The City Council Budget meeting THIS MONDAY, JUNE 12th hasbeen
canceled. Due to this unforeseen event OCNC will be rescheduling our
Day of Action Rally to a later date. We look forward to a future day of
action with civic engagement and PEOPLE POWER!!
At the same time, the City’s Finance Director recently released a memo stating that funding for a cultural arts commission will come back in the mid-cycle budget
adjustment after the Cultural Affairs Division's summer community
engagement process that "informs the governance of the Cultural Arts
Commission".
WE CANNOT WAIT.
Our 2-year community process has revealed that Oaklanders need a cultural arts commission right now with the following key impact areas:
Work collaboratively across city agencies
Make funding recommendations
Coordinate arts policy activities
Promote cultural policies and plans
Develop policy recommendations for cultural preservation and equity
Develop and adopt a cultural master plan that supports arts and cultural preservation
We
cannot accept the city’s promise to address Arts & Culture during
the mid-cycle budget adjustment. We need their commitment NOW -
addback $1.33 million in the 2017-2019 budget NOW!
JOIN the Thunderclap campaign HEREby no later than 6pm tomorrow (posts Tuesday afternoon). We have to get 100 supporters, we are currently at 27.
SHARE the Thunderclap campaign with 5
people in your network – WE NEED YOU to help us reach more artists,
local arts organizations, Oakland residents, elected officials and ALL
neighborhoods in Oakland. Here is the link to sign up and share: http://bit.ly/2raYtc9
Let's do this OCNC! For the people, for the culture, for the town!
Take a look at OCNC's budget policy memo here. We have be sharing this with Oakland’s elected officials.
Dr. Nathan Hare comments on Fritz Pointer's book review of Blue Jeans in High Places
Sounds like Fritz is an equal opportunity finger pointer, but he’s got a point.
Thank you,
Nathan Hare
...Just don’t try to turn it into a religion like our prople tend to do. Struggle is its own excuse for being; and we don’t need another ideology that doesn’t know it’s left foot from its right.
Thank you,
Nathan Hare
Marvin X replies to Dr. Hare
Do the foots know right from wrong?
--Marvin X
Naw. That’s how come they be getting off on the wrong foot.
Thank you,
Nathan Hare
Marvin X replies
JB say get on the good foot. Which one is that?
Marvin,
To answer your question, that’s part of what messed us up. Say you’re orthodox, as most people are, that means you dance or box or do anything with the right foot (we’re not talking of the wrong fit just now) backing you up, leading with the other. For most people they are starting with or pivoting off their left foot, for others it’s just the reverse but no matter, because they are doomed to comply or deal with other people coming from an orthodox approach, meaning they’re doubly challenged (as they say of people retarded). So you think of your right foot as your good foot, but for many of us it’s injured or sore, so we think of the other one as our good (not injured or sore) foot; and some of us don’t have a good foot at all, and ain’t had it for years, many injured in childhood without access to adequate medical care; so all of that just goes double. Then we might get to using the other foot as our good foot, i.e., our backup foot, until the other one heals; and just thinking of which foot is good (if neither is) confuses us again. So getting on the good foot gives us pause, so the scramble to get on the good foot becomes a syncopated frenzy of confusion James Brown called a dance (all the more if we don’t know what syncopated is, on account of our edjumacation), don’t care what it is. Like we be grinning all the time because we hurting somewhere in our self, but expected to thank God and put on a good face; so speaking of feet we can get turned upside down.
Don’t start me to talking cause I’ll tell everything I know.
Fritz Pointer comments on Dr. Nathan Hare
Dr. Fritz Pointer
Marvin,
I am humbled and proud to read Dr. Nathan Hare's comment on my book review of Blue Jeans in High Places. It was Dr. Hare who wrote in the second edition of Black Anglo Saxons (1991), quoting Carter G. Woodson who "warned us (Black people) that any race that had remained in the same political party for 50 years (speaking then, circa 1932, of the Republican party) and hadn't gotten anything out of it deserved to be oppressed. By now we have been in rotation trapped within the Democratic Party also for more than 50 some-odd years." Perhaps, I'm not the only one who is "an equal opportunity finger pointer." As V.I. Lenin would ask: What is to be done?
Fritz
Blue Jeans in High Places
“The Coming Makeover of American Politics”
by Mike McCabe
A review by Fritz Pointer 6/4/17
Dear friends suggested this book to me, Drs. Ralph and Nancy Knudson, retired MD’s, from La Crosse, Wisconsin. Last week, in Madison, Wisconsin, on a trip to “Unveil” my wife’s father’s tombstone, Prof. Daniel Kunene, a customary South African tradition that must be fulfilled no later than one year after the passing of a relative or loved one, Ralph told me that Mike McCabe will possibly be running for Governor of Wisconsin and he and Nancy may support him.
For the past 15 years, Mike McCabe, Director and founder of Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, has followed the money in American politics. He believes that the inheritance of American democracy has been squandered, “largely because we have allowed bribery to become legal again.” Of course old-fashioned bribery remains a crime, but “Today’s legal bribes aren’t called bribes. Now they’re called campaign contributions.” So, what is bribery sounds charitable, philanthropic.
And, with the 2010 Supreme Court promulgating Citizens United, one of the dumbest rulings ever concocted, standing democracy on its head, by allowing corporations and other powerful groups to spend unlimited sums on elections with the simplistic logic: if people could be property, then property can be people, McCabe finds appalling, and accelerating America’s plunge into the abyss of oligarchy.
Indicative of this is the 2012 election when, according to McCabe: “32 donors of Super PACs matched all of the money raised from small donors by President Obama and his rival Mitt Romney combined. Yep…the top 32 Super PAC donors – giving nearly $10 million apiece – contributed a total of $313 million to finance election advertising by these special interest committees.” Oh, yes, we have “freedom of speech,” but If money is speech, then who is being heard?
McCabe asks us to question why and how “in the span of a single generation, Wisconsin (like many other states) has gone from a place where it was possible to run successfully for statewide office for $145 (Bill Proxmire, 1982) to one that has seen $81 million spent to decide who sits in the governor’s office.” He reminds us that in 1897 and again in 1905 Wisconsin took a stand “banning corporate campaign contributions and election spending,” and (the nation) should do this again.
“Where are the voices” McCabe asks, “saying it’s time to extend the promise of free public education beyond high school? Where are the voices saying higher education and advanced vocational training needs to be as accessible and affordable in the twenty-first century as elementary and secondary education were made in the twentieth?” They are not saying it, he says, because they are not being paid to say it. Instead, not a single new state university campus has been created in Wisconsin since 1968. But since 1994, eight new prisons have been built and a ninth purchased.
Like “Fighting Bob” La Follette, who called himself a “Progressive Republican” McCabe believes: “the business of government is not business, but service to the common people”…. and, that “the will of the people is the law of the land.” And, with that, he recognizes that, “More and more every day, our country is becoming less white, less male-dominated, less Christian, less ‘traditional’,” hence, Citizens United.
So, Mike McCabe reminds us that The Founders wanted a wall between not only church and state, but also between business and state.
Whether we realize it or not he says, “the political spectrum has been turned on its head. It is vertical, not horizontal. The definitive question in today’s politics is not whether you are standing with those on the left, right or middle; it is whether you are with those on the top or bottom or somewhere in between.” Who are the Democrats and Republicans standing with? Who are they working for: Those on the top or those on the bottom?
“One party is scary and the other is scared” McCabe repeats, and we know what he’s talking about. “Both parties belong at or near the top because both are catering to wealthy special interests and neither major party is listening to ordinary people or reliably acting on their behalf… The horizontal spectrum continues to foster the illusion of two parties with separate and distinct masters.” Rather, we might want to begin to talk about “royals” and “commoners.”
McCabe makes clear, “I am not talking about creating a third party. I am talking about having at least one that truly owes its allegiance to the people.” We need, he believes, a new political identity, thinking, vocabulary and new symbols. Liberal and Conservative, for example boxes us into horizontal thinking. We refer to politicians as leaders, yet “With a few impressive exceptions, politicians are consummate followers. They don’t move a muscle without getting marching orders from their key supporters.” The current symbols for the Democratic and Republican parties are the donkey and the elephant. When giving lectures, McCabe begins by asking: “How many of you own a donkey?” No hands go up. Then he asks, “How many of you own an elephant?” Of course no hands go up. Then he asks, “How many of you own a pair of blue jeans?” And, every hand goes up. So, “what would better represent people, an elephant or donkey or pair of blue jeans?”
What would better distinguish us from the suits on Wall Street or on K Street where all the lobbyists hang out or the suits on Capitol Hill whose pockets are lined? “What” he asks, “could better symbolize the political identity of the masses than blue jeans? “ Overall, the book is as refreshing as Mike’s speeches. He leaves us with hope: “We face nothing today that hasn’t been faced – and defeated – before. Right on this soil.” He gives us strategies, things we can do, starting locally and thinking globally.
A security guard walks up a ramp leading to the Brazilian National Congress, in Brasilia, Brazil, Thursday, April 13, 2017. Though the deals were often sealed over dinners and coffees, there was nothing casual about the massive corruption scheme that Brazilian prosecutors are investigating involving bribes and kickbacks paid to hundreds of politicians. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) (The Associated Press)
SAO PAULO – A secret communications system was used to discuss and arrange the payments of bribes. A detailed spreadsheet mapped out who got what, all veiled under a system of codenames. And overseeing it all, there was an entire department at the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht whose only purpose was to ensure the graft ran smoothly.
Though deals were often sealed over dinners and coffees, there was nothing casual about the massive corruption scheme that Brazilian prosecutors are investigating involving bribes and kickbacks paid to hundreds of politicians in exchange for state contracts, beneficial legislation and other favors.
The Supreme Court opened investigations into about 100 politicians this week, based on testimony provided by current and former executives at Odebrecht. Their testimony describes how bribery and kickbacks were simply part of doing business.
"There was a rule: Either we don't contribute to anyone, or we contribute to everyone," explained Emilio Odebrecht, chairman of the board, referring to payments to politicians.
Odebrecht appears to have opted for the latter. Court documents released this week and prosecutors' statements offer a peek into the highly organized way the company managed millions of dollars in bribes.
The scheme was overseen by the blandly named Division of Structured Operations, which investigators refer to as simply "the bribe department." It had its own hierarchy and its own accountants. It also used its own off-the-books communications system, called Drousys, to communicate about the bribes both internally and externally.
The payments were detailed in spreadsheets, held in the Drousys system, according to testimony and the judge's decision released this week. On those spreadsheets, politicians who received bribes and the intermediaries who delivered them were referred to by nicknames.
The man who is now President Michel Temer's chief of staff, Eliseu Padilha, was called "cousin." Former Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes was "little nervous one." Others were "decrepit," ''Viagra," ''little boy of the forest" and "Dracula."
One congressman even protested on his Facebook page when his nickname — "totally ugly" — was reported in the Brazilian press last year.
The employees at Odebrecht may have had some fun with the nicknames, but their revelations so far show that they took corruption very seriously.
Prosecutors are investigating the testimony and deciding whether to bring charges. The politicians have denied wrongdoing, with many saying the funds they received from Odebrecht were legal campaign contributions.
If you want to visit the home where civil rights legend Rosa Parks lived, you have
a trip ahead of you — all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. That’s because her
home is in the backyard of an American artist living in Germany.
It seems like back-of-the-bus treatment for the black woman who had the guts in
1955 to refuse to give up her seat to a white man in Alabama and go to the back
of the bus. Instead, she gave birth to the civil rights movement.
Why is her home in Berlin? The short answer is that Detroit planned to destroy it.
When Parks’ niece Rhea McCauley found out, she paid $500 for the home, which
Parks moved to in 1957, and cast around for ways to save it. She reached out to
artist Ryan Mendoza, who happened to be in Detroit at the time and had previously moved a house from the city to Europe for an art project.
Though they both appealed to Detroit’s mayor to protect the building, they said the mayor had no interest. So Mendoza and volunteers disassembled the home,
packed it in shipping containers, transported it to Germany, and put it back together in an expensive operation that took several months, reported Deutsche Welle.
“It is something that is precious,” McCauley told The Associated Press. “It is priceless, yet it is being mistreated. That’s what I saw and that’s how it felt. So
when I met Ryan and he said, ‘Let’s bring it to Berlin and restore it,’ I said yes.”
Mendoza, who was born in New York, is stunned that Germany ended up with
what he considers a treasure. “The Rosa Parks house should actually be a
national monument and not a demolition project,” he told Deutsche Welle.
“The basic question, the fundamental question I ask myself: ‘Is the house
worthless or is the house priceless?’ For the American institutions so far the
house has been deemed worthless,” he told Agence France-Presse. “It was put
on a demolition list; that’s not a detail.”
Mendoza believes it’s apt that the house now stands in a country that tore down
a wall and was removed from a nation that plans to build a wall.
SEAN GALLUP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Rosa Parks’ niece Rhea McCauley (right) stands outside her aunt’s home, now in Berlin.
Hundreds of people turned out to see the official unveiling of the home in Berlin
last week. The interior still needs some work, but Mendoza has installed a sound
exhibit for the home including a telephone interview with Parks.
McCauley said she hopes one day the U.S. will “grow up” and ask for its treasure
When Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, NAACP president Cornell Williams Brooks, and actor Danny Glover joined thousands of Mississippians in marching for labor rights two months ago, economic and social justice activist Chokwe Antar Lumumba was in the thick of it. “I stand for workers’ rights,” Lumumba said, as the marchers converged on a Nissan plant where workers have been organizing for union protections. “[The] struggle does not cease and so we’re constantly in the battle of how we create self-determined lives for people. And we believe in human rights for human beings and you cannot support human rights if you’re not prepared to support workers’ rights. And so, we live in a world where you have so many with so little and so few with so much. And so, we’re trying to change that dynamic right here [in Mississippi]—we want to change the order of the world.”
To answer your question, that’s part of what messed us up. Say you’re orthodox, as most people are, that means you dance or box or do anything with the right foot (we’re not talking of the wrong fit just now) backing you up, leading with the other. For most people they are starting with or pivoting off their left foot, for others it’s just the reverse but no matter, because they are doomed to comply or deal with other people coming from an orthodox approach, meaning they’re doubly challenged (as they say of people retarded). So you think of your right foot as your good foot, but for many of us it’s injured or sore, so we think of the other one as our good (not injured or sore) foot; and some of us don’t have a good foot at all, and ain’t had it for years, many injured in childhood without access to adequate medical care; so all of that just goes double. Then we might get to using the other foot as our good foot, i.e., our backup foot, until the other one heals; and just thinking of which foot is good (if neither is) confuses us again. So getting on the good foot gives us pause, so the scramble to get on the good foot becomes a syncopated frenzy of confusion James Brown called a dance (all the more if we don’t know what syncopated is, on account of our edjumacation), don’t care what it is. Like we be grinning all the time because we hurting somewhere in our self, but expected to thank God and put on a good face; so speaking of feet we can get turned upside down.
Don’t start me to talking cause I’ll tell everything I know.
This event is to honor and uplift our Black and African community. We will be showcasing the richness and diversity of the Black and African culture through food, dance, music, and fashion. We will be collaborating with Black and African businesses to help give them a platform in the community while encouraging people to purchase products and services from them. This event as a whole will unify and bring together communities who may feel that they are alone or marginalized in this era of gentrification. We will encourage standing together, standing tall, and working together to make our community flourish.
6/1-6/17- Hela- The Live Oak Theater- Time Varies 6/1-6/3- The 10th annual Rafiki Coalition Black Health and Healing Summit- 601 Cesar Chavez Street- Time Varies 6/2- LyricsLounge 510- MLK Cafe- 9 PM 6/3- Take Back our Streets: Community Breakfast- 9 AM 6/3- Father Daughter Dinner Dance-Geoffrey's Inner Circle- 6PM 6/3- Oakland Carnival and Wellness Festival- Mosswood Park- 12 PM 6/3- Millsmont Farmers Market -7700 Mountain blvd- 9 AM 6/6- Speak Easy- Berkeley Repertory- 7PM (Every Tuesday) 6/6- The Oakland Queer+ Trans Open Mic-440 Grand Ave- 6PM 6/8- Black Fatherhood Film: Oakland Screening- Oakstop- 6PM 6/11- Talk of the Town: NLC Oakland's Community Building Forum- Greenlining Institute- 10 am 6/14- Nights at the Libertine- The Libertine Oakland- 8PM 6/14- Take Back Our Streets: Speaking Against Violence- Youth Uprising- 5 PM 6/16- Diner Maison Noire: Dinner + Conversation w/ Mame-Fatou Niang- Bissap Baobab Oakland - 7PM 6/17- African Nights- Miliki Restaurant- 9PM 6/17- Juneteenth Celebration: Friends of the Negro Spirituals- West Oakland Public African American Museum and Library at Oakland- 1 PM 6/17- 1st Annual Oaktown Reggae Festival 6/17- Soulful 70’s Party- Geoffrey's Inner Circle- 8 PM 6/17- 6/18- Zuvaa Pop up Shop- Oakstop- Time Varies 6/18- 30th Annual Berkeley Juneteenth Festival- 11 AM 6/24- The Oakland African Initiative Expo- Omni Community Center- 6 PM 6/25- Oakland Juneteenth- 3233 Market st- 11 AM
*All events are subject to change, check directly on sites for cost, update in location and times* Did we miss your event? Don't let it happen again!
This event is to honor and uplift our Black and African community. We will be showcasing the richness and diversity of the Black and Afric...
The Fanfare and National Scope to Support the Challenges of Tupac Movie by Bennie Boom By Maurice Brian Henderson ...
The Black Arts and Culture Calendar is back! 6/1-6/17- Hela- The Live Oak Theater- Time Varies 6/1-6/3- The 10th annual Rafiki Coaliti...
2nd Annual Passion Africa Fashion Show, Friday, June 9, 7:30PM, Berkeley Technology Academy, 2701 MLK, Jr. Way Berkeley World Mu...
