Photo Essay Marvin X by Adam Turner

Save the date, early bird tickets on eventbrite: In Conversation, Dr. Cornel West and Marvin X

Marvin X Speaks, autographs books at Marin City Juneteenth

Marvin X speaks and autographs Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter at 

Marin City Juneteenth, Saturday, June 29, 2019

 Marvin X speaks, Third Baptist Church, San Francisco
photo Adam Turner

3rd Annual Marin City Juneteenth Community Festival 2019

415-332-1441 / 415-299-2554

freedom 

Saturday, June 29, 2019- 10am-6:30pm

A Special Place

The Marin City Festival is special. Set in a natural grove of trees, intimate yet dynamic. A perfect place to get out of the race.  A  time to relax with friends. Bring a lounge chair and blanket. Support local merchants.  Celebrate our theme:

ECONOMIC CONNECTIONS: INTERNATIONAL

Our Food Vendors serve up a diverse selection of delicious meals, beverages and desserts.

 

Delicious Food...Art...Fashion & More

Jewelry, fashion, crafts, music, local & celebrity talent, Childcare with games, jumping tent and more. We encourage attendees to support our local businesses by spending, a minimum of $25 on food and $100 for goods.

Inspirational Entertainment

Talented performers share Spoken Word and historical tributes. An "Open Mic"provides space for locals to shine, along with our Juneteenth Vendor "commercials" which will compel you to purchase their goods & services over corporate competitors.

There is no cost to attend the Festival

However, we offer VIP seating for those desiring a catered experience. 

Reserved seating, meal/beverage voucher. 

Wait service and a reserved parking space. 

$125 per couple. $75 Single.

Treat yourself or a beloved elder with special needs.

More Information

Theme: Economic Connections-International

Juneteeth is a holiday commemorating the political end to over 400 years of legalized mass enslavement, an institution that created a legacy of systemic economic imbalance.  

We aspire to heal this imbalance by creating an African Marketplace where goods and services are lovingly offered in a spirit of  Pan-Africanism and Economic Liberation.  

Questions?

oshalla@juneteenthcommunityfestival.info

Marin City Juneteenth Community Festival

A Project of the Marin City Community Services District

Location

530 Drake Avenue. Marin City, CA. 94965

 Behind Rocky Graham Park.  Parking available on site or nearby.

Review by Marvin X: Last Black Man in San Francisco

 Danny Glover, grandfather

 The Nigga Greek Chorus

 Jimmy Fails as Jimmy and co-writer

 Jimmy Fails and Johnathan Majors as Jimmy and Mont

 Tichina Arnold as Aunti

Last weekend, writer Cecil Brown stopped by my Academy of da Corner, Lakeshore Ave., Oakland, and asked if I'd seen Last Black Man in San Francisco? I replied that I hadn't and he said he hadn't either, but from what he'd heard, it was the gentrification of gentrification, referring to the white director,Joe Talbot, although co-written by Rob Reichert and Jimmy Fails, also the co-star. Cecil Brown was saying the process of the  production itself was gentrified, and it certainly was, e.g., European music dominated the soundtrack of a film essentially about hip hop characters, although the film was definitely inter-generational, including a mythic ancestor grandfather, who supposedly built a Victorian house in the 1940s when the wave of North American Africans migrated West to work in the war industry and replaced Japanese in the Fillmore when they were put in concentration camps.

Jonathan Majors and Jimmie Fails are the main characters, Mont and Jimmy respectively. Like many North American Africans disconnected from their history, we often construct mythology to placate our psychological trauma that transcends amnesia which assumes we forgot, but Dr. Nathan Hare says we simply never knew, as any victim of physical trauma is unable to recall what happened to them. Jimmy comes to believes, or rather constructs the myth that his grandfather built the house but eventually deed history reveals it was constructed a hundred years before, as a tour guide attempted to tell his group.

During probate by the white owners, Mont and Jimmy occupy the house but are forced to move when a "friendly" real estate agent puts it up for sale. Before they depart, Mont produces a play in the house that reveals the myth Jimmy has been living by at which point Jimmy declares he must be the last black man in San Francisco because all his relatives are living precariously or have departed.

This film about brotherly and family love has value as North American Africans are being gentrified coast to coast. But as Tina Turner said, "What's love got to do with it?"

We don't expect film writers to be sociologists and city planners, so although we appreciate the film, it presents the problem but no solution, and perhaps there is none when the median cost of a home in San Francisco is 1.4 million dollars. Will any amount of creative financing solve problem of affordability? Most certainly, a livable wage won't!

And most especially, a communal problem will not be solved with an individual solution. We know films must be focused, and although we can deduct from the specific to the general, we need to see that the severity of the problem is communal.



We recently celebrated the memorial of Wade "Speedy" Woods, and I titled my story on him as "The Last Fillmore Revolutionary Negro". Ironically, as per this film, Speedy headed WAPAC, the Fillmore or Western Addition
Project Area Committee, a redevelopment agency that tried to save, and did save, many of the Victorians like the one depicted in Last Black Man in San Francisco. If I were to write a film on Speedy, it would reveal his efforts to save community as opposed to a narrative of him as an individual. He did have a team! And WAPAC save some elements of the Fillmore, but we must note that years later as the Fillmore, aka, Harlem of the West, suffered gentrification, former Mayor Joe Alioto publically apologized for "destroying the cultural and economic vitality of the Fillmore."

Left to write, SFSU BSU co-founders Mar'yam, Danny Glover and Marvin X.
Danny portrayed Jimmy's grandfather in Last Black Man in SF.

As was noted in the Rolling Stone review, Last Black Man floated between fantasy and documentary, or mythology and reality, and this is okay, except our condition is so critical, do we have time for fantasy? We are being moved on and thus we are on the move. The film revealed our desperate straits, from family members to the hopeless Greek chorus on the corner in the hills of Hunters Point, to the sick white people in downtown San Francisco who want nudity as a normality. They have even opened a cafe where they can enjoy rats as they eat and drink!

SF Mayor London Breed at SF Juneteenth in the Fillmore

photo Marvin X

As we came off the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, we noted the skyscrapers under construction, then wondered how city planners can approve these constructions without giving equity to the displaced with affordable housing and living wages? Nevertheless, our beloved Mayor London Breed spoke at the Fillmore Juneteenth and assured the crowd of North American African we would not suffer the fate of the Last Black Man in San Francisco! We shall survive, the Mayor assured  the crowd!
--Marvin X
6/23/19

Update: Dr. Cornel West/Marvin X Conversationj

Update: Dr. Cornel West/Marvin X Conversation on Critical Issues

Local, National, International

December, 2019

Date, Time, Place TBA

 Dr. Cornel West and Marvin X in Philly at the 65th B-Day of Mumia Abu Jamal

The December, 2019 on-stage conversation between Dr. Cornel West and Marvin X is rapidly taking shape although the date, time and place has not been finalized, but Berkeley will likely be the city. Berkeley Juneteenth board member, Delores Noche, has confirmed as a sponsor. B-Tech Math instructor, Ramal Lamar, has confirmed the B-Tech PTA as a sponsor. Paul Smith of the Bay Area Jazz Society will be music director. Co-producer will be Dr. Ayodele Nzinga of Oakland's Lower Bottom Playaz and the Black Arts Movement Business District, CDC.

The event is a conversation between two of America's greatest minds. While Dr. Cornel West is a well known public intellectual, Marvin X has been a force in the black revolutionary underground as co-founder of the Black Arts Movement and unofficial recruiter of the Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam.

 Left to right: Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, co-founders of the BPP

In the introduction to his latest book, Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X, Dr. Nathan  Hare writes, "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)...."
Ishmael Reed calls him, "Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland." Bob Holman says, "He's the USAs Rumi...." Dr. Mohja Kahf says, "He's the father of Muslim
American literature." Next week, Duke University Professor Ellen McLarney is flying into Oakland to conduct a three-day interview with Marvin X for her book on Black Islamic influenced writers. She has chapters on Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez and will include a chapter on Marvin X.
 
Left to right: Mrs. Amina Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Marvin X and Amiri Baraka, RIP, at the memorial for Dr. Betty Shabazz, Riverside Church, NYC.
Photo Risasi

Professor McLarney was so humbled the poet agreed to be interviewed, she told him, "What shall I call you? I cannot just call you Marvin X?" When one of his students heard of her remarks, he said, "I don't care what people say, Marvin X is my Sheikh!"

  

 Marvin X and his mentor/associate in BAM, Master Teacher Sun Ra, Father of Afro-futurism (Octavia Butler is Mother). Marvin and Sun Ra taught in the Black Studies Department, UC Berkeley, 1972.

Minister Khalid Muhammad (RIP) told Marvin X repeatedly whenever they met, "I studied your writings in college. I love your early writings influenced by the Nation of Islam!" Marvin X says, "I shall forever love and respect Khalid. He came to Oakland searching the Crack houses trying to save Huey Newton and myself. I was so deep into Crack addiction, when Muslim brothers told me Khalid was looking for me and Huey, I didn't know who the fuck they were talking about. Who in the fuck is Khalid, I remember saying!"

Left to right, fellow BSU founders at SFSU: Mar'yam Wadai, Danny Glover and Marvin X
photo Adam Turner

Marvin is one of the founders of the Black Students Union at San Francisco State University and has taught at Fresno State University, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, San Francisco State University, Mills College, University of Nevada, Reno, and elsewhere. He appears in the film: Black Panthers, Vanguard of the Revolution, directed by Stanley Nelson. His archives were acquired by the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.

 Black Panther, Vanguard of the Revolution Director Stanley Nelson,

Marvin X, Fred Hampton, Jr. at the San Francisco Film Festival

Left to right: Marvin X, grandson Jahmeel, Director Stanley Nelson, MX's daughter, Attorney Amira Jackmon and daughter Naeemah at Berkeley screening of film.

The poet has been commissioned by the Austin, Texas Black Cultural District, Six Square, to write and produce a dramatic work on the 400th Anniversary of our presence in the American slave system, November, 2019.

Marvin X is the author of thirty books, most of which are out of print. This event is a benefit to enable Black Bird Press to reprint his catalogue of writings.

The poet/playwright/essayist turned 75 on May 29. His radical career began in 1962 at Oakland's Merritt College where he became friends with fellow students Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and others of the neo-black intelligentsia as Bobby Seale described their coming into black consciousness at Merritt College on Grove Street/MLK, Jr. Drive.

He introduced Eldridge Cleaver to Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale. Cleaver immediately joined the BPP and became Minister of Information.

Among the topics Dr. Cornel West and Marvin X will discuss include:
gentrification and homelessness, health issues of senior citizens, incarceration, 2020 elections, immigration, reparations, religiosity vs. spirituality, the MeToo Movement, Black Lives Matter, Pan Africanism, including Blaxit, and other critical issues. A Q and A will follow. Cat Brooks has been invited to be moderator.

The last time these two gentlemen were on stage together was 2001 at San Francisco State University when Marvin produced the Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness Concert.

This conversation will surely be an historic event you won't want to miss. Tickets will be available soon as a date, time and place are finalized.

For more information, stay turned to www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com
Call 510-575-7148. We need sponsors, supporters and generous donations. Your donations can be tax deductible.

Update:

The Marvin X Tribe: Jazmin Jackmon graduates from University of Oregon, drafted by Houston Dash, Women's Professional Soccer Team

 

Congratulations on your graduation from the University of Oregon and joining the Houston Dash, Women's professional soccer team. Love you granddaughter Jazmin.

--Marvin X (Jackmon)

FYI, like all families, my family has suffered much trauma and grief, yet we rise, we rise, we rise. Ache!