Marvin X review of Dr. Ayodele Nizinga's Protective Shields at the Flight Theatre, 1540 Broadway, downtown Oakland

Notes on Dr. Ayodele Nzinga's mytho-magical drama: Protection Shields

by

Marvin X

Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, founder, producer, playwright and director of Oakland's Lower Bottom Playaz opened a new play at the Flight Deck, 1540 Broadway, downtown Oakland. It is a myth-ritual dance drama in the Black Arts Movement Theatre tradition, based on the Yoruba story telling in the best tradition of African didactic narrative, i.e., teaching a moral story based on ancient spirituality and morality, i.e., the myth of Eshu and the moral teaching of do the right thing. 

In the 1960s, Black Arts Movement poets, playwrights, dancers, drummers, painters turned away from Christian mythology and ritual to embrace Islamic, Yoruba, Rasta and Hebrew myth-ritual. It was a conscious denunciation of European White supremacist Christianity that approved the genocide of 100 million, and even today, 2018, North American Africans suffer trauma and unresolved grief so well depicted in Protective Shields. 

The Yoruba priest who probably influenced 1960s Black African culture the most, was Oba Serjiman Olatunji who spread Yoruba culture in Harlem, who single handedly presented Yoruba culture in its most flamboyant and royal manner. As a Harlemite during 1968-69, I recall Oba Serjiman parading through the streets of Harlem with his entourage of wives, priests and devotees in elegant flowing robes and head pieces, chanting Yoruba songs that helped ignite the Black Arts Movement of the 60s, the most radical artistic and literary revolution in American history, alas, it gave birth to the Black Panthers, Black Arts Movement, Black Studies, Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, et al.

Black Arts Movement co-founders,Amina and Amiri Baraka, were married in a Yoruba ceremony, officiated by Oba Serjiman, who soon departed Harlem to establish his  African Yoruba Village in Sheldon, South Carolina. According  to the new Oba/king, before his father could have peace with the whites in the area, he had to show superior magic in the manner of Moses and Pharaoh's magicians.

Oba Serjiman, obviously influenced the Black Arts Movement, alas, he is perhaps the most critical factor in the BAM/Yoruba intersection. There was Nigerian drummer Oljunji reinstating the drum as spiritual therapy with rhythms for all the orishas, i.e., gods, for Harlemites and North American Africans coast to coast deprived of the healing power of the drum since arriving in the Americas, most especially in the USA, elsewhere the drum created new world beats in the old world manner, for orisha rhythms never change--an eternal tribute to the identity and power of the gods and their  connection with devotees, supplicants, sycophants.....

A Black Mass was Amiri Baraka's interpretation and synchronization of Elijah Muhammad's Myth of Yakub, the mad scientist who created the white man through genetic engineering, but Baraka infused his myth drama with Yoruba and Sufi teachings. We applaud Baraka for utilizing original North American African mythology but extending the myth with African and Islamic myth-rituals. 

BAM theatre folks like the New Lafayette's director Bob Macbeth, Barbara Ann Teer's National Black Theatre, the Last Poets and myself tried to create Black Ritual Theatre, with dramatic energy derived from Yoruba, Islamic and Christian myth-ritual, especially the Holy Ghost church. It had the high level of energy we wanted in the BAM theatre. Further, we wanted to destroy that fourth wall that separated the actors from audience, forcing them into oneness and celebration of the Divine Spirit. My contribution to Ritual Theatre is Resurrection of the Dead, a myth-ritual dance drama by Marvin X, Black Educational Theatre, San Francisco, 1972. In the African tradition of drama, there is no audience, all enjoy the communal experience. When I was told Vudun is a democratic society, I understood in  the Vudun ritual one only comes forward when their orisha's rhythm is beat on the drum. Correct me if I am wrong. 

We cannot leave BAM Master Teacher Sun Ra out of this discussion since he fused Kemit mythology with socalled science fiction, although Sun Ra is considered the father of Afro-futurism, Octavia Butler, the Mother. But Sun Ra took Yoruba, Islamic, Christian and all other isms and schisms, including Jazz, Blues and any other sounds to construct his Myth-Ritual Arkestra, demonstrating the highest level of BAM aesthetics, philosophy, dramaturgy. No BAM artist approached Sun Ra's vision of smashing European art and white supremacy mythology. 

In the grand tradition of African drama that originated in the Osirian drama of Resurrection, modeled on the annual inundation of the Hapi River, aka, Nile, Ayodele reveals to us the necessity of high morals and values as the ultimate Protective Shield. 

If we cut to the chase in Ayo's drama at the crossroads ruled by Eshu, aka Legba, aka Ptah, aka Peter, Protection Schields taught us the only protection is to do the right thang, thus the long monologues by characters fighting within themselves to do the right thing. To borrow a line from Islam, we say, "Ithdina s-sirata al mustaqim, Guide us on the right path." The Christian Bible tells us to put on the armor of God. 

Dr. Ayodele Nzinga forces us to transcend the Christian and Muslim myth-ritual, with repeated calls out to the Yoruba orishas, displaying Yoruba myth ritual of offering fruit to placate the orishas, without which one cannot possibly navigate the crossroads, not without Eshu in the persona of a child, yet wielding spiritual power to present the suffering adults with the Protective Shield, even the suspected murderer of the mother's son is given the Protective Shield but only after he declares the uselessness of murder or "blood for blood" as the narrator repeatedly informed us. 

A mother wants revenge for the murder of her son. Having lost a son, we were beyond understanding of her trauma and unresolved grief. She was presented with a Protection Shield by Eshu represented by a child who adorned all the supplicants who submitted to do the right thing, some for the first time in their lives. Alas, my patron, Abdul Leroy James, used to say, "Most of you people (excluding himself since he was a successful multi-millionaire from real estate but he did make possible my book projects and community events such as the Melvin Black Forum, Oakland Auditorium, 1979, National Black Men's Conference, Oakland Auditorium, 1981, Kings and Queens of Black  Consciousness, San Francisco State University, 2001, Tenderloin Black Radical Book Fair, 2004, San Francisco, One Day in the Life, docudrama of Marvin X's addiction and recovery, the longest running North American African drama in Northern California history, 1996-2002)--Ancestor Abdul Leroy James said, "Most of us ain't done nothing right in our lives.". 

Protection Shield's dominant theme was do the right thang! If you kill, the pain of revenge is inescapable, blood feuds for evermore, honor killings. All the supplicants submitted to do the right thang and were thus blessed to transcend the crossroads with the blessing of Eshu. 

Throughout the drama, all the orishas were called upon to do their thang. Playwright, producer, director, Dr. Ayodole Nzinga consciously employed the Yoruba myth-ritual to rock 2018 Black Christian myth-ritual, although Africans in the Americas long ago figured out how to synchronize African spirituality with European Christian mythology. We fused Haitian  Vudun, Cuban and Puerto Rican Santaria, Barzilian Condomble and other Caribbean spiritual persuasions into a eclecticism of functional religiosity. We can attend a Catholic mass then visit a Vudun ceremony to placate the Orishas without feeling contradictory.

The Yoruba narrative in Ayo's drama resembled Black American Christian ritual, or Christianity in general with its major theme of suffering and death, although the joy of resurrection derived from Kemet, Egypt, Africa's Nile Valley Civilization that extended the 4,000 miles of the Hapi River, aka Nile, source of  basic Christianity, Judaism and Islamic religiosity. See Yusef Ali's translation of the Holy Qur'an and his notes on the steps of Egyptian Religion toward Islam. 

Dramatic Structure

For sure, Dr. Ayodele transcended Western dramaturgy. Protection Shields was completely devoid of dialogue, instead a plethora of monologues was employed, many offstage, but even more pervasive was her use of choreography to advance the narrative. The Yoruba method of utilizing dance to advance narrative is well known, going back thousands of years. We know the dancers employed classic Yoruba choreography to tell the story, for every dance movement is connected with an Orisha,yet as much as we enjoyed the dancers whose choreography advanced the narrative, still, something was missing and sorely needed to make this myth-ritual dramatic. Dramatic film can move to stage and visa versa, but Protection Shields is the mytho-history of the hero Wolfhawk Jaguar, an individual experiencing a rite of passage and his devotees enjoying a healing communal rite of passage as well.

We were not satisfied with the hero sleeping throughout the drama of his myth history. We see him on the second level, primarily asleep in a dream mode, but since he is also the rapper and high priest of this drama, he must be utilized beyond his dream state. After all we hear him and see him in constant movie clips buy why not allow him to take the stage as rapper to explicate his mythology. He would be much appreciated by the dancers whose every move is about him, so get him out of slumber land and let him rap to us from the upper room. This will make his mythology real to us and expand the reality of his time in our midst and the lessons the narrator informs us about continuously throughout this didactic classical drama in the Yoruba tradition.

Earlier today, I wrote about How to Recognize A Real Nigga, Part Two, Notes on the Nigga Debate, during the intermission, Dr. Nzinga and I conversed and I told her I tried to delineate the positive nigga from the negative nigga. Her drama revealed to us that doing the right thing is the best and only thing to do, anything less has negative repercussions since every action has a reaction and Eshu will not allow us beyond the crossroads unless we put on the Protective Shield, i.e., the armor of God. Thankfully, the supplicants submitted to wear the Protective Shield, so the drama ends in the African fashion of Sheikh Anta Diop, who told us in the Cultural Unity of Africa, there is no tragedy, only comedy, for we know what Frankie Beverly sang about joy and pain, sunshine and rain, sometimes they the same.... Yet, to traverse the crossroads, we must be right, so in Islam we pray, "Ithdina s-sirata al mustaqim, Guide us on the right path. Dr. Ayodele Nzinga continues and extends Black Arts Movement theatre into the present era. We applaud her crew of actors, dancers and technicians.

Protection Shields will rock your consciousness, especially if you are a white man dipped in chocolate as a young man described the Black Anglo Saxons (Dr. Hare) of today.

--Marvin X

9/23/18

Ramal Lamar reviews Cold Wind from the North: The Prehistoric Origins of Racism, Explained by Diop's Two Cradle Theory, by Vulindlele Ijiola Wobogo

Cold Wind from the North: The Prehistoric European Origins of Racism Explained by Diop's Two Cradle Theory. By Vulindlela Ijiola Wobogo (Charleston: Books on Demand, 2011. Pp. 554. Contents, Introduction, Bibliography and Index, $29.99)

In light of the 50 year anniversary of the BSU Strike at San Francisco State University that gave birth to Black Studies in American universities, it is an honor to write this review.  I am a proud alumnus of the Pan Afrikan Students Union of San Francisco State University (from 1996 to 1998, when the organization was banned) and was a student enrolled in Wobogo's BLS 213 course "Kemetic Strategies in Physical Science".  In this course, not only did I learn of the Afrikan foundations of modern science, but I was exposed to fundamental techniques of physical science, i.e., natural philosophic inquiry. This was even before Theophile Obenga, (past Department Chair of Black Studies and one of Africa's greatest living scholars) came to SF State to lead the Black Studies Department in the new phase of intellectual warfare in defending what Ptah Mitchell, President of the School of Afrikan Philosophy,  called 'the scholastic sovereignty of Black Studies'. Ironically, it was in this BLS 213 course that I met and studied with a new generation of future African scientists, engineers, philosophers, mathematicians, technologists, scholars and business leaders across the African diaspora.    

As a professor, Wobogo had the ability to explain intricate and complicated scientific theories in such a clear and concise manner that I didn't realize until later, when having to take advanced courses in physics or mathematics; that the conceptual understanding I had of certain natural scientific phenomena was due to Wobogo's teaching. All too often I perplexed some of the non African scientists and professionals and researchers I worked with in graduate school  or industry by articulating an idea (or theory) with such clarity that their response was usually: "I don't know how you know that...." or something along those lines. Thinking of Wobogo's mastery, I am reminded of the late John Henrik Clarke, who mentioned that he lectured and taught so many popular courses that he did not really have enough time and luxury to publish masterpieces of original research. Now that Baba Wobogo has retired and is able to write, I am thankful that he was able to publish this work (along with subsequent others).

Even though "Cold Wind" is an expansion of two of his earlier published works, "Diop's Two Cradle Theory and the Origin of White Racism"(1976), and "Anokwalei Enyo"(1977), this is a fundamental work in the history and philosophy of science for myriad reasons. In the tradition of detecting scientific laws of social nature analog to laws of physical nature, Wobogo synthesizes the ideas of modern African scholarship from the past 90 years to present a complete theory of the origin of racism. We are reminded of the contributions made by various African scholars to this social scientific theory, usually attributed only to Cheikh Anta Diop.   

Wobogo's contention (recognized by Marimba Ani and others) is that "specific conditions of life in the arctic cradle since the beginning of the racial differentiation spawned the development of high levels of individualism-competitiveness, xenophobia, genocentricity and ethnocentricity. Of these qualities, xenophobia can be characterized as proto-white racism, which flowered upon contact of European homo sapien with African homo sapien and Asian homo sapien".    

From this basic premise Wobogo takes us through the history and shows how this European trait evolves into the many forms of racism experienced by African people throughout the continents and nations of the world, since about 20,000 BC. The book is also semi-autobiographical since Wobogo is an observer-participant in what he terms the African American Revolution (1960-1975) that led to the creation of Black Studies. And in a manner consistent with traditional scholarship, Wobogo tells a first person narrative of the certain historical events without centering on self aggrandizement  and personal ego.  work and replaces it with scientific rigor and 'demonstration of authority'.

As an educator and lifelong student, this work is crucial in clarifying, if not solving one of the basic problems facing (African) humanity: racism; even when housed under the auspices of genetic engineering and computer technology. Wobogo paints a picture of what a future would look like with or without the (maatian) balance of African contribution to modern problems of science and society, and how incomplete a picture would be, especially for academics, which refuse to acknowledge Africa in the forefront; whether it is from anthropologists, technologists, or a hybrid of the two.  This is a highly recommended book for future scholars and researchers continuing the "great work".

Ramal Lamar

Historian of Science

School of Afrikan Philosophy

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Coming soon from Black Birdg Press

Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X

INTRODUCTION
By Nathan Hare, PhD
Father of Black and Ethnic Studies
San Francisco State University


With the return of “white nationalism” to the international stage and the White House and new threats of nuclear war, the black revolutionary occupies a crucial position in society today. Yet a black revolutionary of historic promise can live among us almost unknown on the radar screen, even when his name is as conspicuous as Marvin X (who may be the last to wear an X in public view since the assassination of Malcolm X).
This semblance of anonymity is due in part to the fact that the black revolutionary is liable to live a part of his or her life incognito, and many become adept at moving in and out of both public and private places sight unseen. For instance, I didn’t know until I read Marvin X’s “Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter” that when he put on a memorial service for his comrade and Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, 1998, he was unaware that Eldridge’s ex, Kathleen Cleaver, had traveled from the East Coast and slipped into the auditorium of the church with her daughter Joju. As one of the invited speakers I had noticed her curiosity when I remarked that I had been aware of Eldridge before she was (he and I /had had articles in the Negro History Bulletin in the spring of 1962) and had met her before Eldridge did, when I was introduced to her while she was working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at Tuskegee institute, but luckily for Eldridge I was happily married to the woman who years later would escort Kathleen around San Francisco in what I recall as a failed search for a black lawyer to take his case when he returned from exile in France.
Like many other persons across this promised land, I also thought I knew Marvin X. I can clearly recall seeing him walk into the offices of The Black Scholar Magazine, then in Sausalito, with a manuscript we published in the early 1970s. However, his reputation had preceded him. For one thing, then California Governor Ronald Reagan had publicly issued a directive to college administrators at UCLA and Fresno State University to get Angela Davis and Marvin X off the campuses and keep them off. The Fresno Bee Newspaper quoted Reagan as he entered the State College Board of Trustees meeting in his capacity as president of the board, "I want Marvin X off campus by any means necessary!"
Over the years I continued to encounter him: when he organized the First National Black Men’s Conference, 1980, Oakland Auditorium, that drew over a thousand black men (without benefit of media coverage) to pay their way into a conference aimed at getting black men to rise again. I was a member of his Board of Directors. I also attended a number of other conferences he organized, such as the Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness, San Francisco State University, 2001, and the San Francisco Black Radical Book Fair, 2004, as well as productions of his successful play, “One Day in the Life,” with a scene of his last meeting with his friend, Black Panther Party co-founder, Dr. Huey P. Newton, in a West Oakland Crack house.
I will never forget the time he recruited me and the seasoned psychiatric social worker, Suzette Celeste, MSW, MPA, to put on weekly nighttime workshops in black consciousness and strategies for “overcoming the addiction to white supremacy.” On many a night I marveled to see him and his aides branch out fearlessly into the gloom of the Tenderloin streets of San Francisco and bring back unwary street people and the homeless to participate in our sessions, along with a sparse coterie of the black bourgeoisie who didn’t turn around or break and run on seeing the dim stairway to the dungeon-like basement of the white Catholic church.
But when I received and read Marvin’s manuscript, I called and told him that he had really paid his dues to the cause of black freedom but regretfully had not yet received his righteous dues.
As if to anticipate my impression, the designer of the book cover has a silhouetted image of Marvin, though you wouldn’t recognize him if you weren’t told, in spite of the flood lights beaming down on him from above like rays directly from high Heaven, as if spotlighting the fact that Marvin ‘s day has come.
You tell me why one of the blackest men to walk this earth, in both complexion and consciousness, is dressed in a white suit and wearing a white hat; but that is as white as it gets, and inside the book is black to the bone, a rare and readable compendium of Marvin’s unsurpassed struggle for black freedom and artistic recognition.
Black revolutionaries wondering what black people should do now can jump into this book and so can the Uncle Tom: the functional toms find new roles for the uncle tom who longs for freedom but prefers to dance to the tune of the piper; the pathological tom, whose malady is epidemic today, as well as the Aunt Tomasinas, can be enlightened and endarkened according to their taste in this literary and readable smorgasbord.
“Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X” is a diary and a compendium, a textbook for revolutionary example and experience, a guide for change makers, a textbook for Black Studies and community action, including city planners who will profit from his proposals and experiences in his collaboration with the mayor and officials of Oakland to commercialize and energize the inner city, with a Black Arts Movement Business District (BAMBD) that could be the greatest black cultural and economic boon since the Harlem Renaissance. No longer just talk and get-tough rhetoric, his current project is cultural economics, Oakland’s Black Arts Movement Business District, an urban model evolving in real time in the heart of downtown Oakland, where people like Governor Jerry Brown once tried their hand before they turned and fled back into the claws of the status quo.

I can’t say everything is in this book, just that it reflects the fact that Marvin, for all he has done on the merry-go-round of black social change, is still in the process of becoming.
Readers from the dope dealer to the dope addict to the progressive elite, the Pan African internationalist, the amateur anthropologist, the blacker than thou, the try to be black, the blacker-than-thous, the try to be white (who go to sleep at night and dream they will wake up white) and other wannabes; in other words from the Nouveau Black to the petit bourgeois noir and bourgie coconuts, “Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X” is a fountainhead of wisdom, with a fistful of freedom nuggets and rare guidance in resisting oppression or/and work to build a new and better day.
Dr. Nathan Hare
3/8/18

Dr. Nathan Hare, PhD and Marvin X

Introduction by Dr Nathan Hare
Black Bird Press, Oakland CA
2018


Other works coming soon

Sweet Tea, Dirty Rice, poems
Mythology of Pussy and Dick, Expanded version, 400 pages
Collected Plays

Books to reprint

Fly to Allah, poems
Land of My Daughters, poems
Love and War, poems
In the Crazy House Called America, essays
Beyond Religion toward Spirituality, essays
Wish I could tell you the Truth, essays
Wisdom of Plato Negro, Parables,Fables
Memoir of Eldridge Cleaver, My Friend the Devil
How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy
Son of Man, proverbs
Woman, Man's Best Friend, proverbs,poems, parables, songs
Somethin' Proper, autobiography


If you would like to support the writing projects of Marvin X, please donate any amount to my campaign, e.g., $1.00, $5.00, $100.00, $1000.00, $10,000. Your contribution can be tax deductible. 

Marvin X has given over a half century of his life to the Black Arts/Black Liberation Movement. He has endured exile, jail, prison, barred from teaching at universities and colleges, hated and despised by black reactionaries and white supremacists, pseudo white liberals and undercover Zionists.  Yet, he remains tenacious, indefatigable and peripatetic.  

FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 2018

Aretha, Angela Davis, Marvin X and the White Farmer from the Central Valley

 

In 1969, Governor Ronald Reagan removed Angela Davis and Marvin X from teaching in academia: he removed Angela from UCLA because she was a black Communist; Marvin was banned from Fresno State University because he was a black Muslim who refused to fight in Vietnam.

Speaking on Aretha Franklin this morning with Amy Goodman, Angela Davis recalled that although Aretha Franklin offered to pay her bail, it was a Central Valley White farmer who put up his land to free her. This reminded me that it was this same White farmer who supported my struggle to teach in Black Studies at Fresno State University, 1969. He also spoke on my behalf at my San Francisco draft trial for refusing to fight in Vietnam. He was attacked viciously by white racists for assisting Angela and myself. They called him a nigger lover and I think he eventually lost his land. For his support, I thank him, honor and respect Roger McAfee for his John Brown consciousness.
--Marvin X
8/17/18

Parable of the Dog

Parable of the Dog

"The ghetto wasn't bad enough
then hippies came
dog shit everywhere...."

ghetto wasn't bad enough
neo-colonial hippies came
high tech hippy gentrification
black nigger dogs
Becky jog
walk dog all night long
don't say nothing Becky
let Becky jog
three in morning
don't touch Becky
hate crime
don't call Becky white gul
funky white ho'
terrorist threat
let Becky 'lone

dogs everywhere
gentrification dogs
no want children dogs
lonely woman man dogs
feed dogs steaks
no feed hungry people dogs





WOMAN AND DOG MISSING
REWARD FOR DOG!
Ghetto wasn't bad enough
no more niggas
dogs everywhere
dog shit opioid human shit
heroin crack shit
shithole San Francisco
shithole America
Shithole Paris
everywhere shithole Donald

tech shit suites
fake news shitholes
fake government shitholes
swamp dweller shitholes
democratic/republican
globalist shithole wars for eternity
Syria Iraq Afghanistan Palestine Yemen Somalia Libya
poor people street shit wars
tent dweller wars
poor people wars
drug wars

dog wars
dogs
human dogs
four legged dogs
two legged dogs
cats too
granddaughter said
she go have kitty cat party
no dogs allowed
why grandbaby
dog poop too big
kitty cat party only.
some black girls like dogs
two legged nigga dogs
some like four legged dogs
tongue kiss dogs
no kiss man
some black girls like dog porno
beastility
some black girls say fuck a nigger
better get me a rottweiler up in here
ghetto wasn't bad enough
cave days come again
white man best friend
WOMAN DOG MISSING
REWARD FOR DOG.
--Marvin X
9/9/18

Marvin X Mexican

Marvin X Mexican

Marvin X and sons, Abdul (Darrel, RIP) and Hakim (Marvin K) visited Oaxaca, Southern Mexico, 1972

Vamanos vamanos
let's go
fresno central valley field hollar
happy chant day end
cotton field grapes watermelon
vamanos
let's go home
can't see can't see field work
school clothes grape cut
100 trays 300 day
school clothes grape fields
watermelon field too hot
quit noon time
vamanos
to hot noon time
vamanos
let's go grandfather
back to Chinatown contractor bus
pool hall time
Dick's Jew store
Stacy Adam shoes
Pendleton shirts
Alpaca sweaters
cool cats
dress uncle style
daddy style
hustler pimp style
vamanos
cotton field time
third pickin time
choppin' cotton time
no work no clothes
five in morning bus ride
Chinatown ride to fields
grandfather work hard
vamanos
grandfather drunk gambling
Al Gato Negro Club
Granny say go get grandfather
stuck on stupid
ride with mama/uncle stand
wait in car
Uncle Stan go get grandpa
stuck on stupid
money gone gambling drunk
universal pan African
beer hall style
vamanos.
Let's go
--Marvin X
9/7/18

Marvin X: The Meta-Mayor of Oakland CA

Marvin X: The Meta-Mayor of Oakland CA

Master Writer Ishmael Reed has always honored and supported Marvin X. Reed's Literary 

Society Pen Oakland, presented Marvin X with a lifetime achievement award. Of Marvin X's docudrama of addiction and recovery, One Day in the Life, Reed said, "It's the most powerful drama I've seen."
]

 Left to right: BAM co-founder and chief architect Amiri Baraka, RIP, Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale, Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, star student of Marvin X, Ahi Baraka, son of
AB and Marvin X, co-founder of BAM and BAMBD, Oakland's Black Arts Movement Business District along the 14th Street corridor from the Lower Bottom to Lake Merritt.

Oakland Mayoral candidate Cat Brooks and Meta-Mayor Marvin X

Marvin X supports Cat Brooks for Mayor

\

Poet-playwright Marvin X and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown

"We appreciate Mayor Willie Brown for supporting our Recovery Theatre and my docudrama of addiction and recovery, One Day in the Life. The Mayor gave grant funds from the Mayor's Office and introduced my play at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre to a sold out crowd. We thank San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown for his help in making One Day in the Life the longest running African American drama in Northern California history.

Ishmael Reed calls him, "Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland." Bob Holman says, "He is the USA's Rumi, the wisdom of Saadi, the ecstasy of Hafiz, the politics of Amiri Baraka, the humor of Pietri.

As we go into the City of Oakland elections, Oakland's Black politicos are finding their way to Oakland's Meta-Mayor, poet/scholar/organizer, philosopher Marvin X at his Academy of da Corner, Lakeshore.

He is likely to return soon to his original classroom at 14th and Broadway, where he initially made himself accessible to the citizens of Oakland, Black, White, Brown, Yellow, no matter.
After Ishmael Reed observed X in his street corner classroom, Reed said, "If you want to learn inspiration and motivation, don't spend all that money going to seminars and workshops, just go stand at 14th and Broadway, and watch Marvin X at work. He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland."

Today on Lakeshore, the Meta-Mayor was visited by Peggy Moore, former chief assistant to Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, soon joined by Brother Troop, candidate for Mayor from Deep East, along with Cat Brooks and the persistent candidate for any office, Pamela Price, and with incumbent Libby Schaaf, aka, Jerry Brown in drag. LOL.  See my short script Marvin X Driving Miss Libby (Youtube).

Peggy and Troop conversed and when they departed when a young writer and photographer arrived to interview me, I informed them I was the Meta-Mayor. They bowed to me in the oriental manner and I returned the bow.

As I ear-hustled their conversation and in prior comments to me, they had doubts that my favorite candidate Cat Brooks was qualified since she had no experience in city politics. Peggy noted that several City of Oakland departments are headed by Black men, e.g., planning, recreation, fire, etc.
These are the people a mayor must work with, Peggy said.

Others politicos have doubts about Cat Brooks because of her antipathy with the Oakland Police Department. Cat Brooks is head of the Anti-Police Terrorism Project. We long ago told Cat to visit Newark, New Jersey, to student the City of Newark's Police Model, under Mayor Ras Baraka. She might also learn how Mayor Baraka deals with developers and gentrification, demanding 20% housing for below market rate citizens in new housing developments. We suggest Cat Brooks invite Mayor Ras Baraka to Oakland to speak on her behalf.

As per Cat Brooks antipathy with the OPD, we suggest reconciliation as Mayor Ras Baraka has done in Newark, NJ. His mother, Mrs. Amina Baraka, informed me Mayor Baraka has stopped the police killing Black men but has not stopped Black men from killing Black men!

After candidate Troop returned from his conversation with Peggy Moore, he stopped at Academy of da Corner and said, "We know this, if Black men and women can feed themselves, they are not likely to go out shooting each other. With bellies full, they are likely to kick back and relax. But if they are hungry and cannot satisfy their hunger, all manner of crimes are likely. So we need jobs."

As Meta-Mayor, I said/wrote years ago, "Bush and Baraka offered three things to the insurgents of Iraq and Afghanistan, "If you lay arms and pledge allegiance to the constitution of your countries, we will provide you with education, housing and jobs." When America is ready to do this for the desperate young men and women in her inner cities, we suspect the violence will subside.

As mayoral candidate Brother Troop departed with The Movement Newspaper (Marvin X Publisher, no longer in circulation due to lack of funds), he pointed to the picture of Marvin X and Mayor Libby Schaaf alongside the City of Oakland's Proclamation honoring the 50th Anniversary of the Black Arts Movement, of which Marvin X is one of the founders with his Black Arts West Theatre, San Francisco, 1966, Black House Cultural/Political Center, (Co-founded with Eldridge Cleaver, Ed Bullins, Ethna Wyatt, Willie and Vernastine Dale, San Francisco, 1967; New Lafayette Theatre, Harlem, 1968 (associate editor of Black Theatre Magazine; Black Educational Theatre, San Francisco, 1972; Recovery Theatre, 1996-2002. He said, "Hopefully, the day will come when I will be the Mayor and take a picture with you as you have with Mayor Labby Schaaf.

The Meta-Mayor was soon occupied with a young writer/photographer from New York who seeks to photograph and interview Oakland's Plato, Rumi, Hafiz, Saadi, Pietri, Baraka.

--Marvin X
7 September 2018

White supremacy in defining mental health in America

It is amazing how quickly white men who commit acts of violence, including mass murder, are labeled suffering mental disabilities, but North American Africans are simply sane hoodlums, thugs, or suffering lack of parental authority and guidance, but sane (and what is sane in this insane world?).

It will be a great surprise to some when the black psycho-social pathology  of pervasive violence in Chicago and other US cities is classified as rooted in some degree of mental illness, along with drug abuse and economic inequities.

Does not Black violence stem from traumatic slave syndrome--not post, but modern day mental slavery? If white boys propensity for homicide is due to estrangement in the rapidly transformation of patriarchal white culture into the multi-cultural reality, including the fluid gender identification crisis, why are young Black men exempt from suffering severe trauma at attempting to navigate through the American cultural matrix, quagmire, conundrum? White the best of Hip Hop culture delivered cultural and revolutionary consciousness to some, other in Hip Hop culture gravitated or were directed to the most base, reactionary elements of this culture, from pedophilia to the world of make believe with its conspicuous consumption of blind bling and pimp/ho. Even the conscious sector is in confusion due to the plethora of isms, schisms, religiosity and mythology.  Hip Hop celebrants are suffer mental paralysis when unable to synchronize the intellectual, ideological and mythological morass, usually a combination of Kemetic thought, Islamic, Yoruba, Moorish Science, Five Per Center, Rastifari and Hebrew mytho-religiosity. Don't leave out York, Super Sunnis and Sufism to make the pot of Gumbo complete, including North American African Christian myth/ritual.

But the dominant white supremacy false narrative tipping the scale of our mental equilibrium appears in the drug crisis, with Crack heads labeled criminals and imprisoned, while opioid addicts
(mostly white) qualify for mental health programs to recover. 

Such linguistic and concomitant program disparities have long labeled Black addicts as criminals. This criminalizing of Blacks extends throughout social and institutional culture. In political economics, we are attacked as welfare cheats, while white farmers were recently granted welfare checks totaling 12 billion dollars to alleviate their losses in Trump's tariff wars, even when the farmers cry they want trade not relief checks.

White supremacy is pervasive in the American criminal justice system. While serving time in federal prison, my job was in the yard office, mainly to announce inmate visitors. I had to first look up their names that included their crimes and sentencing. I saw that white bank robbers got three to four years, black bank robbers seven. Is a black bank robber worse than a white one?

American white supremacy has always been about identity, the black body versus the white body, e.g., three-fifths of a man versus the 100% white human white being. Only as chattel slaves (personal property slaves) did North American Africans have value. Even when the slave catchers killed an African for resisting, the catcher had to compensate the master for loss of property.

But in our current and long persistent nothingness and dread, i.e., being only of value as cannon fodder in the military or incarcerated commodities on the stock exchange, the Black identity crisis is internal as well as external.

Dr. Nathan Hare delineates White Supremacy Type I and II. We suffer the oppressed syndrome, while Type I is the oppressor's syndrome. It is the oppressor's disparity in identifying mental disorders based on white supremacy that so often dominates the narrative until we accept his definitions of criminality and mental health, of course, far too often are mental health issues are in denial, to the point of not permitting the family member to see therapy. This is due to shame, perhaps guilt, but as a result, the matter does not become a communal or community affair, even though mental illness impacts most North American African families. I know cases of  conscious Black bourgeoisie families that never acknowledged or celebrated their child who committed suicide. I acknowledge one of my sons, Darrel, aka Abdul (RIP), committed suicide at 39 years old. His manic depression and medication made him walk into a train. Dr. Frantz Fanon, Dr. Nathan Hare, et al., tell us the oppresssed suffer situational disorders and manic depression is among them. Of course Dr. Fanon said we can only regain our mental equilibrium by engaging in revolution, national liberation.

There is no consensus of the road to our liberation, some have long sought assimilation, integration, others champion separation, national sovereignty, others seek repatriation to the Motherland as my daughter has done. She is now living in Accra, Ghana. She attended and graduated in Microbiology from Howard University on a track scholarship. In her interviews on Al Jazeera and the BBC, she has said, "I ran track to win, so I am not going to be in any situation where I don't have a chance of winning. They might not have electricity 24/7 in Ghana, but they don't have white supremacy 24/7. 
They have it but not 24/7."

Too often we buy into the white supremacy narrative and become blind to our traumatic neo-slave syndrome mentality, refusing to acknowledge our young men and women are just as sick as the white-boy school mass killer, church killer or night club mass murderer. Yes, those who shoot and kill every weekend in the hood, along with their plethora of partner abuse, often a critical cause of homicidal and suicidal violence, especially sexual improprieties, are no less sick than those white boys, but the diagnosis of the Black person is criminal, the white boy suffers a mental health disability. The white boy can kill nine persons in a church but is depressed thus afforded a meal at McDonald's on the way to jail, while the surviving victims immediately forgive him in the most grand manner of the Cross and Lynching Tree, as Rev. James Cone taught us (RIP).

We thus suffer psycho-linguistic maladies far beyond usage of the "N" word, or even "B" word, MF word, et al. Most importantly, in 2018, we have no consensus on whether we are Americans, African Americans (I hear continental Africans are now African Americans); we are Negroes, so-called Negroes, Bilalians, Moors, Aboriginal Asiatic Black men and women, etc. With North American African, I try to give us a geo-political identification. We are Africans in North America as distinguished from Central and South American Africans, Caribbean Africans, European Africans, et. al.

In sociology 101, we were taught about the cultural lag. We must admit in this era of high technology, events are changing rapidly and language as well. As I said at the top, some language is cunning and vile, determined to maintain the last vestige of a dying order called White Supremacy, although we are not tricked by this term which is a misnomer in the era of Globalism that transcends white domination, alas, Globalism is multi-cultural, e.g., Chinese, Arab, Latino, European. This mixed portfolio can again confuse those trapped in the low information vibration, still thinking White Supremacy is White, while it has clearly morphed into the multicultural variety, still cunning and vile.  After all, ethnicities are all able to express Type II and even Type I White Supremacy. If this is confusing, Nelly Fuller is right, "If you don't understand white supremacy, everything else will confuse you!"

Language is indeed fluid and dynamic, so one can try to maintain a basic language to complete our daily round, yet if we reject the linguistic and societal changes because we find some of them morally abhorrent, we may find ourselves further alienated from a world hostile to us for the last few centuries. And yet, the final question rests, not with "them," but with US as a people who must recognize our national liberation aspirations, for the African proverb says, "Wood may remain in the water ten years but it will never become a crocodile."

If a marriage partner remains in an abusive relationship, their mental health is called into question and recovery, often long term, is needed so the abused person can regain their mental equilibrium.
Do you not think North American Africans need a total break from our marriage with the USA, from four hundred years of traumatic slave syndrome psychosis, yes, a complete, total and full blown break with reality. Frazier described it best in Black Bourgeoisie, "The world of make believe" enjoyed by the black bourgeoisie and grassroots as well. We've all been hoodwinked and bamboozled.

Language is the primary instrument in the propaganda war to continue the domination of North American Africans, no matter whether utilized by perennial white supremacists or the new boys and girls on the block,i.e., the globalists and their running dogs, sycophants and sell-outs among our own kind.

For us suffering Type II White Supremacy, we must face the myriad traumas head on, without fear of relapse due to clear knowledge of our horrific condition, past and present. Shall we tell the sufferers of oppression an Aspirin will suffice? We should not tell the patient the cancer is final stage without a vigorous therapeutic recovery regimen? At minimal, we must tell the patient to guard against being deceived, even from the doctor himself! Dr. Nathan Hare says follow the Fictive Theory, i.e., everything White supremacists say is fiction until proven to be fact, most especially anything relating to our condition, but the general reality as well. Mrs. Amina Baraka said, "Don't drink the Kool Aid. Well, Marvin, you and I drank a little bit!" LOL
--Marvin X
8/28/18

Prison Lyrics of Marvin X, 1970, in honor of the 2018 Black August National Prison Strike

In  Honor of the Black August 
National Prison Strike, 2018

Marvin X: The Prison Lyrics, 1970

Marvin X underground in Harlem, NY, 1968. 

photo Doug Harris

He was wanted by the FBI for refusing to fight in Vietnam. In Harlem he worked at the New Lafayette Theatre as Associate Editor of their Black Theatre Magazine. His Black Arts Movement associates included Amiri Baraka, Askia Toure, Sonia Sanchez, Sun Ra, Last Poets, Nikki Giovanni, Milford Graves, Haki Madhubuti, Ed Bullins, Robert Macbeth and the Lafayette Theatre family, Larry Neal, Mae Jackson, Barbara Ann Teer, et al. 

His chapbook Fly To Allah is a seminal work of the BAM and Muslim American literature, according to Muslim American literature scholar, Dr. Mohja Kahf. 

When he was captured returning from a visit to Montreal, Canada, after his release and knew his Harlem sojourn was ended, he penned the following poem before his departure for a court appearance in San Francisco.

Al Hajj Harlem

In sha-allah

I go from here

soon

studied theory practice of blackness

University of Harlem

greater than Timbuctu

farewell Harlem

Mecca of the West

saddened moved

smile

see my children

I am a child

rising taking control

I am moved to be here

a star

Allah's heaven

As Salaam Alaikum

wa rah matu llahi

wa barakatuh.

--Marvin X

After the court convicted and while awaiting sentencing, Marvin X went into his second exile (first was Toronto, Canada), this time to Mexico City and Belize, Central America, from which he was arrested for teaching Black Power and suspected of being a Communist. When the plane from Belize landed in Miami, Florida, he was taken to Dade County Jail, later Miami City Jail, then San Francisco County Jail and sentenced to five months at Terminal Island Federal Prison. He wrote the following lyrics while in San Francisco Country Jail and Terminal Island, 1970. 

We are the revolutionaries!

In memory of James McClain, William Christmas and Jonathan Jackson. In their slave revolt of August 7, 1970, at the Marin County Courthouse, shouted, "We are the revolutionaries!"

We are the revolutionaries

Days go slow in here

don't let us out for air

can't even tell morning night

they read our mail

don't have no rights

try to make us feel less than man

don't work don't work

I know who I am

We are the revolutionaries

We are the revolutionaries

They got us down

not for long

feed us food fit for pigs

put us in cells with the insane

never go outside can't tell when it rains

nobody comes to see us, nobody seems to care

in spite of everything we hold on

We are the revolutionaries

jails filled with brothers black and brown

must be conspiracy to keep us down

won't work won't work won't work

gonna break out free the town

Can't make me feel less than man

bars mean nothing

I know who I am

Days go slow in here

don't let us out for air

what kind of people are these

really make you wonder

hurry Allah fire and water

Devils won't give up

til six feet under

We are the revolutionaries

We are the revolutionries

They got us down

not for long

power to the people death to the devil

power to the people death to the devil

We are the revolutionaries

We are the revolutionaries

We're going to make a new world for everybody

We're going to make a new world for everybody.

--Marvin X

Chained and Bound

for Luciano Marcellius 15X Bel-Lee, Terminal Island FOI Captain.

Three of us NOI brothers held an election on the  Big Yard. Marcellius said I was

the minister since I was the smartest. He appointed the other brother secretary

and himself Captain. Next Sunday we met in the chapel and I lectured on Africans in the Americas, based on Africa's Gift to America, J.A. Rogers, a book I found in the prison library that was marked Contraband, but I put it in my property when I was released from Terminal Island. 

You got me chained and bound

but can't keep me down

Born to be free

have my liberty

by any means necessary

Our time has come

our day is here

black man stand

have no fear

got me chained and bound

but can't keep me down

Dare to struggle dare to win

then the world will be ours again

devil is a paper tiger

rules with the gun

no law and order

til black justice done

Got me chained and bound

can't keep me down

Come my brothers

seize the time

no more dope no more wine

no no no no no no

Got me chained and bound

but you can't keep me down

Come my brothers

breako  the chains

no peace til freedom reigns

You got me chained and bound

can't keep me down

no no no no no no no no no.............

Allah Loves a Warrior

Allah loves a warrior

hates a coward

Allah loves a warrior

hates a coward

Want to serve the Mighty God

Got to be a mighty man

Allah loves a warrior

hates a coward

When battle gets rough

got to be more tough

Allah loves a warrior 

hates a coward

When the deal goes down

Don't turn around

Allah loves a warrior

hates a coward

If you can't give everything

Can't serve this King

Allah loves a warrior

hates a coward

Total submission

He asks of you

Make His will your will

that's what you gotta do

Cause Allah loves a warrior

hates a coward

You gotta be strong in times like these

can't turn around

can't try to flee

Allah loves a warrior

hates a coward

If you say you believe

don't you know you will be tried

cause Allah loves a warrior

hates a coward.

--Marvin X

from Take Care of Business, musical drama, Black Educational Theatre, San Francisco, 1972, music arranged by Sun Ra and his Arkestra. Choreography by Raymond Sawyer. Directed and produced by Marvin X.

Afterword

Marvin X in Georgetown, Guyana, South America, interviewing Prime Minister Forbes Burnham at his residence, 1972. PM Burnham gave North American Africans citizenship upon request, especially those escaping US white supremacy. Julian Mayfield, Tom Feelings and other artists joined his government. Herman Ferguson was a political refugee from NYC, along with Nassar Shabazz from San Francisco. Other North American Africans who found refuge in Guyana were Mamadou Lumumba and others associated with RAM or the Revolutionary Action Movement.  

After enduring exile twice and jail, prison, Marvin X was awarded a writing fellowship from the National Endowment of the Humanities that enabled him to visit Afro-Mexicans in Southern Mexico and attend Carifesta, the Caribbean Festival of the Arts, Georgetown, Guyana, 1972, at which he interviewed Prime Minister Forbes Burnham, a socalled Black Power advocate we later learned the American CIA used to forestall another Cuban-style Marxist regime in the Americas. Black Power was more favorable to the USA than Communism. One of our greatest Pan African scholars, Dr. Walter Rodney, was assassinated under PM Burnham's watch, along with the Rev. Jim Jones massacre of 900 mostly North American Africans so desperate to escape US White supremacy they fed their children poison laced Kool Aid. Marvin's interview was published in Black Scholar Magazine and Muhammad Speaks Newspaper.