Playwright August Wilson and Oakland's Lower Bottom Playaz

The Lower Bottom Playaz and The American Century Cycle Project. by Ayodele Nzinga, MFA, PhD

King Hedley II is the beginning of the end of The Lower Bottom Playaz, Inc., momentous American Century Cycle Project. King Hedley is currently running at The Flight Deck on Broadway in Oakland CA. It opens The Playaz, main stage for Season16.Continua: The American Century Cycle Project and only leaves Radio Golf which will be main stage in December 2015 at The Flight Deck, concluding both Season 16 and The American Century Cycle Project.

The Playaz began production of The American century Cycle in 2010 after producing Gem of the Ocean in 2009 and falling into relationship with the spirit and intention of August Wilson, America's greatest playwright living or dead. In 2010 I announced our intention to be the first company to ever fully stage the Cycle. In 2015, with Hedley up and running my troupe and I are poised on the edge of the completion of a ritual never fully enacted. We play for the Master in most humble gratitude for his generous blessings upon us as we have struggled to manifest this work. It has been a journey that has taken us places we could not have imagined and even more important it has brought us home.

We are producing Hedley and Golf in our new house in uptown Oakland. The journey from our own out door theater in West Oakland to a residency in an indoor 100 seat black box in uptown has been a tumultuous journey full of pathos, falling to rise higher, refusing to fail, striving and daring to fly in the dark to find our light. We are going to be the first to formally stage the Cycle in chronological order. No other company has ever done so. The Green Room recordings were done after we started our journey with Wilson and they come as close to chronological production as anything ever done but they are recordings of readings. Some companies have staged all ten works in the order Wilson wrote them. No company has ever achieved what we are poised to accomplish.

"You die by how you live". August Wilson- Gem of the Ocean

In some ways its been a lonely journey. Not a lot of attention has been given our effort. We are a small company that started out as a Gypsy theater performing in non-traditional spaces including half way houses for reentry populations and shelters for the homeless.  A 100 seat outdoor theater was built for us in West Oakland where we did 13 Seasons of theater. We did Shakespearean adaptations, established the Shakespeare in the Hood series, toured Mack A Gangsta's Tale to violence riddled areas of Oakland and Richmond, CA. We did an original work, Mama at Twilight: Death by Love that frankly examined the HIV growth in black communities by interrogating gendered roles and community taboos. We established our brand around telling stories that facilitated vitally important community discussion. We honed our craft and survived and very quietly became one of the greatest opportunity for black actors and theater makers in the East Bay. The community organization that partially funded our work stopped funding our productions mid way through our production of The Century Cycle and we became the only theater company to produce in The African American Museum and Library at Oakland CA. where we independently produced Fences. We then took up residency in The Flight Deck where we produced Two Trains Running and Jitney.

We are so very proud to reach the conclusion of our commitment to August Wilson who in many ways has guided our growth, instructed our direction, and renewed our commitment to our craft, our communities, and our selves. Wilson is the only work we have not felt a need to make site specific as is our habit. In Wilson we see ourselves and we see ourselves as part of the nation in the nation behind the veil in North America, and the universal nature of Wilson's site specific Cycle (all the plays take place in the Hill Distinct of Pittsburgh PA with the exception of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom). We recognize and have come to overstand Wilson's song of North America; its our lives, we have lived it, bled it, and learned to sing it with honor and dignity as we have walked with Wilson.

If you have seen our work you know we do Wilson with integrity and passion. If you have not a great theater experience is waiting for you. Join us at our new theater to be a part of our red carpet season as we conclude The Century Cycle Project.

Book tickets for King Hedley, II and Radio Golf today:  http://www.lowerbottomplayaz.com/box-office.php

In the spirit of Jesus, Allah and Sun Ra, let us be in this world but not of it.

We can transcend this mentally retarded bullshit of white supremacy illusion. Don't get sucked into it. Amiri Baraka told us how the Sirens call you but you must not answer. If you answer, then they got that ass. You then submit to all the messages of the Sirens, calling you to madness and insanity.

Dr. Hare says, "If you don't want the harlot, don't go to the harlot's door." He adds, "Without those willing to be slaves, there can be no masters."

What does the Qur'an say, "Only because the devil called you, you came." You do not need to heed the whispering of the devil who whispers into the hearts of men and jinn."

And the Christians tell us, "Resist the devil and he shall flee from you."

There are those of you who submit willingly to the devil, only because you don't exercise the power of resistance.  We must say, "Aoozo Bil-laa-hi mi-nash shay-tann-nir rajeem. Translated: I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed devil.

The devil is an illusion we submit to when we are in a weak mental and spiritual condition. We submit to the world of make believe, believing it is the real deal yet it is an illusion from the world of make believe and conspicuous consumption or materialism, a dream world for dreamers who must be awakened from their dream state.

Marvin X recalls his 1968 interview with James Baldwin

 photographic art by Ted Pontiflet, Oakland CA, Joyce Gordon Gallery Exhibit

Marvin X confesses, "After I saw Ted Pontiflet's photographic art of James Baldwin,
I had to reconstruct my esthetics of Blackness and admit that no matter how much I had
imagined James Baldwin as an ugly man, yet positioned with African sculpture in the background, I was forced to say he was beautiful in the African esthetic tradition, thus cast out my
Eurocentric esthetics or concept of beauty."

In my December, 1968, interview with James Baldwin at his New York apartment, yes, without heat, he told me a host of things on Blacks in America and throughout the world, especially those ex-patriots in Paris, in particular Richard Wright, the man he dethroned as the heavy weight champion of Black literature. I will get to his comments on Richard Wright in a moment, but one of the most important things he said to me was, It's a wonder we all haven't gone stark raving mad as Black people in America. It's a miracle for a Black father to raise a Black son under these conditions and I applaud the men who are able to do so.

"How can these people talk about the Prince of Peace while they bomb the hell out of the Vietnamese during these Holy Days?  Your condition proves they don't believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ!"

It was James Baldwin's script that Spike Lee used to make his film Malcolm X. But in 1968 there were many people who questioned Baldwin's ability to write such a script about a man who symbolized Black manhood. When I asked him about their reaction, he retorted, "Hey, I pay my rent, I write what I want!"

As per Richard Wright, he felt Richard Wright lost his roots in exile; he became disconnected from the reality of Black life in America, even in Africa for that matter. When he went to Africa, he misinterpreted some things that I came to understand about Africa and my relationship to Africa. When I came to understand my father, I understood he was an African priest/preacher transferred to America, and he ruled his church and his family as part of an African village of which he was the king. I don't think Richard understood he was not an African but an American, for better or worse.
I understood this and had no problems with it! I knew I had to make peace with the America nightmare, I had to understand those airless rooms Americans live in." In one of his essays, he wrote, "The idea of white supremacy has led white people to rationalizations so fantastic it reaches the pathological."

Notes on Straight outta Compton and August Wilson's King Hedley II

 

Straight Outta Compton and August Wilson's King Hedley are the major theme  of North American African cinematic and literary tradition, i.e. the Slave Narrative or How I Got Ovah. Ancestor Amiri Baraka was asked at a UC Berkeley poetry reading what was his greatest accomplishment? He replied, "I survived!"



Watching August Wilson's stage play King Hedley II  and a viewing Straight Outta Compton were similar in several ways, although I only saw the first half of King Hedley produced by the Dr. Ayodele Nizinga's Lower Bottom Playaz at the Flight Deck Theatre, downtown Oakland. Although August Wilson's play was about the 1950s and Compton was about the 80s and 90s, both presented the pervasive violence in our lives, the internal violence with each other and the external violence of the police.  The film and the play revealed the awesome violence we are confronted with daily. Ice Cube was so on time when he wrote those lings about just getting through the day without using my AK. All the brothers in the play and film were packing guns as a natural part of our daily round. This has been true for the 50s, 60s, 80s, 90s until the present moment, 2015.

Both play and film revealed the economic violence as well, e.g., the pimping in the music industry or the the wage slavery in Hedley. In short, we are in a constant state of war within our community and with external forces that seek to exploit and rob us at every turn.

It was most timely for the film to show why we are NWA's or Nigguhs with Attitudes, especially with respect to the police. After watching the film, perhaps some people will better understand why NWA wrote FUCK THE POLICE and why in 2015 we are saying the same Fuck the Police. Just for your information, after the 1965 Watts Rebellion, my poem Burn Baby Burn, included the lines

"Motherfuck the police

and (Chief) Parker's sister too!...",

--from Burn Baby Burn by Marvin X, Soulbook Magazine, 1965

The Black Arts Movement was also threatened with arrest by the police for the plays of Amiri Baraka, Ed Bullins and myself. Yes, we had to deal with freedom of speech here in the Bay Area at our Black Arts West Theatre, San Francisco, and at a Laney College performance. In 2015, we don't think the Heldley play will be stopped because of August Wilson's line, "God is a bad motherfucker!"

We appreciate the raw but common language used in the film and play, although we know the Black culture police will try to have some pseudo moral comment about the language usage in the film. But Rap music cares nothing about the pseudo morality and the psycholinguistic crisis of the Black Bourgeoisie, for, as E. Franklin Frazier told us, they live in the land of make believe. As Ice Cube told a white journalist in the film, "Rappers are just journalists reporting the news in our community."

The film and play reveal how Black bodies respond to place and time. We are still in the Sisyphus  syndrome, rolling the rock up the hill only to have it fall down so we must repeat the same process for eternity until we indeed get Straight Outta Compton, a mental condition that we cannot overcome until we decide to do for self like Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and other rappers and artists with consciousness and business acumen.

August Wilson's King Hedley II runs through September 6 at the Flight Deck Theatre, downtown Oakland. We demand you go see the Lower Bottom Playaz production of this classic.
 --Marvin X
23 August 2015

 

John Legend on Police Profiling and Black Lives Matter

I’m writing you today to talk about an issue that is deeply personal to me -- the epidemic of racial profiling and police brutality that threatens the lives and liberty of far too many people of color and minorities.

As a black man, racial profiling is something I am far too familiar with. 

I was shocked to hear that my home state of California has one of the weakest racial and identity profiling laws in the country.(1) That’s why I joined my friends at Courage Campaign to support a landmark bill that could fundamentally fix our state’s broken law, and I’m asking you to join us.

SIGN ON to ask your state legislators to support the Racial and Identity Profiling Act (AB 953) to fix our profiling law, improve public safety, protect the rights of all Californians, and advance police-community relations.(2)

As a nation, we are at a crossroads. Since the police killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Ezell Ford, and more, the Movement for Black Lives has captivated the world and shined a bright light on the desperate need for systemic changes to policing nationwide. And while many of us are talking about the problem and taking steps to address it, it seems that every day, we hear another horror story of a person of color being stopped, assaulted, or killed by the hands of law enforcement. Each story makes my heart hurt. This can’t go on.

It goes without saying that not every police officer is a racist and not every person of color that is arrested is innocent. But when the evidence clearly shows that Blacks are stopped TWICE as often as their peers, and Blacks and Latinos are searched at THREE AND TWO TIMES the rate of Whites, respectively, it would be naive not to acknowledge that there is something fundamentally and tragically wrong.(3) And we can’t stand back while my life, and the lives of so many of our brothers and sisters continue to be threatened.

This is California’s moment to do the right thing and address the urgent cry to fix our broken racial profiling laws to improve law enforcement transparency and accountability.

JOIN ME to ask our state leaders to support the Racial and Identity Profiling Act (AB 953) to help California lead the nation against profiling and police brutality.

The issue doesn’t stop with racial profiling. The underlying structural issues that contribute to our country’s overwhelming problem of mass incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline run much deeper than that. And right now, there is an unprecedented opportunity for California’s state legislators to pass substantial criminal justice legislation that addresses the root causes of crime and violence, beyond AB 953, that could serve as models for the nation.

Courage Campaign and I are supporting the following bills that would dramatically improve the health and well-being of children, mothers, fathers, and siblings who are currently incarcerated, and I am asking you to join us and support them:

• SB 124 (Leno) – a bill that would that would end solitary confinement for children;
• SB 261 (Hancock) – a bill that would make certain individuals – who were under the age of 23 when they committed the crime – eligible for a youth offender parole hearing after serving a lengthy prison sentence;
• SB 219 (Liu) – a bill that would codify and expand access to the existing Alternative Custody Program so that women can retain close family ties and help end the intergenerational cycle of incarceration; 
• AB 1352 (Eggman) – a bill that allows defendants to withdraw a guilty or no contest plea to avoid harsh and unintended consequences;
• and AB 1056 (Atkins) – a bill that would create the Second Chance Program for Community Re-entry and provide direction to the Board of State and Community Corrections grant-making process to prioritize community-based alternatives.

JOIN ME to support AB 953 and these other bills to positively transform our state’s current juvenile and criminal justice systems.

Yours in the fight for racial and criminal justice,

John Legend

Huey P. Newton, the Canadian Connection

Huey P. Newton (1942-1989): The Canadian Connection


The Canadian Connection

By Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali


Huey P. Newton was murdered 26 years ago in Oakland, California during
the month of August. Because Black freedom fighters like George and
Jonathan Jackson, Khatari Gaulden and others lost their lives during
this month, revolutionaries inside the California prison system have
deemed it Black August.

It is August 22, 1989 at about 8:30 a.m. the late Gwen Johnston, the co-owner
of Third World Books and Crafts (Toronto’s first African Canadian
owned bookstore) phones me. The news is shocking, dreadful even. Mrs.
Johnston is in tears stating, “Otis they have killed Huey”.

Mrs. Johnston and her husband Lennie were huge supporters of Newton,
the Black Panther Party and the struggle for African and human
liberation.

When Newton returned to the United States after his exile in
revolutionary Cuba in 1977 he first landed in Toronto. He was detained
in Brampton, Ontario and was represented by the progressive
Euro-Canadian lawyer, Paul Copeland. Toronto’s African community
supported Newton and the Panthers had several chapters in this county.

Toronto’s African community was represented by Owen Sankara Leach,
Lennox Farrell, the late Sharona Hall, Mitch Holder, Bryan Hyman,
Cikiah Thomas and others at the Brampton courthouse. It was covered by
the Toronto dailies and even was discussed by Walter Cronkite on the
CBS Evening News.

Spider Jones discusses his brief tenure with the Black Panther Party
in his autobiography “Out of the Darkness: The Spider Jones
Story”.Another African born in Canada  Rocky Jone created a Black
Panther Party chapter in Halifax,Nova Scotia.

Whatever his shortcomings and there were many, Newton led many of us
ideologically. For a brief moment in the history of Africans in
America Newton was” the tallest tree in the forest”.

Malcolm X was the first national leader in the African community in
the United States to oppose the war in Vietnam. Dr. Martin Luther King
later followed Malcolm’s lead on this issue; Newton took it to the
next limit. He offered troops to fight on the side of the North
Vietnamese. In 1970, when was released from prison in California, his
first act was to offer troops to fight in Vietnam on the side of the
Vietnamese people.

On August 29, 1970 Newton wrote "In the spirit of international
revolutionary solidarity the Black Panther Party hereby offers to the
National Liberation Front and Provisional revolutionary Government of
South Vietnam an undetermined number of troops to assist you in your
fight against American imperialism. It is appropriate for the Black
Panther Party to take this action at this time in recognition of the
fact that your struggle is also our struggle, for we recognize that
our common enemy is the American imperialist who is the leader of
international bourgeois domination."

Newton also raised the questions of the liberation of women and even
gays. At that time in our history this was not fashionable.

Nationalists, Pan-Africanist and even some socialist formations did
not wish to touch the hot potato of gay rights. Newton did. He was the
bold one. His speech given on August 15, 1970 created a firestorm in
the African liberation movement. At that time I did not support
Newton's thoughts on the issue of gays and lesbians.

Newton said: "We should be careful about using those terms that might
turn our friends off. The terms 'faggot' and 'punk' should be deleted
from our vocabulary and, especially, we should not attach names
normally designed for homosexuals to men who are enemies of the
people. Homosexuals are not enemies of the people. We should try to
form a working coalition with the gay liberation and women's
liberation groups. We must always handle social forces in the most
appropriate manner."

Newton was born in Oak Grove, Louisiana on February 17, 1942.

Louisiana has always been a problem for the ruling circle in the
United States. Queen Mother Moore, Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, Raymond
“Maasi” Hewitt, Elmer
"Geronimo" Pratt, Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown), Paul
Mooney Richard Williams (father of Serena and Venus Willisms )and
Newton all hail from Louisiana.

Queen Mother Moore from New Iberia, Carter and Hewiitt from Shreveport, Geronimo
from Morgan City, Imam Al-Amin from Baton Rouge and Newton from Oak Grove.

There were 74 chapters of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement
Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) in Louisiana
alone. Tony Martin pointed  this out in his volume, “Race First: The
Ideological and Organizational truggles of Marcus Garvey and the
Universal  Negro Improvement Association”.

In the 1950s and 1960s the militant Deacons for Defense sprang up in
the pecan state. Jesse Jackson won the primaries for the Democratic
Party in 1984 and 1988. Barack Hussein Obama, rode a wave of black
support to victory in Louisiana.

The state has also produced its share of sell-outs, buffoons and idiots.

As we commemorate the 39th Anniversary of Black August and the 26th
anniversary of Newton joining the ancestors we should remember the
words of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Says Mumia: "Huey was, it must be said, no godling, no saint. He was,
however, intensely human, curious, acutely brilliant, a lover of the
world's children, an implacable foe of all the world's oppressors."


Norman (Otis) Richmond, aka Jalali, was born in Arcadia, Louisiana,
and grew up in Los Angeles. He left Los Angles after refusing to fight
in Viet Nam because he felt that, like the Vietnamese, Africans in the
United States were colonial subjects. Jalali is producer/host for the
Diasporic Music show on UhuruRadio.com every Sunday at 2pm ET. His
column Diasporic Music appears monthly in The Burning Spear newspaper.
He  can be contacted Norman.o.richmond@gmail.com

Parable of a Happy Black Man

Some young people have come by Marvin X's Academy of da Corner at 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland and after looking at the spread of conscious literature, broke down in tears at the beauty of blackness before their eyes, something they'd never seen before. Those of us who are conscious and have been conscious since the 60s, take for granted that all of our people are aware of black consciousness literature, but this is presumption that must be discarded. Many of our people have never seen a black book, sadly, in many homes there are no books, newspapers, magazine or other reading material. Some parents are so ignorant they tell their children, "Don't bring nothing home from that damn school."

 Dr. Nathan Hare, Father of Black Studies

As a teacher, I have long told educators  when they ask me to speak with students that I would prefer talking with their parents for students are not the problem. Recently, when I told an administrator in the Oakland Public Schools I only wanted to speak with parents, he replied, "This can be arranged easily through the Housing Authority because parents are required to attend meetings in the projects." We know few parents attend PTA meetings at schools, i.e. Black parents. I have gone to parent meetings in Berkeley where my grandchildren attend school and  the white parents are there at 8AM in the morning.

But let me get back to Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland, the most dangerous classroom in the world, a teacher's self definition, but it has been the scene of numerous rallies, protests, rebellions and riots, from Oscar Grant to Occupy Oakland to Ferguson to Baltimore to Black Lives Matter, Port of Oakland General Strike  and beyond.

In partnership with sociologist and clinical psychologist, Dr. Nathan Hare and educator Dr. Julia Hare, I am able to give out books for free to the poor, others are requested to give a generous donation.

This week I was giving out books to those without money (alas, free phone, now a free book!), two persons  who witnessed me were Blues Hall of Fame member Augusta Collins and former Nation of Islam official, Brother Jerry of Mosque #26, San Francisco. They were present when one young man came up to my table without funds. I handed him a book and he gave me a strange look, walked a couple of feet then turned back to me, saying, almost in tears, "Brother, I really don't know how to take this because ain't nobody ever gave me nothing before, " and he crossed the street.

Brother Jerry said, "Brother Marvin, some of our people have never been given a gift in their life. They don't know how to take it. Keep doing what you are doing, Marvin X. You are doing a great work. May Allah be pleased with you." Augusta Collins said, "Marvin X, when I get home I'm going to write on Facebook what I saw you doing today. This is beautiful."

After a day at the Academy dealing with the poor, mentally challenged, the petit bourgeoisie,  whites suffering addiction to White Supremacy Type I (Dr. Nathan Hare, see his foreword to my manual How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy); whites in denial of course, although one young white lady made a generous donation for a collection of books to help her people suffering Type I Addiction) but after a day dealing with mainly those suffering unresolved grief and trauma from the  American neo-slave system(Addiction to White Supremacy Type II, Dr. Nathan Hare), when I got home, I called Dr. Hare to tell him of the day's events.

"Dr. Hare, I tell them to take one each of your and Julia's several titles and give a generous donation. Give what God puts in their hearts. Some have only given one dollar, some have given donations of  twenty, forty, fifty dollars, so it all works out."

Dr. Hare said it was fine with him and encouraged me to keep on doing what I'm doing. This is better than keeping the books in storage and getting nothing; if we get two dollars per book, it's better than nothing!"

"Doc, I rather give the people the discount than a distributor. At least the people smile. Distributors and bookstores usually have an ugly frown when you come for your money." I told Dr. Hare about the brother who was given a free book and almost broke down after receiving his gift."

Again, Dr. Hare said, "Keep on doing what ya doing, Marvin X!"

Academy of da Corner, Bay Area Locations

During the week, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland
Saturdays, Lakeshore Avenue, across from the Farmer's Market
Sunday, Berkeley Flea Market, ASHBY BART STATION

As a senior citizen, Marvin X appears at Academy of da Corner as per his energy level or when he feels like it. Best to make an appointment: 510-200-4164.

We know many of you have only read the writings of Marvin X since the sixties until now,  persons on the social media have read his writings but never met him in person, the same with persons who heard him on KPFA and KPOO radio.

If you'd like to meet and greet him at any of the above locations, it is best to call to make sure he will be there.

Marvin X is presently working to establish the Black Arts Movement Business and Cultural District along the 14th Street corridor, from the Afro-American Museum/Library at Martin Luther King, Jr. Way to Alice Street. He is forming a community task force to help him plan the district in partnership with the City of Oakland. If you'd like to be part of the BAM Business and Cultural District Community Task Force, please email me some of your ideas for such a district. We are scheduled to meet with Oakland City Council President Lynette McElhaney in September, so send me a paragraph or two of your ideas ASAP.
jmarvinx@yahoo.com

As-Salaam-Alaikum
Marvin X (El Muhajir)
BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT DISTRICT
 

Parable of the White Supremacy Bikers

 

If you attack the white supremacy bikers, you may be guilty of hate crimes or
making terrorist threats, so it is best to say nothing to them. Better to rape a
black woman walking in the hood at 3AM than a white woman, don't even
think about touching a strand of her pretty blond hair!

Parable of a White Supremacy Bike Rider

Master Teacher Marvin X at his Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland, aka The Black Arts Movement Business and Cultural District. Marvin X says his classroom is the most dangerous in the world. Well, revolution occurs literally in his classroom, the Oscar Grant rebellion, Occupy Oakland, Ferguson, Black Lives Matter. Marvin X was in his classroom the night police shot the US Marine in the head. Marvin X suffered tear gas even though he ran inside Burger King. Ishmael Reed calls Marvin X, "Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland." Bob Holman calls him, "The USA's Rumi, Saada, Hafiz...." Amiri Baraka said, "Marvin X, aka El Muhajir, is one of the outstanding...African writers and teachers in America. He has always been in the forefront of Pan African writing. Indeed, he is one of the innovators and founders of the new revolutionary school of African writing."
photo Adam Turner

The white supremacy bikers and skate boarders think with the same sick mythological construction as others addicted to white supremacy. But the white supremacy bikers are especially arrogant in their addiction to white supremacy, instead of seeing  themselves as bikers, they think they are superior to cars, that cars should bow down to them because they are white, especially those living in the hood that gentrification has bestowed them.

Now we must acknowledge that black bikers have none of the arrogance of the white supremacy bikers. For the most park, black bikers never get in front of a car and think the car or rather the driver should submit to them solely because they are white and not only rule the roads but rule the world. Black bikers know they don't rule the roads or the world. Black bikers have common sense, no matter how much they are addicted to white supremacy.





But the white supremacy bikers would never admit they are addicted to white supremacy even though it was through their inheritance that they were able to remove the blacks from housing in the hood in order to claim it for themselves. They are in denial about the fact that only white privilege allowed them to move into the hood and displace the blacks they claim as allies in their fake pseudo liberal progressive persona.

These fake liberal children of the KKK will even Occupy Oakland with the Blacks, march with them in protesting police violence yet go to their new homes in the hood where blacks once lived until the whites or neo-whites, i.e. children of the old whites, hipsters, et al., have come to settle so they can be in close proximity to San Francisco's financial district or the new technology centers of the SF or Silicon Valley, since they can yet afford housing prices in San Francisco or in the Valley of the neo-colonized brain children who dominate the start up companies and entrepreneurs of generation billionaires.

One has had to literally fight the white supremacy bikers in the streets, most recently while we were unloading to teach at Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland, proclaimed by the people as the Black Arts Movement Business and Cultural District, from 14th and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way to Alice and 14th and beyond, including Lake Merritt and Laney College.

A white supremacy female biker, the worst kind in her gender loving supremacy, approached me as I stopped at 14th and Broadway to unload books at Academy of da Corner. She informed me I had almost hit her. In truth, I didn't see her due to an eye injury. But as I said above, if I were a biker, I would be more concerned about the car with two thousand pounds of steel and plastic coming at me rather than impose my ass on a bike to the car. But, no, the white supremacy bikers think they control the roads and streets and we low life ghetto rats should submit to them. Her boyfriend, another biker, joined the conversation against me as I unloaded so I had to call him a bitch motherfucker too and tell him to kissx my black ass. I repeated what I'd said to her, "I think you need to watch the cars rather than focus on the cars watching your white ass on your bike."

They departed, but my day at Academy of da Corner was hardly over. Hour by hour, I must encounter the mentally ill from every ethnic group. A mad Latino asked me for the time. I told him to turn around and look at the clock atop City Hall. He refused to do so and said he wanted me to give him the time. I told him he was not going to work me, suck my energy. Look at the clock. He declined and walked across the street.

A former street child came by so grown up and womanly I didn't recognize her, but she persisted until I did. She said, "Marvin X, look at me, you don't remember me, I can't believe this. Remember when I used to dress like a boy? Remember when I was homeless?"

Then I remembered her. But looking at her, here was a full woman before me. Girl, what happened to you? You into dick now?

She said yes, I have a boyfriend. I don't do that gay/lesbian shit no more. They can't say nothing to me. But Marvin X, you taught me in your Mythology of Pussy of Dick that I own my pussy and I can give it to whomever I please. Recently I did and the nigguh been buggin me ever since.

You mean you gave the nigguh some pussy and he got sprung?

Well, you can say that, but I got a boyfriend, but it was one of those moments when a girl do what she wanna do.

But now you done sprung da nigguh?

Guess so, that nigguh won't stop text messaging me.

Well, I'm just happy to see you have developed into a beautiful young woman, after foster care, homelessness, street life, etc. You look beautiful to me.

Thank you, Marvin X. You know you've been my teacher since I was fifteen.

I am pleased to see some of my street children survived, but they were some of the most talented in the first place, poets, singers, artists, musicians. Imagine, some of these children who gather at Frank Ogawa Plaza/Oscar Grant Plaza are those lost and turned out on the way to grandmother's house, children of foster care, children who've never known their father and/or mother. Can you imagine not knowing your father or mother? And some parents were same gender loving persons. One young man said, "Hey, Marvin X, my mother is a lesbian, so how you think I felt when I went to school sports events with my mother and her women? My friends asked me what the fuck was going on? But I love my mother, just know that, Marvin X!"

Parable of Why I gotta be a bitch cause I don't wanna give up my pussy?

 One Day in the Life of Marvin X, aka, Plato Negro at Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, Oakland, aka, Black Arts Movement Business and Cultural District

Subject of the Day: Why I gotta be a bitch because I don’t want to give up my pussy?

A young lady stopped by Marvin X’s Academy of da Corner in an agitated state. She came up to his table but asked if she could sit down? He said please, come sit down. She sat down and said the following:

Marvin X, tell me why I gotta be a bitch cause I won’t give a nigguh ma pussy? Marvin X, a nigguh threatened to kill me last night because I wouldn’t give him my pussy. Marvin X, do I have to die cause I won’t give a nigguh my pussy? What am I supposed to do? And he ain’t even my boyfriend? He ain’t my boyfriend! We ain’t never had no discussion about giving him some of my pussy. I don’t even know him like that, but he threatened to kill me last night, Marvin X. What am I supposed to do? I don’t even know if his dick is clean! He might have AIDS or some other shit. He don’t know if I got some STD or HIV but he ready to kill me over my pussy. Am I a slave, am I supposed to give up my pussy to any man who says he wants my pussy? I ain’t no ho’. Marvin X, can you help me understand what’s going on with these nigguhs? Because I wouldn’t give him some pussy he said I was mentally ill, bipolar, manic-depressive, but the main thing that bothered me was because he kept calling me a bitch. I can’t understand why I gotta be a bitch. Help me, Marvin X.

Marvin X replied, “Well, brothers do think they own the pussy, that they have all rights to your pussy, even when they ain’t even your boyfriend. Men will claim shit that ain’t theirs to claim.

I’ve repeatedly told men, especially in my Mythology of Pussy and Dick pamphlet, that they don’t own the pussy, that they don’t have a pussy, that they don’t bleed five days a month. One sister replied, “Well, ma nigguh act like he got a pussy, he act like he on his cycle!” 

Sister, I wish I could tell you things are getting better but we just saw the man in Texas kill eight people, including six children, because he felt he owned his ex-woman’s pussy, even though she was married to another man, had five babies by her new husband, one by her ex-man, but he killed everybody cause he felt he owned her pussy. It’s sick, sick, sick.

But I still wanna know why I gotta be a bitch? Why I gotta be called mentally ill cause I won’t give a strange ass nigguh my pussy that God gave me? Seem like it’s the end of the world, Marvin X, is it?

Looks like it to me.

You mean these people ain’t gonna never wake up and change? You mean I gotta be a bitch til the day I die?

Well, you were called Queen during the 60s, so you’ve gone down the scale from Queen to bitch, ho’, dog, slut. We’ve gone from Black Power to Black Lives Matter. We lost power in the counter-revolution, so now we’re trying to regain our mental and physical equilibrium with Black Lives Matter. For sure, it only matters to us, nobody else gives a damn about Black Lives Matter if and when we don’t. So sadly, sister, yes, you will be a bitch until the man bitch gives up his man bitch behavior. If you ask me, he looks like a bitch, walking around showing his funky ass. Who wants to look at his black funky ass. And he calls himself a man? How can a grown man walk with his wife and children with his pants on his knees, showing his funky drawers? Then he calls you bitch, no he’s the bitch, the ho’, the slut, not you!

---continued--

August 18, 2015

Marvin X

Academy of da Corner

14th and Broadway

downtown Oakland

BAM Business and Cultural District
jmarvinx@yahoo.com
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com 

Master Drummer makes transition to ancestors, Doudou N'Diaye Rose - Rose Rhythm

Dr. Sam Hamod, Ph.D on true Islam

Poet/Professor, Dr. Sam Hamod, one of the founders of Muslim American literature

I am sad to tell you that there are so many lies being posted about Islam that it's hard to keep up with them all. As an expert on Islam, and as the former director of The Islamic Center in Washington, DC ( the focal point of Islam in North America at the time, but it is not longer a Center, it is now just a backward mosque), it is important to understand that: 1. Islam is not tribal or national, but far too many alleged Muslims paste their tribal notions on Islam ( i.e., 'honor killing," 'not educating women," "giving women a lower place in society," "seeing women as only child bearing creatures." "thinking that they have to let their hair grow long or have a beard," "dissing Christianity (which wrong, because the Qur'an makes clear that all "people of the book should be respected), and other misunderstandings of Islam.

 
2. ISLAM FORBIDS KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE (thus it is clear, tht this israeli and american inspired ISIS group is not Muslim and if they think they are then they are of the devil , not of God/Allah), the Qur'an makes clear, 'to save one innocent person is to save all of mankind, to kill one innocent person is kill all of mankind."

 
3. Islam is worldly, it asks that you "read and think,' not just memorize, but try to keep learning and learn all you can about everything in the world, and use all good methods to continue learning. It is not Arab, Pakistani, Indian, Afghani, etc. and many do not even know that the largest Musiim country in the world is Indonesia, and most of those people do not speak Arabic--thus, it is not a religion of one country, but of the world, as is Christianity and Buddhsim, Hinduism, etc.

I SHALL SAY MORE IN ANOTHER POST, BUT THIS IS A START SO THAT OTHERS CAN SEE SOME OF THE MISTAKES OTHERS MAKE WHEN SPEAKING ABOUT ISLAM.
Professor Sam Hamod, Ph.D

The Cross and the Lynching Tree (James Hal Cone and Bill Moyers)

  

Jesus crucified on the cross and lynching tree of America

The Brother's Network honors Larry Robin as Brother of the Year

"The voice of intelligence ... is drowned out by the roar of fear. It is ignored by  the voice of desire. It is contradicted by the voice of shame. It is biased by hate  and extinguished by anger. Most of all it is silenced by ignorance." -Dr. Karl A. Menninger Larry Robin, 2015 Brother of the Year, founder of Moonstone Arts Center,  Robin's Bookstore, and Moonstone Preschool. Mr. Robin's was the first and  only bookstore in Philadelphia to sell books written by African Americans in  Philadelphia. His legacy includes the opportunity for emerging and established  authors and intellectuals to read chapbooks, poetry, novels and literature, from   Nelson George to Sonia Sanchez. Nearly everyone who is a part of the black arts  movement during the last forty years has presented their work in the Moonstone/ Robin's Bookstore space.  Please join us in congratulating Larry Robin, our Brother of the Year, and we cordially  invite you to attend these upcoming programs hosted by Larry Robin.

Attack on Dhoruba Bin Wahad - Press Conference

Ebony Magazine: 1,000 Black Activists, Artists and Scholars Demand Justice for Palestine

1,000 Black Activists, Artists, and Scholars Demand Justice for Palestine

Full-text of statement from Angela Davis, Cornel West, Talib Kweli, the Dream Defenders, Hands Up United and other prominent organizations and leaders
 

By Kristian Davis Bailey and Khury Petersen-Smith

Photo courtesy of

Christopher Hazou

 

 

Over 1,000 Black activists, artists, scholars, students, and organizations have launched a statement expressing their solidarity and commitment to ensuring justice for Palestinians. Signatories to the statement span a wide cross-section of Black activists and scholars, including Angela Davis, Boots Riley, Cornel West, dream hampton, Emory Douglas, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Pam Africa, Patrisse Cullors, Phil Hutchings, Ramona Africa, Robin DG Kelley, Rosa Clemente, Marvin X, Talib Kweli, and Tef Poe. 38 organizations signed on, including The Dream Defenders, Hands Up United, Institute of the Black World 21st Century, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, and Organization for Black Struggle.

The statement is printed in full below:
"The past year has been one of high-profile growth for Black-Palestinian solidarity. Out of the terror directed against us—from numerous attacks on Black life to Israel’s brutal war on Gaza and chokehold on the West Bank—strengthened resilience and joint-struggle have emerged between our movements. Palestinians on Twitter were among the first to provide international support for protesters in Ferguson, where St. Louis-based Palestinians gave support on the ground. Last November, a delegation of Palestinian students visited Black organizers in St. Louis, Atlanta, Detroit and more, just months before the Dream Defenders took representatives of Black Lives Matter, Ferguson, and other racial justice groups to Palestine. Throughout the year, Palestinians sent multiple letters of solidarity to us throughout protests in Ferguson, New York, and Baltimore. We offer this statement to continue the conversation between our movements:
On the anniversary of last summer’s Gaza massacre, in the 48th year of Israeli occupation, the 67th year of Palestinians’ ongoing Nakba (the Arabic word for Israel's ethnic cleansing)—and in the fourth century of Black oppression in the present-day United States—we, the undersigned Black activists, artists, scholars, writers, and political prisoners offer this letter of reaffirmed solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and commitment to the liberation of Palestine’s land and people.

We can neither forgive nor forget last summer’s violence. We remain outraged at the brutality Israel unleashed on Gaza through its siege by land, sea and air, and three military offensives in six years. We remain sickened by Israel’s targeting of homes, schools, UN shelters, mosques, ambulances, and hospitals. We remain heartbroken and repulsed by the number of children Israel killed in an operation it called “defensive.” We reject Israel’s framing of itself as a victim. Anyone who takes an honest look at the destruction to life and property in Gaza can see Israel committed a one-sided slaughter. With 100,000 people still homeless in Gaza, the massacre's effects continue to devastate Gaza today and will for years to come.

Israel’s injustice and cruelty toward Palestinians is not limited to Gaza and its problem is not with any particular Palestinian party. The oppression of Palestinians extends throughout the occupied territories, within Israel’s 1948 borders, and into neighboring countries. The Israeli Occupation Forces continue to kill protesters—including children—conduct night raids on civilians, hold hundreds of people under indefinite detention, and demolish homes while expanding illegal Jewish-only settlements. Israeli politicians, including Benjamin Netanyahu, incite against Palestinian citizens within Israel’s recognized borders, where over 50 laws discriminate against non-Jewish people.

Our support extends to those living under occupation and siege, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the 7 million Palestinian refugees exiled in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. The refugees’ right to return to their homeland in present-day Israel is the most important aspect of justice for Palestinians.
Palestinian liberation represents an inherent threat to Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid, an apparatus built and sustained on ethnic cleansing, land theft, and the denial of Palestinian humanity and sovereignty. While we acknowledge that the apartheid configuration in Israel/Palestine is unique from the United States (and South Africa), we continue to see connections between the situation of Palestinians and Black people.

Israel’s widespread use of detention and imprisonment against Palestinians evokes the mass incarceration of Black people in the US, including the political imprisonment of our own revolutionaries. Soldiers, police, and courts justify lethal force against us and our children who pose no imminent threat. And while the US and Israel would continue to oppress us without collaborating with each other, we have witnessed police and soldiers from the two countries train side-by-side.
US and Israeli officials and media criminalize our existence, portray violence against us as “isolated incidents,” and call our resistance “illegitimate” or “terrorism.” These narratives ignore decades and centuries of anti-Palestinian and anti-Black violence that have always been at the core of Israel and the US.

We recognize the racism that characterizes Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is also directed against others in the region, including intolerance, police brutality, and violence against Israel’s African population. Israeli officials call asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea "infiltrators" and detain them in the desert, while the state has sterilized Ethiopian Israelis without their knowledge or consent. These issues call for unified action against anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and Zionism.
We know Israel’s violence toward Palestinians would be impossible without the US defending Israel on the world stage and funding its violence with over $3 billion annually. We call on the US government to end economic and diplomatic aid to Israel. We wholeheartedly endorse Palestinian civil society’s 2005 call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel and call on Black and US institutions and organizations to do the same. We urge people of conscience to recognize the struggle for Palestinian liberation as a key matter of our time.

As the BDS movement grows, we offer G4S, the world’s largest private security company, as a target for further joint struggle. G4S harms thousands of Palestinian political prisoners illegally held in Israel and hundreds of Black and brown youth held in its privatized juvenile prisons in the US. The corporation profits from incarceration and deportation from the US and Palestine, to the UK, South Africa, and Australia. We reject notions of “security” that make any of our groups unsafe and insist no one is free until all of us are.

We offer this statement first and foremost to Palestinians, whose suffering does not go unnoticed and whose resistance and resilience under racism and colonialism inspires us. It is to Palestinians, as well as the Israeli and US governments, that we declare our commitment to working through cultural, economic, and political means to ensure Palestinian liberation at the same time as we work towards our own. We encourage activists to use this statement to advance solidarity with Palestine and we also pressure our own Black political figures to finally take action on this issue. As we continue these transnational conversations and interactions, we aim to sharpen our practice of joint struggle against capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and the various racisms embedded in and around our societies."

Visit www.blackforpalestine.com for the full list of signatories and more information. You can also follow the statement on Facebook and Twitter. Kristian Bailey is a co-author of the statement along with Khury Petersen-Smith.

Read more at EBONY http://www.ebony.com/news-views/1000-black-activists-artists-and-scholars-demand-justice-for-palestine-403#ixzz3jDjQwahT
Follow us: @EbonyMag on Twitter | EbonyMag on Facebook

Sandra Rivers on the beating of Black Panther Party Elder, former political prisoner (19 years) Dhoruba bin Wahad

 

THERE IS NO – NONE – NO – RATIONALE FOR PUTTING HANDS ON A REVERED ICON OF OUR BLACK LIBERATION STRUGGLE!!! Dhoruba bin Wahad has given his LIFE to our struggle!!!

 http://theblacklistpub.ning.com/profiles/blogs/black-activists-clash-in-atlanta-when-malik-zulu-shabazz-ordered-

Malik Zulu Shabazz and  others who are responsible for Dhoruba bin Wahad being so viciously brutally beaten that he had to endure 6 hours!! Of surgery to repair a broken jaw and other injuries to his face, ….. – MINIMALLY, should assure that Dhoruba bin Wahad  receives ALL medical and personal care needed to bring him to FULL RECOVERY!!!

Those mouthing ‘Hands Off Asaata’ must apply that maxim to ALL freedom fighters, especially our super heroes like Dhoruba, as well as ALL African people!!!  Internal integrity is THE most important value for our liberation!!!

We are awaiting further information as to how to get speedy-recovery wishes to Dhoruba and any needed material support.

Sandra Rivers

sandrarivers@me.com