Congratulations Judge Teri L. Jackson, Associate Justice of the Court of Appeal
Congratulations to Judge Teri L. Jackson, who was sworn in Tuesday to the office of Associate Justice of the Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, Division Three.
Judge Jackson was the first African American woman tapped for SF Superior Court and is now the also the first to her new post.
She was joined at the ceremony by her sister Porsha, brother-in-law Paul and their/her NBA twin sons Jarron and Jared Collins. They invited Warriors superstar Draymond Green, who was their with his fiance Hazel Renee. Also present was Judge Marty Jenkins, Da Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr., Sutter Health Chief Anthony Wagner, Judge Skip Hewlett and wife attorney Cloey Hewlett, SF City Administrator Naomi Kelly, Attorney Paul Henderson and Jounalists Carloyn Tyler and Amelia Ashley-Ward, just to name a few.
Members of the Commission on Judicial Appointments who approved Governor Gavin Newsom's choice Judge Jackson presided: Chief Justice of California Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye, State Attorney General
Xavier Becerra and Presiding Justice J. Anthony Kline.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks on America, 2020
As we reflect on ML King's b day, 2020, we suspect he would say, "Lord have mercy! My God, look what happened to my dream. It's a nightmare that so many people are living on the streets coast to coast in the richest nation in the world. Today as yesterday, we took a check called freedom to the bank but were told there were insufficient funds. Today America is yet the number one purveyor of violence throughout the world. She has learned nothing since Vietnam.
Why is she in Iraq and refuses to leave? Why has she been in Afghanistan twenty years with no victory in sight? Why is her military industrial complex in Syria, Yemen, Somalia and other lands at the cost of trillions? No wonder we can't cash our freedom check, now called Reparations!"
The San Francisco Black Mental Health Emergency and Reparations
"It's a wonder we all haven't gone stark raving mad!"
--James Baldwin, interview with Marvin X, NYC, 1968
As Murphy's law states, things go from bad to worse, and things have certainly gotten worse since James Baldwin told me those words a half century ago. Our mental condition has deteriorated severely from the traumatic slave syndrome effects that has persisted 400 years. America's drug war bombarded our community with toxic chemicals in the form of Crack and germs in the form of STD and HIV/AIDS with the concomitant economic loses in housing and population due to so-called urban renewal, i.e., Negro Removal, that has now morphed into gentrification and dislocation. And mass incarceration has most certainly exacerbated the problem, along with persistent mis-education and ever pervasive racial discrimination in all phases of life.
Dr. Nathan Hare told us housing is the first need of persons suffering mental illness and/or drug abuse, if they are to recover their mental equilibrium or a modicum of sanity. Dr. Frantz Fanon taught us in Wretched of the Earth that the only way the oppressed man and woman can regain their mental health is through the process of revolution. But even revolutionaries need housing. Even slaves had housing, although not much better than the tents occupied by today's homeless throughout San Francisco and the streets of America.
Today, on the steps of San Francisco City Hall, Supervisor Shamann Walton held a press conference that called for reparations from the City and County of San Francisco. He demanded reparations in the form of decent housing, living-wage employment, proper education. A speaker from the SF Board of Education noted 2020 will be the first year Black History Month will be celebration in the San Francisco Public Schools. Supervisor Walton demanded reparations for police abuse under the color of law, in short, a holistic package of reparations. Another speaker noted that reparations is restorative justice for 400 years of crimes against humanity.
The press conference was attended by a multi-cultural group of supporters from the Latinox, Asian,
and white community. They were in full support of reparations for North American Africans. With such broad unity, we think it is about time for the San Francisco North American African leadership to unite. If there are mental health issues, ageism or sexism, we say our condition is an emergency and we must come together and talk shop, as Malcolm X told us. There is no reason aside from mental health issues that keep us from solidifying on an issue that is bigger than any individual, any politician, preacher or teacher. Young Turks must reach functional unity with the elders and the elders must submit to the energy of youth by offering guidance and direction. The hour is too late to be on an ego trip. Surely we see perennial racism is unabated, flowing from the Right and often from the Left. We need only recall Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, "...I'd rather be with the KKK than phony white liberals...."
But all too often our enemy is internal rather than external, although often they may be both! We cannot continue with the slave mentality in modern dress. What did Ancestor Harriet Tubman tell us, "I could have freed more slaves if they had known they were slaves." Often we are unconscious of our behavior that is the residue of slavery. Supervisor Shamaan Walton said a leadership and community meeting on reparations will be held soon. We urge all those sincerely interested in reparations to be present, especially our beloved Rev. Amos Brown, President, SF NAACP and Paster of Third Baptist Church.
Immediately following the press conference on reparations, my editor, Amelia Ashley Ward, asked me to accompany her to Mayor London Breed's office to observe a private meeting she was having with a faith group
advocating for senior housing. Before the meeting began, we chatted with the Mayor in her private office.
Amelia introduced me to Mayor p Breed, but I told Amelia I knew the Mayor from the African American Cultural Center on Fulton Street. She was the director when my Recovery Theater performed One Day in the Life, the docudrama of my addiction to Crack. Mayor Breed reminded me she grew up in the OC housing projects, OC for Out of Control. She said none of her friends would come there to visit her because it out of control! The only friends she had were those who lived there. I told her I was quite familiar with the OC projects as I had bought Crack there many times. On one occasion I gave a dealer short money by mistake but as soon as I realized it, I rushed back to make it right because I didn't want any problem with the OC brothers. The Mayor laughed because she knew it could have been a serious problem.
Amelia and I went into the conference room with the interfaith group. Soon the Mayor entered and the meeting began with a prayer. The group had taken over the Mayor's office some time ago, demanding to meet with her, occupying her office for two hours. She refused to meet with them under duress but agreed to meet today.
After introductions, they demanded the City of San Francisco charge seniors no more than 30% if their income for rental housing. After listening to testimonials, Mayor Breed said she could not promise them what they desired. It would take time.
She told them she fully understood the problems of seniors since she was raised in the projects by her grandmother whom she had to care for when she developed Alzheimer's.
My point is that if this group was unified in their demands and the Mayor was forced to listen. As per reparations, North American Africans must come as a unified group, not divided by intergenerational conflict.
Youth are the vanguard of any people’s struggle, for only youth have the energy and fearlessness to engage the enemy or opposition, and once they grasp the program and ideology of struggle, they are invincible.
Sometimes the problem with the youth generation is the historical discontinuity Harold Cruse wrote about in Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, the gap in knowledge and discipline the old generation doesn’t pass on to the new, causing the new to reinvent the wheel, thus losing precious time making similar mistakes, especially when the old guard doesn’t intervene with direction and wisdom from previous struggle, or the old guard might want to dominate the youth with war stories of battles long ago, rather than guiding youth on strategies and tactics for the war at hand.
We suspect that if the African American leadership will get their heads together and stop ego tripping, the community may indeed secure reparations from the City and Country of San Francisco. Does our leadership suffer mental health issues, if so, we suggest they meet with Dr Nathan Hare since their maladjustment to injustice is severe and is negatively impacting our freedom struggle in this city. In the words of our beloved ancestor Dr Julia Hare, do we have black leaders or leading blacks? There is no reason for two competing Reparation projects. They should and must be merged for the greater good of our community.
Oakland's Black Arts Movement Business District and Mother's for Housing
Because of the people's movement, the Oakland mothers who had occupied a vacant house on Magnolia Street have won a victory. After a violent eviction by the Alameda County goon squad that landed the mothers in Santa Rita jail, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, Governor Newsome and a Land Trust has negotiated to purchase the house from the investment company after renovations. But it was the mother's radical action that made a successful resolution to their occupation because they were homeless. Their case will no doubt be a model for addressing the homeless crisis in Oakland and perhaps coast to coast. They repeatedly told the media they wanted their situation to spark a movement, which brings us to the Oakland City Council member Lynette McElhaney's move to remove Movement from the name of the Black Arts Movement Business District because it's a dog whistle for radicalism she and her stakeholder sycophants don't desire. We say if there is a lack of desire for radical movement in the BAMBD, it shall become a Negro Museum of California district.
Oakland City Council member McElhaney told someone I hate her since we had to force her to push through legislation to establish the Black Arts Movement Business District in Oakland. And she was president of the city council at the time, 2016.
Since then she has done nothing to make the district a reality except from time to time hold stakeholder meetings. On the other hand, Dr Ayodele Nzinga established the BAMBD CDC and has won several Community benefit agreements with developers, gave out $150,000 in mini grants to community persons, including Asians and North American Africans. The California Arts Council granted BAMBD CDC $200,000 for last year's and this year's Bamfest.
BAMBD CDC advocated $75,000 in the City's general fund for capacity building. Lynette had nothing to do with obtaining the funds but is trying to seize the funds for her agenda, while she's had four years to secure funds for BAMBD, including funds for signage, red black and green banners representing the African Universal Flag created by Marcus Garvey. This year is the 100th birthday of the flag that the City of San Francisco painted on all Third Street light poles in Hunters Point, Black cultural district. She now wants to remove "Movement" from the name of the BAMBD. She and other reactionary Negroes objected to the word Movement from the beginning. Oakland Post Newspaper Publisher Paul Cobb had to inform Lynette and her stakeholder sycophants, "The only reason black people are still alive is because of movement, Civil Rights Movement, Black Radical Movements, including the Black Panther Party and the Black Arts Movement." Our condition in Oakland is surely in need of movement, not less movement, if only a bowel movement! I emailed City Councilwoman Lynette McElhaney that I do not hate her. I love story tellers! There should be a statue of Chauncey Bailey, not a plaque. I write in the spirit of Chauncey Bailey and I continue his work of exposing lies and bullshit!
--MARVIN X
Off The Record
Sun Reporter Newspaper
Political Columnist
Writer Marvin X and Oakland City Councilmember Lynette McElhaney in happier times
Photo Adam Turner
San Francisco Supervisor Shamman Walton
photo Adam Turner
Sun Reporter political columnist Marvin X, Sun Reporter Editor Amelia Ashley-Ward,
former San Francisco Supervisor Sophie Maxwell
photo Adam Turner
Marvin X on Reparations
SF Supervisor Shamann Walton and Marvin X
