

My little mosque
has a big sense of humor
Not

I went to the mosque
when no one was there
The prayer space was soft and serene
I heard a sound like lonely singing
or quiet sobbing. I heard a leafy rustling
I looked around
A little Quran
on a low shelf
was reciting itself

My little mosque has a Persian carpet
depicting trees of paradise
in the men's section, which you enter
through a lovely classical arch
The women's section features
well, nothing

Piety dictates that men enter
my little mosque through magnificent columns
Piety dictates
that women enter
my little mosque
through the back alley,
just past the crack junkie here
and over these fallen garbage cans

My little mosque used to be democratic
with a rotating imam
we chose from among us every month
Now my little mosque has an appointed imam
trained abroad
No one can dispute his superior knowledge

We used to use our minds
to understand Quran
My little mosque discourages
that sort of thing these days
We have official salaried translators
for God

I used to carry around a little mosque
in the chambers of my heart
but it is closed indefinitely pending
extensive structural repairs

I miss having a mosque,
driving by and seeing cars lining the streets,
people double-parking, desperate
to catch the prayer in time
I miss noticing, as they dodge across traffic
toward the mosque entrance between
buses and trucks,
their long chemises fluttering,
that trail of gorgeous fabrics Muslims leave,
gossamer, the colors of hot lava, fantastic shades
from the glorious places of the earth
I miss the stiff, uncomfortable men
looking anywhere but at me when they meet me,
and the double-faced women
full of judgment, and their beautiful
children shining
with my children. I do

I don't dream of a perfect mosque
I just want roomfuls of people to kiss every week
with the kisses of Prayer and Serenity,
and a fat, multi-trunked tree
collecting us loosely for a minute under
its alive and quivering canopy

Once, God applied
for a janitor position at our mosque,
but the board turned him down
because he wasn't a practicing
Muslim

Once a woman entered
my little mosque
with a broken arm,
a broken heart,
and a very short skirt
Everyone rushed over to her
to make sure
she was going to cover her legs

Marshmallows are banned
from my little mosque
because they might
contain gelatin derived from pork enzymes
but banality is not banned,
and yet verily,
banality is worse than marshmallows

Music is banned
at my little mosque
because it is played on
the devil's stringed instruments,
although a little music
softens the soul
and lo, a hardened soul
is the devil's taut drumskin

Once an ignorant Bedouin
got up and started to pee against a wall
in the Prophet's Mosque in Medina
The pious protective Companions leapt
to beat him
The Prophet bade them stop
A man is entitled to finish a piss
even if he is an uncouth idiot,
and there are things
more important in a mosque than ritual purity

My little mosque thinks
the story I just narrated
cannot possibly be true
and a poet like me cannot possibly
have studied Sahih al-Bukhari

My little mosque
thinks a poem like this must be
written by the Devil
in cahoots with the Zionists,
NATO, and the current U.S. administration,
as part of the Worldwide Orientalist Plot
to Discredit Islam
Don't they know
at my little mosque
that this is a poem
written in the mirror
by a lover?

My little mosque
is fearful to protect itself
from the bricks of bigots
through its window
Doesn't my little mosque know
the way to protect its windows
is to open its doors?

I know the bricks of bigots
are real
I wish I could protect my little mosque
with my body as a shield

I love my dysfunctional little mosque
even though I can't stand it

My little mosque loves Arab men
with pure accents and beards
Everyone else is welcome
as long as
they understand that Real Islam
has to come from an Arab man

My little mosque loves Indian
and Pakistani men with Maududi in their pockets
Everyone else is welcome because as we all know
there is no discrimination in Islam

My little mosque loves women
who know that Islam liberated them
fourteen hundred years ago and so
they should live like seventh-century Arabian women
or at least dress
like pre-industrial pre-colonial women
although
men can adjust with the times

My little mosque loves converts
especially white men and women
who give "Why I embraced Islam" lectures
to be trotted out as trophies
by the Muslim pom-pom squad
of Religious One-up-man-ship

My little mosque faints at the sight
of pale Bosnian women suffering
across the sea
Black women suffering
across the street
do not move
my little mosque much

I would like to find a little mosque
where my Christian grandmother
and my Jewish great-uncle the rebbe
and my Buddhist cousin
and my Hindu neighbor
would be as welcome
as my staunchly Muslim mom and dad

My little mosque has young men and women
who have nice cars, nice homes, expensive educations,
and think they are the righteous rageful
Victims of the World Persecution

My little mosque offers courses on
the Basics of Islamic Cognitive Dissonance
"There is no racism in Islam" means
we won't talk about it
"Islam is unity" means
shuttup
There's so much to learn
Class is free and meets every week

I don't dream of a perfect mosque, only
a few square inches of ground
that will welcome my forehead,
no questions asked

My little mosque is as decrepit
as my little heart. Its narrowness
is the narrowness in me. Its windows
are boarded up like the part of me that prays

I went to the mosque
when no one was there
No One was sweeping up
She said: This place is just a place
Light is everywhere. Go, live in it
The Mosque is under your feet,
wherever you walk each day

Parts of this poem have been published in Azizah Magazine.

Mohja Kahf's first book of poetry is E-Mails from Scheherazad (University Press of Florida, 2003). She was born in Syria and came to the United States in 1971 with her parents. Now a sedate professor of literature at the University of Arkansas, Dr. Kahf used to be one of the baton-twirling sisters in her college alma mater's MSA chapter.